Religious Nongovernmental Organizations: An Exploratory Analysis

This paper represents the first systematic attempt at an analysis of religious nongovernmental organizations (RNGOs). Largely ignored as an organizational field, RNGOs constitute a new breed of religious actors shaping global policy–an organizational hybrid of religious beliefs and social activism at local, national, and international levels. This paper proposes a definition of RNGOs, traces the emergence of RNGOs from an historical perspective, and situates them in their current religious and sociopolitical contexts. Drawing on interviews and documentary data from a sample of 263 United Nations-affiliated RNGOs, the author proposes an analytical framework to examine the religious, organizational, strategic, and service dimensions of these organizations. Religious nongovernmental organizations' unique contributions to the redefinition of a just society as well as the sociopolitical challenges arising from their religious identity are discussed.     

Factors Associated with Having Flextime: A Focus on Married Workers

To examine flexible work scheduling of married workers a conceptual framework was developed and tested using the 1997 Current Population Survey Work Schedules Supplement. Odds of flextime use were higher for married males, non-Hispanic whites, those with relatively higher levels of education and income, those with a preschool aged child, residents of the Midwest or West (as compared with the South), managers or professionals, and employees of the federal government.     

Wearing corset,losing shape: The euro's effect on trade imbalances

When does trade become a one-way relationship? We study bilateral trade balances for a sample of 18 European countries over the period from 1948 through 2008. We find that, with the introduction of the euro, trade imbalances among euro area members widened considerably, even after allowing for permanent asymmetries in trade competitiveness within pairs of countries or in the overall trade competitiveness of individual countries. This is consistent with indications that pair-wise trade tends to be more balanced when nominal exchange rates are flexible. Intra-euro area imbalances also seem to have become more persistent with the introduction of the euro, some of which is linked to labor market inflexibility. Reviewing the direction of imbalances, we find that bilateral trade surpluses are decreasing in the real exchange rate, decreasing in growth differentials, and increasing in the relative volatility of national business cycles. Finally, countries with relatively higher fiscal deficits and less flexible labor and product markets exhibit systematically lower trade surpluses than others.     

Empirical Likelihood Inference for the Rao‐Hartley‐Cochran Sampling Design

The Hartley‐Rao‐Cochran sampling design is an unequal probability sampling design which can be used to select samples from finite populations. We propose to adjust the empirical likelihood approach for the Hartley‐Rao‐Cochran sampling design. The approach proposed intrinsically incorporates sampling weights, auxiliary information and allows for large sampling fractions. It can be used to construct confidence intervals. In a simulation study, we show that the coverage may be better for the empirical likelihood confidence interval than for standard confidence intervals based on variance estimates. The approach proposed is simple to implement and less computer intensive than bootstrap. The confidence interval proposed does not rely on re‐sampling, linearization, variance estimation, design‐effects or joint inclusion probabilities.     

What Cruising Infants Understand about Support for Locomotion

“Cruising” infants can only walk using external support to augment their balance. We examined cruisers' understanding of support for upright locomotion under four conditions: cruising over a wooden handrail at chest height, a large gap in the handrail, a wobbly unstable handrail, and an ill‐positioned low handrail. Infants distinguished among the support properties of the handrails with differential attempts to cruise and handrail‐specific forms of haptic exploration and gait modifications. They consistently attempted the wood handrail, rarely attempted the gap, and occasionally attempted the low and wobbly handrails. On the wood and gap handrails, attempt rates matched the probability of cruising successfully, but on the low and wobbly handrails, attempt rates under‐ and overestimated the probability of success, respectively. Haptic exploration was most frequent and varied on the wobbly handrail, and gait modifications—including previously undocumented “knee cruising”—were most frequent and effective on the low handrail. Results are discussed in terms of developmental changes in the meaning of support.     

Consumption Dynamics During Recessions

Are there times when durable spending is less responsive to economic stimulus? We argue that aggregate durable expenditures respond more sluggishly to economic shocks during recessions because microeconomic frictions lead to declines in the frequency of households' durable adjustment. We show this by first using indirect inference to estimate a heterogeneous agent incomplete markets model with fixed costs of durable adjustment to match consumption dynamics in PSID microdata. We then show that aggregating this model delivers an extremely procyclical Impulse Response Function (IRF) of durable spending to aggregate shocks. For example, the response of durable spending to an income shock in 1999 is estimated to be almost twice as large as if it occurred in 2009. This procyclical IRF holds in response to standard business cycle shocks as well as in response to various policy shocks, and it is robust to general equilibrium. After estimating this robust theoretical implication of micro frictions, we provide additional direct empirical evidence for its importance using both cross‐sectional and time‐series data.     

Before you open the doors: ten lessons from Florida's Faith and Community-Based Delinquency Treatment Initiative

In 2003, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) provided Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) with a $3.5 million grant to design and implement a faith- and community-based program for incarcerated juveniles. Florida's experience developing a completely new program has provided valuable lessons regarding important issues to consider and address before clients are referred to the program. This article enumerates 10 key lessons from Florida's experience that can provide important guidance to other sites across the country hoping to develop faith-related services for youths in institutions.     

Allegations of child sexual abuse in parenting disputes: An examination of judicial determinations in the Family Court of Australia

This study examined Family Court of Australia (FCA) judicial determinations in parenting disputes when allegations of child sexual abuse (CSA) are made by an interested party, usually the mother. For the study, 156 published judgments from 2013–2015 were examined to measure how often allegations of CSA are substantiated, suspected to be true, and disbelieved. The characteristics most common in substantiated versus unsubstantiated cases, evidence of abuse presented, and resulting parenting orders were assessed. Findings indicate that, against international comparisons, FCA judges substantiate cases very conservatively, with rates of substantiation much lower than in other studies. Allegations made by mothers against fathers were disproportionately unsubstantiated, as were those which did not fall under the Magellan case management system. Cases where the only evidence of CSA was a child’s disclosure and parent’s allegation were common in both substantiated and unsubstantiated cases, meaning that a lack of other evidence does not preclude a positive finding of risk of CSA by the FCA. Those cases also involving a protection order against the accused were more likely to be substantiated. Confirmation biases and a judicial tendency to err on the side of false negatives are discussed.     

Deporting Fathers: Involuntary Transnational Families and Intent to Remigrate among Salvadoran Deportees

One‐fourth of deportees from the United States are parents of US‐citizen children. We do not know how separation from families affects remigration among deportees, who face high penalties given unlawful reentry. We examined how family separation affects intent to remigrate among Salvadoran deportees. The majority of deportees with children in the United States were also separated from their spouse, and the vast majority had US‐citizen children. Family separation was the single most important factor affecting intent to remigrate. We interpret these findings in light of immigration policy debates.