Pay comparability in state governments

Earnings differentials between state government and private industry employees are estimated for each state using 1990 Census data. Female employees in most state governments receive higher earnings than comparable private sector employees, whereas the opposite result applies to males. However, the size of the state government earnings advantage or penalty is not uniform across states for either sex. The relative earnings of state employees increase with their membership in unions and with the revenues generated by state government’s tax and financing policies.     

On the Use of Hierarchical Probabilistic Models for Characterizing and Managing Uncertainty in Risk/Safety Assessment

A general probabilistically-based approach is proposed for both cancer and noncancer risk/safety assessments. The familiar framework of the original ADI/RfD formulation is used, substituting in the numerator a benchmark dose derived from a hierarchical pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic model and in the denominator a unitary uncertainty factor derived from a hierarchical animal/average human/sensitive human model. The empirical probability distributions of the numerator and denominator can be combined to produce an empirical human-equivalent distribution for an animal-derived benchmark dose in external-exposure units.     

Habitat use and activity patterns of urban-dwelling javelina

In Arizona, conflicts between homeowners and urban-dwelling javelina (Tayassu tajacu) continued to increase. Human-javelina conflicts often occurred when javelina responded to urban attractants and destroyed ornamental landscapes, injured pets, and frightened homeowners. This prompted initiation of a study during 1992–93 to develop recommendations to alleviate these conflicts. We captured, radio-collared, and located eight javelina from six herds to determine home ranges, habitat use, and activity patterns in Prescott, Arizona. Urban-dwelling javelina adjusted their home ranges, habitat use, and activity patterns to best use human-provided urban food, water, and cover resources. The most conspicuous of these adjustments was the increased nocturnal activity of urban-dwelling javelina to avoid human disturbances. Undeveloped land within or adjacent to Prescott provided javelina with daytime bedding areas and nighttime travel corridors. We determined that this issue was more a people problem than it was a javelina problem. Thus, strategies to resolve the conflicts must target homeowners.     

Normalization in Econometrics

The issue of normalization arises whenever two different values for a vector of unknown parameters imply the identical economic model. A normalization implies not just a rule for selecting which among equivalent points to call the maximum likelihood estimate (MLE), but also governs the topography of the set of points that go into a small-sample confidence interval associated with that MLE. A poor normalization can lead to multimodal distributions, disjoint confidence intervals, and very misleading characterizations of the true statistical uncertainty. This paper introduces an identification principle as a framework upon which a normalization should be imposed, according to which the boundaries of the allowable parameter space should correspond to loci along which the model is locally unidentified. We illustrate these issues with examples taken from mixture models, structural vector autoregressions, and cointegration models.     

Infants' Reactions to Object Collision on Hit and Miss Trajectories

This experiment investigated the impact of the path of approach of an object, from head on versus from the side, and the type of imminent contact with that object, a hit versus a miss, on young infants' perceptions of object looming. Consistent with earlier studies, we found that 4‐ to 5‐month‐old infants do indeed discriminate hits versus misses. We also found a novel result regarding the path of the approaching object. The discrimination of hits from misses was modified by whether or not the approaching objects passed in front of the infants' faces; objects crossing the line of sight evoked more frequent defensive reactions than objects that did not cross the line of sight, regardless of whether or not such objects were on a collision course. These findings are discussed within the context of the development of visually guided locomotion and linear versus nonlinear paths of translation through the world.     

Effects of Class Positions of Parents on Educational Attainment of Daughters and Sons*

