Peripherization of immigrant professionals: Korean physicians in the United States

Using data on the characteristics of 1043 physicians who graduated from a medical school in Korea, the authors analyze the effects of immigrant status, gender, and year of graduation on their choice of medical practice specialty. The specialty areas are categorized into 2 groups, "core" and "periphery," on the basis of the reported median income of practitioners in each specialty. The results of log-linear model analyses indicate that female physicians are more likely to immigrate to the United States than male physicians, although the general trend of immigration does not notably change over time. In the main equation, immigration status shows a significant peripheral effect as immigrant physicians are much more likely to practice in peripheral areas than their home-staying counterparts. Gender status is also found to have a significant peripheral effect. When these Korean immigrant physicians are compared with the US-educated physicians in regard to their areas of practice, the same pattern of peripherization is observed among the immigrants. The findings suggest that, despite their secular image of "success," immigrant professionals in the United States carry on the same kind of marginal economic activities within the professional labor market as unskilled immigrant workers do within the nonprofessional labor market.     

SUR Approach for IV Estimation of Canonical Contagion Models

Seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) method is applied to the instrumental variable (IV) estimation of the canonical contagion models. A finite sample Monte Carlo experiment shows that the resulting estimator, IV-SUR estimator, is substantially better than the existing IV estimator in terms of both bias and mean squares error under diverse circumstance of instrument, conditional heteroscedasticity, and cross-section correlation.     

DOWNSIZING AND JOB INSECURITY

This article offers an explanation of why firms' downsizing patterns may vary substantially in magnitude and timing, taking the form of one‐time massive cuts, waves of layoffs, or zero layoff policies. The key element of this theory is that workers' expectations about their job security affect their on‐the‐job performance. In a situation where firms face adverse shocks, the productivity effect of job insecurity forces firms to balance laying off redundant workers and maintaining survivors' commitment. The cost of ensuring commitment differs between firms with different characteristics and determines whether workers are laid off all at once or in stages. However, if firms have private information about their future profits, they may not lay off any workers in order to signal a bright future, boosting worker's confidence. (JEL: J21, J23, D21, D82)     

Identifying and Explaining Different Poverty Trajectories Using a Group‐based Trajectory Analysis – A Case Study of South Korea

In this study, we propose a group‐based trajectory analysis to examine why and how people fall into and out of poverty despite spiralling public expenditure on anti‐poverty policies. By analyzing the poverty experiences of 1,001 low‐income households between 1999 and 2008 in Korea, we identify five groups based on their poverty trajectories: exiting, declining, slowly rising, rapidly rising and chronic. Household members in each group demonstrate heterogeneous labour market experiences, educational levels and demographic factors. The exiting group has a high proportion of full‐time workers, high school graduates, and younger and male‐headed households, whereas the chronic group has more part‐time workers, high school dropouts, and older and female‐headed households. Among the declining, slowly rising and rapidly rising groups, educational background, age and sex are factors that differentiate the poverty dynamics of household members. Lastly, a number of social policies for helping low‐income households to leave and stay out of poverty are proposed.     

Women in the middle: generational position and grandmothers' adjustment to raising grandchildren

This study compared the adjustment of two groups of grandmothers who were providing primary care for grandchildren in split-generation households: 25 grandmothers in the oldest generation of their families (G1), and 22 grandmothers who had living parents or in-laws (G2). It was hypothesized that because of potential demands on them as middle-generation women, G2 grandmothers would report greater burden and depression in their caregiving roles than G1 grandmothers. After controlling for numerous factors that are associated with generational position, the hypothesis was confirmed. In addition to being in the middle generation, having grandchildren with problems predicted elevated depression and burden. Grandmothers who were educated beyond high school also reported greater role burden.     

Comparative study of American and Korean practitioners’ dissent with perceived unethical management decisions

This study examined how similarly or differently American and Korean public relations practitioners use dissent tactics. The results showed that assertive confrontation was the most frequently adopted tactic among practitioners in both countries. However, Korean practitioners were more likely to work to sabotage implementation of unethical decision, and to leak information to external stakeholders than the US counterparts. This study will shed light on the impact of cultural difference on public relations practitioners’ dissent selection on unethical management decisions.     

Multidimensional Comparison of Personality Characteristics of the Big Five Model, Impulsiveness, and Affect in Pathological Gambling and Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder

The phenomenological resemblance between pathological gambling (PG) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has led to suggestions that PG be categorized as an obsessive-compulsive-spectrum disorder (OCSD). This study aimed to explore whether PG resembles OCD in terms of personality and temperament. Fifteen patients with PG, 18 patients with OCD, and 33 healthy control subjects were included in the study. The study subjects were all male and drug na?ve. We analyzed data obtained from three self-report questionnaires assessing personality, impulsiveness, and affect: the short version of the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R), the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11 (BIS-11), and the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). Participants with PG and OCD demonstrated less conscientiousness (F = 7.089, P = .002) and less openness to experience (F = 6.268, P = .003) and less positive affect (F = 15.816, P < .001) than did healthy controls. The two diagnostic groups did not differ from each other with respect total BIS-11 scores, but those with OCD showed more neuroticism than did those with PG and healthy controls ( F = 9.556, P < .001), and those with PG obtained higher scores on the non-planning impulsiveness factor of BIS-11 than did those with OCD or healthy controls ( F = 9,835, P < .001). PG and OCD share similar profiles in terms of personality and temperament. This study provides phenomenological evidence supporting the conceptualization of PG as an OCSD.     

Closing the Need-Service Gap: Gender Differences in Matching Services to Client Needs in Comprehensive Substance Abuse Treatment

Despite the broad recognition in social work that services are more effective when they are tailored to individual client needs, we have only limited evidence of the impact that services matched to client needs have on treatment outcomes. This study examines gender differences in the impact of matched services, access services, and outcome-targeted services on substance abuse treatment outcomes by using data collected from 1992 through 1997 for the National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study, a prospective, cohort study of substance abuse treatment programs and clients. The analytic sample consists of 3,027 clients (1,105 women and 1,922 men) who reported needed services from 59 treatment facilities. Findings from the study indicate that overall programs have only limited success in targeting services to client needs, but when they do, receipt of substance abuse counseling and matched services predicts both remaining in treatment and reduced posttreatment substance use for both women and men, but especially for women.