Immigration and Attitudes Towards Day Care

We examine the relationship between preferences for the public funding of school children day care and the share of foreign pupils in German jurisdictions. To this end, we employ multilevel models to analyze individual-level data from the 1997 and 2002 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel and data on different jurisdiction-levels from official sources. In contrast to a number of recent studies that investigate the link between redistributive preferences and immigration, we find no evidence for a negative association between the two variables. The specifications either indicate no relationship or a weak positive relationship. Our analysis supports two main conclusions: First, the direction of the relationship between redistributive preferences and immigration depends on the specific domain of the welfare state. Second, we demonstrate that the magnitude of the relationship differs across the different levels of jurisdictions. This second result suggests that the patterns found in the previous literature may not be robust to a disaggregation of the data to lower level of jurisdictions. Further research is necessary once more data is available.     

The Role of Community Assessments,Place, and the Great Recession in the Migration Intentions of Rural Americans

Many rural areas of the United States are experiencing population decline due to out‐migration. However, others—especially those places rich in natural amenities and recreational opportunities—are attracting new residents and losing less of their native population. In this article we investigate the predictors of rural Americans' migration intentions by examining how individual‐level community assessments, including community attachment and perceptions of community‐level problems, shape rural Americans' migration decision making while controlling for individual and place effects. Drawing on survey data from 17,000 residents in 11 different rural areas around the United States, we find that community attachment is a key predictor of rural migration, even during periods of economic recession, and regardless of individual and place characteristics or perceptions of community‐level problems. We also find that multiple dimensions of community attachment (e.g., practical, natural, family, community trust) have independent effects on the propensity of rural residents to migrate. Our research contributes to knowledge on migration trends among rural Americans by exploring the complicated reasoning behind why people stay in, or move to, certain rural communities and not others.     

Towards a re-conceptualization of flow in social contexts

The antecedents and outcomes of individual-level flow are well documented in a large body of literature. However, flow does not only occur in isolation - quite to the contrary, recent evidence suggests that social interaction can facilitate the experience of flow. Therefore, we propose a taxonomy, which distinguishes five different flow states according to two global factors: interactional synchrony and self-other overlap. Solitary flow bears all characteristics developed by Csikszentmihalyi. Co-active flow is facilitated or hampered by the presence of other people. Private interactive flow emerges on the grounds of a minimal unidirectional interaction with more passive others; only the active subject is in flow. In shared interactive flow, a fully synchronized activity between group members takes place and all group members are in flow. In group flow, all members reach a level of complete self-other overlap with the group, which leads to a collective experience of flow on the group-level. In addition to differences and commonalities of the different types of flow, suggestions for how to induce and study social flow are discussed.     

High Employment and Social Security: Vision or Illusion in a Globalized World?

This article addresses two issues in the context of globalization. First it considers whether the goals of successful employment policy and social equilibrium are at all reconcilable. Second it looks at ways in which the labour market prospects of workers who are at a competitive disadvantage, prospects which are poor in many countries, can be improved on a lasting basis. Using the example of export-oriented countries such as Denmark or the Netherlands, it shows that a social State which offers help but expects something back can be an integral part of an effective strategy to generate jobs. This is particularly true where earlier generous transfers are maintained while targeted incentives create the conditions for a flexible economy and a flexible labour market.     

Die Regulation der ?kologischen Krise

There is a growing discrepancy between the knowledge about the ecological crisis and the effectiveness to deal with this crisis politically. Just in a time of increasing environmental problems the institutions of international environmental politics are in a crisis of legitimation and functioning. This contrasts with the broadly acknowledged anthropogenic character of climate change and the respective politicisation of this crisis phenomenon. The article firstly develops a theoretical framework which aims to contribute to explaining the growing discrepancy between crisis consciousness and crisis politics. For this purpose, the concept of societal relationships with nature is linked to insights of critical geography, regulation theory and critical state theory. Thereafter, the empirical analysis identifies the fossilist production and consumption patterns as principal cause for the mentioned discrepancy. Its deeply rootedness and global outreach supersede the ecological crisis consciousness and the negotiations on the existing terrains of environmental politics. At the same time, they contribute to intensifying the contradictions in societal relationships with nature. The (possible) processing of these contradictions and their democratically motivated politicisation will be analysed in the last section of the paper.     

The front end in non-assembled product development: A multiple case study of mineral- and metal firms

We conceptualize the front end in non-assembled product development to be iterative and experiment-based, consisting of three sub-phases: informal start-up, formal idea-study, and formal pre-study. Although some key activities are shared with the front end activities in assembled product development, literature reviews, anticipating requirements of customers’ production processes, analysis of raw materials, anticipation of scale-up problems, and tests in bench-, pilot plant-, and full scale production represent unique activities. In addition, product concepts were frequently developed in parallel, requiring specification of physical, chemical and structural properties. These findings have implications for increasing the success and quality of front end efforts.     

Migration and foreign trade: Further results

In this note, we use the production-theory approach to immigration in an open-economy setting to investigate the role of nonresident workers in Swiss aggregate production. Unlike earlier work in this area, exports are explicitly taken into account. Indeed, a statistical test for global separability between inputs and outputs reveals that exports and products intended for domestic use cannot be aggregated. Our results show that immigration tends to stimulate imports and to shift the output mix towards nontraded goods, thereby impacting negatively on the trade account. Received: 24 March 1999/Accepted: 4 January 2001     

The use of external controls: To what extent can it currently be recommended?

With more and better clinical data being captured outside of clinical studies and greater data sharing of clinical studies, external controls may become a more attractive alternative to randomized clinical trials (RCTs). Both industry and regulators recognize that in situations where a randomized study cannot be performed, external controls can provide the needed contextualization to allow a better interpretation of studies without a randomized control. It is also agreed that external controls will not fully replace RCTs as the gold standard for formal proof of efficacy in drug development and the yardstick of clinical research. However, it remains unclear in which situations conclusions about efficacy and a positive benefit/risk can reliably be based on the use of an external control. This paper will provide an overview on types of external control, their applications and the different sources of bias their use may incur, and discuss potential mitigation steps. It will also give recommendations on how the use of external controls can be justified.