Gender differences in willingness to compete: The role of public observability

A recent literature emphasizes that gender differences in the labor market may in part be driven by a gender gap in willingness to compete. However, whereas experiments in this literature typically investigate willingness to compete in private environments, real world competitions often have a more public nature, which introduces potential social image concerns. If such image concerns are important, and men and women differ in the degree to which they want to be seen as competitive, making tournament entry decisions publicly observable may further exacerbate the gender gap. We test this prediction using a laboratory experiment (N = 784) that varies the degree to which the decision to compete, and its outcome, is publicly observable. We find that public observability does not alter the magnitude of the gender gap in willingness to compete in an economically or statistically significant way.     

当今中国社会主义建设的纲领性文件——浅析十六大报告对《共产党宣言》的继承和发展

<共产党宣言>所开创的伟大事业,在中国共产党的继承、发展和创新下,取得了举世瞩目的成就.十六大是我党在新时期召开的一次极为重要的会议,会议通过的报告从多方面继承和发展了<共产党宣言>的基本观点,是当今中国社会主义建设的纲领性文件,是新世纪初中国社会主义建设的<共产党宣言>.     

与时俱进的道德建设论要

党的十六大报告关于道德建设的思想体现了与时俱进的理论品质 ,是对社会主义道德建设经验的科学总结 ,是理论创新与实践创新、道德理想与现实的有机结合 ,丰富和发展了马克思主义道德理论。在全面建设小康社会的历史新时期 ,我们需要坚持与时俱进的社会主义道德建设实践。正确处理好先进性与广泛性、他律与自律、中国特色与世界伦理文化等方面的关系     

把握灵魂,抓住精髓,实现富民强市新跨越--学习党的十六大精神的体会和思考

认真学习、深刻领会、全面贯彻十六大精神 ,为实现十六大确定的各项目标任务而奋斗 ,是当前和今后一个时期的首要政治任务。深刻领会十六大精神 ,必须围绕主题 ,把握灵魂 ,抓住精髓。全面落实十六大精神 ,必须紧紧扭住“第一要务” ,牢牢铭记“两个务必” ,深刻理解和自觉实践“三个代表” ,以改革的精神推进党的建设新的伟大工程 ;必须立足扬州 ,狠抓落实 ,求真务实 ,实现富民强市、建设名城的新跨越 ;在这一过程中 ,必须大力实施“科教兴国”战略 ,努力争创新世纪发展的新辉煌     

学习贯彻十六大精神,推进“两课”教育教学的创新

学习贯彻十六大精神,推进“两课”教育教学的创新@赵书爱$华北水利水电学院人文社科部!河南郑州450011     

The Roles Played by the Staff and Workers’ Representative Congress in the Formation of Work Regulations

Article 4 of the Labor Contract Law lays down the right of the Staff and Workers’ Representative Congress (SWRC) to deliberate on the formulation of (intra-enterprise) work regulations, but this has become a “soft” law in judicial practice. The judicial criteria for judging the validity of work regulations are in essence determined by the judge’s judgment on their reasonableness. As an important embodiment of Chinese politics, economics and culture, the transformation of the SWRC that accompanied the market economy has not negated its value as an indigenous traditional resource. The SWRC does not just enjoy deliberative rights in the formation of regulations, as clearly specified in constitutional law, but also has rights under the law in local legislation and practice. Hence the system of work regulations is neither a unilateral decision on the part of management nor a contract, but rather an autonomous norm developed through the SWRC mechanism. Given the mandatory nature of Article 4 of the Labor Contract Law, regulations will only be valid after they have gone through a democratic process. The further development of the theory of normative system formation should endow the SWRC with greater rights and integrate it smoothly with the collective contract system to standardize collective labor relations.     

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.     

Is There a Double‐Negative Effect? Gender and Ethnic Wage Differentials in Italy

This paper investigates the gender and ethnic wage differentials for female migrants in Italy by applying the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition, with and without Heckman correction, to account for self‐selection into the labour market. The gender wage gap is nearly 15 per cent, more than 60 per cent of which is unexplained by observable differences. The ethnic wage gap is much larger (39 per cent), but endowments explain 53 per cent of the gap. We also estimate the double‐negative effect of being both female and a migrant. A female migrant earns 42 per cent less than an Italian male; the unexplained component is estimated to be 53–65 per cent. Results are robust to different specifications.     

Sex, self-interest and health care priorities

In this questionnaire study, individuals were asked to prioritise publicly provided preventive health care services, one of which would be unavailable to them by virtue of their sex. The aim was to establish whether men and women would exhibit different degrees of self-interest when making a constrained choice. Around 1800 subjects from east-central England prioritised three different types of cancer screening. Most also provided written explanations for their rankings and these were classified into explanatory themes. Logistic regressions using socio-demographic and attitude data predicted the type of screening chosen as first priority. The analysis revealed that many men and women did indeed assign similar priorities to the different types of screening and, even when the priorities differed, these were often justified by similar arguments relating to technical aspects of the interventions and to self-interest. However, women were far more likely than men to prioritise a type of screening from which they themselves would benefit directly and the variations in preferences and explanations between the sexes occurred primarily because of differences in other-regarding attitudes. The bias towards screening of females was driven by women's greater worries about the disease in question and by men's “benevolent sexism” with respect to women's wellbeing.     

Vowel harmony redux: Correct sounds,English loan words,and the sociocultural life of a phonological structure in Korean1

This paper examines an ideology of standard pronunciation and spelling of English loan words in South Korea through the lens of Korean vowel harmony. I focus specifically on the alternation between an older Japanese‐style ‘a’[a] and a newer Korean‐style ‘?’[?] for the mapping of mid‐vowels from English to Korean. The opposition between ‘a’ and ‘?’ also figures into the dichotomy of vowel classes between ‘yang’ or ‘light’ vowels and ‘yin’ or ‘dark’ vowels in Korean vowel harmony. This opposition is pervasive in Korean's rich stock of denotationally iconic words (e.g. onomatopoeia), where ablaut between vowel classes produces semantic and pragmatic contrasts. I suggest that this latter structure of phonological opposition has an influence on speakers’ perceptions of vowel difference and associated values in English loan words, despite an overarching ideology of standard pronunciation that is based on assumptions about phonetic fidelity. ? ??? ?? ???? ?? ?? ? ??? ? ?????? ????? ?? ??? ???? ????. ??, ?? ???? ‘?’[a]? ‘?’[?]? ??(mapping)?? ?? ??? ??. ??? ?? ????? ‘?’? ?? ?? ??? ? ?????? ???? ???? ??(正音)?? ?????? ??. ?? ‘?’? ????? ???, ??? ???? ??? ????? ?(音)?? ???? ??. ???, ‘?’/‘?’? ??? ??? ???? ?? ????? ????? ??; ?, ??? ????? ????? ??? ??. ??, ????? ???? ????? ??? ??? ??? ? ? ??. ????, ????? ????? ????? ??? ?? ???? ????? ??? ??? ???. [Korean]