The impact of cash-benefit reform on parents’ labour force participation

This paper evaluates the impact of a recent Norwegian family-policy reform. The reform provides benefits of up to NOK 3,000 (approximately € 400) per month to families with one- to three-year-old children, who do not utilize state-subsidized day-care centres. We investigate the reforms effect on parents labour force participation. We find that, on average, the reform reduced womens labour force participation and increased the specialization of work between couples. We find that the effect of the reform depends on womens schooling. Specifically, the labour force participation of highly educated mothers fell by more than that of mothers with less education.I am grateful to Associate Professor Espen Bratberg and Professor Alf Erling for their valuable comments. My special thanks to Kjell Vaage, Arild Aakvik and Afsane Bjorvatn for helpful suggestions. This paper was presented in a seminar at the Department of Economics, University of Bergen, Norway. I am thankful to the participants of the seminar for their positive feedback. The paper has also benefited from the reports given by three anonymous referees. I am also thankful to Professor Heather Joshi for helpful remarks on the paper. Responsible editor: Christoph M. Schmidt.     

Understanding labour processes in global production networks: a case study of the football industry in Pakistan

ABSTRACT

Over the last few decades, the changing nature of global production and distribution processes has raised a number of critical questions regarding work and employment relations. Presenting a qualitative case study of the football industry in Pakistan as an example of the general mechanism of the social relations of re/production in a global system of industrial organization, this research highlights how and under what conditions informal workers are embedded in extended global production networks. By drawing on the integrated conceptual framework of the global production network (GPN) and labour process theory (LPT), this research sheds light on the working conditions and living realities of informal workers. A potential contribution of this paper is to extend the horizon of production network theory by analysing the work and employment conditions of informal workers, which are absent in existing discussions of these conceptual frameworks.     

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN RESPONSE TO BIG STAKES

It is commonly perceived that increasing incentives improves performance. However, the reaction to increased incentives might differ between men and women, leading to gender differences in performance. In a natural experiment, we study the gender difference in performance resulting from changes in stakes. We use detailed information on the performance of high‐school students and exploit the variation in the stakes of tests, which range from 5% to 27% of the final grade. We find that female students outperform male students in all tests—but to a relatively larger degree when the stakes are low. The gender gap disappears in tests taken at the end of high school, which count for 50% of the university entry grade. (JEL: D03, J16, I21, C30)     

Complementarities in CSO Collaborations: How Working with Diversity Produces Advantages

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - A commonly explored theme in international civil society organisation (CSO) collaborations is the dominance of Northern...     

Asian Carers' Experiences of Medical and Social Care: The Case of Cerebral Palsy

Correspondence to Ghazala Mir, University of Leeds, Centre for Research in Primary Care, Nuffield Institute for Health, Hallas Wing, 71–75 Clarendon Road, Leeds LS2 9PL, UK. E-mail: g.mir{at}leeds.ac.uk Summary This paper discusses the experience of South Asian carers ofa person with cerebral palsy. Previous research in this areahas failed to explore carers' perceptions of causation or theirviews on the quality of service support. Qualitative interviewswere carried out with twenty carers in two localities in thenorth of England with the aim of providing in-depth contextualizeddata on their experiences over time, their attitudes towardscerebral palsy and their interactions with service provision.Results show that parents' views on causation differ markedlyfrom explanations based on a medical, genetic model of cause.Parental attitudes towards cerebral palsy are shown to be influencedboth by interactions with service professionals and by parents'ability to manage their situation. The absence of adequate materialand emotional resources may foster a negative construction ofdisability by parents that, in turn, has detrimental effectson the individual with cerebral palsy. Parents' religious beliefscan act as a source of emotional support that helps them developa constructive perspective on disability and deal with futureuncertainty. We conclude that developments in service provisionneed to build on the perspectives of South Asian individualsand communities to respond effectively to their needs.     

Service Delivery Through E-Governance: Perception and Expectation of Customers in Fiji and PNG

Empirical studies on e-governance are replete with evidences highlighting its potential for improving service delivery. This study was conducted in PNG and Fiji using structured questionnaires distributed to different groups of respondents. The results indicate that e-governance has the potential to improve Public Service Delivery. It is also confirmed through the findings in this research that the expectations of citizens from public services are quite high, but experience has often been negative i.e. there is a huge variance in the perception and expectation of normal citizens in PNG (Papua New Guinea) and Fiji regarding service delivery, quality of services.     

Effect of a Family Policy Reform on Immigrants' Labour Supply and Earnings

An important feature of Scandinavian welfare states is the transfer of resources to families with children. Long parental leave and provision of high‐quality subsidized day care are important policies in this regard. This paper evaluates the impact of a recent Norwegian family policy reform on the labour supply of native and immigrant women in Norway. The reform provides cash benefits to families with 1–3‐year‐old children who do not utilize state‐subsidized day care centres. We find that the effect of the reform on labour force participation of women is fairly modest. However, given participation, earnings of natives and immigrants fell after the cash‐benefit reform. Specifically, earnings of highly educated non‐Western immigrants fell by more than those of natives.     

Ogbu and the debate on educational achievement: an exploration of the links between education,migration, identity and belonging

This paper looks at some of the issues raised by Ogbu’s work in relation to the education of different minority ethnic groups. Ogbu poses questions such as the value attached to education, its links to the future and its measurable outcomes in terms of ‘success’ as experienced by black participants. The desire for better life chances leads families to consider migration to a new country or resettlement within the same country, thus making migration both a local and a global phenomenon. As an example, attention is drawn to the situation facing South Asian children and their families in the UK. In terms of ethnicity and belonging, the wider question that is significant for many countries in the West after ‘Nine‐Eleven’ is the education of Muslim children. A consideration of this current situation throws Ogbu’s identification of ‘autonomous minority’ into question. It is argued that a greater understanding of diverse needs has to be accompanied by a concerted effort to confront racism and intolerance in schools and in society, thus enabling all communities to make a useful contribution and to avoid the ‘risk’ of failure and disenchantment.     

Exact algorithms for scheduling programs with shared tasks

We study a scheduling problem where the jobs we have to perform are composed of one or more tasks. If two jobs sharing a non-empty subset of tasks are scheduled on the same machine, then these shared tasks have to be performed only once. This kind of problem is known in the literature under the names of VM-PACKING or PAGINATION. Our objective is to schedule a set of these objects on two parallel identical machines, with the aim of minimizing the makespan. This problem is NP-complete as an extension of the PARTITION problem. In this paper we present three exact algorithms with worst-case time-complexity guarantees, by exploring different branching techniques. Our first algorithm focuses on the relation between jobs sharing one or more symbols in common, whereas the two other algorithms branches on the shared symbols.