Gender and self-employment selection: An empirical assessment

This paper presents a unique assessment of the factors that influence men's and women's decisions to switch from wage employment to self-employment; virtually all studies of self-employment entry have heretofore focussed solely upon men. Using longitudinally matched data from the Current Population Survey, novel empirical patterns adduced here include: (1) the relatively strong, positive influence of fertility upon women's selection into self-employment; (2) the greater propensity of small business employees to switch to self-employment; and (3) the significant relationship between wage-sector occupation and predisposition to self-employment.     

Social capital as collective narratives and post‐disaster community recovery

This paper examines how social capital aids in post‐disaster community recovery and redevelopment. While previous studies on social capital and post‐disaster recovery have tended to focus on social networks as a source of necessary assistance, the primary focus of this study is on how social capital in the form of collective narratives affects post‐disaster recovery. We argue that collective narratives can shape the recovery strategies that individuals adopt. To illustrate this we examine the post‐Katrina recovery efforts in St. Bernard Parish, an area devastated by flooding and significant environmental damage. In particular, we focus on the shared narrative that dominated qualitative interview data collected in St. Bernard, namely, its shared identity as a close‐knit, family‐oriented community comprised of hard workers. This narrative led community members to adopt a strategy that emphasized self‐reliance.     

Social and human capital in immigrant adaptation:: The case of Canadian business immigrants

Purpose: With the resurgence of immigration to North America in the past three decades, research on immigrant adaptation and the attendant issues of assimilation has burgeoned. A prevailing assumption of much of this research is that social capital is a vital resource enabling immigrants to find their economic and social niches in the host society. In a word, social capital is a key factor in the immigrant adaptation process. This assumption has been especially prominent in research focusing on one specific subset of immigrants: entrepreneurs. Social capital in the form of ethnic networks and family ties is assumed to function critically in the establishment and operation of immigrant-owned businesses. This paper argues that although the formation and expenditure of social capital may typify the experiences of many or even most immigrant entrepreneurs, some enter the host society with sufficient human and/or financial capital that enables them to forego the utilization of social capital in the adaptation process.Methods: To demonstrate, I draw upon in-depth interviews conducted with 70 immigrant entrepreneurs in the province of Ontario, Canada between 1993 and 1995. All interviewees entered Canada under the auspices of the Canadian Business Immigration Program, a federal program designed to attract immigrants with demonstrable business and managerial skills that presumably will lead to the establishment of a firm and thus to the subsequent creation of jobs and economic activity. A formal requirement of their entrance, then, is the possession of proven business skills, a critical form of human capital that facilitates successful economic adaptation in the host society.Forms of social capital are described and their applicability to the adaptation experiences of the interviewees is analyzed. What is found among these business immigrants is a minimal reliance on social capital in establishing and operating their firms. In securing investment capital, finding a work force, and acquiring information, ethnic and family ties, the most common forms of social capital for immigrants generally and for immigrant entrepreneurs in particular, do not play a major role. Solidarity with co-ethnics and the use of family labor, so common among conventional immigrant entrepreneurs, are not of significant import in the economic adaptation of these business immigrants. Moreover, ties to coethnics are only minimally significant in patterns of social adaptation as well.Results: It is concluded that immigrants entering the host society with pre-migration intentions of business ownership possess sufficient human capital that enables them to disregard the formation and utilization of social capital in their economic and social adaptation. In this they differ from immigrants who take a more conventional path to business ownership, that is, laboring in the mainstream work force following entrance into the host society and gradually accumulating resources that lead to entrepreneurship.For business immigrants with children, however, social capital does play a key role in the decision to immigrate. Business immigrants are prepared to abandon successful firms in the origin society in order to provide their children with a more promising socioeconomic environment, including above all what is viewed as superior opportunities for education. Hence, the social capital that inheres in close-knit family arrangements provides incentive for parents to accept losses in financial capital in order to increase their children’s human capital.Conclusion: The context of the receiving society may also be seen as a form of social capital for Canadian business immigrants. All declare that quality of life, rather than the lure of financial success, serves as their major incentive to immigrate to Canada. Moreover, the fact that they enter a society that officially proclaims its multicultural character offers them the opportunity to become Canadian but to retain their ethnicity. The source of social capital in this case, then, is not the ethnic community, but the broader society.     

Social capital: An analysis of factors influencing investment

This paper investigates how individual and community characteristics affect individual social capital investment behavior. We assume a representative individual maximizes her net benefits from social capital by choosing the amount of social capital investment in each period of her lifecycle. The model parameters are estimated by fitting the model to observed data using computational techniques. Simulations determine how perturbations to individual and community characteristics affect individual social capital behavior. The results suggest that social capital investment occurs irrespective of future benefits, personal characteristics affect the level and variance of investment, and institutions matter in determining social capital investment behavior.     

