LOSING BY LESS? IMPORT COMPETITION,UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE GENEROSITY,AND CRIME

Increased import competition from China has brought about a host of negative consequences for the most exposed industries and labor markets. Do social programs attenuate these harmful effects? We examine changes in import competition between 1990 and 2007, taking crime as our outcome of interest and unemployment insurance as our mitigating program. We find strong evidence that counties with access to more generous unemployment insurance experienced relatively smaller increases in trade‐induced property crime. This highlights a new and important positive externality of unemployment insurance. (JEL H00, R10)     

Continuing professional development after qualification--partnerships,pitfalls and potential

Social work educators, employers and policy-makers have increasingly recognised the importance of continuing professional development. The UK social work qualification (DipSW) provides a broad base of practice skills, knowledge and values. However, increasingly complex work, frequent legislative and policy changes, research findings and challenges of working in a societal context of increasing change and diversity all contribute to the necessity of developing strategies for continuing professional development which adequately equip social workers. Such education cannot be alienated from social workers' employment context, and thus needs to remain mindful of employers' needs while concurrently maintaining academic rigour. This paper explores the development and delivery of a year-long post-qualifying training course run collaboratively between West Sussex Social and Caring Services and University College Chichester. It places some of the experiences of tutors, candidates and Training and Development Officers within the wider context of social work education, training and the delivery of social care. In exploring some of the contradictions and tensions experienced it seeks to further understand the challenge of delivering effective training in an increasingly complex and fragmented arena. Finally, it considers possible future developments, mindful of future changes in UK social work education.     

Social Activity,School-related Activity,and Anti–substance Use: Media Messages on Adolescent Tobacco and Alcohol Use

In this article, we present the effects of three hypothesized protective factors—social activities, school-related activities, and anti–substance use media messages—on adolescent tobacco and alcohol use. Data were drawn from the “Monitoring the Future” research project, which was conducted by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. The sample included 2,551 twelfth-grade students. The results of the structural equation model showed that exposure to media anti-drug messages had an indirect negative effect on tobacco and alcohol use through school-related activity and social activity. The results suggest that comprehensive ecological interventions encompassing media, family, and school can increase the preventive effects of adolescent's substance use.     

The longitudinal effects of influence of parental attachment and emotion regulation on Internet delinquency in early adolescence

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to identify the longitudinal influence of parental attachment and emotion regulation on changes in Internet delinquency. This study used the Korean Youth Panel Survey (KYPS) data, in which 2,844 school-age children were annually assessed from Grade 4 in 2004 to Grade 8 in 2008 in South Korea. Latent growth models were used to examine developmental trajectories of Internet delinquency, parental attachment, and emotion regulation longitudinally. This study showed that adolescents experience an increase in Internet delinquency over the fourth year and a decline in the fifth year. The initial level of parental monitoring had significant effects on the initial level of emotion regulation. In addition, the initial level of parental attachment was associated with a slower rate of acceleration of Internet delinquency across time. The study findings indicate that parental attachment influences Internet delinquency among Korean adolescents. The practice implications of the findings are discussed in terms of Internet delinquency reduction efforts.     

Influence in covariance structure analysis: with an application to confirmatory factor analysis

Influence functions are derived for the parameters in covariance structure analysis, where the parameters are estimated by minimizing a discrepancy function between the assumed covariance matrix and the sample covariance matrix. The case of confirmatory factor analysis is studied precisely with a numerical example. Comparing with a general procedure called one-step estimation, the proposed procedure has two advantages:1) computing cost is cheaper, 2) the property that arbitrary influence can be decomposed into a fi-nite number of components discussed by Tanaka and Castano-Tostado(1990) can be used for efficient computing and the characterization of a covariance structure model from the sensitivity perspective. A numerical comparison is made among the confirmatory factor analysis and some procedures of ex-ploratory factor analysis by using the decomposition mentioned above.     

Curtains at Number Ten: predicting the general election

The UK general election must be called by May 2010, with Conservatives widely expected to oust Labour. How certain are those expectations, and what problems face those trying to predict the results? Opinion pollster Nick Moon reveals all.     

Foreclosing Fluidity at the Intersection of Gender and Sexual Normativities

Binary gender and sexuality are socially constructed, but they structure thought at such a deep level that even those critical of sexism and homophobia can unwittingly reproduce them, with consequences felt most profoundly by those whose gender/sexual identity defy binary logic. This article outlines a generic pattern in the reproduction of inequality we call foreclosing fluidity, the symbolic or material removal of fluid possibilities from sexual and gender experience and categorization. Based on 115 responses from people who are both sexually and gender fluid and a reading of existing sociologies of gender and sexualities from a fluid standpoint, we demonstrate how lesbian/gay/straight, cisgender, and transgender women and men—regardless of intentions—may foreclose fluidity by mobilizing cisnormative, transnormative, heteronormative, and/or homonormative beliefs and practices. Examining patterns of foreclosing fluidity may provide insight into (1) the further incorporation of fluid people and standpoints into symbolic interactionism, and (2) the reproduction and persistence of sexual and gender inequalities.     

Prizes in an industrial union environment

This paper proposes a short-run cross-sectional theory of how employers in an industrial union work environment try to foster and reward greater efforts and more productivity by individual workers by offering a “prize” in the form of shift premiums, overtime pay, and accident risk premiums. The theory is evaluated empirically with a set of micro data from a large industrial establishment. We found that the effect of such prizes is to steepen the upward portion of the earnings profile, dampen the compression of earnings in a union environment, and increase earnings differentiation.