Ethnic Prejudice and Discrimination in Europe

This article provides an introduction to research on European prejudice and discrimination. First, we list the distinctive characteristics of a European perspective and provide a short sketch of European immigration and ethnic groups. Europe has become a multicultural community. Nevertheless, public opinion and the continent's politics often do not reflect this empirical fact. Prejudice and discrimination directed at immigrants are a widespread phenomena across Europe. Several cross-European surveys support this conclusion, although theoretically driven surveys on prejudice and discrimination in Europe remain rare. Cross-European research studies classical and modern theories of prejudice and discrimination and attempts to uncover the psychological mechanisms that explain individual readiness to exclude ethnic groups. A brief sketch of recent European research is presented. This issue offers both important cross-national perspectives as well as needed comparisons with the more studied case of racial prejudice and discrimination in the United States.     

Intensity, timeliness, and success of incumbent response to technological discontinuities: a synthesis and empirical investigation

The extant literature highlights numerous different factors influencing the timeliness and intensity of incumbent response to discontinuous technological change. However, this literature has so far not been synthesized and is therefore limited in its analytical, predictive, and normative power. We develop a comprehensive model of incumbent response that organizes different explanatory factors into the three distinct dimensions of (1) identification and interpretation, (2) decision making, and (3) organizational implementation. We also conceptualize how response intensity and timeliness affect business performance in new technological domains. We test the model against data from 320 firms from the German dental lab industry, finding substantial support for the majority of our hypotheses. This study offers unique empirical insight in observing that cognitive constructs such as framing and management flexibility have the strongest impact on both intensity and timeliness of incumbent response to technological, and thus, strategic discontinuities. Together, our findings have important implications for both theory and practice.     

How to ask sensitive multiple-choice questions

Motivated by recent failures of polling to estimate populist party support, we propose and analyze two methods for asking sensitive multiple-choice questions where the respondent retains some privacy and therefore might answer more truthfully. The first method consists of asking for the true choice along with a choice picked at random. The other method presents a list of choices and asks whether the preferred one is on the list or not. Different respondents are shown different lists. The methods are easy to explain, which makes it likely that the respondent understands how her privacy is protected and may thus entice her to participate in the survey and answer truthfully. The methods are also easy to implement and scale up.     

Modelling columnarity of pyramidal cells in the human cerebral cortex

For modelling the location of pyramidal cells in the human cerebral cortex, we suggest a hierarchical point process in that exhibits anisotropy in the form of cylinders extending along the z-axis. The model consists first of a generalised shot noise Cox process for the xy-coordinates, providing cylindrical clusters, and next of a Markov random field model for the z-coordinates conditioned on the xy-coordinates, providing either repulsion, aggregation or both within specified areas of interaction. Several cases of these hierarchical point processes are fitted to two pyramidal cell data sets, and of these a final model allowing for both repulsion and attraction between the points seem adequate. We discuss how the final model relates to the so-called minicolumn hypothesis in neuroscience.     

Reviews

The Jewish Anti‐Fascist Committee Revisited. Alexander M. Borschtschagowski, Orden für einen Mord: Die Judenverfolgung unter Stalin. Berlin: Propyläen, 1997. Notes. Ind. Glossary. 472pp. ISBN 3–549–05605–2 (hbk)

Arno Lustiger, Rotbuch: Stalin und die Juden. Die tragische Geschichte des Jüdischen Antifaschistischen Komitees und der sowjetischen Juden. With a foreword by Efim Etkind. Berlin: Aufbau‐Verlag, 1998. Bibl. Notes. Ind. Photographs. 429pp. ISBN 3–351–02478–9 (hbk)

A Chicken‐and‐Egg Situation. Charles King and Neil J. Melvin (eds.), Nations Abroad: Diaspora Politics and International Relations in the Former Soviet Union. Boulder, CO/Oxford: Westview Press, 1998. 240 pp. Index. ISBN 0–8133–9015‐X

A Greek Tragedy. Gennady Estraikh, Soviet Yiddish: Language Planning and Linguistic Development. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. x + 217pp. Bibliography. Index. £40. ISBN: 0–19818479–0

Freeze‐Frame Picture. Susanne Marten‐Finnis and Heather Valencia. Sprachinseln. Jiddische Publizistik in London, Wilna und Berlin 1880–1930. Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1999. 144pp. Illustrations. Bibliography. ISBN: 3–412–02998‐X     

The determinants of opting for the German group taxation regime with regard to taxes on corporate profits

Forming a tax group for corporate and trade tax purposes in Germany has its advantages in terms of tax savings for the companies concerned. Depending on the profit situation, for certain companies these benefits were extended by the 2001 German corporate tax reform. However, setting up a tax group in Germany is also accompanied by certain disadvantages for the consolidated companies, resulting especially from the assumption of increased liability for subsidiaries’ losses. The objective of this study is to investigate the factors determining the decision in favour of, or against, the formation of a tax group. A natural experiment arising from the 2001 German corporate tax reform allowed us to determine to what extent companies exploited the increased potential benefits of a tax group post reform. We test this finding employing firm-level data from the database AMADEUS. Our results show that the number of tax groups increased significantly with the introduction of the exemption method as from 01.01.2001. This result is especially apparent amongst companies benefiting from a tax group only post reform. Yet eligible companies which would have obtained tax benefits by entering into a tax group did not always choose this option. This applies in particular to parent companies with subsidiaries that are not wholly owned, and to small subsidiaries.     

State of Control: Unknown Migrant Children

Recently, crises seem to predominate migration policymaking. They are commonly seen as critical junctures which precipitate major policy change. However, rather than creation of something new, crises can instead be vehicles for restoring the order of the past. This article examines the case of asylum-seeking unaccompanied minors in Sweden, where drastic changes have been made in the aftermath of the perceived “migration crisis” of 2015. Employing historical institutionalist theory, it examines decades of Swedish migration policymaking through analysis of state inquiries, law proposals and court rulings. It argues that the changes introduced 2015 were not qualitatively new, but rather a result of long-simmering tensions. These tensions lie between state attempts to control migration, particularly of “unidentifiable” individuals, and the rights accorded to migrants. The article shows that Sweden's migration framework of bounded universalism has gradually been altered by tools that categorize migrants, with implications for migration policy as a whole.     

THE AGENCY OF POLITICS AND SCIENCE

We study a principal‐agent relationship between a politician and a researcher that captures stylized facts regarding the involvement of politics into scientific research. The politician has some ideal policy that he would like to implement, but needs to contract with a researcher to choose a policy that is supported by scientific advice. We study the implemented contracts under symmetric and under asymmetric information about the researcher's ability and concern for reputation, and discuss with which types of researchers the politician will contract. We identify several conflicts between the interests of voters and those of the politician. (JEL D72, D82, D83)     

Antecedents and effects of individual ambidexterity – A cross-level investigation of exploration and exploitation activities at the employee level

For long-term success, companies need to adapt to technological and environmental change. Organizational ambidexterity, which balances the exploration of new opportunities with the exploitation of existing capabilities, is increasingly viewed as a promising approach to tackle this challenge. However, despite the important role of individuals for firms' ambidexterity and performance, evidence on how exploration of new opportunities and exploitation of existing capabilities are triggered at an individual level and on their subsequent effects on overall performance is still lacking. Accordingly, the present research shifts the focus from organizational ambidexterity to individual ambidexterity. Based on data from 415 employees, the results of structural equation modeling show that both organizational architecture and organizational context can be used to induce individual ambidexterity. Furthermore, positive performance effects of individual ambidexterity across different organizational levels, namely the team and department levels, are confirmed.