School Choice in London and Paris – A Comparison of Middle‐class Strategies

Education is one major public service in which quasi‐markets and other choice‐based mechanisms are now established methods of delivery. The types of school people choose, and the extent to which their choices are realized, have a fundamental impact on the outcomes of any mechanism of school choice. In this article, we provide a comparative analysis of the school choice strategies of middle‐class families in London and Paris. We draw on approximately 200 in‐depth interviews carried out across the two cities. This enables us to investigate the extent to which middle‐class school choice strategies transcend the institutional context provided by both the local (state and private) schools market and national education policy in England and France. We discuss these findings in the context of current school choice policy and consider their implications for future policy design.     

Immigration and status exchange in Australia and the United States

This paper evaluates the status exchange hypothesis for Australia and the United States, two Anglophone nations with long immigration traditions whose admission regimes place different emphases on skills. Using log-linear methods, we demonstrate that foreign-born spouses trade educational credentials via marriage with natives in both Australian and U.S. marriage markets and, moreover, that nativity is a more salient marriage barrier for men than for women. With some exceptions, immigrant spouses in mixed nativity couples are better educated than native spouses in same nativity couples, but status exchange is more prevalent among the less-educated spouses in both countries. Support for the status exchange hypothesis is somewhat weaker in Australia partly because of lower average levels of education compared with the United States and partly because of the less sharply defined educational hierarchy at the postsecondary level.     

Observing Unobservables: Identifying Information Asymmetries With a Consumer Credit Field Experiment

Information asymmetries are important in theory but difficult to identify in practice. We estimate the presence and importance of hidden information and hidden action problems in a consumer credit market using a new field experiment methodology. We randomized 58,000 direct mail offers to former clients of a major South African lender along three dimensions: (i) an initial “offer interest rate” featured on a direct mail solicitation; (ii) a “contract interest rate” that was revealed only after a borrower agreed to the initial offer rate; and (ii) a dynamic repayment incentive that was also a surprise and extended preferential pricing on future loans to borrowers who remained in good standing. These three randomizations, combined with complete knowledge of the lender's information set, permit identification of specific types of private information problems. Our setup distinguishes hidden information effects from selection on the offer rate (via unobservable risk and anticipated effort), from hidden action effects (via moral hazard in effort) induced by actual contract terms. We find strong evidence of moral hazard and weaker evidence of hidden information problems. A rough estimate suggests that perhaps 13% to 21% of default is due to moral hazard. Asymmetric information thus may help explain the prevalence of credit constraints even in a market that specializes in financing high‐risk borrowers.     

“The Price You Pay”: How Female Professional Chefs Negotiate Work and Family

Work–family conflict can act as an important, and gendered, mechanism underlying women’s under-representation in male-dominated occupations. This study uses in-depth interviews to explore the experiences of female professional chefs in order to understand how women in a prestigious, yet male-dominated service occupation manage barriers relating to their balance of work and family responsibilities. Conflict between work and family responsibilities often stemmed from the long work hours expected of chefs and played a role in some of our participant’s decisions to leave kitchen work. Respondents in this study negotiate work–family conflict using three strategies: (1) delaying/forgoing childbearing to succeed as a chef; (2) leaving kitchen work for another job in the culinary field; and (3) adapting either work or family to make the two roles more compatible. Our conclusion discusses the implications of these strategies for gender inequality in the workplace, particularly for women in male-dominated occupations.     

Steuerreformen durch Tarif-oder Zeiteffekte? Eine Analyse am Beispiel der Thesaurierungsbegünstigung für Personenunternehmen

Zusammenfassung  Der Beitrag diskutiert Tarif- und Zinseffekte anhand der begünstigten Besteuerung nicht entnommener Gewinne von Personengesellschaften, die 2008 in Deutschland eingeführt wurde. Bei Eigenfinanzierung und Betrachtung von Grenzsteuers?tzen zeigt der Beitrag, dass die Thesaurierungsbegünstigung stets nachteilig ist, wenn eine abgeltend besteuerte private Kapitalmarktanlage die Alternativanlage darstellt. Müssen Gewinne thesauriert werden, weil Mittel im Unternehmen ben?tigt werden, so entf?llt die private Alternativanlage und die Thesaurierungsbegünstigung kann bei hohen Zins- und Steuers?tzen vorteilhaft sein. Wird die Einkommensteuerprogression berücksichtigt, zeigt der Beitrag, dass bei schwankenden Gewinnen die Thesaurierungsbegünstigung oftmals vorteilhaft ist, auch gegenüber der Abgeltungsteuer. Bei fremdfinanzierten Investitionen kann die Inanspruchnahme der Thesaurierungsbegünstigung sehr vorteilhaft sein, da die geringere Steuerzahlung bei Gewinnanfall den Umfang des ben?tigten Fremdkapitals mindert. Insgesamt zeigt sich, dass sich Reformen von Steuertarifen wesentlich st?rker auf die Vorteilhaftigkeit von Investitionen auswirken als Zinseffekte.

