Does an Immigrant Background Ameliorate Racial Disadvantage? The Socioeconomic Attainments of Second‐Generation African Americans1

Although there is a growing literature on the socioeconomic circumstances of the second generation, this issue has not been systematically considered for African Americans. To help fill this research gap, we investigate the extent to which the socioeconomic attainments of second‐generation African Americans differ from mainstream (i.e., third and higher generation) African Americans. Using data from the Current Population Survey and the 2000 Census, our results indicate that the schooling and wages of second‐generation African Americans consistently exceed those of third‐ and higher generation African Americans. Our findings also reveal that second‐generation African Americans do at least as well as whites in terms of years of schooling, but wage differentials differ significantly by gender. Second‐generation African‐American women earn wages that are at least as high as comparable white women, but second‐generation African‐American men earn wages that are, on average, about 16% less than measurably comparable white men. While no one theoretical perspective can account for all these results, they nonetheless indicate the continuing significance of racial disadvantage for African‐American men, including those with an immigrant background.     

MALE MARITAL WAGE DIFFERENTIALS: TRAINING,PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS,AND FIXED EFFECTS

Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we replicate previous estimates of the marital wage differential for white men, extend the analysis to African American men, then explain the within and between race differentials. We first control for formal job training, then for cognitive skills, parental background, and self‐esteem with little effect. By contrast, the white differential but not the black differential disappears in fixed‐effects estimation. We reconcile the cross‐section/panel differentials by focusing on the distinct identification conditions employed by each technique. Men who never change marital status play a significant role in white cross‐sectional estimates. (JEL J31, J12)     

How does information sharing affect first-tier suppliers’ flexibility? Evidence from the automotive industry in Sweden

This study addresses the critical research issue of how supplier delivery performance can be enhanced by integrating information sharing into volume and delivery flexibility. This study developed a research model to relate information sharing on demand forecasts and inventory data between original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and first-tier suppliers. Based on a sample of 52 suppliers from automotive industry in Sweden, partial least squares structural equations modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to assess the model. The results confirm that sharing demand forecasts is a key enabler of supplier volume and delivery flexibility while sharing inventory data is not. The study contributes to enlarging the knowledge about supply chain management from the suppliers’ perspective. It also contributes to knowledge by validating the conceptual model and operationalisation of constructs. The study also has practical contribution in which management should focus on improving communication and collaboration practices with OEMs for effective sharing of demand forecasts.     

Psychometric Properties of the Family Inventory of Resources and Stressors in Families of Children with Emotional/Behavior Disorders: Ethnic/Racial and Developmental Differences

The Family Inventory of Resources and Stressors (FIRST) has been shown to have adequate psychometric properties in the assessment of families of children with emotional and behavior disorders (EBD). However, the extent to which ethnic/racial and developmental differences moderate the psychometric properties of this instrument is unknown. The study sample consisted of 150 families with an EBD child consecutively admitted to the Astor Transitions Program. This study seeks (1) to conduct a psychometric analysis of the FIRST subscales among African American and Hispanic/Latino families with older students versus early childhood students with EBD, and (2) to determine whether profiles will show greater stress for families of older students due to longer exposure to their EBD. Alpha coefficients were computed with a cutoff of 0.70 (or higher) indicating acceptable internal consistency reliability. Criterion variables reflecting family environment, mental health, and level of service correlated with relevant FIRST subscales assessed validity. Ethnic/racial and developmental effects were found to moderate the psychometric properties of the FIRST. No statistically significant between-group mean differences on the FIRST were found for families of early childhood versus older EBD students. Despite evidence of response bias on the part of families and lack of standardization during test administration by caseworkers, the current findings still reveal adequate reliability and limited validity of FIRST subscales.     

<Emphasis Type="Bold">Women’s Progress for Men’s Gain? Gender-Specific Changes in the Return to Education as Measured by Family Standard of Living, 1990 to 2009–2011</Emphasis>

This study investigates gender-specific changes in the total financial return to education among persons of prime working ages (35–44 years) using U.S. Census data from 1990 and 2000, and the 2009–2011 American Community Survey. We define the total financial return to education as the family standard of living as measured by family income adjusted for family size. Our results indicate that women experienced significant progress in educational attainment and labor market outcomes over this time period. Ironically, married women’s progress in education and personal earnings has led to greater improvement in the family standard of living for married men than for women themselves. Gender-specific changes in assortative mating are mostly responsible for this paradoxical trend. Because the number of highly educated women exceeds the number of highly educated men in the marriage market, the likelihood of educational marrying up has substantially increased for men over time while women’s likelihood has decreased. Sensitivity analyses show that the greater improvement in the family standard of living for men than for women is not limited to prime working-age persons but is also evident in the general population. Consequently, women’s return to education through marriage declined while men’s financial gain through marriage increased considerably.     

Moving Towards Happiness?

We add to the literature on the driving forces of international migration. While the existing literature establishes that income differences, migration costs and certain other factors (e.g. climate or human rights) affect the migration decision, we focus on the broader role of non‐pecuniary factors. We include well‐being measures in a standard model of bilateral migration flows and enrich the analysis further by testing the effects on migration of inequality in happiness within a country. Our findings that both the mean and standard deviation of happiness – in both origin and destination countries – help explain bilateral migration flows over and above any income effect, indicates the need to incorporate both pecuniary and non‐pecuniary factors when modelling migration choices.     

A New Framework for Manufacturing Planning and Control Systems*

This paper presents a new framework for manufacturing planning and control systems which we call iterative manufacturing planning in continuous time (IMPICT) that appears to have several advantages over the well-known material requirements planning (MRP) framework. IMPICT explicitly considers capacity constraints and total system cost (including tardiness) to determine order sizes, order release/due dates, and operation schedules in a deterministic, multi-level, finite horizon, dynamic demand environment. Continuous time scheduling variables allow setups to be carried over from one period to the next. Three new heuristics built on the IMPICT framework are presented and tested in a simulation-based, full-factorial experiment with a wide variety of problem environments. The benchmark for the experiment was materials requirements planning with operations sequencing (MRP/OS) implemented with best-case, fixed planned lead times. The experiment showed that all three heuristics were statistically better than MRP/OS. The total cost for the order merging (OM) heuristic was 25 percent better than the total cost for MRP/OS. Computational times for OM were substantially larger than for MRP/OS; however, the computational times in the experiment suggest that OM is still computationally viable for large-scale batch manufacturing environments found in industry. IMPICT is superior to standard MRP systems because it explicitly considers capacity constraints and total system costs when it creates a materials plan. IMPICT is superior to linear programming-based approaches to finite loading and scheduling found in the literature because it allows setups to be carried over from one period to another and because it is computationally viable for realistic-sized problems.