THE RETURN OF THE WAGE PHILLIPS CURVE

The standard New Keynesian model with staggered wage setting is shown to imply a simple dynamic relation between wage inflation and unemployment. Under some assumptions, that relation takes a form similar to that found in empirical wage equations—starting from Phillips’ (1958) original work—and may thus be viewed as providing some theoretical foundations to the latter. The structural wage equation derived here is shown to account reasonably well for the comovement of wage inflation and the unemployment rate in the US economy, even under the strong assumption of a constant natural rate of unemployment.     

From the “strategy of truth” to the “weapon of truth”: The Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry, 1942

The aim of this article is to advance in a hidden part of public relations history: the Archibald MacLeish's ‘strategy of truth’ and its implementation to film industry to influence American public opinion. The attempts during the Second World War to fight the enemy through factual propaganda also found, in the film industry, the ideal medium to offset the enemy's propagandising audiovisual products, particularly Nazi propaganda. For this reason, the government drew up the Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry (1942) following the line established by the Office of Facts and Figures and Archibald MacLeish's ‘strategy of truth’. Thus, the Manual for the Motion Picture Industry became a good example of the use of ethical propaganda.     

A maximal domain of preferences for strategy-proof,efficient, and simple rules in the division problem

The division problem consists of allocating an amount M of a perfectly divisible good among a group of n agents. Sprumont (1991) showed that if agents have single-peaked preferences over their shares, the uniform rule is the unique strategy-proof, efficient, and anonymous rule. Ching and Serizawa (1998) extended this result by showing that the set of single-plateaued preferences is the largest domain, for all possible values of M, admitting a rule (the extended uniform rule) satisfying strategy-proofness, efficiency and symmetry. We identify, for each M and n, a maximal domain of preferences under which the extended uniform rule also satisfies the properties of strategy-proofness, efficiency, tops-onlyness, and continuity. These domains (called partially single-plateaued) are strictly larger than the set of single-plateaued preferences. However, their intersection, when M varies from zero to infinity, coincides with the set of single-plateaued preferences.An earlier version of this paper circulated under the title A maximal domain of preferences for tops-only rules in the division problem. We are grateful to an associate editor of this journal for comments that helped to improve the presentation of the paper and to Matt Jackson for suggesting us the interest of identifying a maximal domain of preferences for tops-only rules. We are also grateful to Dolors Berga, Flip Klijn, Howard Petith, and a referee for helpful comments. The work of Alejandro Neme is partially supported by Research Grant 319502 from the Universidad Nacional de San Luis. The work of Jordi Massó is partially supported by Research Grants BEC2002-02130 from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología and 2001SGR-00162 from the Generalitat de Catalunya, and by the Barcelona Economics Program of CREA from the Generalitat de Catalunya. The paper was partially written while Alejandro Neme was visiting the UAB unde r a sabbatical fellowship from the Generalitat de Catalunya.     

Journalists’ assessments of public relations subsidies and contact preferences: Exploring the situation in Spain

The aim of this article is to offer journalists’ assessment of their relationships with public relations professionals in the Autonomous Community of Catalonia (Spain). We analyzed quantitative interviews (questionnaires) and in-depth interviews conducted with 68 Catalan journalists regarding their relationship with public relations practitioners and investigated their assessments of public relations subsidies and contact preferences. An explanatory view is offered.     

Managing reputational risk in an economic downturn: The case of Banco Santander

One of the fields most affected by the crisis is the financial sector. Nevertheless, Spain's banks have so far held up relatively well, and this article's examination of one of the leaders, Banco Santander, shows. The authors argue that the Bank's current strong position is not just attributable to Spanish regulations for conservative lending practices, or to the fact that Spanish banks did not invest in U.S. subprime mortgage products, but also to their well-established Reputational Risk Management programs. The article illustrates Banco Santander's management of reputation and proposes the bank as a paradigmatic case for the importance of dialogue and reputation in these times of turbulence. Because of this focus, the approach is largely uncritical, rather than balanced, in concentrating on how Banco Santander offers evidence of a paradigm shift in action that offers a model for effectively addressing the economic downturn. The article concludes by suggesting the key role for public relations in managing reputational risk under contemporary conditions.     

