The Industry of Illegal Migration: Social Network Analysis of the Brazil‐US Migration System

In this article, we analyse the process of migration by applying a social network methodology. Using the personal network approach, we focus on a case study of the Brazil‐US migration system to analyse the formation of the so‐called “industry of illegal migration”. We suggest that in migration systems, brokerage evolves not only because of historical and cultural changes, but also because the changes emerge within a structured environment in which brokerage can thrive, and this, in turn, causes the social networks to support and produce specialized actors (individuals and organizations) embedded in the “right positions” of the social structure in the migration process. In this particular case study, we suggest that brokerage seems to take place through gender‐oriented networks and the personal experience and structural power of returned migrants. These returned migrants usually have more varied social contacts and types of relationships from which they can obtain richer information about the migration system.     

Capitalizing the Crisis? Explanatory Factors for the Design of Short‐time Work across Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development Countries

This article looks at the financial and economic crisis 2008–10 in 18 Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development states and seeks to investigate explanatory paths for the subsidization of further education within short‐time work programmes. Several hypotheses are put to the test: first, a classical partisan difference argument; second, a varieties of capitalism approach proposing a successful joint rallying of employers and employees for subsidization in coordinated market economies; and, lastly, the merged hypothesis that right‐wing parties in a coordinated economic context might subsidize feeling the pressure to overcompensate an ‘issue ownership’ of left parties in the field of employee‐friendly policies. We identify four explanatory paths: coordinated economies in the sample subsidized when they were economically closed or highly indebted. The results also support our combined hypothesis, that New Zealand – a left‐governed liberal market economy – and right‐governed coordinated market economies of the non‐Scandinavian type subsidized.     

Gamson’s law and hedonic games

This note adds one celebrated coalition formation game due to Gamson (Am Soc Rev 26:373–382 1961a, Am Soc Rev 26:565–573, 1961b) in the list of applications of the theory of hedonic games explored by Banerjee et al. (Soc Choice Welf 18:135–153, 2001) and Bogomolnaia and Jackson (Games Econ Behav 38: 204–230, 2002). We apply their results to study the original Gamson game and offer extensions both to a multi-dimensional characteristics space and to an infinite number of players.     

Managing a Low-Incidence Risk: The Example of Toxic Shock Syndrome

This article demonstrates a methodology that allows individuals to reach a personal decision on the use of products which carry very small risks to health and life but also offer considerable benefits. A combination of the principles of dominance, extended dominance, and various methods of direct risk-benefit tradeoffs are shown to reduce the number of possible decisions regarding product use to the one optimal for the value structure of a particular individual. An historical examination of toxic-shock syndrome identifies tampons as a product with risks too small to warrant public intervention but too sizeable to be ignored. The methodology described here can be applied for all such products.     

Propensity to adopt innovative housing: Development of knowledge indexes

The process by which energy efficient housing alternatives is diffused through society in relation to the information flow is relatively unknown. The major purpose of this study was to validate a continuum of the propensity to adopt alternative housing (passive and active solar, earth sheltered and retrofitted) based on knowledge level. Findings indicate knowledge indices are valid predictors of consumer acceptance of energy efficient housing alternatives. A greater level of knowledge was correlated with respondents willing to adopt an alternative housing type.