The West,Russia, and China in Central Asia: What Kind of Game Is Being Played in the Region?

The article discusses the nature of the tangled interaction between the ex-Soviet Central Asian republics and the outside great powers – Russia, the United States and China. Although the so-called Great Game model is often used to explain the geopolitical rivalry in the region, the current pattern of relations between various international actors is much more complex than a traditional tug-of-war between the old colonial empires. While Russia's strategic role in Central Asia appears to be on the rise, the capacity of the West to influence political developments in the region has diminished. However, the overall situation in Central Asia remains volatile and its geopolitical landscape is far from being settled.     

Changes in HIV/AIDS knowledge and testing behavior in Africa: how much and for whom?

Demographic and Health Survey data from nine African countries make it clear that HIV/AIDS prevention knowledge has been increasing. Still, in many cases, fewer than half of adult respondents can identify specific prevention behaviors. Knowledge is lowest in rural areas and among women. HIV testing generally remains rare but is highly variable across countries, likely reflecting differences in the supply of testing services. In most cases, schooling and wealth impacts on prevention knowledge have either been stable or have increased; hence, in the majority of contexts, initial disparities in knowledge by education and wealth levels have persisted or widened.

Welfare analysis of a tax reform for Germany: a comparison of the unitary and collective models of household labour supply

We compare results of a tax reform analysis obtained with the collective and unitary models of household behaviour. We simulate real world micro-data by means of a collective approach, using a compound procedure of estimation and calibration based on the 1998 wave of the German socio-economic panel. We estimate a unitary model on this ‘collective’ data set. Investigating a move from joint to individual taxation on the basis of both models, we obtain important discrepancies between predicted adjustments to labour supply and distortions in the welfare analysis of the reform on the basis of unitary estimates.      

Understanding changes in Māori incomes and income inequality 1997–2003

This paper examines recent changes in weekly income levels and dispersion for Māori, New Zealand’s indigenous ethnic group. Changes in the Māori income distribution between 1997 and 2003 reflect rapid increases in economic growth and employment rate. A reduced proportion of people had zero or benefit-level incomes and a higher proportion had high incomes. Income inequality declined for working-aged Māori and was stable for employed Māori. The average income gap between Māori and Europeans declined. The increased Māori employment rate during this period was the single most important driver of changes in the Māori income distribution.

Family structure and child outcomes in the USA and Sweden

Previous research shows that living in a non-intact family is associated with educational disadvantages. This paper compares the relationships between childhood family structure, schooling, and earnings in Sweden and the USA. This comparison is interesting because both family structure and public policies differ significantly. We find a negative relationship between living in a non-intact family and child outcomes, and the estimates are remarkably similar in both countries. After using sibling-difference models, the correlation with family structure is no longer significant. These results cast doubt on the causal interpretation of the negative relationship between non-intact family structures and child outcomes.     

试论人类经济历史发展过程的波形路径

资本主义经济危机与周期的理论 ,是马克思主义政治经济学中固有的理论。对这一理论的研究 ,已逐渐延伸到对社会经济发展过程中一般周期性波动问题的探讨。人类经济的发展 ,是否也呈现一定的周期性 ?本文试图说明 ,人类经济历史发展过程 ,是沿着某种曲折的波形路径推进的     

Training Bodies,Building Status: Negotiating Gender and Age Differences in the U.S. Fitness Industry

What role does the body play in facilitating interaction across status differences? Whereas previous scholarly work has focused on “roles” and “specialized knowledge,” I investigate how bodies, appearances, and physical abilities are also consequential in these exchanges through the concept of “bodily capital.” Coined by Bourdieu, bodily capital provides a way to understand why individuals invest time, energy, and resources into their bodies, and what they expect to receive in return. As a concept, bodily capital is necessarily broad as it encompasses a variety of forms, including athletic prowess, attractiveness, physique, muscle tone/strength, agility, and other modes of embodiment. Because the body is integral to a variety of status distinction-making processes, individuals invest in and exchange bodily capital to increase their relative status in specific fields. Drawing on interviews with 26 personal trainers and 25 clients, as well as more than one year of participant observation, I find that trainers and clients use bodily capital to negotiate gender and age differences, either by re-arranging interactional power dynamics or resisting stereotypes. The type of bodily capital that allows for such negotiations to take place, however, is the hegemonic thin-toned ideal—a classed and largely raced form of bodily capital that has purchase in the U.S. fitness industry. Although individuals in the study were able to use this form of capital to enable successful cross-status interactions, doing so reified the dominance of middle-class, white bodily aesthetics. Thus, while bodily capital may challenge some status hierarchies, it reinforces others.     

Individuals and Communities: the Importance of Neighbors Volunteering

In this analysis, I examine the effects of community-level volunteering on an individual’s choices regarding time – whether to work and whether to volunteer. In order to better explain the decision to volunteer, a classic pure public goods structure is contrasted with a less restrictive impure public goods model that admits other possible private motivations. The results of this study undermine the neoclassical notion that volunteering can be understood solely as a pure public good that is provided less when others are seen to be contributing. In fact, individuals are found to be more, not less, likely to volunteer when others in their communities do so. An innovative instrumental variables strategy is used to account for reflection bias and the possible endogeneity caused by selective sorting of individuals into neighborhoods, which allows for a causal interpretation of these results. Employment regressions provide preliminary evidence that average volunteering relates, to some extent, with the decision of whether to participate in the labor force. Variations in the effect of average volunteering across age and gender are also explored. The present work is unique by virtue of its use of a large and representative dataset, along with rigorous statistical testing. I use United States Census 2000 Summary File 3 and Current Population Survey (CPS) 2004–2007 September Supplement file data and control for various individual and community-level characteristics.     

Winning a Battle but Losing the War? Third Sector and Social Policy in Latin America: The Case of Uruguay

This paper analyzes some aspects of the third sector’s involvement process in the provision of public social services. Using evidence garnered in previous research based on in-depth interviews, I offer elements toward an assessment of the consequences this process has produced not only in terms of the gains and losses it has produced for social policy, but also for the very identity and constitutive characteristics of the third sector. The evidence hereby compiled strengthens skepticism toward the hypothesis that sees a transformative potential in the role of the third sector in social policy in Latin America. This skepticism arises from issues detected by involved actors themselves and that are linked to the weakness of the sector as a whole.     

The Relationship Between Corporate Volunteering and Employee Civic Engagement Outside the Workplace in Russia

This paper discusses the relationship between corporate volunteering and civic engagement outside the workplace in Russia, proceeding from a mixed-method approach. The quantitative findings are based on a comparison between employees in 37 Russian companies who participated in corporate volunteering (N = 399) and those who did not (N = 402). Using binary logistic regression analysis, we demonstrate that employee participation in corporate volunteering is positively related to four forms of civic engagement outside the workplace: informal volunteering, formal volunteering, formal monetary donation, and informal monetary donation. In addition, we draw on information obtained from interviews with 10 corporate volunteers, as well as with all 37 company corporate volunteering managers, to develop a general explanation for why corporate volunteering might lead to civic engagement. We identify three primary explanations. First, trust in companies can be converted into increased trust in social institutions. Second, corporate volunteering can expose employees to other realities, thereby leading them to rethink their priorities. Third, corporate volunteering socializes employees to volunteering, thus making them more likely to incorporate volunteering into their personal repertoires of activities. Corporate volunteering appears to be an effective mechanism for stimulating civic engagement and volunteering infrastructure in post-communist countries.