Keep time, stay healthy

Recent studies reveal that sleep loss in humans leads to metabolic disorders. A new study reports the development of metabolic syndrome in mice with altered circadian timing brought about by a mutation in a gene that functions in the biological clock. An intriguing and unanswered question is the relation between a healthy biological clock and normal appetite and weight regulation.     

The Detrimental Side Effects of Minimum Wage Laws

The adverse effects of minimum wage legislation demonstrate how a government policy presumably intended to help people worst off in society can actually end up causing far more harm than good. In this case, the victims are unskilled laborers. By making it illegal for employers to pay unskilled workers wages equal to their marginal revenue productivity, it causes unemployment for all workers whose productivity happens to be below the minimum wage. It also widens the wage gap between whites and minorities because there are disproportionate numbers of unskilled and uneducated minorities compared with whites.     

Cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of developmental data

Methods appropriate to the analysis of longitudinal-panel data are not necessarily appropriate to the analysis of developmental data, because of the sequential order that developmental data are assumed to have. This paper compares, using data from a study of social categorization ability, the usual cross-sectional test for cumulative order (Guttman scaling) with a longitudinal test for sequential order using matrices. This matrix-based test is then compared to the analysis of differences in proportions. It is shown that the matrix-based test is more appropriate to the analysis of developmental data than either longitudinal difference-of-proportion analysis or the Guttman scale.     

Political choice and the multiple “logics” of capital

Conclusion The issue of whether one sees the constraints on domestic freedom of action as economic or political has important practical consequences. If one accepts the position that reforms such as the expansion of social welfare actually interfere with the fundamental logic of a capitalist order, it becomes very difficult to defend those reforms from conservative attack. One can argue that over the long term the only way to protect those reforms is through a break with the capitalist system, but this does not provide much strategic guidance in the short term. On the contrary, since the left is agreeing that these reforms contribute to the problems of the economy - inflation, slow growth, unemployment - it follows that the citizenry is acting rationally when it supports the right-wing attacks on the reforms. In a context in which the immediate transition to socialism is not possible, it follows that the best way to enhance the collective welfare is by trading off the reforms for the promise of faster economic growth.This is, I would argue, what has happened in the past decade in the United States. While one can easily exaggerate the influence of leftist ideas, the wide dissemination of the accumulation versus legitimation perspective within academia and activist circles has had the effect of persuading key groups of the futility of resisting the Reaganite attacks on the all-too-limited American welfare state. The very notion that Reagan's policies were necessary for American capitalism had the effect of disempowering those who were in a position to resist those policies.If, on the contrary, the left had stressed that the constraints are political and that there are multiple ways to make a capitalist economy work, the possibilities for effective resistance would have been greater. Rather than perceiving Reaganite policies as reflecting some economic necessity, it would have been possible to formulate alternative policies for responding to the economic problems. With such alternative frameworks, it might then be possible to build broader political alliances while also empowering the victims of the cutbacks to fight both to protect earlier gains and to win new concessions.Because the struggle to protect the remnants of the welfare state continues, it is not too late to break the chains of the economistic fallacy. The costs are slight and the benefits could be enormous.     

Gluttons for Punishment? African American Celebrities and the Dilemma of Black Leadership

Race and Social Problems - We demonstrate a dilemma for African American celebrities from the policing behavior of the mass publics of both Blacks and Whites. Examination of norms suggests that the...     

Foundation ownership and shareholder value: an event study

Review of Managerial Science - Some of the largest listed firms in Western and Northern Europe are partly owned by foundations. So far, little research exists about the shareholder value effects of...