This paper investigates the Chicago Board Option Exchange Volatility Index's (‘VIX’) response to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, in terms of information efficiency. First, we estimate an Efficiency Index over rolling windows, based on closing levels, for a period between 1995-01-03 and 2020-12-30. Second, we check for the presence of deterministic chaos in efficiency series, by using the largest Lyapunov exponent and sample, as well as permutation entropy. However, we do not find that these estimators provide a clear evidence of a substantial change in VIX's efficiency during 2020, in terms of deterministic chaos and irregular dynamics.

Social tolerance, i.e. the tolerance for the intrinsic diversity of large social groups, can be viewed as a synergic effect of the features of both individuals and socioeconomic environment. This paper proposes a twofold contribution to the literature. First, it advances a conceptual framework in which tolerance at individual levels is explained by social polarization-in the form of income distribution-and the perceived quality of the social relationships and structures. Second, the regression analysis-involving micro-data from World Values Survey covering a time span between 2010 and 2014, for 48 countries-provides robust evidences for a non-linear impact of income distribution on social tolerance. This impact appears to be U-shaped and displays a pronounced degree of asymmetry. Also, labour market position, education, class self-identification, gender, age, marital status, levels of individuals' personal security and sharing of post-materialist values matter in explaining social tolerance. The same main determinants contribute to the formation of both social tolerance and social capital. The differences are related to the amplitude as well as to the degree of symmetry for the corresponding non-linear transmission channels.

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The intangibles can be viewed as strategic assets, since their inclusion in the structure of the total assets allows economic entities to extract a "competiveness rent" and, thus, to enhance the outcomes of their activity. This paper seeks to provide some empirical evidences for the effects exercised by shocks emerged at the level of intangible-to-total assets ratio on profitability in the case of 562 large companies listed on Frankfurt Stock Exchange and London Stock Exchange. We found that, for the full sample, there is a relatively steady relationship between this ratio and various measures of profitability (Return on Assets -ROA, Return on Capital Employed -ROCE and Gross Margin). However, when the two markets as whole or different sectors are considered, there seem to be various significant structural differences and some scale effects in the transmission of the intangibles' impact on profitability. Moreover, we check the robustness of the results in view of two control variables: cash flow-to-operating revenue ratio appears to be the most robust, whereas the effects of solvability ratio are less stable and vary across markets and sectors.