Variability of Travel Time,Congestion, and the Cost of Travel

The variability of travel time modifies the rush hour traffic and the cost of commuting. The bottleneck model of road congestion with fixed peak-load demand is augmented of an additive random delay. When individuals have (α-β-γ) preferences, there exists a unique Nash equilibrium. The variability of travel time leads to departure rates that are spread more evenly over the rush hour than when travel times are deterministic. This equilibrium mechanism mitigates both congestion and the cost of unreliability. This implies that “single-traveler models,” which treat congestion as an exogenous phenomenon, overestimate the value of reliability for the rush hour. The application with the uniform or with the exponential distribution helps appraise the overestimation.     

The Selection of Knowledge from the Behavioral Sciences and its Integration into Social Work Curricula

Evidence of discrimination is seen in the disparity with which ethnic minorities, particularly Blacks and Chicanos, experience “equal opportunities” in administrative positions. This study explores the significance of these phenomena for Black and Chicano administrators and the implications for social work education. The findings show that they perceive themselves as being required to have greater job entrance capabilities than their Anglo peers, receiving less organizational support than their Anglo peers, having less intrinsic authority than their Anglo peers, having limited channels for communication, and having limited opportunities for upward movement in comparison with their Anglo peers.     

Studies of Scholarly Productivity in Social Work Using Citation Analysis

Ideally, an educator’s reputation should be based primarily on that person’s scholarly publications. However, reputation is more than the sum of one’s scholarly efforts. In this article, the authors seek to add objective information to the subjective decision-making process involved in hiring, promoting, or providing tenure to educators. The authors present norms of citations—objective indicators of reputation—for professors, associate professors, and assistant professors. These norms were derived from the Citation Index of the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). Four studies were undertaken to examine scholarly productivity using the same basic methodology: citation analysis. In Study 1, the authors examined a sample of educators listed in the Encyclopedia of Social Work. These experts were used as a national norm against which other educators could compare themselves. Study 2 was based on a citation analysis of deans of all graduate schools of social work. In Study 3, the authors examined “local norms” of four particular schools of social work and discussed the differences between national and local norms. In Study 4, the authors examined “personal norms” through a detailed study of the careers of three individual professors, and compared their entirely scholarly productions against the SSCI record.     

发展西北边疆小商品经济的政策思考

改革开放以来,中国经济社会发展一个重要经验是发展乡镇经济,而乡镇经济的优势产业就是小商品生产。边疆民族地区应充分借鉴这一经验,发挥传统小商品经济优势,促进城乡各民族共同繁荣。这就需要提供特殊的民族贸易保护政策。例如,享受免征增值税政策,优惠贷款政策,国家专项扶持资金政策等等,同时积极构建向西开放的小商品基地。     

Can Multinational Corporations Afford to Ignore the Global Common Good?1

Contemporary advances in the fields of globalization and technologies raise the question of the relationship between international business and the global common good. Half of the hundred biggest economies in the world are now corporations. Nation‐states were traditionally viewed as the guarantors of the common good; however, the current historical stage is marked by the waning of the role of government, and reveals an emerging situation characterized by a co‐responsibility of multiple agents in this respect. Three major evolutions are likely to induce multinational corporations (MNCs) to take the global common good into account: the imperative of the preservation of our biosphere, the rise of an anti‐globalization sentiment with all its potential consequences, and the necessity to design a global social contract. Besides, these three phenomena are interconnected, which adds to the pressure on MNCs to change their policies.     

What are the determinants of delayed childbearing and permanent childlessness in the United States?

This paper presents estimates of delayed childbearing and permanent childlessness in the United States and the determinants of those phenomena. The estimates are derived by fitting the Coale-McNeil marriage model to survey data on age at first birth and by letting the parameters of the model depend on covariates. Substantively, the results provide evidence that the low first birth fertility rates experienced in the 1970s were due to both delayed childbearing and to increasing levels of permanent childlessness. The results also indicate that (a) delayed childbearing is less prevalent among black women than among nonblack women; (b) education is an important determinant of delayed childbearing whose influence on this phenomenon seems to be increasing across cohorts; (c) education is positively associated with heterogeneity among women in their age at first birth; (d) the dispersion of age at first birth is increasing across cohorts; (e) race has an insignificant effect on childlessness; and (f) education is positively associated with childlessness, with the effect of education increasing and reaching strikingly high levels for the most recent cohorts.     

When staff members sexually abuse children in residential care.

When an agency staff member is accused of sexually abusing a client, the administration is faced with the Solomonic task of balancing the necessity of protecting the child, supporting the staff, and maintaining the integrity and reputation of the agency. This article presents practical suggestions for managing the agency through such a crisis.