Sociology and development in the 1990s: Critical challenges and empirical trends

Recent transformations of global economic structures have been accompanied by divergent national, regional, and local patterns of development, including severe socioeconomic crises for many Third World countries. At the same time, established conceptualizations of development processes have been called into question by divergent models of social change, such as those of world systems and postmodernist theorists. These phenomena present major analytical challenges for sociologists specializing in the study of development. New technologies and production processes, changing forms of international dependency, and the appearance of new social actors are among the most important topics for study. We argue that political economy, based on midrange propositions and comparative historical methods, constitutes the most fruitful approach to this task.     

A dependent fatigue lifetime model

An ARMA(p,q) Box-Jenkins fatigue model which allows to take into account the dependence between the strengths of neighbouring pieces of material for constant stress range is presented and the asymptotic convergence, for large lengths of materials, to a Gumbel distribution is shown. When the stress range varies, a regression model, compatible with Gumbel result, is derived. This model is based on a functional equation which is solved and a three parameter family is obtained as the only solution. Finally, an example of application with real fatigue data is included. Monte Carlo simulations give the distribution functions of the fatigue strength of wires of different lengths and allow their design. In this way, the influence of dependence is analyzed.     

Preschool attendance and school-age profiles: A revision

Data collected from the Uruguayan household survey (ENHA) of year 2006 is used to provide more evidence and revision on the longer-term impact of pre-primary education on subsequent school attendance and accumulated years of education. In order to control for unobserved individual or household characteristics that may affect both the participation in a preschool program and the later educational attainment, we instrumented preschool attendance with average attendance rates by age in each locality. Previous research found a positive effect both on school attendance and accumulated years of education, and this effect magnifies as children grow up. But, till 2006 survey, there's no accurate data available to calculate properly the accumulated years of education a child should have and so the causality between preschool and the outcome accumulated years of education was only approximated. Thus, a major contribution of this paper is that for the first time, ENHA makes possible to work with real data on school grade repetitions (estimate accurately the possible lag in children education) and we find results which are different to previous findings. In sum, though preschool impacts positively on subsequent school attendance, preschool seems not to have an increasing impact on years of education as children grow up if we take into account new data on grade repetition. Also this paper broadens the scope of the previous research adding data on rural areas and taking also into account children who do not live with both biological parents. Spreading out preschool education seems to be a successful policy option in a country with large drop-out rates but to cope with school grade repetition new options should be studied.     

Hygiene Wars on the Mercosur Border: Local and National Agency in Uruguaiana (Brazil) and Paso de los Libres (Argentina)

Scholarly attention to the processes of globalization and the construction of regional blocs such as the European Union, NAFTA, and Mercosur has resulted in the relatively widespread belief that borders are in the process of disappearing. Yet, ethnographic studies on political borders have for several years been evincing various redefinitions of border areas comprising new conflicts and mechanisms for strengthening certain barriers between countries. This article attempts to contribute to the discussion of the interplay between nation, state, and border in the Mercosur by analyzing transformations on the Argentinian-Brazilian border. My particular interest is in examining how sociocultural conflicts and negotiations at borders in this region are affecting the construction of new meanings of nationality, and conversely, how new policies (especially "hygienic" barriers) being defined from the politico-economic centers are transforming local populations' everyday lives and experiences. Border populations can be as important in the construction of state and nation as are areas deemed to be central.     

The Influence of Top Management Teams in the Strategic Orientation and Performance of Small and Medium‐sized Enterprises

Identifying which factors affect firms' performance is a critical issue in strategic management research. This paper addresses the influence of managerial team over the behaviour and performance of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). By treating top management team (TMT) characteristics as predictors of a firm's strategic orientation, we seek to provide a more complete understanding of how the characteristics of managerial teams shape decision‐making processes and SMEs' behaviours in order to successfully compete in low munificent environments. Based on primary data regarding managerial characteristics and firms' behaviours of a sample of 295 SMEs, our results confirm that a firm's strategic orientation plays a mediating role in explaining how TMT characteristics determine SMEs' performance.     

