INCOMPLETE SOCIAL CONTRACTS

There is a long normative ‘Social Contract’ tradition that attempts to characterize ex‐post income inequalities that are agreeable to all ‘behind a veil of ignorance.’ This paper takes a similar normative approach to characterize social decision‐making procedures. It is shown that quite generally some form of majority‐voting is preferred to unanimity ‘behind a veil of ignorance’ whenever society faces deadweight costs in making compensating transfers. Deviations from unanimity (or ex‐post Pareto optimality) are ex‐ante efficient to the extent that they economize on costly compensating transfers. Put another way, the optimal decision rule trades off the benefits of minority protection and those from greater flexibility. (JEL: H11, G33, G34, D63, P16, P48)     

Schumpeterian Growth Theory and the Dynamics of Income Inequality

In this lecture, it is argued that Schumpeterian Growth Theory, in which growth is driven by a sequence of quality‐improving innovations, can shed light on two important puzzles raised by the recent evolution of wage inequality in developed economies. The first puzzle concerns wage inequality between educational groups, which has substantially risen in the US and the UK during the past two decades following a sharp increase in the supply of educated labor. The second puzzle concerns wage inequality within educational groups, which accounts for a large fraction of the observed increase in wage inequality, although in contrast to between‐group wage inequality it has mainly affected the temporary component of income.     

Who is right about the modern economy: Polanyi,Zelizer, or both?

Zelizer’s work may be read as an attack on the central Polanyian thesis: that the market system threatens social life by the undue prominence it lends the economy in the organization of modern society. The recent publication of Viviana Zelizer’s The Purchase of Intimacy (2005a) is therefore an excellent opportunity to review the general trend of her work Zelizer 1979, 1985, 1994, and contrast her leading ideas to the central thesis that gives Polanyi’s work its particular flavor: the danger encapsulated in the use of modern money and the functioning of the market system. A draft of this essay was presented in March 2007 at a workshop held at the University of London, and a preliminary French version has appeared in a special issue of the Revue du Mauss devoted to Polanyi’s thought (Vol. 29, June 2007). The present version is directed to Zelizer’s views on the relation between market and society. I thank Franck Cochoy, Keith Hart, José Ossandon, and Viviana Zelizer for their helpful comments and advices.

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Work,Refuge, Transit: An Emerging Pattern of Irregular Immigration South and East of the Mediterranean

Southern and Eastern Mediterranean (SEM) countries have recently turned into receivers of migrants, but they have neither the institutions nor the policies that would allow them to integrate migrants. Therefore, most migrants in SEM countries found themselves in irregular situation. Using a variety of statistical sources, official and non‐official, the article establishes that out of 5.6 million immigrants living in SEM countries in the mid‐2000s, a minimum of 3.6 would be in irregular situation. They belong to three categories: approximately 2 million migrant workers attracted by SEM labour markets where they are employed in the informal sector with no work permit, 1.5 million de facto refugees who cannot obtain the status of refugee and are waiting for resettlement in a third country or return to their homes, and less than 200,000 transit migrants initially bound for Europe, which they are unable to reach for lack of visa. While their reasons to be stranded in the SEM differ, these three categories share the same vulnerable conditions, with no legal access to work, services, or protection.     

Factor Structure and Psychometric Properties of the Italian Version of the Homosexuality Scale of the Trueblood Sexual Attitudes Questionnaire

The aim of the present study was to translate the Homosexuality scale of the Trueblood Sexual Attitudes Questionnaire into the Italian language and to assess its factor structure and psychometric properties in Italian psychology students. The questionnaire was originally developed and validated in U.S. college students, and later in Turkish social work students, showing high internal consistency. It measures attitudes toward several sexual practices and behaviors, regarding self and others. Particularly, the Homosexuality scale measures attitudes toward different sexual and romantic practices with people of the same sex. A total of 199 Italian psychology students participated to the study, and they were administered the Italian translation of the scale. We applied exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Results showed that the scale has high internal consistency, and that the original two-factor model accounting for attitudes toward self and others fits the data well. Implications for education and assessment in student populations are discussed.     

Intra-rater reliability of hip abductor isometric strength testing in a standing position in older fallers and non-fallers

Background

Reduced hip muscle strength has been shown to be a major factor related to falls in older persons. However, comprehensive assessment of hip abduction strength in the clinical setting is challenging. The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility and intra-rater reliability of a quick and simple hip abductor strength test in a functional standing position.

