Stochastic Forecasting of Labor Supply and Population: An Integrated Model

This paper presents a stochastic model to forecast the German population and labor supply until 2060. Within a cohort-component approach, our population forecast applies principal components analysis to birth, mortality, emigration, and immigration rates, which allows for the reduction of dimensionality and accounts for correlation of the rates. Labor force participation rates are estimated by means of an econometric time series approach. All time series are forecast by stochastic simulation using the bootstrap method. As our model also distinguishes between German and foreign nationals, different developments in fertility, migration, and labor participation could be predicted. The results show that even rising birth rates and high levels of immigration cannot break the basic demographic trend in the long run. An important finding from an endogenous modeling of emigration rates is that high net migration in the long run will be difficult to achieve. Our stochastic perspective suggests therefore a high probability of substantially decreasing the labor supply in Germany.     

Public relations and community: A persistent covenant

In the 21st Century global public relations professional community, the need for a postmodern reformation is compellingly evident. Most theorizing begins with basic assumptions about the three main social actors for which public relations has been practiced: (1) corporations, (2) nongovernmental and civil society organizations (NGOs and CSOs), and (3) governments. Questions about society itself are rarely examined, but when they do come up, scholars and practitioners tend to assume generally accepted values and mores. Neglected has been a robust criticism of the concepts upon which such paradigms have been built.     

Codependent VAR models and the pseudo-structural form

This paper investigates whether codependence restrictions can be uniquely imposed on VAR models via the so-called pseudo-structural form used in the literature. Codependence of order q is given if a linear combination of autocorrelated variables eliminates the serial correlation after q lags. Importantly, maximum likelihood estimation and likelihood ratio testing are only possible if the codependence restrictions can be uniquely imposed. Applying the pseudo-structural form, our study reveals that this is not generally the case, but that unique imposition is guaranteed in several important special cases.     

Turnover and Excess Worker Reallocation. The Veneto Labour Market between 1982 and 1996

This research exploits a large matched employer–employee data set for an Italian region, the Veneto, that is presented here for the first time, in order to analyse job and worker flows. In a first part, the paper computes worker turnover, job turnover, and excess worker reallocation over a time span of 14 years. The results are discussed, and comparisons are made between the quantitative features of the labour market in the Veneto region and those of other labour markets. In a second part, turnover and excess worker reallocation are related to search costs, and new empirical evidence is presented that helps in understanding the connections between search activity, unemployment, and the economic cycle.     

Gender-related Effect of Cultural Participation in Psychological Well-being: Indications from the Well-being Project in the Municipality of Milan

Gender differences have been observed in the way males and females process cognitive stimuli coming from exposure to works of art and participation in leisure activities. For this reason, we designed a project to assess this issue, with a cross-sectional study in Milan, on a sample of the population consisting in 1,000 inhabitants. Our objective was to assess how cultural participation affects subjective well-being, measured with the Psychological General Well-being Scale, which gives a global index of psychological well-being ranging from 0 (lowest level of well-being) to 110 (highest level of well-being). The survey was conducted with the assistance of Doxa, an Italian pollster company, through telephone interviews, according to the Computer Aided Telephone Interview system. A significant statistical difference in variable distribution between the two genders was found for civil status (more males resulted as being single and more women widowed), income (higher income in males), cultural participation (higher in males) and psychological well-being (higher in males). As expected, state of health has the maximum impact on the level of psychological well-being. The increase in the number of concomitant diseases is in fact linearly associated with a progressive increase in psychological distress with average scores of around 60 (very low level of well-being), in the presence of 5 or more concomitant diseases, in both males and females. The impact profile of nine major determinants on subjective well-being resulted to be clearly different in the two genders. Health status dominates in both, but its impact is higher in females than in males. The obtained results remained substantially unchanged also when the two gender groups were matched according to civil status and income level distribution. Leisure activities play an important role in females (second place after health status), while in males they result as being less important (fourth place after health status, civil status and occupation). Education is quite important for females (third place), while it is given the least importance in males. This different profile probably reflects different social and environmental influences on the two genders. The social and psychological implications of these findings are discussed.     

The European delay in transition to parenthood: the Italian case

A delay in the transition to parenthood is common to all European countries, but Mediterranean and North European young people follow different pathways of transition to adulthood, which are described in the article. Since 2003, we have conducted four social inquiries in Italian urban contexts involving male and female young people with and without children and the article is therefore focused on Italy. The principal purpose of this research programme is to interpret the determinants of the Italian phenomenon of delaying the birth of the first child. The interpretative axes for conceptualizing the problem are intergender and intergenerational comparisons. In particular, the results of these inquiries indicate that in Italy the delay of the parenthood transition is linked to the policy-makers' ‘delay’ in realizing that the decision to postpone having children is not strongly linked to any ‘crisis of family values’. The real problem is that since the beginning of the twentieth century, the present younger generation is the first to suffer from a general decrease in social opportunities as compared with the previous one. The mechanism is illustrated by Bourdieu: the new generation's members continue to form their life expectations on the basis of their parents' situations without considering the changes in conditions (e.g. inflation of study titles) that restrict their access to social resources. According to our results, the delay in the assumption of the parental role is an unintentional effect of a set of intentional actions aimed at creating and consolidating life conditions supporting self-realization. ‘Delayers’ continually try to resist the distressing sensations of precariousness, instability, vulnerability and uncertainty recognized by influential sociologists as distinctive features of contemporary life. Consequently, the delay in the family-building process takes on an active connotation: the attempt is to fill the gap in life chances related to gender and generational memberships. The last part of the article is dedicated to a comparison of European countries' social policies in support of parenthood.     

The press and Alitalia's 2008 crisis: Issues, tones, and frames

Given that public opinion about a company's performance during a crisis is highly influenced by the way news media cover crisis events, studies that look at news media's choice of crisis issues, tones and frames are extremely valuable. This paper presents the main findings of a study on how the Italian and international press framed the Italian national airline Alitalia and its crisis in 2008 before its privatization. This study is based on content analysis of news articles published in 2008 in two Italian and two international newspapers. Comparisons of crisis issues, tones and frames between the Italian and international press are made. Implications and recommendations for crisis managers are discussed as well as directions for further research.     

Varying levels of anomie in Europe: a multilevel analysis based on multidimensional IRT models

Recent years have seen increased attention paid to monitoring social anomie and its dependency on micro- and macro-factors. In this paper, we endorse the theorisation of social anomie as a complex, multidimensional and multilevel phenomenon. To ensure a rigorous measurement of the varying levels of social anomie in the European countries, the current study relies on a multilevel multidimensional item response theory model which explicitly accounts for the presence of a non-ignorable missing data mechanism. This unified approach makes it possible to specify an analytical model of links between anomie features and their determinants and to explore how the latent traits of interest are influenced by individual-level factors, as well as by country-level indicators. Additionally, to avoid misleading inferential conclusions, the proposed model takes into account the respondent’s omitting behaviour, assuming that the missingness mechanism is driven by a latent propensity to respond. Data used in this study have been collected in the 2010 wave of the European Social Survey. To reduce the computational complexities, a Bayesian specification of the MIRT model is provided and the parameter model estimates are obtained through MCMC algorithms.