Import competition and job displacement: A case study of Korean manufacturing industries

This paper investigates the impact of import competition on job displacement in Korean manufacturing industries. Using a regression model for the period of 1993–2003, the empirical results show that import competition raises the job displacement rate in the Korean manufacturing sector but the elasticity is negligible in its magnitude. Worker characteristics, such as gender, age, job tenure, and education level, proved to be significant in determining the displacement rate. Characteristics of displaced workers in high import-competing industries are also investigated based on the survey data. Workers who lost their jobs in these sectors were slightly older, less educated, and had longer job tenure than the workers in the other groups.     

Older Workers: Who are the working poor in the U.S.?

With data from the 2000 Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the purpose of this study was to provide a profile of older workers who live poverty, and to compare the demographic, financial, employment, and health attributes of such individuals to similar persons not living in poverty. This study found that 3.5% of employed individuals between the ages of 51 and 61 belonged to the class of working poor. The results of the multivariate logistic regression analyses indicated that the older working poor were more likely to be non-White, less educated, non-married, and had lower levels of net worth than the working non-poor. They were more likely to be employed part time and were less likely to be covered by employee-sponsored health insurance.     

Third Shift Women in Business-Owning Families

Using data from the 1997 National Family Business Survey (NFBS), this study identifies factors associated with married women’s employment involvement in business-owning families. While focusing on married women in a third shift situation—working for the family business, for the marketplace, and for managing the household—this study compares business and family characteristics by women’s employment status. The results of multinomial logit regression analysis indicated that family cash flow problems, presence of children age under 6, age of women, business assets, age of business, home-based family business, establishment of business, and industry type were significant predictors of women’s employment decision. The results of the study have further implications for women in a third shift situation among business-owning families.Yoon G. Lee, Utah State University, 2905 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322-2905, USA; e-mail: yoonlee@cc.usu.edu.Gong-Soog Hong, The Ohio State University, 1787 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210-1295, USA; e-mail: ghong@hec.ohio-state.edu.Barbara R. Rowe, Utah State University, 2949 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322-2949, USA; e-mail: browe@ext.usu.edu.     

The Effect of Pseudo-Exogenous Instrumental Variables on Hausman Test

Hausman test is popularly used to examine the endogeneity of explanatory variables in a regression model. To derive a well-defined asymptotic distribution of Hausman test, the correlation between the instrumental variables and the error term needs to converge to zero. However, it is possible that there remains considerable correlation in finite samples between the instruments and the error, even though their correlation eventually converges to zero. This article investigates the potential problem that such “pseudo-exogenous” instruments may create. We show that the performance of Hausman test is deteriorated when the instruments are asymptotically exogenous but endogenous in finite samples, through Monte Carlo simulations.     

Are dual and single exposures differently associated with clinical levels of trauma symptoms? Examining physical abuse and witnessing intimate partner violence among young children

A significant portion of children living in the United States have experienced trauma. Informed by the developmental traumatology model, we explored the effects of physical abuse and witnessing intimate partner violence (IPV) on childhood trauma symptoms. This study utilizes a convenience sample of 580 high‐risk children between 3 and 12 years who received services from one‐child advocacy centre during a 12‐month period. We performed a series of binary logistic regression analyses to examine if physical abuse, exposure to IPV, and dual exposure (i.e., both physical abuse and IPV) are distinctly associated with six trauma symptoms, including anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress (PTS), dissociation, anger, and sexual concerns. The results indicated that dual exposure was predictive of all trauma symptoms, except for dissociation. Additionally, physical abuse was associated with PTS, anger, and sexual concerns, whereas exposure to IPV was associated with depression, PTS, and sexual concerns. Research and implications for practitioners working with young children are discussed.     

Bridge regression: Adaptivity and group selection

In high-dimensional regression problems regularization methods have been a popular choice to address variable selection and multicollinearity. In this paper we study bridge regression that adaptively selects the penalty order from data and produces flexible solutions in various settings. We implement bridge regression based on the local linear and quadratic approximations to circumvent the nonconvex optimization problem. Our numerical study shows that the proposed bridge estimators are a robust choice in various circumstances compared to other penalized regression methods such as the ridge, lasso, and elastic net. In addition, we propose group bridge estimators that select grouped variables and study their asymptotic properties when the number of covariates increases along with the sample size. These estimators are also applied to varying-coefficient models. Numerical examples show superior performances of the proposed group bridge estimators in comparisons with other existing methods.     

Drinking: Another glass ceiling? Social drinking and alcohol use among women in Korea

Korean society is experiencing a rapid increase in alcohol consumption among women. Research on women's alcohol use has focused mostly on problems and pathological symptoms associated with alcohol use. Focusing only on problems of alcohol use risks overlooking some important social phenomena where alcohol use is a medium. We examined the association between marital status, childcare responsibility, employment status and social drinking behaviour. Our aim was to examine how these factors influence women's alcohol consumption in order to provide an empirical explanation of how the traditional division of labour limits women's social drinking practices. Findings show that women are structurally excluded from social drinking behaviour due to domestic responsibilities (as a wife and a mother). In other words, social drinking has become another glass ceiling for women. Key Practitioner Message: ● Attention should be given to structural influences on women's alcohol use; ● It is important to consider gender inequality in both formal and informal domains.     

Optimal Berry–Esseen bound for parameter estimation of SPDE with small noise

We investigate a rate of convergence on asymptotic normality of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) for parameter $\theta$ appearing in parabolic SPDEs of the form

$d{u}^{?}(t,x)=(A_0+\theta A_1)u^{?}(t,x)dt+?dW(t,x),$

where $A_0$ and$A_1$ are partial differential operators, $W$ is a cylindrical Brownian motion (CBM) and $?\downarrow 0$. We find an optimal Berry–Esseen bound for central limit theorem (CLT) of the MLE. It is proved by developing techniques based on combining Malliavin calculus and Stein’s method.     

By what measure? family time devoted to children in the united states

We argue that previous research on time devoted to child care has paid insufficient attention to the conceptualization of care time. Three separate problems are evident. First, the conventional focus on explicit activities with children distracts attention from the larger responsibilities of "passive" care, which ranges from time when children are sleeping to time when they are in the same general area but are not engaged in an activity with parents. Second, the empirical analysis of activity time focuses almost exclusively on parents, overlooking the role of relatives such as grandmothers and siblings. Third, the measurement of active care time often ignores the impact of overlaps among both care providers and recipients. Our analysis of the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics sheds light on these three problems and presents new measures of passive and active care time.