The Emerging Migration State1

Since 1945, immigration in the core industrial democracies has been increasing. The rise in immigration is a function of market forces (demand‐pull and supply‐push) and kinship networks, which reduce the transaction costs of moving from one society to another. These economic and sociological forces are the necessary conditions for migration to occur, but the sufficient conditions are legal and political. States must be willing to accept immigration and to grant rights to outsiders. How then do states regulate migration in the face of economic forces that push them toward greater openness, while security concerns and powerful political forces push them toward closure? States are trapped in a “liberal” paradox — in order to maintain a competitive advantage, governments must keep their economies and societies open to trade, investment, and migration. But unlike goods, capital, and services, the movement of people involves greater political risks. In both Europe and North America, rights are the key to regulating migration as states strive to fulfill three key functions: maintaining security; building trade and investment regimes; and regulating migration. The garrison state was linked with the trading state in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The twentieth and twenty‐first centuries have seen the emergence of the migration state, where regulation of international migration is as important as providing for the security of the state and the economic well being of the citizenry.     

Bribes,power, and managerial control in corporate voting games

Proxy fights have received comparatively little attention relative to the more popular methods for corporate control transfer: merger and tender offers. This paper presents an analytic model of the proxy contest as a cooperative game with four players: management, passive shareholders, insurgent shareholders and a trust fund. The power of the players and the effectiveness of certain managerial actions is discussed.     

Factors influencing wagers in simulated Blackjack

To understand some of the deviations from recommended optimal play in Blackjack, gamblers were considered to be decision makers who used decision rules to predict outcomes. The size of their wagers were used as an index of the confidence of these predictions. If this were the case, players' decisions would be affected by time pressure, short-term probability of winning, and their perceived control of outcomes. Players' wagering on a simulated game of Blackjack was examined to assess the feasibility of this approach. The computer simulation of Blackjack used simplified rules (no splitting, doubling down, insurance, etc.), and the probability of winning was controlled by the computer. Subjects could either choose whether they were dealt extra cards, or could bet upon another player. The other player was a computer algorithm that sat upon a total of fifteen. To examine effects of time pressure upon confidence of judgments, the time allowed to place a bet, and to choose extra cards, was manipulated. Twelve subjects played 20 hands under each of the experimental conditions. The mean amounts wagered, and players' choice of cards were both examined. The results suggested that deviations from optimal play can in part be understood in terms of players' decision processes, that are influenced by the time available to make a decision, the short-term probability of winning, and perceived control of outcomes; each factor may potentiate the effects of the others.The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of Carl Waterman III, for his help with the graphics and timing routines used in the Blackjack program.     

Patterns of Strategic Change in Health Care: District Health Authorities Respond to AIDS*

The literature on strategic change is based mostly on research in the private sector. This paper suggests that change in public sector organizations is equally worthy of study and can offer novel insights. Findings from research into the development of services for HIV/AIDS in NHS health districts are used to illustrate six generic themes in strategic change processes. The first theme concerns the role of context in potentiating change, and in promoting a diverse response in different localities despite unifying government guidelines. A second theme introduces the initiators of change, the ‘product champions’, a less homogeneous group than is sometimes suggested. Although personal status, energy and pro-activity were shared characteristics, individuals differed in style and methods used to attain goals. Theme three highlights social movements as mediators of change. Consumerism has affected both private and public sector industry, but for HIV/AIDS the process has been particularly visible. The mobilising role of crisis comes next. A three phase model is suggested, linking ‘crisis-as-threat’ and ‘crisis-as-opportunity’ theories. A fifth theme concerns changes in organizational culture provoked by HIV/AIDS, and the role played by symbolism - often unpredictable and not easily manipulated by management. The last theme is organizational learning; how learning about HIV/AIDS diffused through the districts, and how well learning generalizes to other issues. In conclusion, it is argued that the study of processes of change in a public sector organization can contribute to general models of strategic change and help to develop organizational theory.     

