Book Review: NGOs and Civil Society: Democracy by Proxy?, Ann C. Hudock,Polity Press,Cambridge, 1999

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Economic analysis of age at first marriage

A subject of great interest to demographers is to relate the timing of demographic events to individual characteristics and environmental variables. Static models of marriage tend to give corner solutions, the choice of marriage or remaining single. This article develops an economic model of marriage which gives interior solutions to the optimum age at first marriage and which does not include an explicit argument about the age at marriage in the utility function. In theoretical analysis, life cycle model is modified to capture different aspects of the decision of when to get married. Results from empirical analysis support implications derived from the theoretical analysis.     

Job satisfaction in the marine and estuarine fisheries of Guinea-Bissau

This paper examines aspects of job satisfaction among small-scale fishers in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. The willingness of fishers to change métier or occupation is a central aspect of study, and gains relevance from the global degradation of marine environments. The author concludes that small-scale fishers are generally satisfied with the extent to which their and needs of self-realization and social life are met. They also express satisfaction with the state of the natural environment. However, fishers are less pleased with the fulfillment of basic needs and with the performance of fisheries managers.     

Immigrant Occupational Mobility: Longitudinal Evidence from Spain

This article examines the occupational mobility of immigrants between their countries of origin and Spain on the basis of one of the few surveys available internationally with longitudinal information on immigrant employment in home and host countries. The evidence shows that the occupational status of immigrants in the Spanish labour market is, in general, substantially worse than in their countries of origin. The severe loss of occupational status experienced by immigrants is explained by the combined effect of the intense initial downgrading they experience when entering the Spanish labour market and their very slow occupational progress during their stay in Spain. These findings are more in line with the segmented assimilation theory, which suggests a limited or blocked immigrant occupational mobility, than with the assimilation theory, which predicts a U shaped evolution in the occupational status of immigrants between their home and host countries. As a result, the Spanish case contrasts sharply with previous evidence for other advanced countries, which tends to support the assimilation perspective. Finally, the empirical evidence suggests that one of the elements impeding the occupational mobility of immigrants in Spain is the significant size of the secondary segment of the labour market, which restricts immigrants’ opportunities mainly to low-status occupations.     

Regional Differences in the Gender Wage Gap in Spain

This study examines regional differences in the gender wage gap in Spain using matched employer–employee microdata, two different econometric decomposition methods and panel data techniques. Our findings suggest that Spain shows a significant regional heterogeneity in the size of the raw gap, roughly comparable to cross-country differences observed in the European context. The results from the decomposition analysis show that although the bulk of the gender wage gap in Spanish regions is due to differences in the endowments of productive characteristics between males and females there is still a substantial part of the gap that remains unexplained. The analysis of the causes behind the variation of both, the raw and the unexplained gender wage gap by region highlights that several economic, institutional and demographic elements identified in previous studies analysing international differences in the gender wage gap are also relevant to explain regional differences in the gender wage gap in Spain.     

Variable order ante-dependence models

Ante-dependence models can be used to model the covariance structure in problems involving repeated measures through time. They are conditional regression models which generalize Gabriel’s constant-order ante-dependence model. Likelihood-based procedures are presented, together with simple expressions for likelihood ratio test statistics in terms of sum of squares from appropriate analysis of covariance. The estimation of the orders is approached as a model selection problem, and penalized likelihood criteria are suggested. Extensions of all procedures discussed here to situations with a monotone pattern of missing data are presented.     

Incentives in a Stage‐Gate Process

Many large organizations use a stage‐gate process to manage new product development projects. In a typical stage‐gate process project managers learn about potential ideas from research and exert effort in development while senior executives make intervening go/no‐go decisions. This decentralized decision making results in an agency problem because the idea quality in early stages is unknown to the executive and the project manager must exert unobservable development effort in later stages. In light of these challenges, how should the firm structure incentives to ensure that project managers reveal relevant information and invest the appropriate effort to create value? In this study, we develop a model of adverse selection in research and moral hazard in development with a go/no‐go decision at the intervening gate. Our results show that the principal's uncertainty regarding early‐stage idea quality—a term we refer to as idea risk—alters the effect of late‐stage development risk. The presence of idea risk can alter the incentives offered to the agent and may lead the principal to reject projects that otherwise seem favorable in terms of positive net present value. A simulation of early‐stage ideas, found through search on a complex landscape, shows that the firm can mitigate the negative effects of idea risk by encouraging breadth of search and high tolerance for failure.