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Tax reforms by tax rate effects or timing effects? An analysis based an the German tax privilege for retained earnings

Summary  This paper analyzes two typical effects of tax reforms, tax rate effects and timing effects. The example chosen for the analysis is the tax privilege for retained profits of partnerships and sole proprietorships, which was implemented in Germany in 2008. Taking equity-financing and top marginal tax rates into account, the so-called tax privilege turns out to be a disadvantage under most assumptions. If the alternative investment is private capital income taxed at a flat-rate tax, the tax privilege will always be disadvantageous. If profits have to be retained and business income is the alternative investment, then the tax privilege will be advantageous in case of high income tax rates and interest rates. Analyzing progressive tax rates instead of top marginal tax rates reveals favorable results in case of fluctuating profits if the tax privilege is claimed. The same is true if debtfinancing is taken into account. All in all, the paper shows that a reform of tax rates influences the attractiveness of investments much more compared to timing effects.

     

The more-than-human sensorium: sensory engagements with digital self-tracking technologies

In this article, we draw on findings from an empirical project involving talking to Australian women about their sensory and sensemaking engagements with digital health technologies. Adopting a new feminist materialist perspective, our analysis identified a series of relational connections, affective forces and agential capacities generated when our participants came together with digitized modes of self-tracking. The agential capacities engendered through and with these technologies included discovering and uncovering information, motivation, quantifying and automating data collection, distinguishing “false” bodily sensations from “real,” discerning patterns, and enhancing sensory capabilities. Working with these technologies, the women were able to access insights into their bodies, feel more in control of bodily activities by reflecting on this information and any patterns over time it revealed. The limitations of these sensory devices were also revealed in the women’s accounts. The devices sometimes closed off or challenged women’s sensory knowledge in ways they found less than useful or helpful, due to failings in the devices’ design or functionality. Our analysis, therefore, highlights the intra-action of enactments of human sensory responses as they engage with digital devices and digital data, including the ways in which these responses were extended, facilitated, or, in some cases, challenged.     

Computer experiment designs for accurate prediction

Computer experiments using deterministic simulators are sometimes used to replace or supplement physical system experiments. This paper compares designs for an initial computer simulator experiment based on empirical prediction accuracy; it recommends designs for producing accurate predictions. The basis for the majority of the designs compared is the integrated mean squared prediction error (IMSPE) that is computed assuming a Gaussian process model with a Gaussian correlation function. Designs that minimize the IMSPE with respect to a fixed set of correlation parameters as well as designs that minimize a weighted IMSPE over the correlation parameters are studied. These IMSPE-based designs are compared with three widely-used space-filling designs. The designs are used to predict test surfaces representing a range of stationary and non-stationary functions. For the test conditions examined in this paper, the designs constructed under IMSPE-based criteria are shown to outperform space-filling Latin hypercube designs and maximum projection designs when predicting smooth functions of stationary appearance, while space-filling and maximum projection designs are superior for test functions that exhibit strong non-stationarity.     

Imagined past,present and futures in Murray–Darling Basin communities

Over the past three decades, irrigation-dependent rural communities in Australia's Murray–Darling Basin have experienced profound economic, social and environmental changes, which they are attempting to accommodate through local government policy. As a contribution to participatory policy design research, in consultation with local governments we carried out focus groups to explore diversity of individuals’ imagined past and present in two rural communities. This was followed by group development of a diverse range of future scenarios and agreement to three likely scenarios. The research identified presence or absence of three underlying themes – irrigation, innovation and inflow of people – that plausibly drive change in these rural communities. These themes are likely to be common to many rural communities that have depended on irrigated agriculture. They provide an example of participatory policy-making, as distinct from the historically employed top-down policy development that has occurred in the Murray–Darling Basin. Because of the diversity of perceptions of past, present and futures, and the ultimate adoption of business-as-usual within the final local government plans, the research emphasises the need to put effort into community deliberations to build cohesion and share ownership of the process for delivering locally nuanced community policy.