The threat of unionism and wage-coverage effects

This study finds that the union/nonunion wage differential decreases with local labor-market coverage. In general, SMSA coverage has a negligible impact on union wages, and nonunion wages increase significantly with coverage. This is consistent with strong threat effects operating at the local labor-market level. As with most other wage-coverage studies, however, union wages increase more quickly with industry coverage than do nonunion wages. These results support the argument that distinctly different economic processes underlie local labormarket and industry-coverage effects. Economies in the provision of union services imply that union threat effects will be most salient at the local labor-market level. Industry wage-coverage relationships are dominated by the positive effect of product-market coverage on union bargaining power. Estimated coverage effects vary by major industry groupings and are sensitive to changes in the specification of the wage equations. The author acknowledges the helpful comments of an anonymous referee and the competent research assistance of Harold Leong.     

Cultural studies, a sociological poetics: institutions of the Canadian imaginary

La poétique sociologique est définie comme problématique pour la sociologie critique de la culture afin de considérer l'avenir du rapport du dédoublement entre les cultures vécue et officielle à travers les institutions de l'imaginaire canadien anglais. On propose des critiques de la CBC, du développement de la politique culturelle, et des Études canadiennes comme école de pensée. A critique of the official definition of Canadian culture is presented. Given the distinction between lived and official culture, the question posed is, ‘how do we theorize the relations between these two levels for an entire society? Based principally on Bahktin's concept of ‘dialogism’ with references to Dumont and Rioux, a sociological poetics is advanced as a theoretical device for unravelling ‘the Canada’. It is argued that cultural studies defined as a sociological poetics must negate any definition of the one Canadian culture or representations of the one Canadian society. Lines of inquiry are suggested with respect to the CBC and Canadian studies as cultural industries.     

A goodness-of-fit index for blockmodels

The ‘fit’ between blockmodels and data networks is extended from a binary to a continuous concept. An index of goodness-of-fit for α-fit blockmodels is proposed, based on the purity (density of 1's or 0's) of the submatrices of the data matrix(es) after the blockmodel partition is imposed. The characteristics of this index are compared with those of correlation coefficient. Some applications are described.     

Community banking and economic development: Lessons from Los Angeles

Among the changes in the field of community development is thegrowing importance of microfinance, both to provide access tocredit and as a vehicle for empowerment. Community banks arerecognized for their role in meeting these goals, although theyremain controversial, as the goals of microfinance are not alwaysagreed upon, with government officials and community membersemphasizing different interests. We examine the Los AngelesCommunity Development Bank to glean further lessons regardingthe role community banks can play in community development.Among the lessons from this experience are that politics areinescapable in the design of community banks; the economicsof banking tends to undervalue community needs; and culturalfactors include both professional and community-level challenges.Accounting for these factors can help community banks empowercommunities to meet the challenges of eliminating poverty.     

Fifteen years later: Can residential mobility programs provide a long-term escape from neighborhood segregation,crime, and poverty

We examined whether the Gautreaux residential mobility program, which moved poor black volunteer families who were living in inner-city Chicago into more-affluent and integrated neighborhoods, produced long-run improvements in the neighborhood environments of the participants. We found that although all the participants moved in the 6 to 22 years since their initial placements, they continued to reside in neighborhoods with income levels that matched those of their placement neighborhoods. Families who were placed in higher-income, mostly white neighborhoods were currently living in the most-affluent neighborhoods. Families who were placed in lower-crime and suburban locations were most likely to reside in low-crime neighborhoods years later.     

A Model of the Consumption Response to Fiscal Stimulus Payments

A wide body of empirical evidence finds that approximately 25 percent of fiscal stimulus payments (e.g., tax rebates) are spent on nondurable household consumption in the quarter that they are received. To interpret this fact, we develop a structural economic model where households can hold two assets: a low‐return liquid asset (e.g., cash, checking account) and a high‐return illiquid asset that carries a transaction cost (e.g., housing, retirement account). The optimal life‐cycle pattern of portfolio choice implies that many households in the model are “wealthy hand‐to‐mouth”: they hold little or no liquid wealth despite owning sizable quantities of illiquid assets. Therefore, they display large propensities to consume out of additional transitory income, and small propensities to consume out of news about future income. We document the existence of such households in data from the Survey of Consumer Finances. A version of the model parameterized to the 2001 tax rebate episode yields consumption responses to fiscal stimulus payments that are in line with the evidence, and an order of magnitude larger than in the standard “one‐asset” framework. The model's nonlinearities with respect to the rebate size and the prevailing aggregate economic conditions have implications for policy design.     

Patterns of Governance: The Curious Case of Non-profit Community Services in Australia

"Community" has taken on a new significance in Australian social policy discourse. Seemingly sound and morally justifiable, in the context of neo-liberalism the language of community positions non-profit delivery of services as superior to state-provided services. As a consequence, non-profit community services are being centrally positioned to mediate the relationship between the state and citizen subjects. In the first part of this paper we trace some of the key historical developments in Australia's welfare state and patterns of governance that are propelling the non-profit sector from the margins to the centre. The second section examines the relationship between Australia's shifting political landscape and the emerging welfare regime. One key feature of this new regime is the attempt to relocate citizenship away from the domain of the state and into that of civil society. The article concludes by sketching out some research themes, focusing, for example, on the impact of devolution of governance in terms of client rights and public accountability.     

Social Work and Child-centred Family Court Mediation

Correspondence to Dr Greg Mantle, APU, Ashby House, Floor 2, Brook Street, Chelmsford CM1 1UH, UK. E-mail G.J.Mantle{at}apu.ac.uk Summary In April 2001, the Children and Family Court Advisory SupportService (CAFCASS) became responsible for family court work,including the provision of mediation services. Family courtmediation offers a gateway for social work with children andfamilies whose needs are largely left untouched by current services,and could thereby play an important part within the broaderextension of prevention, early intervention, parenting and supportservices recommended by government. Over the past two decades,mediation has become a popular approach to reducing conflictand resolving disputes in a wide range of inter-personal, communityand organizational settings. Given the professional interestthat social workers have in helping their clients achieve moreharmonious lives, the space for mediation would appear considerableand yet the connections between mediation and social work are,as yet, insufficiently mapped and analysed, in terms of boththeory and practice. This paper draws on literature and recentresearch to review the relationship between family court mediationand social work.     

Rethinking Risk Attitude: Aspiration as Pure Risk

There exists no completely satisfactory theory of risk attitude in current normative decision theories. Existing notions confound attitudes to pure risk with unrelated psychological factors such as strength of preference for certain outcomes, and probability weighting. In addition traditional measures of risk attitude frequently cannot be applied to non-numerical consequences, and are not psychologically intuitive. I develop Pure Risk theory which resolves these problems – it is consistent with existing normative theories, and both internalises and generalises the intuitive notion of risk being related to the probability of not achieving one’s aspirations. Existing models which ignore pure risk attitudes may be misspecified, and effects hitherto modelled as loss aversion or utility curvature may be due instead to Pure Risk attitudes.