Can Migration Foster Development in Mexico? The Case of Poverty and Inequality

The impact of migration on development can be analysed from a number of perspectives. This article focuses on poverty and inequality. It assesses the relative contribution of migrants to Mexico′s economy through remittances, compared to other Latin American countries; analyses the distributional impact of remittances (with an emphasis on the poor), and compares this impact to the counterfactual impact of migrants’ stay‐at‐home income. It explains the processes leading to scant economic success rates among poor international migrants. Finally, it describes the nature and impact of current Mexican migrant‐oriented policies, and recommends a shift in focus, to lessen emigration, increase the income of migrants, promote returns, and bolster the economic impact of returning migrants.     

Can Infants Use a Nonhuman Agent's Gaze Direction to Establish Word–Object Relations?

Adopting a procedure developed with human speakers, we examined infants' ability to follow a nonhuman agent's gaze direction and subsequently to use its gaze to learn new words. When a programmable robot acted as the speaker (Experiment 1), infants followed its gaze toward the word referent whether or not it coincided with their own focus of attention, but failed to learn a new word. When the speaker was human, infants correctly mapped the words (Experiment 2). Furthermore, when the robot interacted contingently, this did not facilitate infants' word mapping (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that gaze following upon hearing a novel word is not sufficient to learn the referent of the word when the speaker is nonhuman.     

Over-education and Gender Occupational Differences in Spain

This paper explores the role of over-education in shaping the negative relationship between the education level attained by employees and the fact of working in a gender-dominated occupation, in Spain, a country where the phenomenon of over-education is common. Applying multinomial logit regressions, and controlling for individual and job characteristics, the results confirm the typical finding that having a university degree decreases the odds of working in a gender-dominated occupation. However, this is only true in the case of women when considering long—more than 3 years—university studies. The evidence also suggests that the general spread of over-education in Spain weakens that relationship so that reducing over-education would eventually lead to more uniformity in the gender-distribution of employment across occupations.

     

On strategy-proof social choice correspondences: a comment

In a recent paper, Sato (Soc Choice Welf doi:) has provided two alternative definitions of strategy-proofness for social choice correspondences and proved that they are incompatible with the joint requirements of anonymity, neutrality, and a minimal range condition. In this note, we use the results in Rodríguez-álvarez (Soc Choice Welf 29:175–199, 2007) to directly prove stronger versions of Sato’s theorems. The author wishes to thank Shin Sato and John Weymark for their comments and suggestions. Financial support from the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia through the Programa Ramón y Cajal 2006 and grant SEJ-2005-04805, the Consejería de Innovación, Ciencia y Empresa, Junta de Andalucía through grant SEJ-01645, and the Fundación Ramón Areces is gratefully acknowledged.     

Poverty and gender perspective in productive projects for rural women in Mexico: impact evaluation of a pilot project

The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of a pilot study that promoted productive and capacity-building activities among deprived rural women of Mexico. The evaluation design is observational; 1,278 women are interviewed, and the comparison group is estimated by propensity score matching. The results show a positive impact on the carrying out of agricultural activities, in the autonomy of women in decision making, as does their perception of their role in the household. However, the project does not decrease the number of hours set aside for household chores or improve the women's technical and administrative skills.     

Recognizing Emotions in a Foreign Language

Expressions of basic emotions (joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust) can be recognized pan-culturally from the face and it is assumed that these emotions can be recognized from a speaker’s voice, regardless of an individual’s culture or linguistic ability. Here, we compared how monolingual speakers of Argentine Spanish recognize basic emotions from pseudo-utterances (“nonsense speech”) produced in their native language and in three foreign languages (English, German, Arabic). Results indicated that vocal expressions of basic emotions could be decoded in each language condition at accuracy levels exceeding chance, although Spanish listeners performed significantly better overall in their native language (“in-group advantage”). Our findings argue that the ability to understand vocally-expressed emotions in speech is partly independent of linguistic ability and involves universal principles, although this ability is also shaped by linguistic and cultural variables.

