ECONOMIC INTEGRATION,POLITICAL INTEGRATION OR BOTH?

We study the effects of economic and political integration by presenting a model in which firms compete with each other in both an economic market—where they produce a good and compete for market share—and in a political (rent seeking) market—where they compete for transfers from the government. Growth is driven by firms’ cost‐reducing innovation activity and economic and political integration affect firms’ incentive to innovate differently. In this setting, economic and political integration can be seen as complementary. Economic integration, when not accompanied by political integration, can lead to less innovation and slower growth as firms respond to increased competition in the economic market by focusing more on rent‐seeking activity. When economic integration is accompanied by political integration, innovation and growth will be stronger and welfare higher.     

The color of welfare sanctioning: exploring the individual and contextual roles of race on TANF case closures and benefit reductions

This article investigates the individual and contextual roles of race on welfare sanctions: benefit cuts for failing to comply with work or other behavioral requirements under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Using six years of federal administrative data, I advance previous welfare research by providing a nationally representative analysis of participant-, county-, and state-level predictors of welfare sanctioning. Using theories of racial classification, racialized social systems, and racial threat as guiding frameworks, I find that black and Latina women are at a greater risk of being sanctioned than white women. Further, although odds of a sanction are slightly reduced for black women living in counties with greater percentages of blacks, the opposite holds for Latinas, who are at an increased risk of being sanctioned in counties with greater percentages of Latinos.     

Executive compensation in banks: insights from CEO equity incentives and securitization transactions

This paper investigates whether CEO equity incentives promote risk-taking activities in the financial industry. Prior research shows that, during the recent credit crisis, banks whose CEOs had high equity incentives performed significantly worse than banks whose CEOs had low equity incentives. A possible explanation for this result is that the incentive to boost stock price induced CEOs to take risks that turned out to be extremely costly. Focusing on securitization transactions that were among the fundamental causes of the financial crisis and using a sample of US financial institutions, the paper provides evidence that banks whose CEOs had high equity incentives engaged in securitization transactions to a greater extent than did financial institutions guided by CEOs with low equity incentives. Moreover, the paper shows that CEOs with high equity incentives securitized riskier loans than did CEOs with low incentives. This study helps to clarify the role of equity-based compensation in promoting risk-taking behaviors in banks.     

Innovation through tradition in the Italian coffee industry: an analysis of customers’ perceptions

The extant literature reveals how firms may innovate by exploiting past competencies and resources, hence proposing innovation through tradition as an emerging strategy to compete. Previous research largely demonstrates that the effectiveness of an innovation strategy is strictly dependent on the capability of firms to communicate the right message to their customers. Therefore, leveraging products’ attributes becomes fundamental to strategically position their commercial offerings in the minds of the target audience. Nevertheless, despite the well-known relevance of this issue, scant attention has been devoted to investigate the product attributes that consumer’s associate with innovation and with tradition when companies deploy strategies based on “innovation through tradition”. Accordingly, our study aims at covering this gap, by empirically analyzing the consumers’ perception of innovation and tradition in the Italian coffee industry through a positioning analysis. Our research allowed us to identify two sets of product attributes that consumers associate with innovation and tradition. The results show that in many cases the innovation-related and tradition-related attributes are strongly negatively correlated, but in some case the correlation is weak or close to zero. These attributes reveal that in some cases innovation and tradition can be combined in the perception of consumers, rather than representing opposite constructs. This result suggests that companies can effectively communicate the strategy of innovation through tradition to the consumers’ minds, but this must be done by choosing the right attributes.     

Challenging the colonisation of birth: Koori women’s birthing knowledge and practice

Background

The 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination for social and cultural development. This fundamental right has been impeded worldwide through colonisation where many Indigenous peoples have had to adapt to ensure continuation of cultural knowledge and practice. In South East Australia colonisation was particularly brutal interrupting a 65,000 year-old oral culture and archives have increasing importance for cultural revival.

Personalization,gender, and social media: gubernatorial candidates’ social media strategies

This study focuses on the ‘self-personalization’ of campaign politics, marked by candidates highlighting their personal lives over their policy positions. The rise of social media may be accelerating this shift. Applying Strategic Stereotype Theory [Fridkin, K. L., &; Kenney, P. J. (2014 Fridkin, K. L., &; Kenney, P. J. (2014). The changing face of representation: The gender of U.S. senators and constituent communications. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). The changing face of representation: The gender of U.S. senators and constituent communications. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.], which holds that women politicians try to deactivate stereotypes that associate men with agentic leadership traits while capitalizing on stereotypes that associate them with warmth, we assess what role gender plays in candidate self-personalization on social media. A large-scale computerized content analysis of social media posts by gubernatorial candidates in 2014 suggests that male candidates may see more and female candidates see less strategic benefits in personalizing, but this effect does not persist in the face of electoral contextual variables like competitiveness. We also find qualitative differences in the ways male versus female candidates personalize through social media.     

Geospatial Indicators of Space and Place: A Review of Multilevel Studies of HIV Prevention and Care Outcomes Among Young Men Who Have Sex With Men in the United States

Young men who have sex with men (YMSM), particularly YMSM who are racial/ethnic minorities, are disproportionately affected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic in the United States. These HIV disparities have been linked to demographic, social, and physical geospatial characteristics. The objective of this scoping review was to summarize the existing evidence from multilevel studies examining how geospatial characteristics are associated with HIV prevention and care outcomes among YMSM populations. Our literature search uncovered 126 peer-reviewed articles, of which 17 were eligible for inclusion based on our review criteria. Nine studies examined geospatial characteristics as predictors of HIV prevention outcomes. Nine of the 17 studies reported HIV care outcomes. From the synthesis regarding the current state of research around geospatial correlates of behavioral and biological HIV risk, we propose strategies to move the field forward in order to inform the design of future multilevel research and intervention studies for this population.     

The New Destination Disadvantage: Disparities in Hispanic Health Insurance Coverage Rates in Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan New and Established Destinations

Hispanics have the lowest health insurance rates of any racial or ethnic group, but rates vary significantly across the United States. The unprecedented growth of the Hispanic population since 1990 in rural areas with previously small or nonexistent Hispanic populations raises questions about disparities in access to health insurance coverage. Identifying spatial disparities in Hispanic health insurance rates can illuminate the specific contexts within which Hispanics are least likely to have health care access and inform policy approaches for increasing coverage in different spatial contexts. Using county‐level data from the 2009–13 American Community Survey, I find that early new destinations (i.e., those that experienced rapid Hispanic population growth during the 1990s) have the lowest Hispanic adult health insurance coverage rates, with little variation by metropolitan status. Conversely, among the most recent new destinations that experienced significant Hispanic population growth during the first decade of the 2000s, metropolitan counties have Hispanic health insurance rates that are similar to established destinations, but rural counties have Hispanic health insurance rates that are significantly lower than those in established destinations. Findings demonstrate that the new destination disadvantage is driven entirely by higher concentrations of immigrant noncitizen Hispanics in these counties, but labor market conditions were salient drivers of the spatially uneven distribution of foreign‐born noncitizen Hispanics to new destinations, particularly in rural areas.     

Collective Power to Create Political Change: Increasing the Political Efficacy and Engagement of Social Workers

Because social workers are called to challenge social injustices and create systemic change to support the well-being of individuals and communities, it is essential that social workers develop political efficacy: belief that the political system can work and they can influence the system. This study explored the impact of an intensive political social work curriculum on political efficacy and planned political engagement among social work students and practitioners. The findings suggest this model of delivering a political social work curriculum effectively increases internal, external, and overall political efficacy, and that increasing political efficacy has promise for increasing future political engagement.