An analytic method for randomized trials with informative censoring: Part II

Consider a randomized trial in which time to the occurrence of a particular disease, say pneumocystic pneumonia in an AIDS trial or breast cancer in a mammographic screening trial, is the failure time of primary interest. Suppose that time to disease is subject to informative censoring by the minimum of time to death, loss to and end of follow-up. In such a trial, the potential censoring time is observed for all study subjects, including failures. In the presence of informative censoring, it is not possible to consistently estimate the effect of treatment on time to disease without imposing additional non-identifiable assumptions. Robins (1995) specified two non-identifiable assumptions that allow one to test for and estimate an effect of treatment on time to disease in the presence of informative censoring. The goal of this paper is to provide a class of consistent and reasonably efficient semiparametric tests and estimators for the treatment effect under these assumptions. The tests in our class, like standard weighted-log-rank tests, are asymptotically distribution-free -level tests under the null hypothesis of no causal effect of treatment on time to disease whenever the censoring and failure distributions are conditionally independent given treatment arm. However, our tests remain asymptotically distribution-free -level tests in the presence of informative censoring provided either of our assumptions are true. In contrast, a weighted log-rank test will be an -level test in the presence of informative censoring only if (1) one of our two non-identifiable assumptions hold, and (2) the distribution of time to censoring is the same in the two treatment arms. We also study the estimation, in the presence of informative censoring, of the effect of treatment on the evolution over time of the mean of repeated measures outcome such as CD4 count.     

Explaining risky choices without assuming preferences

Economic theories of choice under uncertainty assume that agents act as if they have preferences which govern their choices between risky options. Theories differ as to the exact specification of the preference structure, but it is common to assume that preferences are complete and satisfy certain consistency requirements such as transitivity and monotonicity. In this paper, it is argued that there may be reason to doubt whether individuals act as if they have complete and consistent preferences over risky actions. Instead it is suggested that individuals should be thought of as actively constructing preferences through a process which I call rationalisation. It is then argued that rationalisation provides a basis for understanding certain experimentally observed anomalies which appear quite at odds with conventional theory.     

Public Beliefs About the Beliefs of the Public

Perceptions of the opinions of others are examined on a varietyof issues using data from three sample surveys of metropolitanDetroit. A greal deal of inaccuracy in such perception is evident.Three broad tendencies or patterns can be discerned: "lookingglass perceptions," the general propensity to believe that others'opinions are the same as one's own; "conservative bias," thebelief that the population is more conservative on racial issuesthan it actually is; and limited response to reality constraints.The overall findings suggest that perceptions of public beliefsand attitudes are personally and socially constructed to a muchlarger degree than is often assumed.     

Reference groups and family size norms

The concept of reference groups is introduced as a theoretically useful mechanism involved in diffusing collective norms and values about family size and in formation of family size ideals of individual family members. Data were gathered via self-administered questionnaires from a random sample of 140 urban and 55 rural families in the Lansing, Michigan metropolitan area. Findings show major variations by sex. Conformity to a two-child family norm in the family size ideals of wives depends on the extent to which they are exposed to this norm through reference group interaction and on the size of their families of origin. Husbands' family size ideals are influenced by size of family of origin but not by reference group interaction. In further exploring this pattern of findings, important differences emerge by controlling for educational attainment and residential location.Revised version of a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Session "Population: Fertility Behavior," Chicago, September 5–9, 1977. This research was supported by the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, Project 3152, "Functioning of the Family Ecosystem in a World of Changing Energy Availability" through the Institute for Family and Child Study and the Department of Sociology. Acknowledgements are due to Shirley Foster Hartley, Nan E. Johnson, Harry Perlstadt, Harry K. Schwarzweller, and the referees of this journal, all of whom made helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Michigan State Agricultural Experiment Station Journal Article Number 8245. Requests for reprints should be sent to Daniel C. Clay, Department of Sociology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824.