Methods

Individuals over 65 years of age were recruited from the geriatric department of a university hospital and an outpatient clinic. Thirty-two older subjects, including 16 fallers (≥1 fall during the last 12 months) and 16 non-fallers were included. Maximum voluntary isometric strength (MVIS) and rate of force generation (RFG) of the hip abductors of the right leg were evaluated in a standing position using a hand-held dynamometer. Two test-sessions were carried out. All hip strength values were normalized to participants’ weight. Reliability was determined using the intra-class correlation coefficient agreement (ICC_agreement), the standard error of measurement (SEM) and a Bland and Altman analysis (BA).

Results

All participants completed the strength tests, which took a mean 2.47?±?0.49 min (one limb). Intra-rater reliability was higher for MVIS (0.98_{[0.95–0.99]}) than RFG (ICC?=?0.93_{[0.87–0.97]}) for the entire sample. In the non-fallers, ICC was 0.98_{[0.95–1.00]} (SEM?=?0.08 N.kg^??1) for MVIS and 0.88_{[0.75–0.96]} for RFG (SEM?=?1.34 N.kg^-1.s^-1). In the fallers, ICC was 0.94_{[0.89–0.98]} (SEM?=?0.11 N.kg^??1) for MVIS and 0.93_{[0.84–0.98]} (SEM?=?1.12 N.kg^??1.s^??1) for RFG. The BA plot showed that the MVIS and RFG values did not differ across test-sessions, showing that no learning effect occurred (no systematic effect). The mean differences between test-sessions were larger and the LOA smaller in the fallers than in the non-fallers.

Conclusion

Assessment of hip strength in a standing position is feasible, rapid and reliable. We therefore recommend this position for clinical practice. Future studies should investigate the diagnostic value of hip abductor strength in standing to discriminate between fallers and non-fallers, and to determine if change in strength following a falls prevention program reduces the risk of falls.

     

From armed group to movement: armed struggle and movement formation in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country

In recent decades, social movement scholars have expanded our understanding of ‘terrorism’ by analyzing a particular trajectory, movement to armed group, whereby movement demobilization spurs armed struggle. This article analyzes an alternative trajectory: armed group to movement. Once armed struggle’s limitations become apparent, armed groups often adopt an attritional military strategy suited to their capacities. To securely wage an attritional campaign, groups disembed through the adoption of insular structures, removing them from their milieux and from recruits and resources needed for organizational reproduction. To offset this, armed groups reembed through the development of politico-military movement structures: forming allied aboveground movement organizations; coordinating armed and unarmed activism; and creating a ‘movement’ identity. This offsets disembedding in three ways. First, collective action augments armed groups’ violence by expanding the struggle into new domains. Second, mobilized support provides armed groups political legitimacy, countering the ‘terrorist’ label. Third, aboveground movement organizations assist in recruitment, alliance-formation, public communication, and mobilization, facilitating armed groups’ organizational reproduction. This paper investigates the strategic decision to adopt movement structures by analyzing documents produced by militants linked to the IRA and to rival ETAs, ETA Politico-Military and ETA Military, allowing for the exploration of different aspects of the decision to adopt movement structures. From Irish republican texts, insights into the basic benefits of movement development are gleaned. Basque separatist documents, on the other hand, provide perspectives on the nature of interorganizational centralization and coordination within politico-military movements.     

The dynamics of capital accumulation in the US: simulations after piketty

We develop a dynamic model where a competitive firm uses labor and capital, with market clearing rates of return. Individuals are heterogeneous in skills, with an endowment in capital/wealth increasing in skill. Individuals aspire to a socially determined consumption level, with a constant marginal propensity to consume out of income above this level. We also study three variants of the model: one with a higher rate of return for large capitals than for smaller ones, one with a capital levy financing a lump sum transfer, and one with social mobility. We calibrate the model to the US economy and obtain that a steady state exists in all variants, and we obtain convergence to the steady state from the 2012 US wealth distribution. The reduction in the level of the aspirational consumption level is the only way to create wealth for the bottom half of the distribution.     

Axiomatization and implementation of a class of solidarity values for TU-games

A new class of values combining marginalistic and egalitarian principles is introduced for cooperative TU-games. It includes some modes of solidarity among the players by taking the collective contribution of some coalitions to the grand coalition into account. Relationships with other class of values such as the Egalitarian Shapley values and the Procedural values are discussed. We propose a strategic implementation of our class of values in subgame perfect Nash equilibrium. Two axiomatic characterizations are provided: one of the whole class of values, and one of each of its extreme points.