Are Gambling Related Cognitions in Adolescence Multidimensional?: Factor Structure of the Gambling Related Cognitions Scale

The present study examined the factor structure of the Gambling Related Cognitions Scale (GRCS); (Raylu and Oei in Addiction 99:757–769, 2004) in a large sample of adolescents (N = 1,490) between the ages of 16 and 18 years (630 males, 860 females) attending several high schools in central Ontario. Problem gambling was measured using the DSM-IV-J (Fisher in J Gambl Stud 8:263–285, 1992). A 5-factor GRCS model was found to have the best fit to the data, and gambling-related cognitions were found to be powerful predictors of disordered gambling among adolescents. However, strong associations among GRCS subscales, as well as the small amount of variance in problem gambling accounted for by specific GRCS subscales, call into question the multidimensionality of the GRCS when used with adolescents.     

Determinants of Employment Decisions After the First Child Birth in Spain

The aim of this paper is to analyse impact of human capital on employment decisions (namely, entry and exit from employment) of first-time mothers in Spain. To carry out the analysis, we use the Fertility, Family and Values Survey of 2006. Transitions are studied via discrete-time duration models with control for frailty. The results indicate that education, previous work experience and living without a partner increase the likelihood of (re-)entering employment and decrease the likelihood of leaving employment after the first child than their low-educated, non-experienced and partnered counterparts. Women in recent cohorts register more (re-)employment transitions than the rest. However, no differences were observed in the transits out of employment across cohorts, which prove small progress in the work-life balance in Spain over the last decades. Finally, the circumstances around childbirth do not seem to influence employment decisions of first-time mothers.     

Service vs. manufacturing: how to address more effectively eco-innovation public policies by disentangling the different characteristics of industries

Eco-innovation is actually a fashionable topic, and several researchers are working on understanding the defining characteristics of firms that consider the environment as a priority when innovating. To date most of these studies have been carried out on manufacturing industries. This article investigates the similarities and differences among service and manufacturing firms. An empirical analysis of a sample of 5509 Spanish companies shows that the variables affecting the eco-innovative orientation of firms are quite similar. Results reveal that manufacturing firms have higher orientation toward the environment than service firms. Furthermore, highly polarized positions in environmental aspects can be found. Despite the limitations of the study, conclusions may help public policy to encourage environmental proactivity in service industry and innovation.     

The power(lessness) of Czechoslovak Jews during the Second World War

The article evaluates the perceptions of Jewish power among the Czechoslovak exiles in Britain during the Second World War. The analysis documents the apparent persistence of prejudices against the Jewish minority among the Czechoslovak non-Jewish authorities that eventually formed the government-in-exile (1940–5), under the presidency of Edvard Bene? (1884–1948). The Czechoslovak exiles believed that the Jewish minority, in particular the Jewish nationalists (Zionists), had vehement supporters within Jewish circles in Western countries. Furthermore, they believed that the Jewish press played a significant role in the formation of public opinion in Britain and especially in the United States. In the early 1940s, the government-in-exile embarked on a policy of national homogenisation of post-war Czechoslovakia and was anxious to give concessions to the political representatives of the ethnic minority groups in exile, in particular the Germans, Hungarians and Jews. Yet the concerns about Jewish influence in liberal democracies granted several political concessions to the Jewish minority, in particular the appointment of a Zionist representative, Arno?t Frischer (1887–1954), to the exile parliament. This notwithstanding, by analysing the internal situation among the Czechoslovak Jewish groups in London, the article documents the internal weakness and disputes among the Jewish groups which gradually revealed the utter powerlessness of the Jewish exiles during their negotiations with the Czechoslovak authorities. The Jewish groups (the assimilationists, Orthodox and secular nationalists) were divided by mutual as well as internal disputes which were not concealed from outside observers and were utilised by the exile government. What emerges from the analysis is an impression of quarrelling groups that could not agree on any of the fundamental issues and whose only power was the ability to court the support of Western Jewish groups, which were perceived by the non-Jewish exiles as influential actors in US and British society.