Democracy,Redistribution, and Political Participation: Evidence From Sweden 1919–1938

In this paper, we compare how two different types of political regimes—direct versus representative democracy—redistribute income toward the relatively poor segments of society after the introduction of universal and equal suffrage. Swedish local governments are used as a testing ground since this setting offers a number of attractive features for a credible impact evaluation. Most importantly, we exploit the existence of a population threshold, which partly determined a local government's choice of democracy to implement a regression‐discontinuity design. The results indicate that direct democracies spend 40–60 percent less on public welfare. Our interpretation is that direct democracy may be more prone to elite capture than representative democracy since the elite's potential to exercise de facto power is likely to be greater in direct democracy after democratization.     

Determining person–organization fit for healthcare CEOs: How executive equity sensitivity relates to nonprofit and for‐profit sector selection

This article empirically examines the relationship between the trait of equity sensitivity and employment sector (for‐profit, public, and nonprofit) for senior executives. By controlling for industry (healthcare), we show a relationship between this trait and employment sector in both a single‐state survey and a multistate survey. Findings indicate that benevolents have a propensity to pursue nonprofit positions whereas entitleds are likely to gravitate toward for‐profit positions. Implications for job seekers, employers, and academics are provided.     

A Test of the Economic Strain Model on Adolescents' Prosocial Behaviors

The present study was designed to examine the links between economic strain, parental depression, parent–child connectedness, and adolescents' prosocial behaviors. The sample consisted of 478 participants (M age at Time 1=11.29 years, 51% male) recruited from the community who were mostly of European American descent (69%) and from mostly middle to upper SES families. At Time 1 parents completed measures of their own income and economic stress, depression, and connectedness with their child. At Time 1 adolescents reported on connectedness with both their mother and father. At Time 2 (1 year later) adolescents reported on their own prosocial behavior toward strangers, friends, and family. Structural equation model tests showed that economic strain was related positively to parental depressive symptoms, which in turn predicted lower levels of parent–child connectedness, which in turn positively predicted adolescents' prosocial behaviors. Discussion focuses on the family context of adolescents' positive behavioral outcomes.     

Investigation of Change in Adolescent Perceptions of Mothers' and Fathers' Contributions to Interparental Discord From 7th to 9th Grades

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether adolescent perceptions of mothers' and fathers' contributions to interparental discord changed from early to middle adolescence and if the changes were related to adolescent negative mood. Data were drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. Adolescents who were in 7th grade at the Wave 1 assessment and lived with both biological parents during Waves 1–4 were included in this research (n=812; 55% boys; 69% White). Findings indicated that adolescents' perceptions of their mothers' and their fathers' contributions to interparental discord increased at similar rates from early to middle adolescence. The largest increases in adolescent perceptions of mothers' and fathers' contributions to interparental discord from 7th to 9th grades were associated with the largest increases in adolescent negative mood from 7th to 10th grades. Girls' perceptions of their fathers' contributions to interparental relationship problems increased at a steeper rate compared with boys. Findings are discussed in the context of the sensitization hypothesis.     

Immigration,trade and ‘ethnic surplus value’: a critique of Indo–Canadian transnational networks

It is often argued that countries hosting large populations of skilled immigrants might benefit from their cultural and economic competencies in the development of international trade networks. Yet, in so doing, the state can be criticized for fetishizing the ethnic immigrant in market terms in order to extract ‘ethnic surplus value’. In this article, I examine these debates empirically in the case of India–Canada immigration and trade using interviews with traders, officials and immigrant entrepreneurs in British Columbia, Canada. Findings suggest that the supposedly positive relationship between trade and immigration is not obvious in the India–Canada case and there is no convincing evidence of the state managing successfully to extract ‘ethnic surplus value’. Rather, what appears most compelling is evidence of what can be termed a discourse of regional disadvantage circulated by immigrant and non‐immigrant business actors alike regarding the nature of India–Canada relations. Interview respondents link this discourse of disadvantage to the regional history of Indian immigration to Canada, which has traditionally comprised Sikhs from rural Punjab, and it functions to essentialize Indian immigrant ethnicity spatially within both the Indian and Canadian contexts. I focus on the theme of the extraction of ‘ethnic surplus value’ and regional disadvantage to reveal the limitations of both arguments about the economic nature of immigrant‐led network development. In both cases, I challenge these ideas with a critical emphasis on the role of immigrant agency and offer a more nuanced and complicated reading of the role of the state. As a result, I offer a detailed reading of how socio‐spatial immigrant networks are formed and operate at the regional scale, and how this complicates more abstract theoretical formulations regarding the trade and immigration nexus.     

Fathers' Early Emotion Talk: Associations With Income,Ethnicity, and Family Factors

Contextual, mother‐, child‐, and father‐level variables were examined in association with fathers' emotion talk to infants during a shared picture book activity, in an ethnically diverse, low‐income sample (N = 549). Significant main effects included the rate of emotion talk from fathers' romantic partners (i.e., the infant's mother), infant attention and distress, and sensitive parenting. Significant interactions were also found. Higher income African American fathers referred to negative emotions more than non‐African American higher income fathers. In addition, African American fathers who demonstrated more negative and intrusive parenting referred to positive emotions more than non‐African American fathers who demonstrated negative and intrusive parenting. Our findings support family systems theory and, specifically, the interdependence of individuals' behaviors within the family unit. Interaction effects are discussed with respect to cultural variation in beliefs about parenting behaviors and the cultural experience of African Americans, including the Black cultural experience and the minority experience.     

THE EFFECTS OF EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION ON LABOR TURNOVER: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM TAIWAN

This paper investigates the effects of employment protection legislation on the rates of hiring, separation, worker flows, job reallocation, and churning flows for the case of Taiwan. Our empirical identification takes advantage of a reform created by Taiwan's enactment of Labor Standards Law, which has substantially increased the costs of firing, and the implementation of the law's enforcement measures. Moreover, our identification also exploits the fact that the stringency of the law's provisions and the intensity of the law's enforcement vary with establishment size. On the basis of the monthly data at the establishment level for the period 1983–1995, we find that Taiwan's Labor Standards Law and its enforcement measures have dampened labor turnover for medium‐sized and large establishments, while that of small establishments was not affected. (JEL J65, J63, J88)     

COMMODITY TAXATION IN WELFARE STATES

Unemployment is a central policy issue in countries with a “generous” welfare system that is hard to reform. This paper addresses why these countries tend to adopt high commodity tax rates in the optimal taxation context. We explore the role of commodity taxation in alleviating moral hazard and hence involuntary unemployment and then provide supportive evidence from a quantitative analysis. Unlike the usual full employment models, at the heart of this paper is a new dimension of distortion, the “between‐states” (employment state vs. unemployment state) consumption choice distortion, which can be dealt with by a certain optimal combination of commodity and income taxation. Our results therefore offer an explanation for the widely observed coexistence of direct and indirect taxation. (JEL D61, D81, H21)