Vulnerability to individual and aggregate poverty

We propose families of measures for vulnerability to both individual and aggregate poverty. We view vulnerability as the burden caused by the threat of poverty. Exposure to states of the world where hardship may strike causes distress ex-ante, even if ex-post the dice are benign and poverty (consumption below a critical norm) does not materialise. We ensure our measures meet a set of desirable axioms—in the case of aggregate vulnerability, this set includes sensitivity to the degree of correlation of outcomes across individuals. We argue that individual vulnerability levels are not enough to compose the aggregate picture, e.g. because society may be wary of the threat of simultaneous, widespread poverty. We illustrate with data from Ethiopia, where rainfall risks are found to raise vulnerability to poverty despite sustained increases in consumption.     

The wide-meshed safety net. Decision-making on social assistance eligibility in Sweden

This article explores and analyses, with the help of both client and social worker data on 423 applications for social assistance in Sweden, (i) the extent to which social assistance benefits and labour market strengthening measures are granted and (ii) factors concerning clients as well as social workers that are associated with the granting of benefits. Considering (i), the results show that social assistance is granted in about 74% of cases while only 6% of applicants are granted additional labour market strengthening measures. With regard to (ii), the results indicate that the granting of benefits seems to depend on a broad spectrum of factors at both the client and the social worker levels. For example, more experienced social workers are less willing to grant social assistance while chances increase when an applicant is already registered at the local public employment service and/or social insurance office. Moreover, the granting of benefits also co-varies with more or less invariable factors at the client level: social workers are in general more generous towards women and people born outside Sweden, but rather less generous vis-à-vis single parents. The findings are discussed in terms of workfare and professionalization among social workers.     

Sharing a resource with concave benefits

A group of agents are collectively entitled to a perfectly divisible good or resource. They enjoy concave and satiable benefit functions from consuming it. They also value money (transfers). The resource is scarce in the sense that not everybody can consume its satiated consumption level. This paper characterizes the unique (resource and money) allocation that is efficient, incentive-compatible and equal-sharing individual rational. It then discusses its implementation and its link with other axioms.     

Early Warning Indicators for Challenges in Underground Coal Storage

Early warning or leading indicators are discussed for unexpected incidences in case of large‐scale underground coal storage at a power plant. The experience is compared with above‐ground stockpiles for which established procedures are available but where access for prevention and mitigation are much easier. It is suggested that while the explicit organization, procedures, and the general safety systems aim to provide the targeted levels of performance for the storage, representing new technology without much precedence elsewhere in the world, the extensive experience and tacit knowledge from above‐ground open and closed storage systems can help to prepare for and to prevent unwanted incidents in the underground storage. This kind of experience has been also found useful for developing the leading or early warning indicators for underground storage. Examples are given on observed autoignition and freezing of coal in the storage silos, and on occupational hazards. Selection of the leading indicators needs to consider the specific features of the unique underground facility.     

Bandwidth selection for kernel density estimation: a review of fully automatic selectors

On the one hand, kernel density estimation has become a common tool for empirical studies in any research area. This goes hand in hand with the fact that this kind of estimator is now provided by many software packages. On the other hand, since about three decades the discussion on bandwidth selection has been going on. Although a good part of the discussion is about nonparametric regression, this parameter choice is by no means less problematic for density estimation. This becomes obvious when reading empirical studies in which practitioners have made use of kernel densities. New contributions typically provide simulations only to show that the own selector outperforms some of the existing methods. We review existing methods and compare them on a set of designs that exhibit few bumps and exponentially falling tails. We concentrate on small and moderate sample sizes because for large ones the differences between consistent methods are often negligible, at least for practitioners. As a byproduct we find that a mixture of simple plug-in and cross-validation methods produces bandwidths with a quite stable performance.     

Die Institutionalisierung von Managementkonzepten. Eine strukturationstheoretisch-mikropolitische Perspektive

New management concepts keep being discussed in academic studies and business practice. It remains unclear in what way some of them become institutionalized. This is where the article sets out from: The starting point of the analysis is the Sociological New Institutionalism. By means of enlarging its range by a micro political approach as inspired by the Theory of Structuration, acts and political game playing of different agents become the focus of the analysis. Referring to the dimensions of social structures signification, legitimation, and domination, this yields as a result an agent-oriented explanation of processes of institutionalization. The resulting analytical framework is exemplified through the introduction of Diversity Management in Germany.     

Grenzenlose Karrieren? — Hochqualifiziertes Personal und Top-Führungskräfte in Ökonomie und Medizin

The aim of the article is to prove the hypothesis of “bondless mobility” of the highly qualified. It says, that there evolved international distribution and trans-national structures of recruiting of the highly qualified personnel as part of the globalisation. We take our focus on managers and physicians, and based on our own and secondary analyses of other studies we find that this “strong” hypotheses of globalisation does not appear tenable. We prefer the term “Internationalisierung light” and locate the reasons for that in organisations’ career-mechanisms.     

Die wahrgenommene Gerechtigkeit des eigenen Erwerbseinkommens: Geschlechtstypische Muster und die Bedeutung des Haushaltskontextes

The rise in female labor market participation and the growth of ??atypical?? employment arrangements has, over the last few decades, brought about a steadily decreasing percentage of households in which the man is the sole breadwinner, and a rising percentage of dual-earner households. Against this backdrop, the paper investigates how household contexts in which the traditional ??male breadwinner?? model still exists or has already been challenged affect individuals?? subjective evaluations of the justice of their personal earnings. In the first step we derive three criteria used by individuals to evaluate the fairness or justice of their personal earnings: compensation for services rendered, coverage of basic needs, and the opportunity to earn social approval. In the second step, we apply considerations from household economics and new approaches from gender research to explain why men??s and women??s evaluations of justice are determined to a considerable degree by the specific situation within their household. The assumptions derived regarding gender-specific patterns in justice attitudes are then tested on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) from 2007 and 2005. The results support our central thesis that gender-specific patterns in the evaluation of personal earnings are both reduced and increased in dual-earner households. They are reduced because women in dual-income households tend to have higher income expectations that challenge the existing gender wage gap. At the same time, gender-specific patterns are increased because men evaluate the equity of their personal income in relation to their ability to fulfill traditional gender norms and thus their capacity to live up to corresponding notions of ??masculinity.??