Presidents, Prosperity, and Public Opinion

A president skillful enough, or fortunate enough, to presideover a healthy economy is rewarded with public support. Thispaper examines two conceptions of the individual citizen thatmight underlie this relationship. A president's popularity mightdecline when economic times are bad because citizens in effectblame him for their personal hardships—the pocketbookcitizen hypothesis—or because they see the president asfailing to cope adequately with national economic problems,quite apart from the economic dislocations of private life—thesociotropic citizen hypothesis. Across a variety of tests, resultsfrom national surveys covering the Nixon, Ford, and Carter presidenciesconsistently supported the sociotropic hypothesis. The paperconcludes by suggesting several promising explanations for thefindings, and by exploring their normative implications.     

Union Worker Wage Effect in the Public Sector

This study examines union wage premiums in the public sector for the 1998–2004 period. Unlike previous studies, our approach estimates union wage premiums considering differences in the rewards to education, experience, and other personal characteristics for union and non-union workers. The approach provides a larger estimated wage gap than the traditional approach, and allows for simulations of union–nonunion wage gaps for different types of workers. Moreover, we use an Oaxaca decomposition to explain the larger union–nonunion wage gap in the private sector in comparison to that in the public sector. We find that between 50% and 60% of the difference in union wage premiums between the private and public sectors is due to differences in the way unionized workers are rewarded in the private and public sectors, while the remaining portion is due to differences in personal characteristics of private and public sector workers.

Firm Ownership and Rent Sharing

In this paper we analyse—theoretically and empirically—how the degree of private versus public ownership of firms affects the degree of rent sharing between firms and their workers. Using a particularly rich linked employer-employee dataset from Portugal, covering a large number of corporate ownership changes across a wide spectrum of economic sectors over more than 20 years, we find that rent sharing is significantly higher in firms with a larger share of private ownership. Estimates from our most preferred empirical specification suggest that an increase in the private ownership share of 10 percentage points increases (on average) the rent-sharing elasticity by 0.0002. Based on a theoretical analysis that incorporates union-firm wage bargaining and efficiency wage effects within the same modelling framework, this result cannot be explained by private firms being more profit oriented than public ones. However, the result is consistent with a scenario whereby privatisation leads to less job security for workers, implying stronger efficiency wage effects.     

A time series of urban forestry in Los Angeles

There has been an increasing interest in the evolution of urban forests. This research uses historic and digital aerial photography to quantify changes in tree density in Los Angeles, California since the 1920’s. High-resolution geographic information system analysis (4 to 6 time periods) of three regions (San Fernando Valley, Hollywood, Los Angeles Basin) of Los Angeles reveals that there has not always been an increase in tree density with time. Tree densities on public and private land were highest in the 1940’s in Hollywood, while the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles Basin experienced a near linear increase in tree density on both private and public land since the 1920’s. When historic tree density reconstructions were examined for the 15 Los Angeles city council districts from the 1920’s, 1950’s and 2006, most districts in Los Angeles have experienced a significant increase in tree density, however, there has been wide variation in tree densities among city council districts. Trees densities have generally been higher on private land since the 1920’s and currently tree densities on private land are significantly higher than on public land. Results suggest the evolution of urban forests in Los Angeles mirrors the dynamics of urban forests in desert and grassland cities. It is possible to reconstruct the development of urban forests in sections of cities using historic and contemporary aerial photography. We estimated that Los Angeles averages approximately 104 trees per hectare (82 private land, 22 public land) based on 2006 imagery at 0.3 m resolution, however, field validation suggests that we identified only 73% of trees. Although there is still space to plant trees on public land, private land owners will need to be heavily involved in order to achieve the goals of Los Angeles’ Million Tree Initiative.     

A theory of voting patterns and performance in private and public committees

We compare play in private and public committees when insiders care both about how well the committee decision serves organizational goals, and about the rewards which outsiders give for representing their interests. We show that a private committee reaches decisions which better serve organizational goals than either a public committee or the median insider choosing alone; and that a committee can only exhibit a norm of consensus if insiders vote in private. Finally, any insider who does not vote for a private committee’s decision must vote for a decision which better serves organizational goals; whereas a dissident in a public committee votes for a decision which worse serves organizational goals.     

