Economic Explanations for Opposition to Immigration: Distinguishing between Prevalence and Conditional Impact

What explains variation in individuals’ opposition to immigration? While scholars have consistently shown cultural concerns to be strong predictors of opposition, findings regarding the labor‐market competition hypothesis are highly contested. To help understand these divergent results, we distinguish between the prevalence and conditional impact of determinants of immigration attitudes. Leveraging a targeted sampling strategy of high‐technology counties, we conduct a study of Americans’ attitudes toward H‐1B visas. The plurality of these visas are occupied by Indian immigrants, who are skilled but ethnically distinct, enabling us to measure a specific skill set (high technology) that is threatened by a particular type of immigrant (H‐1B visa holders). Unlike recent aggregate studies, our targeted approach reveals that the conditional impact of the relationship in the high‐technology sector between economic threat and immigration attitudes is sizable. However, labor‐market competition is not a prevalent source of threat and therefore is generally not detected in aggregate analyses.     

Comment on David Listokin,Barbara Listokin,and Michael Lahr's “The contributions of historic preservation to housing and economic development”: Historic preservation in a neoliberal age

Abstract

Listokin, Listokin, and Lahr argue that historic preservation can function as a community development tool, but there are numerous deficiencies inherent in this method that make it a less‐than‐desirable way to revitalize. Historic preservation generally leads to gentrification that in turn displaces many low‐income households. The historic rehabilitation tax credit also represents a circuitous means of providing affordable housing that would be more effectively delivered through direct subsidy.     

Migration as a Tool in Development Policy: Caution Ahead?

The World Bank and UNDP have proposed that migration and mobility facilitate economic development. Yet the epidemiological and public health literature has often associated migration and population mobility with the extension and intensification of infectious diseases, most recently epitomised by the AIDS pandemic. Within the context of the well-documented negative developmental impact of AIDS, this suggests a potential clash in perspectives on the role of migration. However, if insights from public health can be incorporated into broader development perspectives, it may be possible to realise the developmental benefits of migration while mitigating or avoiding any associated health concerns.     

Do Term Limits Restrain State Fiscal Policy? Approaches for Causal Inference in Assessing the Effects of Legislative Institutions

Scholars of state politics are often interested in the causal effects of legislative institutions on policy outcomes. For example, during the 1990s a number of states adopted term limits for state legislators. Advocates of term limits argued that this institutional reform would alter state policy in a number of ways, including limiting state expenditures. We highlight a number of research design issues that complicate attempts to estimate the effect of institutions on state outcomes by addressing the question of term limits and spending. In particular, we focus on (1) treatment effect heterogeneity and (2) the suitability of nonterm‐limit states as good counterfactuals for term‐limit states. We compare two different identification strategies to deal with these issues: differences‐in‐differences (DID) estimation and conditioning on prior outcomes with an emphasis on synthetic case control. Using more rigorous methods of causal inference, we find little evidence that term limits affect state spending. Our analysis and results are informative for researchers seeking to assess the causal effects of state‐level institutions.     

Building Norms from the Grassroots Up: Divestment,Expressive Politics,and Climate Change

The fossil fuel divestment movement is at the forefront of civil society initiatives to raise public consciousness about the need for a “fossil‐free” future. Through the lens of the social movement literature, this article shows how the movement has harnessed grassroots activists, engaged in innovative and sometimes disruptive forms of protest, and used cognitive framing and symbolic politics to gain media interest and persuade the public of the importance and legitimacy of its claims as well as to promote a new social norm. The relative instrumental, structural, and discursive power of the movement and its adversaries is also examined, showing how, notwithstanding the fossil fuel industry's deeply embedded structural and instrumental power, the movement has managed to shift the contest onto a terrain where it holds a comparative advantage. Finally, the movement's role in nonstate climate governance is considered, taking account of its interactions with and impact on a range of other climate actors. This article's conclusion is that climate governance is not only an instrumental or pragmatic process of mandating changes in behavior but an expressive and symbolic one of nurturing a new norm and institutionalizing a new set of moral principles.     

IP: It's also about trust and French chefs

There is a principle in the law known as ‘admission againstinterest’. Here is my own admission. While we are delightedto bring together this collection of quality articles aboutthe multifaceted world of IP licensing and technology transfer,something is missing: we need to broaden our coverage aboutthe diverse ways that IP rights are licensed and transferred. To judge from the professional literature, licensing and technologytransfer primarily address the exploitation of patents, copyright,and trade marks. Each of these rights is based upon disclosureand     

The Parliamentary Standards Act 2009: A Constitutional Dangerous Dogs Measure?

The scandal which broke over MPs' abuses of the allowances system during the course of the last parliamentary session shows little sign of abating. As a result of an audit undertaken by Sir Thomas Legg, some MPs have been required to repay sums which were successfully claimed up to five years ago. Although this development has been welcomed by the public, it has been condemned by some in Parliament as being retrospective and unfair. In this article, the discussion focuses on the key provisions of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 which was enacted in order to tackle the issues raised by the expenses scandal. It considers their import and how they are likely to apply in practice. Since the Act is a further example of ‘fast‐track’ legislation, there was no opportunity for pre‐legislative scrutiny. This may help to explain why the Act differs in several important respects from the Bill which was originally introduced. It is highly likely that the 2009 Act will be the subject of post‐legislative scrutiny, especially since it contains a renewal provision.     

Organizational Trust and the Limits of Management‐Based Regulation

This article examines the relationship between management‐based regulation and occupational health and safety through two case studies. The first describes how corporate occupational health and safety systems and standards were interpreted and implemented differently at different mine sites within the same company and examines the particular role of trust between workers and management in explaining variations in occupational health and safety performance. The second explores the difficulties of moving from a highly devolved system of responsibility to a more centralized approach, and the incapacity of externally mandated management‐based regulation to change behavior at site level in the absence of a supportive workplace culture. The article argues that notwithstanding the heavy emphasis currently being placed on both internal (company‐driven) and external (government‐driven) management‐based regulation, a commitment at corporate level does not necessarily percolate down to individual facilities where ritualistic responses or resistant subcultures may thwart effective change. The findings have important implications for the effectiveness of management‐based regulation and meta‐regulation more broadly.     

The New Collaborative Environmental Governance: The Localization of Regulation

This article examines the new collaborative environmental governance, an enterprise that involves collaboration between a diversity of private, public, and non-government stakeholders who, acting together towards commonly agreed goals, hope to achieve far more collectively, than individually. Such an approach appears to blur the familiar sharp boundaries that separate 'the state' from civil society, yet we still know very little about exactly what this blurring of public and private adds up to, and what its implications are. This new form of governance is examined through the lens of three Australian case studies. Each of these studies involves participatory dialogue, flexibility, inclusiveness, transparency, institutionalized consensus-building practices, and, at least to some extent, a shift from hierarchy to heterarchy. The paper examines the relationships between new and old governance, the architecture of these new initiatives, the role of the state, and the importance of negotiating in 'the shadow of hierarchy'.