Social participation and charitable giving: A multivariate analysis

Despite an abundance of survey data on charitable giving, researchers have not analysed these data asking the kinds of theoretical questions and employing the kinds of multivariate statistical techniques that would advance our understanding of the social processes leading to charitable behaviour. This article reports the authors' first findings from their continuing efforts to develop and test such a multivariate causal model of the social, demographic, economic and motivational determinants of individual charitable giving. The first section outlines ouridentification theory of charitable giving. In the second section we discuss the data and how we operationalise our variables. The third section examines whether there is broad quantitative support for major tenets of the model developed if applied at the household level. In the fourth section we enquire about which factors are most strongly related to giving behaviour. We conclude with a discussion about the centrality of communities of participation for inducing charitable giving and about the practical implications for fundraising. An earlier version of this article was prepared for presentation at the annual conference of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, Berkeley, October 1994. The authors are grateful to the T. B. Murphy Charitable Trust, the Lilly Endowment and the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy for their support of this research. We are also grateful to Virginia A. Hodgkinson and Stephen M. Noga for providing data from theSurvey of Giving and Volunteering and for sharing their expertise. Finally, we wish to thank the Editor ofVoluntas and three anonymous reviewers for their careful and constructive suggestions.     

Farm business and the development of alternative farm enterprises: An empirical analysis in Greece

The objective of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework and an empirical evidence of farm business change in relation to the adoption and development of alternative farm enterprises (AFE). The present paper adopts a business typology and looks at the various paths of development. A range of factors condition which path of farm business development will be selected. Some factors relate to the farms' physical characteristics, its business and its human capital. A sample of 200 farmers in the prefecture of Etolia-Akarnania in Greece is analysed in order to identify the factors influencing the choice of farm business development. Three main paths of farm business development are identified in this lagging region of Greece. Conventional (mainstream) farming, alternative farm enterprise development and conventional farming with off-farm employment. Appropriate statistical modelling revealed that both economic and social factors exert an independent effect on the choice of farm business development. Proposals concerning the formulation of future rural policy in the lagging regions of Greece are drawn, based on the results derived from the analysis of the present sample.     

Regional disparities in bonding and bridging social capital: An empirical study of rural and urban Japan

This article investigates regional social capital development by focusing on disparities in bonding and bridging social capital among rural and urban areas of Japan. Rural–urban differences in social capital in Western contexts have been discussed by many studies. Their main finding is that bonding social capital is richer in rural areas and bridging social capital is richer in urban areas. However, the empirical evidence presented in this article suggests that in Japan both bridging and bonding social capital are richer in rural than urban areas, diverging from traditional thinking about these two types of social capital. This finding suggests that urbanization and depopulation in rural areas of Japan have led to changes in people's behavior and their demand for social networks, promoting the development of bridging social capital in rural areas.     

Employment effects of trade in intermediate and final goods: An empirical assessment

The steady growth of international trade in intermediate goods and services has made the relationship between trade and the international division of labour more complex. For 39 countries, the author decomposes the employment effects of international trade into five components, namely, the labour content of – or employment generated by – (1) exports; (2) imports; (3) the import content of exports; (4) the export content of imports; and (5) the third‐country import content of imports. He shows that in 2009, trade in intermediate goods accounted for some 88 million jobs – 14 per cent of all jobs generated by international trade – while the import content of exports accounted for 44 million jobs.     

Social capital as social networks: A new framework for measurement and an empirical analysis of its determinants and consequences

The contribution of this paper to the social capital literature is threefold. First, we set up a new framework for measurement, allowing us to build indicators for five different dimensions of the concept. Second, we provide a single, synthetic, measure capturing that particular configuration of social capital which the literature generally associates with positive economic outcomes. Third, we carry out an empirical assessment of the relationships between the different types of social capital identified by our analysis and a range of socio-economic phenomena.     

Social preferences for public intervention: An empirical investigation based on French data

In this paper we examine the support given by French households to public intervention aimed at reducing inequalities and improving the well-being of low-income classes. We first discuss to what extent the model of self-interest could be relied upon when one wants to take into account social norms to explain the individual demand for redistribution. We find that social beliefs play an important role in explaining individual attitudes towards public intervention. We also find that the support given to redistribution can increase or decrease depending on the interaction between reciprocity norms and beliefs regarding the causes of poverty.     

Social capital and economic development: Toward a theoretical synthesis and policy framework

Theory and Society -     

Health technology assessment: trying to bring empirical and ethical inquiry together

A comprehensive assessment of a health technology requires that a wide variety of questions are addressed. These range from whether the use of a technology results in achievement of its intended effects (e.g., better tumour control, pain relief, improved mobility, etc.) at acceptable costs and without incurring undue risks to the patient, to whether its use may challenge existing social arrangements and values (e.g., individual responsibility for preserving good health, the value of human life, etc.). Clearly, this is a major challenge, since it requires the use of quite different methods of inquiry. In the past decades, we have rarely witnessed assessments where both types of questions were addressed in a balanced way. Rather, a wide gap exists between inquiries with a strong empirical focus and an almost complete neglect of underlying normative issues, and inquiries which are largely discursive, but with a serious disregard of relevant empirical data. The complex interplay between normative frameworks and empirical data in the assessment of health technologies is illustrated in two case studies: the assessment of surgical management of children with glue ears, and the assessment of Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation in neonates.

