THE EFFECTS OF EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION ON LABOR TURNOVER: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM TAIWAN

This paper investigates the effects of employment protection legislation on the rates of hiring, separation, worker flows, job reallocation, and churning flows for the case of Taiwan. Our empirical identification takes advantage of a reform created by Taiwan's enactment of Labor Standards Law, which has substantially increased the costs of firing, and the implementation of the law's enforcement measures. Moreover, our identification also exploits the fact that the stringency of the law's provisions and the intensity of the law's enforcement vary with establishment size. On the basis of the monthly data at the establishment level for the period 1983–1995, we find that Taiwan's Labor Standards Law and its enforcement measures have dampened labor turnover for medium‐sized and large establishments, while that of small establishments was not affected. (JEL J65, J63, J88)     

Source‐Country Gender Roles and the Division of Labor Within Immigrant Families

The authors examined the relationship between source‐country gender roles and the gender division of paid and unpaid labor within immigrant families in the host society. Results from Canadian Census of Population (N = 497,973) data show that the 2 indicators of source‐country gender roles examined—female/male labor activity ratio and female/male secondary education ratio—are both positively associated with immigrant wives' share in their family labor supply and negatively associated with their share in housework. The association between source‐country gender roles and women's share in couples' labor activities weakens over time. Moreover, the relationship between source‐country female/male labor activity and immigrant couples' gender division of labor is reduced when immigrant women have nonimmigrant husbands, indicating that husband's immigration status matters.     

Unauthorized Migrants and the (Il)Logic of “Crime Control”: A Human Rights Perspective on US Federal and Local State Immigration Policies

Immigration control, widely regarded the sovereign right of nation states, has often been pursued at the expense of civil and human rights. More than a century ago, nativists legitimated a punitive approach to immigration control that treated migrants’ rights as secondary by branding millions of newcomers to the United States as a “dangerous class”. In many ways, recent policies similarly criminalize immigrants and deploy crime control strategies in response. This article reviews the most significant of these policies at the federal and local state level, including: border security measures, detention and deportation, the 287(g) program, anti‐immigrant city ordinances, and the Arizona law (SB1070). Each initiative has been framed as necessary to protect American citizens from serious crime. We focus on four ways in which these policies violate human rights: first, border security measures that result in migrant deaths violate the right to life; second, detention and deportation violate the right to liberty; third, detention and deportation punish unlawful residents as though they were guilty of criminal rather than civil violations of the law, imposing penalties that are arbitrary and disproportionately harsh; and fourth, local state policies to counter illegal immigration encourage racial profiling, a practice that violates the right to freedom from discrimination.     

Refining the Salience Hypothesis: Does the Response to Immigration Differ Across Countries?

Applied to immigration, Blalock’s (Toward a Theory of Minority‐Group Relations. A Capricorn Giant, 1967) salience hypothesis predicts that contact with immigrants will tend to highlight the role of nationality in the identities of natives and thereby increase opposition to immigration. Drawing on group threat and cultural perspectives hypotheses, we consider the roles of macroeconomic conditions and national culture in salience effects. Our results indicate that economic concerns over immigration are more sensitive to the immigrant population share during difficult economic times and in countries with less religious diversity and more collectivist cultures. In contrast, cultural concerns over immigration are not sensitive to the macroeconomic and cultural variables we examine. Thus, the attitudinal response to immigration differs significantly across countries, a finding that is relevant to attempts to manage the social and political consequences of large immigration inflows.     

Different Game,Different Frame?: Black Counterdiscourses and Depictions of Immigration in Atlanta's African‐American and Mainstream Press

This article compares the discourse on immigration found in Atlanta's African‐American press (Atlanta Daily World) to that found in Atlanta's mainstream press (Atlanta Journal‐Constitution). The Daily World's black counterdiscourse situates immigration within a racial frame, discussing Latinos and immigrants interchangeably and casting African Americans as deserving yet excluded citizens. Immigrants appear in the Daily World as either allies in the struggle for civil rights or as competitors for jobs. Although the Daily World crime frames focus on concerns about racial profiling, the Journal‐Constitution often depicts immigrants as criminals or discusses immigration in terms of legal status and policy.     

AN ESTIMATE OF THE AGE DISTRIBUTION'S EFFECT ON CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS

We estimate the age distribution's impact on carbon dioxide emissions from 1990 to 2006 by exploiting demographic variation in a panel of 46 countries. To eliminate potential bias from endogeneity or omitted variables, we instrument for the age distribution in a country's current population with lagged birth rates, and the regressions control for total population, total output, and country and year fixed effects. Carbon dioxide emissions increase with the share of the population aged 35 to 49 years, and this result is statistically significant and quantitatively large. (JEL Q4, J1)     

“They Treat us Like Pests:” Undocumented Immigrant Experiences Obtaining Health Care in the Wake of a “Crackdown” Ordinance

