MULTIPLE ECONOMIES AND YOUTH LIVELIHOOD

In this paper we present a model of multiple economic spheres in order to understand and explain the income-generating activities of young people. These spheres include the formal sector, the informal waged sector, the informal non-waged sector, the welfare sector and the criminal sector. We conclude that, due to changes in the labour market that affect them in particular ways, young people are engaged in a diverse range of activities within and across each economic sphere.     

The knowledge-based economy: intellectual origins and new economic perspectives

This paper discusses the intellectual origins of the knowledge-based economy or KBE, and recent economic theories used to provide an intellectual foundation for the KBE. The KBE is the dominant post-industrial economic development paradigm that emerged in the 1980s, with an emphasis on the role of knowledge creation and distribution as the primary driver in the process of economic growth, the distribution of income, the growing importance of knowledge-based networks among firms, and the interface between government business and citizens in the advanced economies. Recent empirical evidence on rates of return, geographic spillovers, and the internationalization of knowledge flows are discussed in relation to the theoretical foundations of the KBE.     

Making it in America: High school completion by immigrant and native youth

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we find that first-generation youth of Hispanic, Asian, and African heritage obtain more education than their parents, but the second generation and third or higher generations lose ground. Differences in dropout rates by race-ethnicity and immigrant generation are driven by differences in human, cultural, and social capital. Low levels of family human capital, school social capital, and community social capital place the children of immigrants at risk of dropping out. However, cultural capital and immigrant optimism buffer first-generation Hispanic youth and the children of Asian immigrants from the risk of dropping out of high school. While human and social capital resources improve with immigrant generation, cultural capital diminishes.     

Exploring the promotion of youth voice in community-based youth development programmes

This constructivist grounded theory study used semi-structured interviews with 19 youth service providers in community-based youth development programmes to develop a context-specific framework of how and why youth voice promotion occurred. Factors external to the youth programmes, such as funder expectations, influenced the conceptualization of role for youth workers. The social process of meaning making in relation to role identity impacted how youth workers perceived self-efficacy when working with youth, especially when engaged with behaviours falling outside programmatic expectations or norms. Workers prioritized fostering physical and psychological safe spaces for youth participants. When conflict occurred, perceptions of efficacy guided workers in taking positions that either promoted or restricted youth voice based on their perceptions of efficacy in resolving conflict safely. Youth programmes have the capacity to resist or replicate oppression present within the educational system. The adoption and adaptation of educational models of resistance offer a strategy for community-based youth organizations to promote equity and thriving youth.     

How Prevalent Are Stable-Paretian Distributed Financial Variables?

Many studies have claimed that the stable-Paretian distribution should be used to model a wide variety of financial variables, ranging from stock and futures prices to exchange rates. Using a newly developed method, this study shows that the stable distribution is unsuitable for modeling most financial variables that are stable-distributed. We found that the distributions of a few accounting ratios may be stable. Our conclusions support a change in the future directions of financial-variable modeling.     

The Search for a Landfill Site in the Risk Society*

Cette étude examine comment les inquiétudes concernant les risques de l'environnement ont été traitées dans une recherche d'un site d'enfouissement des déchets qu'on a menée récemment à Guelph, Ontario. L'argument sera que les interactions observées entre expert et profane ainsi que le genre de questions soulevées peuvent être comprises en termes de la thèse de la societéà risque proposée par Ulrick Beck. En particulier, cette étude montrera comment la science de l'impact de l'environnement a été restructurée pour s'occuper des conditions de la sociétéà risque. This paper examines how concerns about environmental risk were treated in an landfill search that was recently conducted in Guelph, Ontario. It is argued that the expert-lay interactions observed, and the types of issues raised, may be understood in terms of the risk society thesis proposed by Ulrich Beck. In particular, it is shown how environmental impact science was restructured to deal with the conditions of the risk society.     

Testing for Unit Roots in Dynamic Panels in the Presence of a Deterministic Trend: Re-examining the Unit Root Hypothesis for Real Stock Prices and Dividends

In this paper, we suggest a similar unit root test statistic for dynamic panel data with fixed effects. The test is based on the LM, or score, principle and is derived under the assumption that the time dimension of the panel is fixed, which is typical in many panel data studies. It is shown that the limiting distribution of the test statistic is standard normal. The similarity of the test with respect to both the initial conditions of the panel and the fixed effects is achieved by allowing for a trend in the model using a parameterisation that has the same interpretation under both the null and alternative hypotheses. This parameterisation can be expected to increase the power of the test statistic. Simulation evidence suggests that the proposed test has empirical size that is very close to the nominal level and considerably more power than other panel unit root tests that assume that the time dimension of the panel is large. As an application of the test, we re-examine the stationarity of real stock prices and dividends using disaggregated panel data over a relatively short period of time. Our results suggest that while real stock prices contain a unit root, real dividends are trend stationary.