The Impact of "No Opinion" Response Options on Data Quality: Non-Attitude Reduction or an Invitation to Satisfice?

According to many seasoned survey researchers, offering a no-opinionoption should reduce the pressure to give substantive responsesfelt by respondents who have no true opinions. By contrast,the survey satisficing perspective suggests that no-opinionoptions may discourage some respondents from doing the cognitivework necessary to report the true opinions they do have. Weaddress these arguments using data from nine experiments carriedout in three household surveys. Attraction to no-opinion optionswas found to be greatest among respondents lowest in cognitiveskills (as measured by educational attainment), among respondentsanswering secretly instead of orally, for questions asked laterin a survey, and among respondents who devoted little effortto the reporting process. The quality of attitude reports obtained(as measured by over-time consistency and responsiveness toa question manipulation) was not compromised by the omissionof no-opinion options. These results suggest that inclusionof no-opinion options in attitude measures may not enhance dataquality and instead may preclude measurement of some meaningfulopinions.     

BANKS,FREE BANKS,AND U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH

The “Federalist financial revolution” may have jump‐started the U.S. economy into modern growth, but the Free Banking System (1837–1862) did not play a direct role in sustaining it. Despite lowering entry barriers and extending banking into developing regions, we find in county‐level data that free banks had little or no effect on growth. The result is not just a symptom of the era, as state‐chartered banks seem to have strong and positive effects on manufacturing and urbanization. (JEL G21, N21, O43)     

Antagonistic governance in South African fruit global production networks: a neo‐Gramscian perspective

Governance is a core focus of the global value chain (GVC) and global production network (GPN) literatures. Recent research claims ‘complementary’ or ‘synergistic’ governance, achieved through the confluence of private, public and civil society actors, is required for sustainable social gains. While moving beyond a narrow focus on economic coordination, such analysis lacks a sufficiently nuanced examination of power relations. In this article, I draw on neo‐Gramscian perspectives to account for ongoing contestation, positing that governance needs to be understood in the context of a broader hegemonic project. ‘Antagonistic governance’ is proposed to conceptualize contestation within and across diverse initiatives, which forge, challenge and transform hegemonic stability in GVC/GPNs. I explore this through the South African fruit sector, in particular, a labour crisis in 2012/13. I argue that we need to move beyond apolitical readings of governance to account for the material and discursive practices through which contestation gets played out, compromises are forged, and hegemonic order is maintained.     

When do value chains go global? A theory of the spatialization of global value chains

In this article, I synthesize and extend the theoretical literature on global commodity chain (GCC) and global value chain (GVC) governance to generate a theory of the ‘globalness’ of value chains and the spatialization of value chain linkages. Drawing from the original GCC dichotomy of buyer/producer‐driven commodity chains, I emphasize the height of entry barriers to manufacturing and supplier capability differentials across the North–South divide as determinants of the amount and geographic extent of global offshoring behaviour. Using a novel empirical approach to the measurement of global offshoring behaviour at the global industry level, the article shows that the original GCC governance scheme successfully predicts the levels, rates and timing of global production fragmentation across three networked industries. Combining the original GCC governance scheme with the more recent GVC governance types, the theory leads to predictions about the specific types of GVC linkages that might occur given the drivenness of a chain and the geographical location of lead firms and their suppliers. I conclude by drawing out the theory's implications for our understanding of the link between value chain formation and economic development in the global South and suggesting areas for future research.     

Networks of capital,networks for migration: political–economic integration and the changing geography of Mexico–US migration

While economic globalization has altered the geography of international migration and introduced an array of new sources and destinations, our understanding of the specific mechanisms that link economic globalization to migration remains limited. In this article, I attempt to extend previous research by undertaking an empirical case study of Mexican migration to the USA. Using a unique dataset, I construct multivariate models to test whether, in the context of economic integration, occupations channel migration between similar sectors of the Mexican and US economies. I focus on the food‐processing sector because of its role in the geographic dispersal of Mexican immigration. The results show a strong channelling of Mexican immigration along an occupational line linking the Mexican and US food‐processing sectors. The implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which ushered in a period of intensive political and economic integration, strengthened this occupational channel. By seeing the changing geography of Mexico–US migration in the context of economic globalization, this study casts light on the micro‐level foundations of the globalization–migration nexus.     

The Partisan Heuristic in Low-Information Elections

Much literature has focused on the influence of partisan informationon voter decision making. In this article, we attempt to gaina better understanding of this effect by comparing the surveyresponses of vote-choice questions that provide party labelsand those that do not. We show that less educated survey respondentsare substantially less likely to express a vote preference whenparty labels are not available to them. In addition, we alsofind evidence that those who can state a vote intention in nonpartisanraces are less able to link their candidate choice to theirparty identification. We conclude by demonstrating that, whensurveys do not provide partisan cues, the small number of respondentswho are willing to state their vote intentions and the largenumber of those who appear to be guessing create great difficultiesfor pollsters trying to predict election results.