Employment Patterns of Less-Skilled Workers: Links to Children’s Behavior and Academic Progress

Using data from five waves of the Women’s Employment Survey (WES; 1997–2003), we examine the links between low-income mothers’ employment patterns and the emotional behavior and academic progress of their children. We find robust and substantively important linkages between several different dimensions of mothers’ employment experiences and child outcomes. The pattern of results is similar across empirical approaches—including ordinary least squares and child fixed-effect models, with and without an extensive set of controls. Children exhibit fewer behavior problems when mothers work and experience job stability (relative to children whose mothers do not work). In contrast, maternal work accompanied by job instability is associated with significantly higher child behavior problems (relative to employment in a stable job). Children whose mothers work full-time and/or have fluctuating work schedules also exhibit significantly higher levels of behavior problems. However, full-time work has negative consequences for children only when it is in jobs that do not require cognitive skills. Such negative consequences are completely offset when this work experience is in jobs that require the cognitive skills that lead to higher wage growth prospects. Finally, fluctuating work schedules and full-time work in non-cognitively demanding jobs are each strongly associated with the probability that the child will repeat a grade or be placed in special education.     

Transnationalism and Development: Mexican and Chinese Immigrant Organizations in the United States

The literature on development in economics and sociology has tended to focus on capital flows, investments, and, more recently, institutions as key causal factors. International migration, when discussed, is relegated to the status of a symptom of underdevelopment and even a factor contributing to it. The more recent literature on migrant remittances has partially reversed this view by documenting large hard currency transfers made by expatriates to their home countries. This changed approach to migration and development does not go far enough because it does not take into account the organized efforts of immigrant communities themselves. Nor does it consider important developmental synergies produced by the rising interactions between immigrant organizations and sending‐country governments. Using data from a recently completed comparative study, we document these processes for two major countries of out‐migration—Mexico and China. The study compiled inventories of migrant organizations from both countries in the United States, interviewed leaders of the major ones, and complemented these data with interviews with officials and community leaders in each sending country. Profiles of these transnational ties were constructed, exemplifying their increasing density and developmental impact at the local and national levels. Theoretical and policy implications of the findings are discussed.     

Stability and voting by committees with exit

We study the problem of a society choosing a subset of new members from a finite set of candidates (as in Barberà et al. 1991). However, we explicitly consider the possibility that initial members of the society (founders) may want to leave it if they do not like the resulting new society. We show that, if founders have separable (or additive) preferences, the unique strategy-proof and stable social choice function satisfying founders sovereignty (on the set of candidates) is the one where candidates are chosen unanimously and no founder leaves the society.A previous version of this paper was entitled Voting by Committees with Exit. We are very grateful to the associate editor and two anonymous referees for their detailed suggestions and comments. We also thank Salvador Barberà, Carmen Beviá, Anna Bogomolnaia, Renan Goetz, Matthew Jackson, Howard Petith, Carmelo Rodríguez-Álvarez, James Schummer, and Tayfun Sönmez for their helpful comments and suggestions. The work of D. Berga, G. Bergantiños, and J. Massó is partially supported by Research Grants AGL2001-2333-C02-01, BEC2002–04102-C02-01, and BEC2002-02130 from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, respectively. The work of A. Neme is partially supported by Research Grant 319502 from the Universidad Nacional de San Luis. The work of D. Berga is also partially supported by Research Grant 9101100 from the Universitat de Girona. The work of G. Bergantiños is also partially supported by Research Grant PGIDT00PXI30001PN from the Xunta de Galicia. The work of J. Massó is also partially supported by Research Grant 2001SGR-00162 and the Barcelona Economics Program of CREA from the Generalitat de Catalunya. The paper was partially written while A. Neme was visiting the UAB under a sabbatical fellowship from the Generalitat de Catalunya.