Psychological abuse in Spanish same-sex couples: prevalence and relationship between victims and perpetrators

This study investigates the prevalence of psychological abuse victimization in same-sex couples and the relationship between being a victim and a perpetrator of these negative behaviours. The final sample consisted of 107 adults residing in Spain who identified themselves as lesbian women and gay men, and who had been involved in a conflictive same-sex relationship. Participants were asked how frequently they would label their experience of psychological abuse and three different estimation methods were used. Furthermore, the relationship between being a victim and being a perpetrator of psychological abuse behaviours was calculated through the behavioural estimation method using a questionnaire. The results showed that the prevalence rates varied from 11.3% to 56.6%, depending on the estimation method, and they revealed that there was no correlation between receiving and enacting psychological abuse behaviours. The variation in prevalence rates highlights methodological differences that limit the extent to which comparisons can be made across studies. Three estimation methods are introduced to stimulate future research on this issue.     

Measuring Quality of Life in Small Areas Over Different Periods of Time

The purpose of this paper is todescribe an index methodology for measuringquality of life, understood multidimensionally,in a set of very different municipalities,units of measurement, and time periods.Although certain technical problems arise whensmall areas (municipalities) are considered,cross and serial comparison is completed. Themethodology was applied in 314 municipalitiesof the province of Barcelona (Spain).     

UNDERSTANDING THE EFFECTS OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING ON CONSUMPTION

Recent evidence suggests that consumption rises in response to an increase in government spending. That finding cannot be easily reconciled with existing optimizing business cycle models. We extend the standard new Keynesian model to allow for the presence of rule‐of‐thumb consumers. We show how the interaction of the latter with sticky prices and deficit financing can account for the existing evidence on the effects of government spending. (JEL: E32, E62)     

Young people’s leisure patterns: testing social age,social gender,and linguistic capital hypotheses

We analysed young people’s leisure activities in order to identify their leisure habitus, discover how they combined activities into leisure patterns, and examine how leisure patterns were socially structured. We argue that the effects of age, gender, and language on how young people’s leisure patterns are structured are mediated by social class. We found that leisure practices could be classified in terms of three habitus: the frequent leisure habitus, the cultural activity habitus, and the social vs. entertainment habitus. The different combinations of these three leisure habitus by young people resulted in four patterns which we refer to as social, omnivorous, entertainment, and religious leisure patterns. The association of leisure patterns with indicators of social position suggests that, as predicted by our theoretical framework, age, gender, and language effects are diminished once we take into account the mediating role of social class. Young people’s leisure practices are therefore socially differentiated, with young immigrants forming a vulnerable group that should be the particular focus of youth leisure policies.     

Soccer, civil religion, and public relations: Devotional–promotional communication and Barcelona Football Club

The aim of this article is to provide a public relations perspective on the civil religion phenomenon through a study of Barcelona Football Club (BFC) as an institution and its public relations efforts. We believe that BFC can be seen as a form of civil religion that uses a devotional–promotional communication model which sets forth, upholds and reinforces relations with “faithful supporters”. The paper links to three main contributions: the work of [Salvador, J. (2004). Futbol, metàfora d’una guerra freda: Un estudi antropològic del Barça. Barcelona: Proa.] on anthropological approach to BFC, [Giner, S. (2003). Carisma y razón. Madrid: Alianza] on civil religion and its communicative dimension, and [Tilson, D. J. (2006). Devotional–promotional communicationa and Santiago: A thousand-year public relations campaign for Saint James and Spain. In J. L’Etang & M. Pieczka (Eds.), Public relations: Critical debates and contemporary practice (pp. 167–184). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.] on devotional–promotional communication. Thus, this article advances a public relations approach to civil religion.