The Micro-economics of Old People's Homes

Summary Eleven old people's homes in England were studied to investigatehow money was distributed within the home, what it had to coverand how it could be spent. The level of the Personal Allowanceand the problems of providing shopping facilities are discussed.The relationship between questions of money and independence,initiative and responsibility in old peoples' homes are consideredand suggestions are put forward to increase old peoples' choiceand control over their own lives.     

FEAR AND LATHING IN THE MICHIGAN FURNITURE INDUSTRY: EMPLOYEE-BASED DISCRIMINATION A CENTURY AGO

We analyze employee-based discrimination using historical data on workers attributes from Michigan's furniture industry. The data provide compelling evidence of employee-based discrimination in the form of a compensating wage differential. A one percentage point decrease in the share of the work force from the worker's own ethnic group increased the wage about 0.1 percent. This response was larger in small firms, in small towns, and among certain ethnic groups. Protestants were generally paid more to work with Catholics. The additional labor costs generated by employee-based discrimination were probably offset by several benefits which rendered complete segregation unnecessary.     

Viewer Characteristics and Agenda Setting by Television News

Most previous studies of agenda setting by television news havefailed to consider factors that might strengthen or weaken agenda-settingeffects. Drawing on the findings of news recall and comprehensionresearch, this investigation of survey data gathered from 1204national news viewers identifies several characteristics ofviewers and viewing traits that increase the agenda-settinginfluence of news programs. The analysis suggests that effectsare greater when viewers have prior awareness of news topicsthrough print media exposure or have some college education.Watching news programs in color and attentively also contributesto increases in agenda setting.     

Media Hegemony: A Failure of Perspective

Numerous studies of TV news have been published since Gans's(1972) call for more research on the mass media. A central issueunderlying much of this research is control and dominance ofthe news process. This essay analyzes the logical and empiricaladequacy of media hegemony as an explanation of ideologicaldominance. Analysis of recent research shows that some researchershave uncritically adapted the "dominant ideology thesis" ofmedia hegemony to studies of TV news and have overlooked findingswhich challenge their claims about (1) the socialization andideology of journalists, (2) whether news reports perpetuatethe status quo, and (3) the nature and extent of internationalnews coverage. Despite the shortcomings of the concept of mediahegemony, efforts should continue to develop an empiricallysound theoretical perspective for locating the news processin a broader societal context.     

Adolescents, Television, and Support for Government

This research finds that support for government as measuredby a feeling thermometer scale is negatively correlated withincreased amounts of television viewing by adolescents and variesin affective directions with the types of programs young adultswatch.     

On shape detection in noisy images with particular reference to ultrasonography

We discuss the detection of a connected shape in a noisy image. Two types of image are considered: in the first a degraded outline of the shape is visible, while in the second the data are a corrupted version of the shape itself. In the first type the shape is defined by a thin outline of pixels with records that are different from those at pixels inside and outside the shape, while in the second type the shape is defined by its edge and pixels inside and outside the shape have different records. Our motivation is the identification of cross-sectional head shapes in ultrasound images of human fetuses. We describe and discuss a new approach to detecting shapes in images of the first type that uses a specially designed filter function that iteratively identifies the outline pixels of the head. We then suggest a way based on the cascade algorithm introduced by Jubb and Jennison (1991) of improving and considerably increasing the speed of a method proposed by Storvik (1994) for detecting edges in images of the second type.     

Rules, Red Tape, and Paperwork: The Archeology of State Control over Migrants

Abstract Conventional accounts of a drastic shift to migration restriction after World War I following a golden era of free movement obscure crucial processes of state formation around matters of administering migration. How and with what consequences did state control over migration become acceptable and possible after the Great War? Existing studies have centered on core countries of immigration and thus underestimate the degree to which legitimate state capacities have developed in a political field spanning sending and receiving countries with similar designs on the same international migrants. Relying on archival research, and an examination of the migratory field constituted by two quintessential emigration countries (Italy and Spain), and a traditional immigration country (Argentina) since the mid‐nineteenth century, this article argues that widespread acceptance of migration control as an administrative domain rightfully under states' purview, and the development of attendant capacities have derived from legal, organizational, and administrative mechanisms crafted by state actors in response to the challenges posed by mass migration. Concretely, these countries codified migration and nationality laws, built, took over, and revamped migration‐related organizations, and administratively encaged mobile people through official paperwork. The nature of efforts to evade official checks on mobility implicitly signaled the acceptance of migration control as a bona fide administrative domain. In more routine migration management, states legitimate capacity has had unforeseen intermediate‐ and long‐term consequences such as the subjection of migrants (and, because of ius sanguinis nationality laws, sometimes their descendants) to other states' administrative influence and the generation of conditions for dual citizenship. Study findings challenge scholarship that implicitly views states as constant factors conditioning migration flows, rather than as developing institutions with historically variable regulatory abilities and legitimacy. It extends current work by specifying mechanism used by state actors to establish migration as an accepted administrative domain.     

DISAGGREGATE EVIDENCE ON PRICE STICKINESS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR MACRO MODELS

We use the methodology applied at the aggregate level by Gali and Gertler (1999) to analyze price and cost data for U.S. six‐digit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) industries. Industries with price adjustment periods of at least 6 quarters generate no more than about 43% of total sales of industries we analyze. Industries with estimated price adjustment speeds of less than a year generate at least 44% of sales. Our conclusion is that disaggregate U.S. data provide as much support in favor of relatively high price flexibility as they do for the assumption of widespread price stickiness utilized in many modern macroeconomic theories. (JEL E31, L16)