THE EQUALITY MULTIPLIER: HOW WAGE COMPRESSION AND WELFARE EMPOWERMENT INTERACT

We explore how more wage equality fuels the generosity of the welfare state via political competition in elections, and how a more generous welfare state fuels wage equality via empowerment of weak groups in the labor market. Together the two mechanisms may generate a cumulative process that explains how equality multiplies, and why countries with more equal distributions of market outcomes also have stronger welfare states. The complementarity between wage setting and welfare spending can explain why almost equally rich countries differ so much in economic and social equality among their citizens. (JEL: H53, I31, J31)     

Outsourcing Manufacturing: Secure Price‐Masking Mechanisms for Purchasing Component Parts

This paper develops and tests a privacy‐preserving business process that supports the selection of a contract manufacturer by an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), and the determination of whether the OEM or the chosen contract manufacturer will procure each of the components to be used in the manufacture of the OEM's branded product. Our “secure price‐masking (SPM)” technology contributes to procurement theory and practice in four significant ways: First, it preserves the privacy of every party's individual component prices. Second, SPM assures that the contract manufacturers will bid their own private purchase cost (i.e., not add a margin to their cost). Third, SPM is not invertible; i.e., none of the participants can “solve” for the private inputs of any other participant based on its own inputs and the outputs provided to it by SPM. Fourth, the posterior distribution of any other participant's private inputs is practically indistinguishable from its prior distribution. We also describe the results of a proof‐of‐concept implementation.     

What can be Learned from Whom? Germany's Employment Problem in Comparative Perspective

In several (large) states of the European continent, particularly in Germany, progress in bringing down high unemployment has been slow. In contrast, 'employment miracles' occurring in a number of countries of the Western world receive increasing attention and raise the question of what can be learned from their obviously more successful political strategies and institutional reforms for attaining better employment performance. The first part of the paper discusses different criteria for evaluating 'successful' employment performance in comparative perspective. After looking into the 'employment miracles' and the policies and policy changes which are commonly ascertained as having been conducive to success - concentrating mainly on the Netherlands, Denmark and the USA - the question of transferability is addressed by examining which elements could be transferred to Germany and other countries of the European continent. The conclusion is that, apart from modernizing (active) labour market policy, there is not much to copy from others. However, successful institutional arrangements and policy innovations implemented elsewhere may be informative with regard to the hindrances of reform in one's own country and the search for possible 'functional equivalents'.     

Dead Reckoning: Demographic Determinants of the Accuracy of Mortality Risk Perceptions

General patterns of bias in risk beliefs are well established in the literature, but much less is known about how these biases vary across the population. Using a sample of almost 500 people, the regression analysis in this article yields results consistent with the well-established pattern that small risks are overassessed and large risks are underassessed. The accuracy of these risk beliefs varies across demographic factors, as does the switch point at which people go from underassessment to overassessment, which we found to be 1500 deaths annually for the full sample. Better educated people have more accurate risk beliefs, and there are important differences in the risk perception by race and gender that also may be of policy interest.     

Welfare functions and group decisions

The paper shows that Pareto optimal sharing rules imply that group decisions will be made unanimously. An example is given.     

A model selection approach for the identification of quantitative trait loci in experimental crosses

Summary. We consider the problem of identifying the genetic loci (called quantitative trait loci (QTLs)) contributing to variation in a quantitative trait, with data on an experimental cross. A large number of different statistical approaches to this problem have been described; most make use of multiple tests of hypotheses, and many consider models allowing only a single QTL. We feel that the problem is best viewed as one of model selection. We discuss the use of model selection ideas to identify QTLs in experimental crosses. We focus on a back-cross experiment, with strictly additive QTLs, and concentrate on identifying QTLs, considering the estimation of their effects and precise locations of secondary importance. We present the results of a simulation study to compare the performances of the more prominent methods.     

Catholic NGOs following the 1995 referendum on divorce in the Republic of Ireland

This article examines patterns of political, social, and economic change within the Republic of Ireland that led to passage of the 1995 Referendum of Divorce. It also looks at this policy's impact on public and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that provide court‐related services. Because the passing of the referendum is in many ways a reflection of the changing role of the Catholic church in public life, considerable attention is granted to the evolving nature of this institution, from policymaker to service provider. Implications include how Catholic NGOs partner with public institutions in providing services to families experiencing divorce.     

Dataset on silver-maple-tree growth regulators

A trivariate summary measure based upon the number of sprouts, the lengths of the sprouts, and the number of intemodes per sprout was developed to compare the effects of growth suppressants on tree regrowth after trimming. A new graphic, the tree picture, was developed to display this information. The tree picture is easy to interpret and revealed clear results for the data given. These results demonstrate how innovative graphical methodology can be applied as a summary device in the absence of or as a supplement to a statistical testing procedure.     

Changing identification among American Indians and Alaska natives

The census-enumerated American Indian population dispersed rapidly between 1930 and 1990. Changes in ethnic classification account for most of the change. In the 1980 count, 10 states with historically large Indian populations account for 53% of births of Indians between the ages of 10 and 80, compared with 72% of the first enumerations of the same cohorts. Migration further reduced the share of these states to 46% of Indian residents in these cohorts. Study of the dispersal of the Indian population should focus primarily on the new emergence of the expression of Indian identity, rather than on migration from former population centers.     

Self-employment and attitudes towards risk: Timing and unobserved heterogeneity

We explore the relationship between self-employment and attitudes towards financial risk using individual level data drawn from the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), which includes measures of individuals’ attitudes towards hypothetical gambles allowing us to explore the implications of interpersonal differences in risk attitudes for the probability of self-employment. Our empirical findings suggest that willingness to take financial risk is positively associated with self-employment. By exploiting the panel aspect of the PSID, we find evidence, whilst controlling for unobserved individual heterogeneity, consistent with a causal relationship between attitudes towards risk and self-employment with attitudes towards risk measured prior to becoming self-employed having a statistically significant positive influence on the probability of future self-employment.