Further Evidence on the Great Crash,the Oil-Price Shock,and the Unit-Root Hypothesis

Recently, Perron has carried out tests of the unit-root hypothesis against the alternative hypothesis of trend stationarity with a break in the trend occurring at the Great Crash of 1929 or at the 1973 oil-price shock. His analysis covers the Nelson–Plosser macroeconomic data series as well as a postwar quarterly real gross national product (GNP) series. His tests reject the unit-root null hypothesis for most of the series. This article takes issue with the assumption used by Perron that the Great Crash and the oil-price shock can be treated as exogenous events. A variation of Perron's test is considered in which the breakpoint is estimated rather than fixed. We argue that this test is more appropriate than Perron's because it circumvents the problem of data-mining. The asymptotic distribution of the estimated breakpoint test statistic is determined. The data series considered by Perron are reanalyzed using this test statistic. The empirical results make use of the asymptotics developed for the test statistic as well as extensive finite-sample corrections obtained by simulation. The effect on the empirical results of fat-tailed and temporally dependent innovations is investigated, in brief, by treating the breakpoint as endogenous, we find that there is less evidence against the unit-root hypothesis than Perron finds for many of the data series but stronger evidence against it for several of the series, including the Nelson-Plosser industrial-production, nominal-GNP, and real-GNP series.     

ESTIMATING THE STOCK‐FLOW MATCHING MODEL USING MICRO DATA

We estimate the stock‐flow matching model using micro‐level data from a well‐defined labor market. Using a dataset of complete labor‐market histories for both sides of the market, we estimate hazard functions for job‐seekers and vacancies. We find that the stock of new vacancies has a significant positive impact on the job‐seeker hazard, over and above that of the total stock of vacancies. There is an even stronger robust result for vacancy hazards. Thus we find evidence in favor of stock‐flow matching, even when controlling for unobserved search heterogeneity and stratifying into submarkets defined by location and occupation.     

Testing When a Parameter is on the Boundary of the Maintained Hypothesis

This paper considers testing problems where several of the standard regularity conditions fail to hold. We consider the case where (i) parameter vectors in the null hypothesis may lie on the boundary of the maintained hypothesis and (ii) there may be a nuisance parameter that appears under the alternative hypothesis, but not under the null. The paper establishes the asymptotic null and local alternative distributions of quasi‐likelihood ratio, rescaled quasi‐likelihood ratio, Wald, and score tests in this case. The results apply to tests based on a wide variety of extremum estimators and apply to a wide variety of models. Examples treated in the paper are: (i) tests of the null hypothesis of no conditional heteroskedasticity in a GARCH(1, 1) regression model and (ii) tests of the null hypothesis that some random coefficients have variances equal to zero in a random coefficients regression model with (possibly) correlated random coefficients.     

What We Should Want with History: A Meditation on Cultural Studies,Methodology, and Politics

This essay evaluates two of the central problems for Cultural Studies as a field: how to generate methodologically rigorous scholarship that is also politically useful; and how to productively use models and theory in the practice of history. Beginning with conversations about the place of (disciplinary) history in Cultural Studies, this essay explores one of the legendary debates in the field: between E. P. Thompson, Perry Anderson, and (at least in theory) Louis Althusser. Though the debate centered on the degree to which the English Civil War could be termed a “bourgeois revolution,” Thompson's fundamental critique concerned Anderson's use of abstract models in history. However, the distinctions Thompson makes are not nearly as clear‐cut in practice – particularly when we look at Ellen Meiksins Wood's attempt to intervene on Thompson's side in her 1991 book The Pristine Culture of Capitlism. Wood's understanding of capitalism relies on an abstract conceptualization of that mode of produciton that is ironically similar to that of Althusser and Anderson. Arguing this as an illustratration of the importance of explicit models and methods, the essay develops Richard Johnson's account of Marx's use of abstraction and theory in his own historical scholarship. Marx's framework is then deployed to reconsider the English Civil War in realation to a key contemporary concern: the origins of copyright and intellectual property. It ends by advocating for what I term anarchic abstraction: a conscious, rigorous, politically‐committed, and dialectical attention to the order and determinations of history with no strict hierarchy given in advance.     

