The micro-foundations of the returnee liability: The interpersonal challenges of returnee entrepreneurs in Kenya

Although it is known that returnee entrepreneurs can contribute to technological and economic upgrading in their home countries, there is also evidence of a returnee liability where returnee entrepreneurs perform worse than locals. Apart from mismatches between home and host country institutional environments, this liability is argued to stem from interpersonal factors like cultural difficulties and the diminished social capital of returnees at home. Using interviews exploring the experiences of twenty Nairobi-based technology-enabled returnee entrepreneurs, we theorize the micro-foundations of the returnee liability: mismatched expectations, cultural tension and mutual suspicion. Returnees who sent remittances while abroad expect locals to support their return and entrepreneurial vision, but locals expect continued financial support. Returnees who had become more individualistic while fending for themselves in Western economies experience tension with the collectivism of locals, even while they seek to readjust to their home culture. The suspicion of returnees about unethical local business practices and frustration about locals’' apparent inability to value proposed innovations further complicate the ability of returnees to access local knowledge and networks. We discuss how the community support addresses these micro-foundations of the returnee liability and thus help developing countries better benefit from the knowledge and innovations of their returnees.     

Trade policy and the United States labour market

The United States Government proposed a sweeping review of existing trade deals when the current Administration took office in January 2017. This paper reviews the ongoing changes, and considers the potential impact of two strands of the trade policy debate on the United States labour market. First, we consider policy decisions that may impact the location decision of multinational enterprises, especially within the context of the renegotiation of NAFTA. Second, we review the policy debate related to the steel industry, and the potential channels through which an import tariff on steel imports may impact the labour market.     

Modeling spatial learning in rats based on Morris water maze experiments

The Morris water maze, developed by Morris (J Neurosci Methods 1984: 11: 47–60), is a behavioral experiment designed to test the spatial memory. When repeating the experiment several times, the changes in time (latency) and distance (path) taken to reach the platform are indicators for the learning and memory abilities of the rat. In juvenile toxicity studies, it is of interest to test whether dosing juvenile rats with some compound of interest has an effect on its learning ability. The traditional analysis uses non‐parametric tests to check for a possible dose‐effect. However, due to the many tests performed, this approach lacks power. Here, an alternative method is proposed, accounting for the longitudinal design of the study, the right‐censoring of observations when animals did not find the platform and the correlation between the time and distance taken to reach the platform. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Residents’ preferred policy actions for shrinking cities

Cities facing a continued and prolonged process of population decline require innovative urban regeneration policies complementary to growth-oriented policies. Losing inhabitants involves a decrease in economic activity and social capital. Therefore citizens’ participation in defining policies to cope with population decline is being increasingly advocated. This research focused on four shrinking cities of Portugal to capture residents’ knowledge about the strengths and weaknesses of their city of residence as well as the policies and actions they prioritized for dealing with the population decline. The responses from 701 questionnaires show that economic revival policies as well as safety and accessibility policies were preferred. To put these policies into action, the recovery of industrial activity, the creation of business incubators, an improvement in law enforcement, and public lighting were ranked as top priorities. Rank-ordered logistic regression models were used to understand which variables influenced the residents’ rankings. We found that the evaluation of the city's characteristics impact the ranking of the policies and actions. Hence, residents show a high level of coherence when engaging in a discussion at the level of policy-making. Therefore, the findings support residents’ involvement in decision-making processes regarding urban regeneration in shrinking cities.     

The economy of risk and respect: accounts by Puerto Rican sex workers of HIV risk taking

Three-hundred-eleven female drug-using sex workers in urban Puerto Rico were asked to describe their last negotiation with a client. They described efforts to protect themselves from many hazards of sex work, including violence, illness, and drug withdrawal. They also described efforts to minimize the stigma and marginalization of sex work by cultivating relationships with clients, distinguishing between types of clients, and prioritizing their role as mothers. Sex workers adopted alternating gender roles to leverage autonomy and respect from clients. Their narratives suggest that sex workers negotiate a world in which HIV is relative to other risks, and in which sexual practices which are incomprehensible from an HIV-prevention perspective are actually rooted in a local cultural logic. Future HIV prevention efforts should frame condom use and other self-protective acts in terms that build upon sex workers own strategies for understanding their options and modifying their risks.     

The relationship of child maltreatment and self-capacities with distress when telling one's story of childhood sexual abuse

This study examined the impact of telling one's story of childhood sexual abuse and its relationship with the survivor's self-capacities and history of other child maltreatment. The baseline data were collected from 134 female CSA survivors who were participating in a large intervention study. Participants were given 10 minutes to describe their childhood sexual abuse and completed a post-interview questionnaire assessing post-traumatic stress symptoms and their emotional response. The distress in response to their narrative was both predicted and mediated by the survivors' self-capacities and other forms of child maltreatment beyond child sexual abuse.