A socio-economic approach to market transactions

The task of this article is to explore social underpinnings in economic exchanges. This exploration is undertaken within the frame of reference of socio-economics that centers on the multifarious social and cultural variables of economic phenomena. In particular, the socio-economic perspective on the market, focusing on the social setting of market exchanges, is utilized. As such, this exploration probes under the surface of (seemingly) cost-benefit induced exchange processes and uncovers a far more complex social structure and dynamics underlying these processes. Hence, these processes are analyzed as constituting socio-economic categories of the market. The social-cultural contingency of economic exchange, especially of its market varieties, is the key hypothesis of this article. This signifies that market exchange, just as production, distribution, and consumption, is a dependent variable on concrete social-historical conditions, rather than being a human universal. The approach proposed here provides an alternative to the purely economic conception, which treats exchange processes as strictly economic variables driven by an intrinsic logic and insulated from other social relations. The mainstream economic literature’s lack of consistent applications of such an approach to market exchange contrasts with the richness of such applications in the field of socio-economics. The paper’s aim is to contribute toward further elaboration and application of socio-economics.     

Language in the process of labour market rationalisation: A sociohistorical approach across twentieth-century Spain

This article analyses the role of linguistic skills in the process of defining professional classifications in Spain during 1919–1980. The aim is to determine the social evaluation of the skills involved. To retrace the classifications, a total of 114 official documents were examined, establishing a chronological division into three major stages: 1920–1940, 1940–1960 and 1960–1980. The first period (1920–1940) shows efforts toward the initial objectification of working conditions and salary scales, revealing social prejudices and tacit conventions shaping the employment hierarchy, while the second one (1940–1960) indicates the extent to which office work stood out over manual work. Finally, the third stage (1960–1980) shows processes of language rationalisation, which entailed attempts to standardise positions based on required skill sets.     

The division of labor and the market areas of manufacturing firms

A sociological framework for relating the division of labor to the market areas of manufacturing firms is reformulated. The growth of exchange and the dynamics of differentiation and integration are discussed as key processes that explain changes in these market areas from local to regional to multiregional to national and also the rise of industrial regions. A case study of nineteenth-century plow manufacturing in the United States illustrates the utility of the proposed framework.     

Labor market flexibility: An index approach to cross-country comparisons

Recently, researchers have used measures of economic freedom (Gwartney and Lawson, 2002) to quantify the relationship between various institutional factors and measures of economic performance. Using a subset of these data, we develop a labor market flexibility index. This measure should be useful to researchers who study labor market performance among countries.     

Unemployment: A labor market perspective

Twentieth century economists have made countless attempts to resolve the causes and cures of unemployment. However none have ventured to consider unemployment not as a social problem but as a market response to political and economic incentives. By treating unemployment as a labor market, where workers rationally select periods of joblessness and where special interest groups profit from unemployment, this paper develops a theoretically consistent model to explain the effects that policy and economic variables have on unemployment. Empirical results support this approach and the worker disincentive effects of UI compensation by estimating simultaneously a demand and supply for unemployment.     

The structure of everyday narrative in a city market: An ethnopoetics approach

This paper considers the value of Hymesian ethnopoetics as a means of analysing everyday narrative in conditions of mobility and change. The paper offers an account of the development of ethnopoetics as a means to make visible and valorize narrative in the Native American oral tradition, and as a method of revealing culturally specific relations of form and meaning. Hymes’ ethnopoetic approach viewed narrative structure as a reflection of a cultural tradition of meaning‐making. Hymes’ analysis proposed that traditional narrative was a culturally shaped way of speaking, and analysis of narrative structure could reveal and recreate culture. His orientation rested on an assumption that the culture of a group was more or less stable and fixed. This paper adopts an approach to analysis based on ethnopoetics, representing everyday narrative dramatically, organized not only as lines and verses, but also as scenes and acts. Representation in scenes and acts makes visible the dynamic nature of the narrative. The paper asks whether Hymes’ ground‐breaking work on ethnopoetics still has currency and purchase in 21st‐century conditions of mobility, change, and unpredictability. Analysis of everyday narrative in a city market concludes that, notwithstanding the complexity of notions of ‘culture’ and ‘language’ in such conditions, ethnopoetics can be productively applied to everyday contexts for the analysis of narrative.     

Foster home recruitment: a market research approach to attracting and licensing applicants

Reports differ concerning the relative recruitment productivity of the various possible resources. This report from Hennepin County, Minnesota, of a three-year recruitment study involving a large sample, with well-detailed findings, offers much to be considered by foster family care services.     

