The Role of Entrepreneurship in the Context of Career Trajectories: Moving Back into Wage Employment or into Unemployment?

This study investigates patterns of movement from self‐employment to wage employment or to unemployment in Belgium. Non‐parametric techniques and complimentary log–log analyses are used to determine the significance of stable individual traits (e.g. gender) and of time‐dependent characteristics (e.g. family and organizational context, labour market mobility) in moving back to wage employment or to unemployment. Evidence is provided on the possibility of entrepreneurship acting as a ‘steppingstone’ between long‐term unemployment and paid work. Yet, significant relationships also emerge between ex‐ante time spent in unemployment and the possibility of continued unemployment upon self‐employment exit.     

Childhood maltreatment among Norwegian drug abusers in treatment

This article reports on the investigation of the correlation between the European Addiction Severity Index (EuropASI) and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) among 102 Norwegian drug abusers admitted to treatment. The aim of the study is to explore how different types and levels of childhood trauma and social and psychiatric factors, medical situation and experienced family history are interrelated. The study addresses three main questions: 1) What is the prevalence of different kinds of childhood trauma among drug abusers in treatment? 2) Does type or level of maltreatment in childhood predict specific substance abuse problems as adults and/or specific social, psychiatric and medical problems as adults? 3) Do substance abuse problems and mental health problems in the primary family predict different types and levels of childhood maltreatment? Twenty‐five per cent of the total sample was included in the high‐level trauma group and 54% in the intermediate‐level group. Females had significantly higher scores than males in all types of childhood trauma. The strongest correlations were found between childhood trauma and lifetime psychiatric problems and psychiatric status during the last 30 days before admission for treatment. More research, and especially prospective studies, is needed to clarify the importance of parents' substance abuse and psychiatric problems in childhood/adolescent compared with trauma in the client's childhood and the client's current psychiatric status.     

Racial Discrimination in Professional Basketball: Evidence from Nielsen Ratings

Using data on Nielsen ratings for locally televised NBA basketball games, we find strong evidence that viewership increases when there is greater participation by white players. This finding controls for a wide variety of other factors that could systematically affect Nielsen ratings, and signifies the presence of customer discrimination in the market for NBA players. We also find that higher Nielsen ratings allow NBA teams to realize greater advertising revenues, meaning that the marginal revenue product of white players exceeds that of comparable black players. This factor explains much of the race-based salary gap that exists in professional basketball.     

The Effort of Being in a Fictional World: Upkeyings and Laminated Frames in MMORPGs

On the basis of ten months of fieldwork studying a role‐playing guild in the game World of Warcraft, this article shows that contrary to the idea that virtual worlds are seductive illusions, technology does not necessarily support players' feelings of being immersed in fictional worlds. Applying Goffman's frame theory, the author explains how role‐players in the game actively upkey elements from primary frameworks in order to create and uphold the frame of being in a fictional world. This kind of narrative immersion is rather hindered than facilitated by technology.     

Correction to: Persuasion under ambiguity

Theory and Decision - In Proposition 4, lines 3, 4 and 8, 9 were scrambled by mistake during the pagination process of the online published article.     

Well-being and occupational roles among middle-aged women

One purpose of the present study is to explore the stability of the pattern of health/work and sickness absence among middle-aged women over a period of three years. This study tested two hypotheses: (a) that enduringly healthy working women would perceive more valued occupational roles and higher well-being than long-term sick-listed women; (b) that high levels of well-being at baseline would predict enduring health and occupational role value at a 3-year follow-up. Middle-aged women (n = 208) answered a postal survey with the Role checklist, a well-being scale and questions about work and sickness situation. The results showed that there was a considerable variability in the pattern of health/work and sickness absence. The variability was greatest among the women who were long-term sick-listed at baseline, and the internal drop out was great among them. The results showed that the enduringly healthy women experienced a more valued worker role and higher well-being than the long-term sick-listed women. Furthermore, high levels of well-being concerning health and work predicted enduring health in the studied sample, and high well-being concerning work was predictive of a valued worker role. Interventions that enable women to develop valuable worker and leisure roles, as well as harmony between different roles, may be important constituents of health promotion/rehabilitation programmes.     

Employment After Parenthood: Women of Migrant Origin and Natives Compared

Motherhood negatively affects female employment in majority populations across Europe. Although employment levels are particularly low among women of migrant origin, little is known about the motherhood–employment link in migrant populations. This paper investigates whether family formation differentially affects the labour market position of migrant women and their descendants compared to natives. Using longitudinal microdata from the Belgian social security registers, 12,167 women are followed from 12 months before until 48 months after the birth of their first child for the period 1999–2010. Levels of activity (versus inactivity), employment (versus unemployment) and full-time employment (versus part-time employment) are compared between natives and first- and second-generation women of Southern European, Eastern European, Turkish and Moroccan origin. We find that activity and employment levels decrease to a larger extent following the transition to parenthood among women of migrant origin than among natives. With respect to activity levels, differences between second-generation women and natives are largely explained by socio-demographic and pre-birth job characteristics, while differences between first-generation women and natives are not, suggesting that other factors such as tied migration patterns determine labour market attachment among first-generation mothers. With respect to employment levels, unemployment is increasing more among women of migrant origin of both generations than among natives, also when controlling for background characteristics, which signals differential access to stable job positions as well as to family policies. In sum, the results draw attention to the challenge that parenthood creates for mothers of migrant origin in terms of retaining and gaining employment, but also to the role of labour market entry and early career positions.