Organizational access to research settings: Entering secondary schools

Fieldworkers have long acknowledged the problems of gaining access to research settings but often failed to analyze them systematically. In this article we provide preliminary evidence that, when seeking to enter formal bureaucracies, access problems can be better understood and more easily resolved by referring to the organizational logic of the setting. Adopting an organizational perspective to analyze access issues, we compare public schools and private religious schools and show how access problems and the strategies to overcome them vary according to the variation in the schools’ organizational features. We develop our argument in four steps. First, we examine the organizational literature on formal institutionalized organizations to highlight the structural problems of gaining entry to public schools for research purposes. Second, we adopt an organizational perspective to identify strategies for overcoming problems of access to public schools. Third, we compare the access to private religious schools and to public schools to demonstrate that problems and solution strategies vary according to the schools’ variation in organizational features. Fourth, we demonstrate the usefulness of organizational access by showing that researchers’ ability to gain entry is enhanced by a preliminary understanding of the organizational characteristics of a formal research setting. Throughout our discussion, we provide illustrative examples from the senior author’s research in public schools and private religious schools in a large Midwestern city.     

PPP Financing in the Road Sector: A Disequilibrium Analysis Based on the Monetary Circuit

This paper discusses public and private financing of infrastructure against the background of monetary equilibria, where money is not neutral and financing has an impact on allocation through distribution. These correspond to “disequilibrium positions” in the neoclassical barter equilibrium, as they violate some of its optimality conditions. In these contexts, evaluating welfare before and after the realisation of a project implies a comparison between two suboptimal positions. Such a comparison reveals that, contrary to a widely held view, there are not many rational arguments that may lead to prefer private financing to public financing of road infrastructure, particularly where local incomes are low. Post Keynesian analysis in general and its monetary variant of the circuit, are useful tools for the analysis of public investment policies in such a disequilibrium context. In particular, some features of the monetary circuit approach are well suited to address the economic problems raised by the analysis of public private partnerships (PPP), notably: (a) the integration of the banking sector and the recognition of its role in monetary creation by the private sector; (b) the monetary creation by the State within a macroeconomic framework fully integrating public finance; and, (c) the necessary link between uncertainty and disequilibrium. Combined with a partial equilibrium analysis based on realistic microeconomic configurations of costs and transport demand parameters, the analysis of the circuit highlights that PPP in the road sector do not add anything to the level of effective demand, being in fact the other flip of the coin of restrictive budgetary policies. PPP play a role in mobilizing part of the accumulated savings that the State is forbidden to attract directly because of debt ceilings. They have a softening effect on the Government budgetary constraints similar to those that could be reached if the Government was allowed to accrue investment like the private sector, but are a less transparent solution, because the relevant debt is not necessarily recognized in the balance sheet that services it.     

Why do larger families reduce parental investments in child quality, but not child quality per se?

Becker’s Quantity–Quality model (Becker in Demographic and economic change in developed countries, Princeton University Press, Princeton, pp 209–240, 1960; Becker and Lewis in J Polit Econ 81(2): S279–S288, 1973; Becker and Tomes in J Polit Econ 84(4): S143–S162, 1976) suggests a trade-off between family size and parental investments in children. To date, only Cáceras-Delpiano (J Hum Resour 41(4): 738–754, 2006) tests this theory by considering private school enrolment. This study extends this work by using a unique data set containing a broader range of parental investments that are arguably linked to parental intentions for producing higher quality children, such as overall and non-sectarian private school enrolment, the number of computers in the home per child, and saving for the child’s education. Both studies find that fertility reduces parental investments. However, the literature generally finds that fertility has no impact on child outcomes. The study offers three potential explanations for this ‘puzzle’.     

Inequality and education decisions in developing countries

In this paper we analyze the effect of inequality on school enrollment, preferred tax rate and expenditure per student in developing countries; when parents can choose between child labor, public schooling or private schooling. We present a model in which parents make schooling decisions for their children, weighing the utility benefit of having a child with formal public or private education versus the forgone income from child labor or household work. Parents vote over the preferred tax rate to finance freely provided public education. The utility benefit of an educated child is proportional to expenditure per student, so that there is congestion in public school. We find that when parents can send their children to work or to private school, high inequality leads to exit from public education at both ends of the income distribution. Thus high inequality reduces the support for public education, leading to a low tax rate and expenditure per student. Exit from public education results in both high child labor and a large fraction of students attending private school. In fact there is a threshold level of inequality above which there is no longer support for public education. In addition we explore the implications for the design of foreign aid. The results suggest that foreign aid policies should focus on promoting school attendance rather than increasing school resources, as the later policy might be offset by a reduction in the recipient country’s fiscal effort, with little impact on outcomes.      

