The minimum wage can harm workers by reducing unemployment

Economists may disagree over how much raising the minimum wage increases unemployment, though few argue that the unemployment effect is zero. According to the standard model, the less the unemployment caused by a minimum wage increase, the less the harm (or greater the good) that results. But by recognizing that minimum wage workers receive fringe benefits, I show that increasing the minimum wage may not cause any unemployment and harms workers because it doesn 't. Furthermore, when there is lumpiness in providing fringe benefits, a minimum wage increase may harm workers by     

Why is flexible employment increasing?

Firms have increased their reliance on flexible, or temporary, employment. Some of this increase is a normal market response to technological and demographic trends largely beyond the control of public policy. But the trend toward flexible employment is also explained by increased government regulation of labor markets. This regulation has increased the cost of employing permanent workers relative to the cost of employing temporary workers. Of primary importance has been the substitution of regulatory restrictions on hiring and firing for the common law doctrine of employment at will.     

RECONSTRUCTING DAILY LIFE IN THE PAST: AN HERMENEUTICAL APPROACH TO ETHNOGRAPHIC DATA

Traditional sources of sociohistorical data capture only a narrow sense of past lifeworlds. Ethnographic accounts often preserve greater details of social practice but have less clear guidelines for use as data. We evaluate the use of hermeneutical theory as providing guidelines for a method by which ethnographies may be used as sociohistorical data. Hermeneutical analysis of ethnographic "texts" is used to reconstruct patterns of daily life in early-twentieth-century rural Appalachia. This method involves: (1) concept-critique to separate observations from the theoretical framework of the ethnographic account, and (2) validation through a logic of internal consistency and comparison. Through hermeneutical analysis, ethnographics can be made to yield observations of social relations not otherwise available. Our analysis suggests benefits and drawbacks of hermeneutical analysis of ethnographic texts.     

The Career-Personal Dichotomy: Perceptual Reality,Practical Illusion,and Workplace Integration

The implicit definitions we give to career and personal counseling reflect a dichotomy between the two areas of research and practice. The field's research focus and counseling trainees' early practice experience probably reinforce the idea that career counseling is prototypically concerned with young adult career choice. A case study of targeted coaching in business is presented to illustrate how career and personal issues are intertwined in adult career adjustment.     

Advocating for an End to Reparative Therapy: Methodological Grounding and Blueprint for Change

Despite the ethical and methodological concerns surrounding reparative therapy (RT) (also known as conversion therapy), a 2011 journal published a study claiming that lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons can “change” their sexual orientation. While much has been written about the deleterious effects of RT it continues to be researched and practiced, and, therefore, continues to cause harm. This article reviews methodological and ethical problems of RT and factors associated with it, and suggests steps to decrease and eventually end its practice as an aspect of social work's mission, which is to protect vulnerable populations, including lesbians and gay men.     

Associations Between Friendship,Sympathy, and Prosocial Behavior Toward Friends

The current study examined the associations between multiple aspects of the friend relationship (connection, companionship, psychological control) and global prosocial behavior toward friends. Participants included 467 early adolescents (M age of child = 13.32, SD = 1.05, 49% female, 69% European American), and data were collected at two time points, roughly 1 year apart. Structural equation modeling suggested that friend psychological control was negatively associated with prosocial behavior toward friends, while friend connection was positively associated (via adolescent sympathy). Discussion focuses on the friend relationship as an important influence on adolescent sympathy and prosocial behavior toward friends.     

The sociodemographic characteristics of Mexican immigrant status groups: implications for studying undocumented Mexicans

"Based on Warren and Passel's...estimate that nearly two-thirds of Mexican-born noncitizens entering the U.S. during 1975-80 and included in the 1980 Census are undocumented immigrants, this article uses the 1980 Public Use Microfiles to delineate four Mexican origin immigrant status groups--post 1975 Mexican-born noncitizens, pre-1975 Mexican-born noncitizens, self-reported naturalized citizens, and native-born Mexican-Americans." It is found that "the pattern of sociodemographic differences among these groups provides support for the idea that the first two categories contain a substantial fraction of undocumented immigrants. These two groups (especially the first) reveal characteristics that one would logically associate with undocumented immigrants--age concentration (in young adult years), high sex ratios, low education and income levels, and lack of English proficiency."     

The Effects of Learning,Forgetting, and Relearning on Decision Rule Performance in Multiproject Scheduling

Product development occurs in multiproject environments where preemption is often allowed so that critical projects can be addressed immediately. Because product development is characterized by time-based competition, there is pressure to make decisions quickly using heuristics methods that yield fast project completion. Preemption heuristics are needed both to choose activities for preemption and then to determine which resources to use to restart preempted activities. Past research involving preemption has ignored any completion time penalty due to the forgetting experienced by project personnel during preemption and the resulting relearning time required to regain lost proficiency. The purpose of this research is to determine the impact of learning, forgetting, and relearning (LFR) on project completion time when preemption is allowed. We present a model for the LFR cycle in multiproject development environments. We test a number of priority rules for activity scheduling, activity preemption, and resource assignment subsequent to preemption, subject to the existence of the LFR cycle, for which a single type of knowledge worker resource is assigned among multiple projects. The results of the simulation experiments clearly demonstrate that LFR effects are significant. The tests of different scheduling, preemption, and resource reassignment rules show that the choice of rule is crucial in mitigating the completion time penalty effects of the LFR cycle, while maintaining high levels of resource utilization. Specifically, the worst performing rules tested for each performance measure are those that attempt to maintain high resource utilization. The best performing rules are based on activity criticality and resource learning.