The Tightrope of Normalcy: Homosexuality,Developmental Citizenship,and American Adolescence, 1890–1940

In the early twentieth century, American developmental citizenship presumed a gradual extension of rights based upon a naturalized trajectory that would lead individuals toward heterosexuality, gender complimentarity, and increasing social and political investment. Means changed dramatically through which psychological, pedagogical, and political discourses positioned adolescence, sexuality, and gender in relationship to national belonging. Yet compliance with gender and sexual normativity as a marker of successful adjustment into adulthood persisted as a powerful precondition to full citizenship. Figurative “problem youth” were attacked in part because they threatened to expose exclusionary assumptions undergirding supposedly universal ideals in optimistic modern American democracy.     

VOLATILITY AND IRISH EXPORTS

We analyze the impact of volatility per se on real exports for a small open economy concentrating on Irish trade with the United Kingdom and the United States. An important element is that we take account of the time lag between the trade decision and the actual trade or payments taking place by using a flexible lag approach. Rather than adopting a single measure of risk, we adopt a spectrum of risk measures and detail varied size characteristics and statistical properties. We find that the ambiguous results found to date may be due to not taking account of the timing effect, which varies substantially depending on which volatility measure is used. (JEL C32, C51, F14, F31)     

Do Truly Comparable Public and Private Sector Workers Show Any Compensation Differential?

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we apply propensity score matching methods to examine evidence on the rent paid to public sector workers in the United States. Traditionally, wage differentials are computed assuming that workers from both public and private sectors are comparable, without actually controlling for the comparability of the units. Using this method, we are able to control for selection bias and, at the same time, select a subsample of comparable workers in terms of their conditional probability of choosing to work in the public sector on which to estimate separate wage equations.     

Dependent industrialization and the Canadian class structure

Dans le passé, deux conclusions différentes ont été tirées sur les effets de l'histoire du Canada sur l'industrialisation, par rapport aux structures de classes canadiennes. D'une part, on a tiré argument du fait que le Canada a engendré une structure de classes non caractéristique au sein des pays capitalistes évolués et d'autre part, que les filiales (branch plant) ont crée l'américanisation de la structure de classes canadiennes. Dans cet article, nous étudions ces arguments en nous servant de données d'études similaires, faites au Canada, en Suède et aux Etats-Unis. Les résultats appuient les deux hypothéses. La structure canadienne des classes porte l'empreinte d'un precédé de développement tronqué mais elle a aussi incorporé dans une forte mesure un ensemble de pratiques clairement américaines quant à l'organisation du processus de production capitaliste. Les firmes américaines et canadiennes déploient également une proportion beaucoup plus forte de main-d'oeuvre en ce qui concerne le contrôle et la surveillance des autres travailleurs et cette tendance est beaucoup plus prononcée au sein des secteurs de l'économie canadienne traditionellement dominés par le capital américain. In the past, two quite different sets of claims have been advanced concerning the effects of Canada's history of dependent industrialization on the Canadian class structure. It has been argued, on the one hand, that Canada has evolved a distorted class structure that is atypical among advanced capitalist countries, and on the other, that the branch plant brought with it the ‘Americanization’ of the Canadian class structure. In this paper we examine these claims with data from identical national surveys conducted in Canada, Sweden, and the United States. The results yield support for both sets of claims. The Canadian class structure bears the imprint of a truncated development process but, in addition, has to a large degree incorporated a distinctively American set of practices for the organization of the capitalist production process. Both Canadian and American firms deploy a much higher proportion of labour power in the work of control and surveillance of other workers, and this tendency is much more pronounced in those sectors of the Canadian economy traditionally dominated by American capital.     

ECONOMIC RESPONSE TO A CRIME DETERRENCE PROGRAM: MANDATORY SENTENCING FOR ROBBERY WITH A FIREARM

This paper reports the results of the application of intervention analysis, an interrupted times series methodology, to test the deterrent response of criminal offenders faced with changes in the penalty structure for the crime of robbery with a firearm. The results are consistent with the hypothesis of general deterrence as set out by Becker and extended theoretically and tested empirically by others. Offenders in Arizona metropolitan areas rapidly reduced the number of robberies with a firearm supplied as penalties for firearm use became more severe. This finding suggests legislation which punishes those who choose to use such weapons in illegal activities may be effective while leaving intact the rights of private citizens to own firearms. One disturbing finding was that a Portion of the deterrent effect of harsher mandatory sentencing for firearm use in robbery may have been offset by substitution of other types of robbery not covered by the new legislation.