Public transit wage rates: Pre-Reagan and Reagan-Bush eras

This paper examines the earnings of public transit bus drivers for both the pre-Reagan and Reagan-Bush eras using Current Population Survey data. The findings show that union drivers were consistently paid a significant wage premium over nonunion drivers, a premium which also exceeded that for unionized private nontransport operatives — suggesting that special institutional features of the public transit industry have collectively conferred market power on unionized public transit workers. During the Reagan years, the earnings of public transit drivers, union and nonunion alike, rose relative to those of private and public nontransport operatives in spite of federally-spearheaded cost containment policies. In 1990, these earnings fell relative to those of private and public nontransport operatives, suggesting that the effects of these policies may be beginning to be felt. Helpful comments were provided by Don Bellante and an anonymous referee     

The use of antidepressant medications in substance abuse treatment: the public-private distinction, organizational compatibility, and the environment

Many studies of innovation adoption in health care organizations focus either on organizational characteristics or the institutional environment, but not both. Furthermore, these perspectives are rarely employed simultaneously in both public and private health care organizations. This research considers the public-private distinction, organizational compatibility, and interorganizational referral relationships in the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) by substance abuse treatment organizations. Using data from nationally representative samples of 363 publicly funded and 403 privately funded substance abuse treatment centers, a four-category typology of public and private organizations initially predicted variation in SSRI use. However some differences were no longer significant once organizational and environmental characteristics were added to the statistical model. These data support hypotheses about the associations between organizational characteristics and SSRI use as well as hypotheses regarding the external environment. Future research should continue to integrate both internal and external factors in theoretical explanations of innovation adoption.     

Children’s Autonomy and Responsibility: An Analysis of Childrearing Advice

Employing qualitative content analysis of 300 childrearing advice articles from Parents magazine, this paper maps historical changes in the depiction of parental authority and children’s autonomy. This popular text reveals increased autonomy for children in their private self-expression, especially in regard to activities of daily living, personal appearance, and defiance of parents. However, the magazine also portrays children’s diminished public autonomy as revealed through increasingly restricted freedom of movement and substantially delayed acceptance of meaningful responsibilities. An appreciation of popular childrearing advice as a measure of individualistic cultural values thus requires an understanding of larger social changes that shift attention from public participation toward private self-expression.     

Private sector unions: The myth of decline

Conventional wisdom holds that private sector labor unions are in “crisis” due to the loss of millions of members over the past two decades which has resulted in a dramatic decline in their economic viability and political power. Financial data for selected years between 1960 and 1987 are analyzed to show that, contrary to prevailing opinion, private sector unions are financially prosperous despite membership erosion. Evidence is also presented which indicates that union political efforts and influence have increased rather than declined in recent years. Resources have been allocated to political advocacy to obtain a more favorable public policy environment for labor organizations and to achieve gains that have eluded unions in collective bargaining. The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Ms. Sybil Jones at the National Institute for Labor Relations Research.     

Public Private Partnerships,the Levels of Public Investment and the New Member States

Some of the features of public private partnerships (PPPs) are outlined. The arguments that PPPs provide additional investment are critical examined, and the way in which the accounting treatment may influence the use of PPPs examined. The costs of PPPs are compared with ‘conventional’ public investment and it is argued that PPPs are a relatively expensive way of undertaking public investment. The idea that PPPs effectively transfer risk from government to private companies is assessed. Issues relating to the nature of contracts under PPPs, the transactions costs and the implementation of the contracts, are briefly considered. For the New Member States, it is suggested that national accounting rules and perceived constraints on budget deficits may encourage the use of PPPs, even if that use is not warranted in terms of costs of public investment.     

