Subtle images of antigypsyism: An analysis of the visual perception of “Roma”

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the powerful stereotypical media discourse that shapes and reproduces a certain racialised and prejudiced perception of people identified as “Roma” in Germany. Using a close analysis of a single picture – appearing as harmless at first glance – and through the reconstruction of its various interpretational contexts and semantics the paper identifies mechanisms used in stereotypical media coverage of “Roma”. This qualitative analysis draws on media analysis of antigypsyism as well as on research of photographic construction of the “gypsy” in order to analyse the contemporary visual regime of “Roma” in Germany. As it portrays “the Roma” as a fundamentally different and socially deviant group, this visual stereotyping is shown to be an integral element of the persistent antigypsyist ideology, deeply embedded in German society.     

Approximate tests for the equality of two cumulative incidence functions of a competing risk

In the context of a competing risks set-up, we discuss different inference procedures for testing equality of two cumulative incidence functions, where the data may be subject to independent right-censoring or left-truncation. To this end, we compare two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov- and Cramér–von Mises-type test statistics. Since, in general, their corresponding asymptotic limit distributions depend on unknown quantities, we utilize wild bootstrap resampling as well as approximation techniques to construct adequate test decisions. Here, the latter procedures are motivated from tests for heteroscedastic factorial designs but have not yet been proposed in the survival context. A simulation study shows the performance of all considered tests under various settings and finally a real data example about bloodstream infection during neutropenia is used to illustrate their application.     

Is coverage enough? Persistent health disparities in marginalised Latino border communities

ABSTRACT

What has been the fate of those living in the place once dubbed the ‘county that needs the Affordable Care Act the most’? This article presents results from a longitudinal, five-year ethnographic study of healthcare access in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. It explores reasons why this region along the U.S./Mexico border has the highest rate of uninsured persons in the country and remains among the most medically underserved, despite some increases in coverage accompanying the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It argues that the convergence of healthcare and immigration policy, framed by a unique regional history and social environment, has had multiple direct and indirect impacts on health and healthcare access. It examines the impact of the ACA on access for Latino immigrants and mixed-status households, which contain a mix of citizens, legal residents, and undocumented persons. It argues that the ACA aided in shifting the conversation to promoting private insurance coverage and away from more fundamental access barriers for low-income working populations ineligible for its benefits. This has eclipsed discussions about fundamental causes of persistent and highly racialised health disparities.     

Taking social policy personally: How does neuroticism affect welfare state attitudes?

The role of the “Big Five” personality traits in driving welfare state attitudes has received scant attention in social policy research. Yet neuroticism in particular—a disposition to stress, worry, and get nervous easily—is theoretically likely to be an important driver of welfare attitudes precisely because welfare states deliver social “security” and “safety” nets. Using cross-sectional data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we study three distinct attitude types (dissatisfaction with the social security system, feelings of personal financial insecurity, and preferences for state provision) and multiple social need contexts (including unemployment, ill health, old age, and nursing care). Controlling for established explanations such as self-interest, partisanship, and socialization, neuroticism does not systematically affect support for state provision. But it robustly increases general dissatisfaction with social security, as well as financial insecurity across various need contexts. Neurotic people are thus less happy with welfare state programmes across the board, yet they also appear to need these programmes more. This trait may be an important deeper layer driving other social attitudes.     

Bubbles and Crashes

We present a model in which an asset bubble can persist despite the presence of rational arbitrageurs. The resilience of the bubble stems from the inability of arbitrageurs to temporarily coordinate their selling strategies. This synchronization problem together with the individual incentive to time the market results in the persistence of bubbles over a substantial period. Since the derived trading equilibrium is unique, our model rationalizes the existence of bubbles in a strong sense. The model also provides a natural setting in which news events, by enabling synchronization, can have a disproportionate impact relative to their intrinsic informational content.     

COMPETING AUCTIONS

This paper shows that larger auctions are more efficient than smaller ones, but that despite this scale effect, two competing and otherwise identical markets or auction sites of different sizes can coexist in equilibrium. We find that the range of equilibrium market sizes depends on the aggregate buyer‐seller ratio, and also whether the markets are especially thin. (JEL: D44, L11)     

Globale organisation — globale manager — globale Klasse?

The globalization of business corporations led to the thesis that a so-called global management class would emerge, both integrating transnational companies and facilitating a global business culture which is able to turn cultural diversity into a competitive advantage. Two questions stem from this thesis: First, how do talents and high potentials in transnational companies become global managers? Second, is global management to be understood as an integrating culture or as a selective one in the context of transnational corporations? The article explores these questions by contrasting the theory of global management with empirical findings from research concerning the strategies of international management assignment and the forming of expatriates’ “mental memberships“. It is shown that global management rests on a ‘thin’ Ethos of economic rationalities which give way to an exclusive “business monoculture” challenging cultural diversity taking place in everyday-life of transnational organizations.     

Health and Well–Being in the Young Old and Oldest Old

Most individuals experience a decline in health status during old age. Paradoxically, there are proposals that older adults nevertheless maintain a positive sense of well–being, an indicator of successful aging. Data from the Berlin Aging Study (BASE: Baltes & Mayer, 1999), a locally representative sample of men and women aged 70 to 100+ ( N = 516, M = 85 years), suggest that cumulative health–related chronic life strains set a constraint on the potential of oldest old individuals to experience the positive side of life. The young old in BASE reported significantly higher positive SWB than did the oldest old. Chronic illness and functional impairments (e.g., vision, hearing, mobility, strength) limit well–being especially in very old age.     

Matching estimators and optimal bandwidth choice

Optimal bandwidth choice for matching estimators and their finite sample properties are examined. An approximation to their MSE is derived, as a basis for a plug-in bandwidth selector. In small samples, this approximation is not very accurate, though. Alternatively, conventional cross-validation bandwidth selection is considered and performs rather well in simulation studies: Compared to standard pair-matching, kernel and ridge matching achieve reductions in MSE of about 25 to 40%. Local linear matching and weighting perform poorly. Furthermore, the scope for developing better bandwidth selectors seems to be limited for ridge matching, but non-negligible for kernel and local linear matching.