Exploring types of interference between work and non-work: using a diary study approach

Studies of work and family issues have used predominately between-subject cross-sectional designs. While some researchers have called for more longitudinal studies, others have suggested that a more strategic way forward for the field is the use of daily diary studies (Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1992). This study explores different types of interference between work and non-work domains, using a diary study methodology. This study consisted of a two-week diary study among 12 Irish employees. Analysis involved a two-step procedure involving both content analysis and interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Results indicated that while individuals reported strain-based and time-based interference, evidence was also found of interference concerning persistent and intrusive thoughts. Despite some limitations to the study, this paper demonstrates that diary studies represent an opportunity for researchers to explore work and non-work experiences in a sensitive and ecologically valid way.     

Excluding Institutionalized Elderly from Surveys: Consequences for Income and Poverty Statistics

Growing life expectancy and changes in financial, marriage and labour markets have placed the income position of the elderly at the center of scientific and political discourse. As a consequence, the last decades witnessed the publication of various influential reports that contained comparative statistics on old age income inequalities on the basis of international surveys. Common to these surveys is that they exclude the elderly who live in institutions. The divergence between the target population (e.g. the population aged 65 and over) and the survey population (e.g. the noninstitutionalized population aged 65 and over) that thus arises, might lead to important bias in the survey results. However, hardly any research has been conducted quantifying the direction and strength of this bias. This article tries to fill this gap and assesses the consequences of excluding the institutionalized elderly for the validity and international comparability of a number of indicators. Analyses with the Belgian Datawarehouse Labour Market and Social Protection show that the resulting bias is negligible for average equivalent pension income, but that assistance dependency among pensioners is underestimated by 10%. Furthermore, on the basis of international statistics, it is shown that the share of elderly in institutions varies substantially across countries. It is argued how this jeopardizes the international comparability of old age statistics. Finally, the article opens up a discussion on the meaning of lack of income and wealth among institutionalized elderly. It concludes that depending on how this question is answered, poverty will be under- or overestimated in countries with a high share of institutionalized elderly.     

PROFIT‐MAXIMIZING GATE REVENUE SHARING IN SPORTS LEAGUES

In this article, I examine how sports leagues can use gate revenue sharing to coordinate talent investments and maximize club profits. Gate revenue sharing reduces incentives to invest in talent. Initially lower investments boost profits, because total costs go down, but investing less also shrinks revenues, which harms profits at higher levels of sharing. The league maximizes profits by setting a sharing rule, which balances these two effects. Gate revenue sharing decreases talent investments more strongly in leagues with heterogeneous rather than homogeneous local market sizes. As a result, the profit‐maximizing level of sharing is higher for relatively homogeneous leagues. This implies that more balanced leagues are expected to share more gate revenues than less balanced leagues. It also explains why gate revenue sharing is widely used in the U.S. major leagues, while it is largely absent in European soccer. (JEL L41, L83)     

THE MEANING OF WORK AND HOME

In contemporary society, work and home represent the two most significant domains in the life of a working individual. Changes in family structures and technological changes (e.g. mobile phones and portable computers) that enable job tasks to be performed in a variety of locations have blurred the boundaries between work and home. This all suggests that the meaning that people may have attached to these domains has changed also. The present research uses in-depth qualitative interviews with 10 employees from an Information Technology company to explore the meaning of each persons work and home domain, and the ways in which they interact. Interviews were transcribed into text documents and analysed. Frequency of word use provided a socio-linguistic profile of the words that participants used when asked to talk about their work and home domains. Content analysis of the sentences relating to work and home provided a measure of how frequently respondents talked about their home-life when asked about work, and vice versa. In addition, each participant filled out an adapted version of the PANAS, which assessed affective state in both the work and home domains specifically. Results are discussed in relation to the generation of future hypotheses.     

Explaining the Wage Gap: Intra-Industry Trade, Services Linkages and Falling Transportation Costs

In the debate on globalisation and wage inequality within countries, Heckscher–Ohlin theory has featured prominently, yet fails to take into account that globalisation comprises much more than increased trade between advanced and less-advanced countries. This paper develops a framework that takes better heed of the many aspects of globalisation and thereby addresses a new channel through which globalisation might influence wage inequality. Our results indicate that to understand the impact of globalisation on wage inequality, one needs insight in the nature and stage of globalisation and the relative size of a country.     

Stress at work, social support and companionship: Towards an event-contingent recording approach

After outlining a taxonomy of perspectives on social support, the literature on the direct and buffer effects of social support with respect to occupational stress is reviewed. It is noted that negative direct and buffer effects of support are frequently observed. Methodological and theoretical explanations for these contradictory findings are presented. It is argued that a different methodological approach is needed to examine such explanations. Three studies-among police officers, secretaries, and correctional officers-are briefly described in which the Daily Interaction Record in Organizations (DIRO) was used. With this event-contingent recording method, social interactions and stressful events are assessed over a period of 5 days, allowing the detailed examination of the processes involved in supportive interactions, and of the effects of such processes.     

Food Prices,Government Subsidies and Fiscal Balances in South Mediterranean Countries

Soaring food and energy prices sparked the revolts in Northern African countries at the end of 2010. This article investigates empirically the impact of world food prices on inflation and government subsidies for Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the occupied Palestinian territories and Tunisia during the ten‐year period 2002–11. Its findings reveal an asymmetry in the response of consumer‐price inflation to shocks in world food prices that made inflation rise fast while nominal rigidities prevented it from falling. Moreover, it shows that government balances deteriorated to 2% of GDP in 2008 and 2011 owing to the incremental government food subsidies, while they hardly improved in value terms when world prices fell sharply in 2009.     

Gender Gaps in Educational Outcomes Among Children of New Migrants: The Role of Social Integration from a Comparative Perspective

This article reviews current research on gender gaps in educational outcomes among children of new migrants (first, 1.5, and second generations) from a comparative cross‐national perspective. The article examines potential explanations for why gendered differences in educational outcomes among immigrants (vis‐à‐vis non‐migrants) continue to occur, focusing on individual, schooling, and institutional factors. For example, while gender gaps in expectations and aspirations as well as some cognitive outcomes are increasing (reading ability is considerably higher among females) and shrinking in specific subjects (e.g. math and science ability is slightly higher among boys), that process often has been less explored within and across immigrant vis‐à‐vis non‐immigrant students. We show that in some countries, gender gaps among disadvantaged ethnic minorities (in relation to other groups) continue to persist and are exacerbated by institutional factors. These disadvantages vary not only across different educational systems and at different rates over time but also are based on students' social background. Overall, we argue that these educational inequalities are key to understanding not only the socioeconomic and future political adaptation of migrants and their children but also future social policy developments in the European Union context.