Volunteering and the gender division of labour: A Franco-British comparison

Cross-national analyses of the gender division of labour usually focus on employment and domestic labour. This paper argues that formal and informal voluntary work should be included in such analyses. Using available secondary sources, the paper compares the gender division of voluntary work in Britain and France – two countries with well-documented differences and similarities concerning employment and domestic labour. The paper reveals that French women, with a higher commitment to the labour market and a slightly larger share of the burden of domestic labour, have a higher commitment to formal voluntary activity but engage less in informal volunteering than their British counterparts whereas French men, with shorter hours in employment and a slightly smaller contribution to domestic labour, undertake more formal and informal voluntary work than their British counterparts. In France, men consistently undertake more voluntary work than women whilst in Britain, there is a degree of gender equality in formal voluntary work but women undertake significantly more informal voluntary work than men. The paper explains the differences and similarities found by considering the role of the state and social policy, the question of ‘time availability’, and the question of what motivates individuals to undertake voluntary work.     

Innovation capability: A sociometric approach

To remain competitive worldwide, firms need to focus on their knowledge-based activities and possess specific abilities that allow them to unravel their potential to innovate. This need has led to an increasing interest in understanding the factors that allow a firm to develop its innovation capability. However, given the complexity of the phenomenon, there is no consensus on the nature and definition of innovation capability. Moreover, most existent studies have focused on studying innovation as a psychometric phenomenon; however, this approach neglects the social dimension of the construct. Thus, an exploratory study is conducted to examine a firm’s capability to innovate from a sociometric perspective. To achieve this objective, 61 surveys were distributed in the biotechnology area of a Mexican university. In addition, informal relations and knowledge sharing are analyzed as determinants of innovation capability. Since, the multiple regression quadratic assignment procedure (MRQAP) is applied.The results reveal that friendship relations become the base for knowledge sharing and, at the same time, this factor positively impacts a firm’s innovation capability.     

Metacognitive confidence: A neuroscience approach

Abstract

Power leads to action and facilitates goal pursuit. The present study examines the joint effects of power and action demands on the ability to maintain the pursuit of goals. It is proposed that the power advantage in goal pursuit is particularly pronounced when goal striving requires high level of activity. Participants were assigned to a powerful or a powerless role and pursued a goal either in a passive or in an active self-regulatory mode. Level of activity affected powerless but not powerful participants: powerless participants gave up goal pursuit earlier when the level of activity required to maintain the goal was high (i.e., showed the typical passive-option effect), whereas this was not the case for powerful participants. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Scoring rules: A cooperative game-theoretic approach

In this work we define the game of the alternatives for each preference profile, and establish relations between scoring rules and cooperative solution concepts for that game, such as the family of semivalues and the family of least square values. Received: 17 March 1997/Accepted: 12 May 1998     

Treating bulimia: A combined therapy approach

Bulimia is an increasingly common eating disorder which is separate and distinct from anorexia nervosa. The disorder is characterized by ingestion of large volumes of food, usually followed by self-induced vomiting or laxative abuse. Although sometimes seen as a symptom accompanying obesity or anorexia nervosa, bulimia is often associated with a normal weight and nutritional state. This paper includes a case study which describes 3 years of treatment and illustrates the personality characteristics common to bulimic patients, demonstrating a marked contrast with the classic anorexia nervosa patient. A combined treatment approach is illustrated which (1) emphasizes individual therapy as the means by which long-term changes in personality can be attained and sustained; (2) uses group therapy to provide peer support and behavioral intervention; and (3) utilizes imipramine to decrease panic and alleviate anxiety and depression.     

Fat talk: A citizen sociolinguistic approach

Fat talk, or self‐disparaging talk about the body, is common among US women and increasingly reported for men. Despite its commonality, this unique genre of talk is difficult to access using traditional sociolinguistic methods both because it is brief and because it arises spontaneously in casual conversation. Here we present a new method of data collection accomplished by collaborating with citizen sociolinguists to collect spontaneous fat talk in public spaces. We compare fat talk exchanges captured by citizen sociolinguists against those collected in a vignette‐based discourse completion task. Our results show redundancy both in how fat talk is initiated and in the manner of the reply across both forms of data collection. However, the citizen sociolinguistic method produced greater variety in fat talk utterances, was less methodologically taxing, and revealed that fat talk occurs differently in same‐sex interactions than mixed‐sex ones.     

Robust stochastic dominance: A semi-parametric approach

Lorenz curves and second-order dominance criteria, the fundamental tools for stochastic dominance, are known to be sensitive to data contamination in the tails of the distribution. We propose two ways of dealing with the problem: (1) Estimate Lorenz curves using parametric models and (2) combine empirical estimation with a parametric (robust) estimation of the upper tail of the distribution using the Pareto model. Approach (2) is preferred because of its flexibility. Using simulations we show the dramatic effect of a few contaminated data on the Lorenz ranking and the performance of the robust semi-parametric approach (2). Since estimation is only a first step for statistical inference and since semi-parametric models are not straightforward to handle, we also derive asymptotic covariance matrices for our semi-parametric estimators.