“From the client's point(s) of view”: How poor people perceive and evaluate political clientelism

Theory and Society -     

Evaluating housing needs with the use of GIS

Rosario (Argentina) has different levels of housing quality and access to physical and social infrastructure. To assess the needs of newly decentralised districts, it is necessary to supply the municipality with new tools to analyse weaknesses and potentialities. The use of GIS can help in this evaluation. It can be implemented at the Public Housing Service to detect problem areas and improve the allocation of resources by efficiently targeting housing needs. Indicators are used to measure different levels of housing needs and provision of basic services. Spatial inequity related to the access to social infrastructure is calculated for the most disadvantaged groups. Expressed demand is also calculated and compared with the demand derived from the indicators. According to the evaluation it can be concluded that the city of Rosario is facing disparities inside the districts. The combined use of derived demand with expressed demand proves to be efficient to detect cases of housing needs where derived demand via indicators is showing lower levels of demand or hiding the situation completely. The growing demand of GIS tools and the availability of census data in digital format will improve and consolidate the evaluation of housing needs and its effect on spatial inequity.     

Illegal immigration booms and welfare in the host country

We assess the effects of an important influx of illegal immigration on production and welfare, applied to the Spanish economy during the nineties, through a calibrated general equilibrium model. Immigrants are perfect substitutes of unskilled native workers, according to their productivity, but they are unevenly rewarded. In a first simulation we analyse the effects of an exogenous increase of illegal workers equal to the estimates for the period. In another simulation an equivalent expansion in unskilled legal immigrants is then considered. Finally, a comparison of both simulations provides the scenario of illegal immigrants being legalised. The outcome suggests that the amount of remittances and the role of labour market mechanisms (e.g. trade unions) play an important role in overall results.     

Variables related to psychiatric sick leave taken by Spanish secondary school teachers

This study analyses the relationships of certain sociodemographic, organizational, and personality variables with psychiatric sick leave taken by Spanish secondary school teachers. The sample comprised 200 teachers (84 men and 116 women) divided into two groups. The first group was composed of 100 teachers who had suffered from psychiatric disorders requiring sick leave. The second was a matched control group composed of 100 teachers with no history of psychiatric disorders. Both groups shared the same organizational variables (same centre, town, number of students, etc). Logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine any relationships and the risk and protection factors for psychiatric sick leave. It is concluded that the most significant variables related to psychiatric sick leave included competitiveness and hostility, as defined by Type A Behaviour Pattern, emotional exhaustion as a factor of burnout, and job dissatisfaction.     

The judge,the cop,and the queen of carnival: Ethnography,storytelling, and the (contested) meanings of protest

Theory and Society -     

Ownership structure and board composition in a high ownership concentration context

Few articles have addressed the relation between the ownership structure and the composition of the boards. The results of the analysis performed on a sample of Spanish listed companies for the period 2004–2011, show that in markets where corporate ownership is highly concentrated, it is necessary to devote special attention to blockholders and to differentiate the figure of the independent directors from the group of outsiders. The results confirm a negative and decreasing relation between blockholders and the percentage of independents while insiders’ ownership is only significant if one looks at the percentage of outsiders as a whole, in which case it shows a U-shaped quadratic relation.     

Identifying endogenous fiscal policy rules for macroeconomic models

The forecast and policy simulations based on macroeconomic models are used in many instances as an important input into policy decision-making. In this paper, we present a model-based method for identifying fiscal closure rules in stochastic macroeconomic models. The methodology is based on the stability analysis of the model at hand, with an endogenous derivation of a reaction on the part of the fiscal authority to state variables in the model. The rule achieves the dual aim of imposing solvency on the fiscal sector and generating a state-contingent dynamic adjustment in a framework consistent with the properties of the model. The approach differs from the standard practice of deriving fiscal closure rules in large macroeconomic forecasting models in both its derivation and implementation. An example of the endogenously derived rule, including some illustrative results, is provided using a small calibrated macro model