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Zusammenfassung Die unfassende Beurteilung einer Medizintechnologie erfordert das Angehen einer Vielfalt ganz verschiedener Fragen. Das Spektrum reicht von der Frage, ob der Einsatz einer Technologie die angestrebten Ergebnisse zeitigen wird (z. B. verbesserte Tumorkontrolle, Schmerzlinderung, bessere Beweglichkeit etc.), ob dies zu akzeptablen Kosten möglich ist, und ohne übermäßige Risiken für den Patienten, bis zu der Frage, ob ihr Einsatz bestehende gesellschaftliche Übereinkünfte und Werte bedroht (z. B. die Verantwortung des Individuums für die Erhaltung seiner Gesundheit, der Wert menschlichen Lebens etc.). Dies ist offenbar eine große Herausforderung, da die Beantwortung dieser Fragen den Einsatz verschiedenster Untersuchungsmethoden erfordert. In den vergangenen Jahrzehnten ist nur selten eine Beurteilung erschienen, in der beide Fragentypen auf ausgewogene Weise berücksichtigt waren. Das Bild ist eher das einer weiten Kluft zwischen in hohem Maße empirisch orientierten Studien, in denen die zugrunde liegenden normativen Fragen fast vollkommen vernachlässigt bleiben, und solchen, die weitgehend diskursiv gestaltet sind, dabei jedoch die relevanten Erfahrungsdaten sträflich missachten. Das komplexe Zusammenspiel zwischen dem normativen Rahmen und empirischen Daten in der Beurteilung von Medizintechnologien wird anhand zweier Fallstudien dargestellt: die Beurteilung des chirurgischen Managements von Kindern mit Mittelohrentzündung und die Beurteilung der extrakorporalen Membranoxygenation in Neugeborenen.

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Résumé Lévaluation complète dune technologie de la santé exige daborder un grand nombre de questions. Celles-ci vont de la question de savoir si la mise en oeuvre dune technologie aboutira aux résultats escomptés (p. ex. meilleure maîtrise des tumeurs, atténuation de la douleur, meilleure mobilité, etc.), à des coûts acceptables et sans risques excessifs pour le patient, à la question de savoir si son utilisation menace le consensus et les valeurs sociales (p. ex. responsabilité de lindividu pour la préservation de sa santé, valeur de la vie humaine, etc.). Ceci est certes un défi de taille, qui exige différentes méthodes détude. Au cours des décennies écoulées, nous avons rarement assisté à des évaluations dans lesquelles ces deux types de questions étaient pris en compte de façon équilibrée. Au contraire, il existe plutôt un profond fossé entre les études mettant fortement laccent sur les aspects empiriques et négligeant presque entièrement les questions normatives sous-jacentes, et les études largement discursives, mais qui ignorent superbement les données empiriques pertinentes. Linteraction complexe entre cadres normatifs et données empiriques dans lévaluation des technologies médicales est illustrée par deux études de cas : lévaluation de la gestion chirurgicale des enfants souffrant dotites, et lévaluation de loxygénation extracorporelle chez le nouveau-né (ECMO).

     

Social capital in Croatia: measurement and regional distribution

By using partial least squares path modeling, this paper develops a complex index of social capital, selects Croatia as the case for testing and validating the index, and investigates the regional distribution of social capital. The social capital index is defined as a complex hierarchical structured construct of third-order with social trust, participation, and civism as its core dimensions. The main results indicate that civism is the most important cause of social capital followed by active participation and social trust. As far as the regional distribution of social capital is concerned, there are statistically significant differences across the Croatian regions. Although the lowest or below the national average level of social capital and its dimensions can be mostly found in the least developed regions (with the exception of the capital), the highest level of social capital and its particular dimensions is not achieved in the most developed regions.     

Social exclusion and social capital: A comparison and critique

Social exclusion and social capital are widely used concepts with multiple and ambiguous definitions. Their meanings and indicators partially overlap, and thus they are sometimes used interchangeably to refer to the inter-relations of economy and society. Both ideas could benefit from further specification and differentiation. The causes of social exclusion and the consequences of social capital have received the fullest elaboration, to the relative neglect of the outcomes of social exclusion and the genesis of social capital. This article identifies the similarities and differences between social exclusion and social capital. We compare the intellectual histories and theoretical orientations of each term, their empirical manifestations and their place in public policy. The article then moves on to elucidate further each set of ideas. A central argument is that the conflation of these notions partly emerges from a shared theoretical tradition, but also from insufficient theorizing of the processes in which each phenomenon is implicated. A number of suggestions are made for sharpening their explanatory focus, in particular better differentiating between cause and consequence, contextualizing social relations and social networks, and subjecting the policy ‘solutions’ that follow from each perspective to critical scrutiny. Placing the two in dialogue is beneficial for the further development of each.