Cet article évalue les effets de l'appartenance de la mère et du père à une classe - déterminée selon la théorie marxiste des classes -sur le niveau d'instruction de leurs enfants, garçons et filles, au Canada. Les données sont tirées d'un échantillon représentatif de Canadiens et de Canadiennes. Les analyses multivariables mon-trent que l'appartenance du père et de la mère à une classe influe sur le niveau d'instruction des enfants des deux sexes. Que le père ou la mère soit issu de la bourgeoisie, de la classe des dirigeants ou de la classe des spécialistes, l'enfant aura un niveau d'instruction plus élevé que celui dont les parents appartiennent à une autre classe. On a toutefois observé que seuls certains effets de l'appartenance à une classe étaient directs; les effets liés à l'appartenance à une classe semblent ne se manifester que partiellement dans les differences de niveau d'instruction des parents, qui sont liées à la classe à laquelle ils appartiennent. Les niveaux d'instruction de la mere et du père influent directement sur le niveau d'instruction des enfants des deux sexes, une fois neutralisés les effets de l'appartenance sociale des parents. De plus, les effets du niveau d'instruction du père et de la mère ont tendance à différer selon le sexe de l'enfant (le niveau d'études de la mère influe davantage sur celui de la fille et à l'inverse celui du père influe davantage sur celui du fils). Toutefois, cette tendance ne se vérifie pas en ce qui concerne les effets de l'appartenance des parents à une classe. Les analyses qui comparent les sous-échantillons d'âges indiquent que la double influence de l'appartenance des parents à une classe et de leur niveau d'instruction a diminué après les années soixante compara-tivement aux années précédentes. Les résultats sont interprétés à la lumière de la théorie du capital culturel. This paper assesses the effects of mothers' and fathers' class positions—measured in terms of Marxist class categories—on the educational attainment of male and female offspring in Canada. Our data are from a national representative sample of Canadians. Multivariate analyses show that, for offspring of both genders, the class positions of fathers and mothers influence educational attainment. Where either parent was a member of the bourgeois, managerial or expert class categories, this meant more education for the offspring than other class backgrounds. Only some proportions of the class effects were direct; the effects of class background appear to partially operate through differences in educational attainment of parents that are associated with parents' class positions. Mothers' and fathers' education levels continue to have comparatively strong positive relationships with educational attainment for offspring of both genders after controls for class categories of parents. Further, the effects of paternal and maternal education tend to be “same-sex directed” (mothers' education levels have stronger effects for daughters than for sons and vice versa for fathers' education). However, a similar pattern does not hold for the effects of parental class positions. Analyses comparing age sub-samples indicate that the influences of both parental class positions and parental education levels upon educational attainment of offspring have decreased in the post-1960 period compared with earlier years. The results are interpreted in terms of the theory of cultural capital.     

Transnational Crime and Transnational Policing

This paper reviews the scholarly literature that connects transnational crime and policing through a critical discussion of the terms used to describe them. It is argued that authorized discourses regarding transnational crime are selective and partial. Ultimately, this results in two sorts of failures in contemporary transnational policing. It is a positive failure insofar as the ramping up of policing power in response to a global crime panic has come at the expense of civil liberties and human rights. It is a negative failure insofar as the transnational policing capacity that has been developed is unable to respond to the very real criminological consequences that are part of the downside of globalization. The surveillant assemblage of the emerging global policing security complex is an awesome and unaccountable power legitimitated on the basis of specified folkdevils. However, and despite well-publicized claims to success, due to its own internal organizational pathologies and institutional fragmentation, the policing security complex is capricious. The article concludes by arguing that critical the examination of the concepts that constitute transnational crime and policing is a crucial contribution to theories of global governance.     

Whither Tocqueville in American Sociology?

This essay addresses the declining influence of Alexis de Tocqueville on contemporary American sociology. While Tocqueville was must reading some decades ago, inspiring several classic sociological studies published in the 1950s and 1960s, and while he remains an authoritative source in other social science disciplines, he has virtually disappeared from present-day sociology. Sociologists, it would seem, have left behind works such as Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the French Revolution despite Raymond Aron’s (Main Currents in Sociological Thought, vol. I, Anchor Books, New York, 1968) insistence that Tocqueville be counted among the discipline’s founders. While Meyer (J. Cl. Socio., 3:197–220, 2003) presumed to have addressed this subject, his argument sheds no light on the matter as he ignores the driving concern of Tocqueville’s work, namely, the tensions between the principle of equality and human freedom. I argue that conceptually sociologists today are in no position to reflect critically on equality and its relation to freedom. Since the turbulent 1960s egalitarian commitments have become embedded in the discipline and are thereby shielded from critical inquiry. At the same time, a conceptual fixation on power effectively pushed to the periphery the kinds of questions Tocqueville raised about the problem of authority in democracy and how authority may be encouraging of human freedom. Committed to advancing the principle of equality, however understood, and seeing nothing in authority but power, sociologists espouse faith in egalitarian, mass democracy whereas Tocqueville sought a critical understanding of it. This is much to the detriment of present-day sociologists, so many of whom demonstrate in their own work and professional behavior the democratic dilemmas Tocqueville warned us about.