This article presents findings from a qualitative study of Latino immigrant experiences seeking health care services in the wake of an anti-immigrant “crackdown” ordinance similar to Arizona's SB 1070. Prince William County, Virginia's 2007 “Rule of Law” ordinance escalated law enforcement efforts that targeted this population for deportation and ordered staff to ensure that no one receive social services other than those required by federal law. This article sought to answer the questions: (1) Were undocumented immigrants able to obtain health care? (2) How do immigrants characterize their experiences with health providers? Data were gathered via semi-structured interviews (n = 57) with Latinos in a low-income neighborhood. Analysis of Spanish-language narratives found that many were dissuaded from seeking care because of high costs as well as lack of familiarity with the health care system. Others perceived that they were treated with insensitivity or outright hostility—and believed this treatment was a deliberate effort to discourage them from seeking help.     

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND THE UTILIZATION OF MINORITY‐ AND WOMEN‐OWNED BUSINESSES IN HIGHWAY PROCUREMENT

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) mandates states' use of affirmative action when awarding federally funded road construction projects. Here I document the effectiveness of this program in increasing purchases from disadvantaged business enterprises (DBEs). Higher goals for the utilization of DBEs, both across states over time and across projects within California, is associated with a greater share of contract dollars awarded to DBEs. This effect is concentrated among minority‐owned firms and is stronger when goals are more likely to be binding and in states with an apparently stricter enforcement regime. (JEL J15, H57)     

Post/past-'Orientalism' Orientalism and its dis/re-orientation

Abstract

In Orientalism (1978) Edward Said articulated more a cultural filter than a cultural divide, through a catalog of historical documents on the west's representation of the east, enabling readers to share a vocabulary that has now become a part of American intellectual history. In the last quarter century Orientalism has acquired a 'symbolic value' that was at best present as a 'potential value', thus realizing itself; from its initial position as an object of cultural study it has now become a subject imbued with the agency to change perception and understanding. It has problematized Orientalism itself and associated issues of the new globalism, such as immigration, diaspora, boundary crossings, cross-border terrorism, mixed ethnicities, international and inter-racial adoptions, and travel. The article focuses on the new social, political and economic faces of the old Orientalist attitudes, and calls for a radical revision of history.     

THE EFFECTS OF EDUCATION ON FERTILITY: EVIDENCE FROM TAIWAN

This study investigates the impact of women's education on fertility. For identification, we use the 1968 compulsory education law change in Taiwan, which generated a regression discontinuity design (RDD) setting. We use the whole population of women from the 1980 and 2010 Population Censuses. Results of our RDD estimation using the exact date of birth suggest that the law change was effective in boosting women's education, but it did not have any impact on fertility. This is in stark contrast to most previous studies using only the birth year as the running variable or using it to construct instruments, which find that women's education depresses fertility. This study demonstrates that using a discrete running variable in RDD may generate a false discontinuity for an otherwise continuous regression function. (JEL J13, C21, I2)     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: BOYCE, A.J. (ed). Migration and Mobility: Biosocial Aspects of Human Movement. Symposia of the Society for Study of Human Biology, Volume XXIII. JORIS, C., MARCHI, L., GAILLY, A. Vrouwen in drievoud; Opvoeding, groepswerking en zelfhulpgroepen bij Siciliaanse, Marokkaanse en Turkse migrantenvrouwen. LEMAN, J. Integratie, anders bekeken. WALVIN, James. Passage to Britain. HIRSCHFELD, G. (ed.). Exile in Great Britain; Refugees from Hitler's Germany. ‘Recherches sur l'immigration’. Critique Régionale 10–11. Cahiers de sociologie et d'économie régionales. CALAVITA, K. U.S. Immigration Law and the Control of Labour; 1820–1924. Migration: World Trends, localized flows and their absorption. International Social Science Journal     

QUANTIFYING BIAS IN DRIVING‐UNDER‐THE‐INFLUENCE ENFORCEMENT

As the marginal suspect and propensity to commit crime are unobserved across racial categories, it is difficult to quantify racial bias with law enforcement outcomes data. We test for racial bias in driving‐under‐the‐influence of alcohol enforcement. The assessment outcome variable, blood alcohol content (BAC), provides information about motorist's choices and allows for a more refined test for racial bias compared with other law enforcement outcome data. We find no evidence of racial bias in the relevant range where our model applies. However, we do find differences in find rates at the lowest levels of BAC, where there should be no impairment. (JEL J7, K42)     

Women watching together: An ethnographic study of Korean soap opera fans in the US