Biographical interviews and imagined futures essay writing: users of two methods in conversation

ABSTRACT

This article reports on a conversation between users of two research methods, biographical interviews and imagined futures essay writing. A dialogue form is used to discuss these methods and their potential to be combined. The value of comparing research methods is discussed, and then the two methods are described and points of connection and contrast are explored. Although one method emphasises looking back while the other looks forward, the two have much in common, including the exercise of imagination, and discussion of individual agency and structural constraint. Both involve the construction of narratives that help understanding of people’s lives as individual trajectories set in broader social and historical contexts. The two methods are quite different but complementary, and possibilities for their combination in one project are identified. The article ends by reflecting on the benefits and drawbacks of using dialogue to consider how research methods sit alongside each other.     

Managing Memphis: governance and regulation in sterile spaces of play

Designed for the express purpose of encouraging consumption-intensive capital accumulation, the physical and symbolic reconstitution of select parcels of America's urbanscape into spectacular, multifaceted environments has heralded a new epoch in the material [re]formation of urban America. Yet, on daring to venture behind the corporatist veil of urban regeneration, one is soon confronted with an array of social injustices instantiated through the brutalizing praxis of the neoliberal public/private institutional amalgams that regulate, manage, and govern today's entrepreneurial cityscapes. Our focal points in this paper are the policies and practices of social governance through which both valorized and pathologized urban bodies are made visible, regulated and managed, as they contribute toward materializing the differentiated (and indeed differentiating) new urban landscape. We concentrate our argument on one North American city, Memphis, and specifically the efforts by private and public institutions to regulate and manage the Memphis cityspace, and realize the goal of reinventing the city (both materially and symbolically). Through dissecting the Memphis scenario, we discuss, and expose: the ‘lean and mean’ (Smith, 1998) urban geographies of aggressive place management and marketing; and, the various narratives underpinning the discursive constitution of belonging and difference within the revanchist metropolis.     

Mass Media Campaign Impacts Influenza Vaccine Obtainment of University Students

Abstract

Objective: To describe the effectiveness of a mass media campaign in increasing the rate of college student influenza vaccine obtainment. Participants/Methods: Students (N = 721) at a large southern university completed a survey between September 2011 and January 2012 assessing what flu clinic media sources were visualized and if they encouraged them to obtain vaccination. Results: Nearly a 30% increase was seen in flu vaccination rates in Fall 2011 over Fall 2010. The main campus Web site portal was the most visualized media source among students. The majority of responses indicated that the source of information visualized had a moderate to strong influence over their decision to get vaccinated. Conclusions: Various communication channels should be utilized to increase influenza vaccination rate on a university campus. Use of mass media to influence college students to perceive, retain, and act on the message of obtaining the influenza vaccine did produce a noteworthy outcome.     

Private Residential Care for Older Persons: Local Impacts of Care in the Community Reforms in England and Wales

The 1990 National Health Service and Care in the Community Act, implemented in 1993, had as a prime objective the creation of social care markets. Prior to these reforms, private residential homes had enjoyed almost guaranteed state financial support for the care of residents, but since then, residential homes have had to compete amongst each other for a finite number of clientsfunded by limited local budgets. The withdrawal of guaranteed state support and the introduction of a marketplace have had negative impacts on many residential home businesses. Indeed, many homes are facing financial difficulties. This paper considers the actions and attitudes of proprietors under the new conditions, based on a three-stage survey in Devon. The private residential sector illustrates that local social care markets have the potential to produce negative outcomes that are far from ideal and, to some extent, the paper highlights a market failure. As a case study this research also demonstrates the value of undertaking locality-based detailed studies over time to investigatethe impacts of policy change.