The enemies within: targeting Han Chinese and Hui minorities in Xinjiang

How can we account for the targeted pattern of violence in Xinjiang, in which Uyghur secessionist groups attack some second-order minorities such as the Han Chinese and the Hui, but not the sizeable populations of Kazak, Kyrgyz, and Mongol minorities? Based on a variety of primary and secondary sources, I argue that members of the Han minority, being the national majority in China but a ‘nested minority’ in Xinjiang, are doomed to become a primary target of secessionist attacks as they represent, in and of themselves, the state from which Uyghur nationalists are trying to secede. Han Chinese’s – and to a lesser extent the Hui’s – economic and political dominance over the Uyghurs, along with their lack of historical ties to Xinjiang, also motivates their targeting while reinforcing the bond between other indigenous and comparatively disadvantaged minorities.     

CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE STATE: THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN COOPERATION AND MINIMUM WAGE REGULATION

In a cross‐section of countries, state regulation of labor markets is negatively correlated with the quality of labor relations. In this paper, we argue that these facts reflect different ways of regulating labor markets, either through the state or through the civil society, depending on the degree of cooperation in the economy. We rationalize these facts with a model of learning of the quality of labor relations. Distrustful labor relations lead to low unionization and high demand for direct state regulation of wages. In turn, state regulation crowds out the possibility for workers to experiment negotiation and learn about the potential cooperative nature of labor relations. This crowding out effect can give rise to multiple equilibria: a “good” equilibrium characterized by cooperative labor relations and high union density, leading to low state regulation; and a “bad” equilibrium, characterized by distrustful labor relations, low union density, and strong state regulation of the minimum wage.     

Emotional intelligence and leadership emergence in small groups

We report the findings from two studies that examine the association between emotional intelligence and leadership emergence in small groups. In both studies, members of groups completed measures of emotional intelligence and other individual differences prior to working on a group project. Their peers rated their leadership emergence at the conclusion of the project. Overall emotional intelligence and a number of its dimensions were associated with leadership emergence over and above cognitive intelligence, personality traits, and gender. These findings were observed when emotional intelligence was measured with an ability test but not when it was measured with a self-report scale. Among the dimensions of emotional intelligence, the ability to understand emotions was most consistently associated with leadership emergence.     

Rapid Social Change and the Turmoil of Adolescence: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

This article is a selective literature review, viewing adolescence in a cross-cultural perspective. Starting with the Mead/Freeman controversy, it centers on the following question: Which are the cultural contexts that best ensure a smooth transition from childhood to adulthood? The review covers some of the ethnographic research, both case studies and work using the hologeistic method (those using the Human Relations Area Files), and some of the research in cross-cultural and developmental psychology, but neither cross-national comparisons nor studies with migrants in multicultural societies. It is found that social adolescence is a universal life stage, but that it takes very different forms in different societies. Its extension into a youthperiod occurred in societies with an age-grade system, and is nowadays linked to urbanization, industrialization, and formal education. Adolescence does not need to be a period of storm and stress, and the generation gap and problem behaviors considered a “normal” part of adolescence are in fact culturally produced. In many situations, these problematic aspects of adolescence are linked to rapid social change or acculturation, most often in the form of westernization. Societies that manage to keep some continuity, cultural identity, and basic values such as family solidarity, often also manage to avoid importing the problems of adolescence despite social change. Of importance are the tolerance and flexibility of adults, close contact between generations, appropriate role-learning and acceptance into the adult community, including in the economic sphere.     

Income taxation of couples and the tax unit choice

We study the optimal income taxation of couples. We determine the resulting intra-family labor supply allocation and its implication for the choice of the tax unit (individual versus joint taxation). We provide a general condition for full joint taxation to arise. We also study how the spouses’ respective labor supply decisions are distorted when the condition does not hold. In particular, we show that, depending on the pattern of mating, the celebrated result according to which the spouse with the more elastic labor supply faces the lower marginal tax rates may or may not hold in our setting.     

Politics and Growth

Theories of growth have made progress in understanding the mechanisms of growth in economic terms. However, there is less understanding of the political processes that enable or obstruct these mechanisms. This article provides a four‐stage framework to clarify and analyse the connections between politics and growth: (i) discussing the basic conditions essential for growth; (ii) suggesting that whether or not these conditions emerge depends on specific forms of public‐private interaction; (iii) linking these relationships to the incentives facing those in political power and investors; and (iv) considering the factors at country level that may help to push incentives in a pro‐growth direction.     

The Impact of Liberalization on Female Workers in Quebec: Four Case Studies

Cet article explore l'impact de la libéralisation des marchés sur la main‐d'?uvre féminine au Québec. Il cherche à valider une intuition formulée par Brunelle, Beaulieu and Minier ( 2004 ) en guise de conclusion d'un rapport de recherche mettant en relief l'essor et la prolifération des marchés périphériques du travail dans le capitalisme mondialisé. Parce qu'elles sont surreprésentées dans le travail atypique, les auteurs se demandaient alors si la restructuration des marchés du travail avait des impacts négatifs les femmes. En nous appuyant sur quatre études de cas dans différents secteurs de l'économie (habillement, commerce de détail, télécommunications, services d'aide à domicile), l'article valide l' hypothèse d'une rehiérarchisation genrée du marché du travail sur la base de statuts d'emploi dans le sillage du processus de libéralisation. The article explores the impact of market liberalization on Quebec's female workforce in a context of global capitalism by testing a hypothesis formulated by Brunelle, Beaulieu, and Minier ( 2004 ) as a concluding remark of a research that exposed the burgeoning of secondary labor market: “Is liberalization leading to an employment‐statuses‐based restructuration of labor markets that would have negative impacts on women?” Using four case studies in key sectors of the economy (garments, retail, telecom, home‐care services), the article suggests a genderized rehierarchization of labor markets based on employment statuses in the wake of the liberalization process.     

Two-Sample Statistics for Testing the Equality of Survival Functions Against Improper Semi-parametric Accelerated Failure Time Alternatives: An Application to the Analysis of a Breast Cancer Clinical Trial

This paper presents two-sample statistics suited for testing equality of survival functions against improper semi-parametric accelerated failure time alternatives. These tests are designed for comparing either the short- or the long-term effect of a prognostic factor, or both. These statistics are obtained as partial likelihood score statistics from a time-dependent Cox model. As a consequence, the proposed tests can be very easily implemented using widely available software. A breast cancer clinical trial is presented as an example to demonstrate the utility of the proposed tests.