Opting out of publicly provided services: A majority voting result

Our objective in this paper is to examine majority voting in an environment where both public and private alternatives coexist. We construct a model in which households are differentiated by income and have the option of choosing between publicly provided services and private services. Publicly provided services are financed through income tax revenues and made available to all citizens at zero price. Majority voting determines the tax rate. Even though preferences over tax rates are not single peaked, we provide conditions under which a majority voting equilibrium exists. We illustrate our existence result with CES preferences and a Dagum income distribution. Received: 21 December 1993 / Accepted: 2 September 1996     

The generalized action potential of protest movements: The new class,social trends,and political exclusion explanations

Three explanations have been advanced to account for the generalized action potential of contemporary protest movements: the rise of the new class, a set of general social trends that cumulatively lead to liberalized social values and loosened social restraints against protest, and the mobilization of excluded groups. Analyzing three dimensions of generalized action potential—protest potential, political action repertoires, and protest movement support—we find support for all three explanations. Educated salaried professionals, especially sociocultural and public sector professionals, display greater protest potential, especially for civil disobedience, and are supportive of emerging “middle class” movements. A set of general social trends centering on increased education, life-cycle and generational change, secularism, and increased women's autonomy also create greater action potential. Reflecting mobilization against political exclusion, African Americans display a consistently strong generalized action potential. These protests reflect the rise of new political repertoires, particularly “protest activism,” which combines protest with high levels of conventional participation and is centered among the more educated.     

The future of public sector collective bargaining in Canada

Conclusion Looking to the future of Canadian public sector labor relations, the glass is half full. Despite regular intervals when government fiscal and economic policy “trump” public sector bargaining rights through legislation, public sector unions and collective bargaining will survive. Public sector compensation and job security will likely continue to be at least comparable to the unionized private sector, and public sector union density should remain stable, at or near its currently high levels.     

Debating the Burqa in France: the Antipolitics of Islamic Revival

In 2009 a French national commission was created to issue recommendations against “the burqa” and raise the possibility of a ban on the practice in certain public settings. This paper explores the different normative stakes of politicizing the burqa and the form of Islamic Revival with which it is associated. Recent scholarship has sought to overturn orientalist depictions of Islamic movements but has insisted that bodily ethical practices, such as Muslim women’s veiling, constitute forms of politics. Based on ethnographic research in a women’s mosque community in a poor suburb of Lyon, France, I argue that these women are not engaged in a form of politics but rather, antipolitics, a movement originally conceptualized in the 1970s and 80s as a rejection of politics and a valorization of private life. Three components define their antipolitics: a reconfiguration of the private sphere against an intrusive state, a retreat into a moral community, and emphasis on spiritual conditions and achievement of serenity. In interrogating different meanings of politics and antipolitics, this paper suggests a rethinking of the relationship between “political Islam” and piety movements.     

Global Dramas in the Midwest Metropolis: Representations,Dilemmas, and Decisions about Violence among Bosnian Refugees in Chicago

This article examines American popular media forms and discussions among three generations of Bosnian refugee-immigrants to the United States (2003–2008) and finds that public presentations conflated Bosnian experiences of civil and domestic conflict. This conflation was made possible in part through a lens refracted by Orientalist and balkanist frames and acted as a powerful filter mediating immigrants' awareness of their statuses in the United States. Women acknowledged gendered family violence as a problem, but they sourced these conflicts to institutions of war and the challenges of local labor markets, rather than rely on culturalist explanations. By focusing on the overlap and disconnect among American public spheres and immigrant private spheres, I demonstrate the need for immigrant studies that attend to the circulation of global representations and to the localized ways in which such frameworks inform migration experiences.     

Exclusive representation and american industrial democracy: An historical reappraisal

Exclusive representation in the public sector has been defended on the basis of private sector experience, which purportedly demonstrates that stable, orderly, peaceful collective bargaining is otherwise impossible or impracticable. Nevertheless, nonexclusive collective bargaining was the norm in most industrial nations when the Wagner Act was passed in the 1930s, and it still is the rule outside the U.S. Historical evidence is presented for the thesis that exclusivity was adopted in the private sector primarily in order to pave the way for a corporative state. Peaceful, orderly collective bargaining by “responsible” unions in a competitive economy was a minor, secondary consideration. Editor’s Note: This Symposium was jointly sponsored by theJournal of Labor Research and the National Institute for Labor Relations Research and was held February 10, 1984 at the Westpark Hotel, Rosslyn, Virginia.