Gender and nationality pay gaps in light of organisational theories

This paper analyses wage inequality with respect to gender and nationality within German establishments. It is a large-scale analysis based on linked employer-employee data from the Institute for Employment Research (LIAB). Wage inequality is measured as the intra-establishment pay gap by gender and nationality, taking into account that human capital may not be equally distributed across the different groups of employees. Consistent with economic theories of discrimination we find significant pay gaps by gender and nationality, even taking into consideration employees’ qualifications. We can show that pay differentials between men and women are much larger on average than those between Germans and non-Germans, and that both pay gaps exhibit a tremendous variation across establishments. Drawing on organisational theories we inquire as to how selected firm characteristics are related to the variation of these intra-firm pay gaps and derive hypotheses about which establishments have a greater incentive and/or are more able to pursue wage equality in their workforces. By use of regression analysis we then investigate whether variables that reflect the firms’ social, institutional and cultural environment and their resource requirements are empirically related to the sizes of the pay gaps. The results are rather ambiguous, suggesting larger, innovating and foreign-owned establishments with a larger share of non-German employees and with a collective bargaining agreement to have smaller gaps, particularly with respect to gender.     

Fostering families' and children's rights to family connections

Recent federal legislation strengthens children's and families' rights to family-centered practice by increasing the responsibility of child welfare agencies to identify and engage extended family members in providing care and support to children placed out of the home. Preliminary results from an experimental study of a federally funded family finding project found greater involvement of family, kin, and informal supports and a higher likelihood of reunification or relative placement compared with standard child welfare services.     

The sociolinguistic development of Yiddish: Eighteenth to the twentieth centuries

Books reviewed in this article:
Estraikh, Gennady Soviet Yiddish: Language Planning and Linguistic Development
Kerler, Dov-Ber The Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish
Peltz, Rakhmiel From Immigrant to Ethnic Culture: American Yiddish in South Philadelphia     

Welfare analysis of a tax reform for Germany: a comparison of the unitary and collective models of household labour supply

We compare results of a tax reform analysis obtained with the collective and unitary models of household behaviour. We simulate real world micro-data by means of a collective approach, using a compound procedure of estimation and calibration based on the 1998 wave of the German socio-economic panel. We estimate a unitary model on this ‘collective’ data set. Investigating a move from joint to individual taxation on the basis of both models, we obtain important discrepancies between predicted adjustments to labour supply and distortions in the welfare analysis of the reform on the basis of unitary estimates.      

Change and Stability in Presidential Popularity at the Individual Level

This article employs a three-wave panel to examine change andstability in the popularity of the president. By survey standards,the item is found to be quite reliable, approaching the reliabilityof party identification. Change in the item can be predictedusing measures of political interest and sophistication, partisanship,and strength of presidential approval or disapproval.     

Understanding the etiology of child abuse: A preliminary typology of cases

This paper examines various conceptual approaches to the etiology of child abuse and reports the results of an original study. Data on 99 families with children who were court adjudicated as having suffered non-accidental trauma were analyzed by means of a cluster analysis (hierarchical nearest-neighbor clustering). Four empirically-derived clusters of family/case attributes are described and then discussed as representing separate etiologies of child abuse. The implications of this typology are also discussed as they relate to clinical practice and social policy.     

Identification of Ethnic Settlement Regions: Amish-Mennonites in Ohio

Abstract The persistence of ethnic settlement in rural regions of the United States is well documented. Yet, there has been little discussion of techniques which allow the identification of the geographic extent and concentration of distinctive ethnic populations. Amish-Mennonite settlement constitutes a unique component of the rural landscape. A wide range of visual clues alert the observer to their presence, but without painstaking field surveys it is difficult to establish their geographic extent. This paper examines four approaches to the identification of Amish-Mennonite settlement. These are county-based population data on religious affiliation, the location of Amish church districts and Mennonite churches, topographic maps, and surnames and cadastral maps. Topographic maps proved unsuitable, but each of the other approaches produced reasonable approximations of the areal extent of Amish-Mennonite settlement. Surnames and cadastral maps present good possibilities for the identification of other ethnic populations in rural regions.     

The emergence of Dutch casinos: A case study of mismarketing?

Ostensibly, the approval of legalized casino type gambling in the Netherlands was intended to combat illegal and uncontrolled gambling. Very early on, however, the plan conceived and implemented by the Netherlands Parliament demonstrated serious mismarketing strategies and tactics. The new legal casinos were appealing to people other than those engaged in illegal gambling, in particular foreign tourists and local high rollers. This paper attempts to analyze the ultimate process of goal displacement, as the state casino industry allowed economic objectives to supplant desires to utilize legal casinos primarily as controls over illegal gambling.