To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic of American cultural–legal studies, and it offers in Atticus Finch an iconic hero who, as Stephen Lubet suggests, is popular culture's most important embodiment of lawyerly virtue. As other scholars have noted, however, To Kill a Mockingbird is not just, or primarily, a law story. Rather, Scout Finch's portrait of Atticus as a father is regarded by many as the key to the text's cultural resonance. Told as a daughter's memory of her father, her brother, and the town in which she grew up, the text frames the era's conflicts over race, gender, and justice through the lens of Scout's admiration for Atticus. From our perspective, however, it is the conjunction of lawyer and father that fuels To Kill a Mockingbird’s appeal and importance, and in this paper we argue that such a conjunction, particularly in its filmic incarnation, provides an opportunity to explore the role that fathers and fatherhood play in cultural imaginings of law and in exemplifying the various faces of law's power. We argue that Atticus Finch is a father/lawyer committed to a particular vision of fatherhood and law, one in which both can transcend, if not transform, the context in which they exist, one in which orienting oneself to the future takes precedence over controlling the present, one in which the temporal horizon of law and fatherhood is kept firmly in view. In the figure of Atticus, To Kill a Mockingbird suggests that law and fatherhood are powerful and yet limited in their power, and that both exist in the present but are oriented towards an as yet unrealized future.     

LABOR'S SHARE,THE FIRM'S MARKET POWER,AND TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY

We investigate the relationship between labor's share, firm's market power, and the elasticity of output with respect to labor input using an approach based on an unobserved components model. The approach yields time‐varying estimates of market power and the elasticity. Evidence on the market power of firms (which we find to be rising since 2000) gives a deeper understanding of movements in labor's share and the labor wedge. The generated values of the elasticity yield revised estimates of total factor productivity growth which is informative about the extent of the downward bias inherent in traditional estimates which use labor's share as a proxy for the elasticity. (JEL O47, C32, E25)     

A Closed Immigration Country: Revisiting Japan as a Negative Case

The Japanese government maintains that the country admits only skilled economic migrants. Its statistics tell a different story. Skilled and low‐skilled economic migrants are admitted in equal measure. The aim of this article is to explain the dissonance between the government's policy rhetoric and policy outcome by turning to policy output. To this end, I quantitatively analyse immigration admission channels for economic migrants, using Ruhs' Openness and Rights Indicators (2013). The main findings not only go against much of what we believe about Japan but helps us reach a more nuanced understanding of its immigration policies. I demonstrate that Japanese immigration admission policies have become more open towards de facto low‐skilled economic migrants over time and are more open to de facto low‐skilled economic migrants than to de jure skilled economic migrants. Instead of openness, the gains made by certain groups of de jure skilled economic migrants have been exclusive immigration privileges related to permanent residence and family sponsorship.     

“Those who come to do harm”: The Framings of Immigration Problems in Costa Rican Immigration Law

This article examines the political rationales at work behind the particularly repressive 2006 Costa Rican immigration law and subsequent immigration reform process and resulting 2010 law through an analysis of two rival framings of immigration in Costa Rica. First, I examine how the rushed nature of the 2006 law constructed a crisis in which migrants, particularly Nicaraguans, represented urgent threats to national security. Next, I examine the 2010 law that emerged from the reform process and the alternative framings of immigration as an issue of human rights and integration that migration advocates contributed to the new law. I argue that the juxtaposition of integration and security frameworks in the new law reinforces the law's most repressive measures, contributing to an overall project of securitization and marginalization of immigrants.     

ACCOUNTING FOR THE CYCLICAL DYNAMICS OF INCOME SHARES

Over the business cycle, labor's share of output is negatively but weakly correlated with output, and it lags output by about four quarters. Profits' share is strongly pro‐cyclical. It neither leads nor lags output, and its volatility is about five times that of output. Those assumptions relate to the structure of aggregate technology and the degree of competition in factor markets. Despite much evidence in favor of time‐varying income shares, macroeconomics still lacks models that can account for their time series facts. This article constructs a model that can replicate those facts. We introduce costly entry of firms in a model with frictional labor markets and find a link between the ability of the model to replicate income shares' dynamics and the ability of the model to amplify and propagate shocks. That link is a weak correlation between the real interest rate and output, a fact in U.S. data but a feature that models of aggregate fluctuations have had difficulty achieving. (JEL E3, E25, J3, E24)     

WHAT DETERMINES FAMILY STRUCTURE?

We use data from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to estimate the effects of policy and labor market variables on the demographic behaviors that determine children's family structure experiences: union formation and dissolution, and fertility. Male and female wages have substantial effects on family structure for children of black and Hispanic mothers. The tax treatment of children also affects family structure. Welfare reform, welfare benefits, and unilateral divorce had much smaller effects on family structure for the children of this cohort of women. Trends in wages and tax rates explain only a small share of the observed changes in family structure in recent decades. (JEL J12)     

TALENT AND/OR POPULARITY: WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE A SUPERSTAR?

We show that both talent and popularity significantly contribute to stars' market values in German soccer. The talent‐versus‐popularity controversy on the sources of stardom goes back to Rosen (1981) and Adler (1985) . All attempts to resolve the controversy empirically face the difficulty of accurately identifying talent. In professional sports, rank‐order tournaments help in ascertaining talent. Analyzing a team setting, we use 20 different performance indicators to estimate a player's talent according to his ability to increase the team's winning probability. (JEL J31, J44, L83)