Adaptive tests of regression functions via multiscale generalized likelihood ratios

Many applications of nonparametric tests based on curve estimation involve selecting a smoothing parameter. The author proposes an adaptive test that combines several generalized likelihood ratio tests in order to get power performance nearly equal to whichever of the component tests is best. She derives the asymptotic joint distribution of the component tests and that of the proposed test under the null hypothesis. She also develops a simple method of selecting the smoothing parameters for the proposed test and presents two approximate methods for obtaining its P‐value. Finally, she evaluates the proposed test through simulations and illustrates its application to a set of real data.     

Privatization of refuse removal and labor costs

We examine the labor-cost savings associated with privatization by comparing earnings and employment trends of public and private sector refuse workers. Findings suggest that high union earnings for workers in the public sector are a source of labor-cost savings in the refuse industry. Evidence on job changers does not indicate that earnings for this group of workers are a compensating differential. Metropolitan area employment findings suggest that municipalities are less likely to use union refuse workers in the public sector when a relatively small percentage of area residents belong to a union. The authors thank Jacqueline Agesa, Keith Bender, Maria Crawford, and Richard Perlman for valuable suggestions. Research assistance from Eric Blackburn is greatly appreciated.     

Interactionism,Social Organization,and Social Processes: Looking Back and Moving Ahead

With its roots in American pragmatism, symbolic interactionism has created a distinctive perspective and produced numerous important contributions and now offers significant prospects for the future. In this article, I review my intellectual journey with this perspective over forty years. This journey was initiated within the American society, sociology, and symbolic interaction of circa 1960. I note many of the contributions made by interactionists since that time, with particular focus on those who have contributed to the study of social organization and social process. I offer an agenda for the future based on currently underdeveloped areas that have potential. These are inequality orders, institutional analysis, collective action across space and time, and the integration of temporal and spatial orders. The article concludes with calls for further efforts at cross‐perspective dialogues, more attention to feminist scholars, and an elaborated critical pragmatism.     

Tomb, temple, machine and self: the social construction of the body.

The body is socially constructed; and in this paper we explore the various and ever-changing constructions of the body, and thus of the embodied self, from the Greeks to the present. The one word, body, may therefore signify very different realities and perceptions of reality; and we consider briefly how and why these meanings changed. Plato believed the body was a 'tomb', Paul said it was the 'temple' of the Holy Spirit, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus taught that it was a 'corpse'. Christians believed, and believe, that the body is not only physical, but also spiritual and mystical, and many believed it was an allegory of church, state and family. Some said it was cosmic: one with the planets and the constellations. Descartes wrote that the body is a 'machine', and this definition has underpinned biomedicine to this day; but Sartre said that the body is the self. In sum, the body has no intrinsic meaning. Populations create their own meanings, and thus their own bodies; but how they create, and then change them, and why, reflects the social body.     

The Pyramid Model: A Useful Tool in Career Counseling With University Students

Often university students are faced with career decisions and seek help from the university counseling center. The pyramid model is a useful tool to assist the counselor and the student in the decision-making process. The metaphor enables the student to understand the tasks that lie ahead in the career counseling process. It is holistic. A case study is included to illustrate the three-dimensional model of career counseling of university students.     

Earnings Inequality in the Nonmetropolitan United States: 1967–19901

Abstract Nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) inequality patterns are contrasted with those of metropolitan (metro) areas to assess the utility of neoclassical and restructuring theoretical frameworks. Inequality measures are constructed from March Current Population Surveys for the years 1968–1991. Results indicate that inequality is greater in nonmetro areas than in metro areas. Results of decomposition procedures suggest that the observed inequality is due to a mix of neoclassical and restructuring factors that account for more inequality in metro than nonmetro areas. National policies must take account of metro/nonmetro differences in patterns and sources of inequality.