Who benefits from labor market institutions? Evidence from surveys of life satisfaction

This paper investigates the welfare effects of labor market institutions, placing an emphasis on how the institutions’ effects are differentiated by socio-demographic subgroups. We study how life satisfaction is affected by employment protection and the level and duration of unemployment benefit payments. Using data for almost 370,000 individuals in ten European countries, 1975-2002, we find that more employment protection and a higher benefit replacement rate increase the life satisfaction of the average citizen. At the subgroup level, different segments of the population are affected differently by the two categories of labor market institutions. While employment protection is valued especially by employed persons of intermediate age, it is less beneficial for women/housewives and for older persons. More generous unemployment insurance is valued especially by these latter subgroups and by the unemployed.     

Criminal behavior in general equilibrium: Who benefits from crime?

Analyses of the social costs and benefits of crime generally focus attention on the perpetrator and victim, with secondary incidence limited to public and private enforcement costs, and possible efficiency losses from punishment. Professors Jorge Martinez-Vazquez and Bruce Seaman extend the notion from the tax evasion literature that variations in the frequency of illegal behavior across sectors of the economy necessitates a full intersectoral approach to the determination of the long run general equilibrium incidence of crime. An algebraic model of three product markets is used to derive the total social costs per dollar of crime under four different market structures in the “crime prone” industry, and similar differences in the related substitute and complementary goods markets. The differing social impacts suggest that industry market and cost structures are potentially relevant factors in devising optimal law enforcement strategies.     

Who discriminates? Evidence from a trust game experiment across three societies

What personal characteristics are associated with the extent to which individuals discriminate against particular groups? We use an incentive-compatible measure of an individual’s tendency to discriminate on others’ different social identities that takes into account the costs of discrimination. In particular, we elicit participants’ willingness to discriminate (WTD) in their investments to make their decisions dependent on others’ social identities using a laboratory trust game experiment with 545 participants in three countries: Malaysia, China and the UK. Analysis of our WTD measure shows that discrimination differs depending on discriminators’ cultural group identity and political values. Demographic variables including age and gender are not significant. Overall our results support the psychological distinctiveness of WEIRD participants found in other studies.     

Who needs Cantonese,who speaks? Whispers across mountains,delta, and waterfronts

This essay digs into the ‘dirtiness’ of cultural studies to prioritize praxis, or as the way my mountain folks collect summer lotus: putting our feet in the muddy water, and finding ways to get the stems underneath the smooth leaves. Using Cantoneseness as a case to locate such ‘dirtiness’, I draw on personal/familial histories as well as research projects to tell how conjunctures of Cantoneseness are politically and unevenly lived. This complex journey travels roughly from my childhood in the Yuebei mountains of northern Guangdong through my teenage and early adult years in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) to my current location as a temporary resident in the East Pacific port of Vancouver. I selectively emphasize and speak on three different locations: first, the rural inland Cantonese location of Yuebei mountains – the borderland and hinterland experiences of my family and myself living what the mountains would offer and how these have changed; second, the industrial superior Cantonese location of PRD in Shenzhen and Guangzhou – my personal experiences and identities as a migrant youth, combined with a case study including interviews with migrant peasant-workers and their children; and third, the western transnational Cantonese location of East Pacific waterfronts in Vancouver and Richmond – my personal engagement with social activism as an ethnicized, international student, combined with a narrative study including interviews with social activists with different Cantoneseness and migration routes. While this mix of whispers speaks in its own way towards using cultural studies with more seriously (global) space-sensitive and (social justice) praxis-sensitive approaches, the primary focus is more modestly on my autobiographical accounts and research efforts as a specific case: to show some strategic locations of ‘Cantonescape’ on the one hand, and to invite wider conversations around cultural-spatial politics on the other.     

Who pays the price for development? Evidence from selected videos

Broadly speaking, development apparently intends to improve the livelihoods of the poor and marginalised people. However, this paper assesses whether this is always the case. Could development come at a price? If yes, who pays the price? This paper investigates this further based on cinematic representations of three non-fiction documentary videos: Drowned Out (2002), Dying for a Bargain (2013), and Black Gold (2006). Interpretive analyses of the storylines of these videos suggest that despite the promises of making a positive change for the better, development, often in practice, might affect the poorest through unfair wage and calls for ‘sacrifices’ for a so-called larger common good.     

What can we learn about unintended consequences from a textual analysis of monitoring reports and evaluations for U.S. foreign assistance programs?

In recent years, articles in Evaluation and Program Planning have noted the importance of evaluating programs’ unintended consequences, and the need to increase our knowledge in that area. To that end, this paper considers the information that can be obtained about the unintended consequences of foreign assistance programs through an automated textual analysis and review of publicly-available monitoring reports and evaluations. Automated full text searches for terms synonymous with ‘unintended consequences’ were conducted of more than 1,300 monitoring reports and evaluations downloaded from a publicly-available database of foreign assistance programs. The reports identified by the automated searches were screened and analyzed to determine which had considered and/or reported about such consequences. Positive and negative consequences were identified, as were the assistance sectors and recipient countries. While this study makes available more information on the unintended consequences of foreign assistance programs, it also emphasizes the need for greater research in this area, and outlines how a future research project of this nature might obtain more data.     

(When) Is job-finding via personal contacts a meaningful concept for social network analysis? A comment to

Chua (2011) argues that in a meritocratic context, institutions restrict the usefulness of social networks in exerting influence on job seekers’ earnings. Regressing job-finding via personal contacts on earnings, he finds negative effects of influence via personal contacts, especially for the well-educated and individuals working in the state sector. In this comment, I argue that these results are ambiguous because (1) the analysis does not sufficiently distinguish between job ‘search’ methods and job ‘finding’ methods, (2) job-finding method indicates information flow rather than a personal contact's influence, and (3) it remains unclear whether Chua's analysis reflects the effect of network usage in job search per se or the effect of self-selection into network usage by individuals with low earning potential.     

Is the web a promising tool for data collection in developing countries? An analysis of the sample bias of 10 web and face-to-face surveys from Africa,Asia, and South America

Whereas the sample composition biases of web surveys have been discussed extensively for developed countries, studies for developing countries are scarce. This article helps to fill that gap by comparing similar non-probability-based web surveys (WEB) and probability-based face-to-face (F2F) surveys both to each other and to the labor force. An analysis of WageIndicator data on work and wages derived from surveys held in 2009–2013 in 10 developing countries (WEB-sample N = 9135; F2F-sample N = 14,659), shows that F2F samples resemble the labor force to a larger extent than web samples do. In both cases, individuals in their 20s and early 30s are overrepresented, and younger and older respondents are underrepresented. This trend is more pronounced in WEB than in F2F samples. However, the differences converge in countries with higher Internet usage. A comparison of the WEB and F2F samples shows that compositions differ greatly, with web respondents being younger, more often male, more often living alone, and higher educated, although these differences are smaller in countries with higher Internet usage. Given the cost differences between the two survey modes, one should nevertheless consider the potential of web surveys as an instrument to gain explorative insights, specifically when searching for individuals with particular characteristics.