Structural and Contextual Factors Regarding the Accessibility of Elective Office for Women of Color at the Local Level

Different from the majority of past research on gender gaps in political officeholding, we adopt an intersectionality framework and move beyond traditional individual factors to explore what implications certain elements in the political opportunity structure may have for women and men of color elected officials serving in county, municipal, and local school board offices. We argue that structural and contextual factors, such as type of institutions, election systems, and jurisdictional racial makeup, may influence the calculations women of color make concerning the accessibility of elective office. Using data from the Gender and Multiracial Leadership (GMCL) project, we find county offices to be the least, and seats on school boards the most, accessible to women of color. Of the types of electoral arrangements, we find multimember districts (MMD) to be the most significant variable predicting the likelihood of women of color in office. Although both Black and Latina women benefit from having a significant share of coethnics or nonwhites in jurisdictions, the two groups of women have an opposite relationship to their racial constituent makeup than that held by their male counterparts.     

Stagnation only on the surface? The implications of skill and family responsibilities for the gender wage gap in Sweden, 1974–2010

The wage differential between women and men persists in advanced economies despite the inflow of women into qualified occupations in recent years. Using five waves of the Swedish Level‐of‐Living Survey (LNU), this paper explores the gender wage gap in Sweden during the 1974–2010 period overall and by skill level. The empirical analyses showed that the general gender wage gap has been nearly unchanged for the past 30 years. However, the gender difference in wage in less qualified occupations fell considerably, whereas the gender pay gap remained stable for men and women in qualified occupations. The larger significance of family responsibilities for wages in qualified occupations is one likely explanation for this result.     

Collective Bargaining and the Gender Pay Gap in the Printing Industry

This paper considers the effect of collective bargaining on the gender pay gap in the printing industry. This sector was subject to multi‐employer bargaining for around 90 years, until 2010. The article analyses gendered collective bargaining processes through the mechanism of symbolic power, that is, the power of interpretation and definition, and utilizes Walton and McKersie's seminal work on bargaining behaviour to understand the processes that have prevented the closing of the pay gap. It finds that symbolic power operates within the sub‐processes of attitudinal structuring and intra‐organizational bargaining to de‐legitimize women's role in equal pay bargaining, alongside distributive bargaining tactics that preclude equal pay bargaining, thereby creating the impression that women are irrelevant to bargaining processes and ensuring relative invisibility for issues of importance to equality bargaining.     

An examination of student and provider perceptions of voluntary sector social work placements in Northern Ireland

Practice based learning in Northern Ireland is a core element of social work education and comprising 50% of the degree programme for undergraduate and postgraduate students. This article presents evidence about the perceptions of practice learning from voluntary sector/non-government organisation (NGO) placement providers and final year social work students on social work degree programmes in Northern Ireland in 2011. It draws on data from 121 respondents from189 final year students and focus group interviews with voluntary sector providers offering 16% (85) of the total placements available to students. The agencies who participated in the research study provide a total of 55 PLOs to social work students, and are therefore fairly representative in terms of voluntary sector (NGO) provision. The article locates these data in the context of practice learning pedagogy and the changes introduced by the Regional Strategy for Practice Learning Provision in Northern Ireland 2010–2015. Several themes emerged including; induction, support and guidance, practice educator/student relationship, professional identity and confidence in risk assessment and decision-making. Social work educators, placement providers and employers must be cognisant of newly qualified social workers’ needs in terms of consolidating knowledge within the formative stages of their professional development.     

循环式国家：转型中国的符号式劳动治理机制探析

抗争政治与国家建设之间的关系是社会运动研究中的一个经典问题。本文通过对一组国有企业退休工人为维护退休金权益所展开的十年抗争进行过程事件分析,来勾勒国家在劳动治理过程中逐步形成的官僚场域。这个官僚场域由三个相互交叉的圈子所构成：信访办圈子、信访办与法院之间的圈子、中央与地方之间的圈子。这些交叉的圈子所构成的国家场域一方面通过对抗争的制度化循环而拉长了工人的斗争时间,分散了抗争的空间,从而有效遏止了抗争的激进化,另一方面则通过抗争工人与国家代理人之间的叙事化互动促进了国家资本的激活与流通,从而实现了对抗争者的象征性支配。     

凌纯声先生的赫哲族田野调查--从现代中国实地调查研究的学术背景谈起

凌纯声先生1930年的赫哲族田野调查是中国民族学和人类学界一次科学的实地调查,具有开创性意义.本文从现代中国提倡和注重实地调查研究的学术背景来审视这次田野调查.上世纪20年代后,中国人文社会科学逐渐从吸收传播"西学"向研究中国历史、社会、民族文化转变,朝着"本土化"的方向努力,从而形成了提倡实地调查研究的学术风气,而且中国学者进行了多次学术实践.这次田野调查与那个时代的学术背景密切相关,并且体现出其学术背景.本文还论述了蔡元培先生与这次田野调查的密切关系.     

