Mexico–US Migration: Views from Both Sides of the Border

Migration to the United States increased sharply in the 1980s and 1990s, raising political concerns. The immigrant flow from Mexico, both authorized and unauthorized, was particularly large. Good data would con‐tribute to rational discussion of this politically charged issue, but data on immigration, particularly of the unauthorized, are notoriously poor. This article applies residual estimation techniques to data from the 1990 and 2000 population censuses of Mexico and the United States (Mexico‐born population) to quantify the intercensal migration flow, arguing that the reasons why unauthorized migrants might avoid enumeration in the United States would not adversely affect data from Mexico. Results suggest that the annual net flow of migrants aged 10 to 80 years from Mexico to the United States averaged between 324,000 and 440,000 between 1990 and 2000. A sensitivity analysis indicates that these results are quite robust (especially those using US data) to likely errors.     

Does the Hispanic Paradox in U.S. Adult Mortality Extend to Disability?

Studies consistently document a Hispanic paradox in U.S. adult mortality, whereby Hispanics have similar or lower mortality rates than non-Hispanic whites despite lower socioeconomic status. This study extends this line of inquiry to disability, especially among foreign-born Hispanics, since their advantaged mortality seemingly should be paired with health advantages more generally. We also assess whether the paradox extends to U.S.-born Hispanics to evaluate the effect of nativity. We calculate multistate life tables of life expectancy with disability to assess whether racial/ethnic and nativity differences in the length of disability-free life parallel differences in overall life expectancy. Our results document a Hispanic paradox in mortality for foreign-born and U.S.-born Hispanics. However, Hispanics’ low mortality rates are not matched by low disability rates. Their disability rates are substantially higher than those of non-Hispanic whites and generally similar to those of non-Hispanic blacks. The result is a protracted period of disabled life expectancy for Hispanics, both foreign- and U.S.-born.     

The Contingent Effects of Role Ambiguity and Role Novelty on Expatriates' Work‐related Outcomes

Research on work stress has highlighted its negative outcomes for both individuals and their employers. Overseas assignments are more stressful than domestic assignments, and their relatively high failure rates are well documented. We suggest, however, that certain types of stress can positively affect expatriate performance. Based on role theory and the distinction between hindrance and challenge stressors, we develop hypotheses regarding the influence of role ambiguity and role novelty on expatriate success. We also conceptualize and empirically investigate the moderating influence of expatriates' perceptions of organizational support and supervisor support. Our hypotheses are tested using a sample of 125 Japanese expatriate managers in Germany. We find that role ambiguity is a hindrance stressor and negatively affects job satisfaction and work adjustment, while role novelty acts as a challenge stressor and positively affects job satisfaction, task performance and work adjustment. Our findings also show that perceived organizational support attenuates the negative effects of role ambiguity on work adjustment and strengthens the positive effect of role novelty on job satisfaction. We also find that supervisor support positively moderates the positive effect of role novelty on job satisfaction and work adjustment.     

Leadership and Effectiveness in the Context of Gender: The Role of Leaders' Verbal Behaviour*

This field study focuses on verbal consideration, which is a leadership behaviour that expresses esteem for the follower and her or his work, knowledge and opinion. It was assumed that the relationship between verbal consideration and various outcomes is moderated by the leader's gender. One‐hundred‐and‐forty leaders and 455 of their direct followers were surveyed in a one‐wave questionnaire study in Germany. Male and female leaders showed the same degree of verbal consideration as rated by their followers. Verbal consideration is related to three out of four outcome variables for both sexes. One unexpected moderating effect of leaders' gender was found: followers of male leaders displaying verbal consideration report less ‘irritation’ (a state of exhaustion considered a threat to good task fulfilment). One explanation may be that male leaders get ‘extra credit’ for showing verbal consideration as it may be thought to entail special effort, whereas for female leaders it may be seen as normal and routine. This assumption should be examined in further studies in order to get more information about the different mechanisms by which female and male leaders reach the same quality of outcomes.     

How to model an institution

Institutions are linkage mechanisms that bridge across three kinds of social divides—they link micro systems of social interaction to meso (and macro) levels of organization, they connect the symbolic with the material, and the agentic with the structural. Two key analytic principles are identified for empirical research, relationality and duality. These are linked to new research strategies for the study of institutions that draw on network analytic techniques. Two hypotheses are suggested. (1) Institutional resilience is directly correlated to the overall degree of structural linkages that bridge across domains of level, meaning, and agency. (2) Institutional change is related to over-bridging, defined as the sustained juxtaposition of multiple styles within the same institutional site. Case examples are used to test these contentions. Institutional stability is examined in the case of Indian caste systems and American academic science. Institutional change is explored in the case of the rise of the early Christian church and in the origins of rock and roll music.

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Systemdynamiken als anonyme Fehlerquellen

System dynamics as anonymous causes of failure Dynamics of problem solving, dynamics of communication as well as dynamics of success are basic challenges in organizations. To ignore them may bring about severe failures in terms of economics and of the personnel. Therefore, it is important to clearly discern these various dynamics and to cope with them.     

Education and gender bias in the sex ratio at birth: Evidence from India

This article investigates the possible existence of a nonlinear link between female disadvantage in natality and education. To this end, we devise a theoretical model based on the key role of social interaction in explaining people’s acquisition of preferences, which justifies the existence of a nonmonotonic relationship between female disadvantage in natality and education. The empirical validity of the proposed model is examined for the case of India, using district-level data. In this context, our econometric analysis pays particular attention to the role of spatial dependence to avoid any potential problems of misspecification. The results confirm that the relationship between the sex ratio at birth and education in India follows an inverted U-shape. This finding is robust to the inclusion of additional explanatory variables in the analysis, and to the choice of the spatial weight matrix used to quantify the spatial interdependence between the sample districts.     

Ranking profiles of capability sets

In this paper, we present an innovative approach for ranking profiles of capability sets on the basis of equity. An interesting way of capturing the notion of equity is to take into account the extent to which each of the different functioning vectors is shared by the population under consideration (of size n). This is done by defining the ‘common capability sets’ enjoyed by k individuals as the set of functioning vectors simultaneously available to at least k individuals (1 ≤ k ≤ n). These sets are closely related to the original capability sets and have some interesting properties that are examined throughout the paper. We define and axiomatically characterize a capability profile ranking that lexicographically compares the different common capability sets. We would like to thank for helpful discussion and comments to Jorge Alcalde-Unzu, Ritxar Arlegi, Miguel A. Ballester, Jose Enrique Galdón, Antonio Nicolò, Jorge Nieto, Prasanta Pattanaik, John Weymark and the anonymous referees of this paper. The project is supported by Spanish’ Comision Interministerial de Ciencia y Technologia (SEC2003-08105) and by the European Commission (MRTN-CT-2003-504796).