Understanding Mechanisms Underlying Peer Effects: Evidence From a Field Experiment on Financial Decisions

Using a high‐stakes field experiment conducted with a financial brokerage, we implement a novel design to separately identify two channels of social influence in financial decisions, both widely studied theoretically. When someone purchases an asset, his peers may also want to purchase it, both because they learn from his choice (“social learning”) and because his possession of the asset directly affects others' utility of owning the same asset (“social utility”). We randomize whether one member of a peer pair who chose to purchase an asset has that choice implemented, thus randomizing his ability to possess the asset. Then, we randomize whether the second member of the pair: (i) receives no information about the first member, or (ii) is informed of the first member's desire to purchase the asset and the result of the randomization that determined possession. This allows us to estimate the effects of learning plus possession, and learning alone, relative to a (no information) control group. We find that both social learning and social utility channels have statistically and economically significant effects on investment decisions. Evidence from a follow‐up survey reveals that social learning effects are greatest when the first (second) investor is financially sophisticated (financially unsophisticated); investors report updating their beliefs about asset quality after learning about their peer's revealed preference; and, they report motivations consistent with “keeping up with the Joneses” when learning about their peer's possession of the asset. These results can help shed light on the mechanisms underlying herding behavior in financial markets and peer effects in consumption and investment decisions.     

雾霾感知风险与公众应对行为的实证分析

通过在雾霾严重时期收集的大规模问卷调查数据,建立了雾霾感知风险等因素与应对行为之间关系的结构方程模型.分析显示,对环境信息越敏感、雾霾感知风险越大、对雾霾知识了解越多、雾霾感知可控性越大的公众会采取更多的防护与应对措施,他们对相关防护产品的购买意愿也越强.特别是,感知风险在环境信息与应对行为以及环境满意度之间起着重要的中介变量作用,即当雾霾污染引起人们的感知风险时,会促使他们采取更多的应对行为,并且对环境满意度评价产生负面影响.另外,雾霾感知可控性在雾霾知识熟悉度与应对行为以及环境满意度之间起着部分中介变量的作用.     

中国自然利率的测算——基于SVAR方法

本文首先利用SVAR模型估计我国的自然利率水平,并在此基础上计算实际利率缺口,然后对实际利率缺口与通货膨胀率的关系进行研究。研究发现:我国实际利率长期低于自然利率;实际利率缺口与通货膨胀率负相关,实际利率缺口变大,通货膨胀率变小,反之则相反。分析表明,实际利率缺口作为宏观经济的重要指标能够反映通货膨胀的变化,利率政策制定部门应把实际利率缺口纳入到政策工具中。     

Scheduling Truck Arrivals at an Air Cargo Terminal

We consider the scheduling of truck arrivals at an air cargo terminal. By coordinating arrivals of cargo delivery trucks with outbound flight departure schedules, some of the shipments can be transferred directly to the departing flights, while others will be stored at the terminal's storage facility and incur extra handling and storage costs. The objective is to obtain a feasible schedule so as to minimize the total cost of operations. We formulate the problem as a time‐indexed integer program and show that, even with limited number of unloading docks at the terminal, the problem is non‐trivial (NP‐hard in the strong sense). Our solution method includes an exact solution procedure to determine an optimal unloading sequence for the shipments carried by each truck, together with a Lagrangian relaxation‐based heuristic for assigning trucks to truck docks and determining truck arrival times. We conducted computational experiments to test the performance of our solution method. Computational results show that our method can generate near‐optimal solutions efficiently. Our simulation results indicate that the scheduling approach proposed in this paper has the potential to generate significant cost savings over a first‐come, first‐served approach currently used at the air cargo terminal that we observed.