Gorbachev's Wage Reform

The wage reform, an aspect of perestroyka, is described as it affects industry, and changes in the wage system are outlined. To stimulate better work, wages are being raised and differentials increased; to induce economies in labor, wage increases are to be financed from the enterprise's income. Self-financing and implementation of the reform to date are addressed as well, as are inconsistencies between the wage reform rules on self-financing and those of the Law on the State Enterprise. Finally, problems such as enterprise footdragging and unemployment and prospects for continued reform, inflationary pressure, and worker morale are considered. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: 027, 124, 824.     

Evaluating essential health packages from a human rights perspective

Many countries at all levels of development have formulated an essential health package, sometimes also referred to as a health benefit plan or a health benefit basket. As defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), essential health packages (EHPs) are “health service interventions that are considered important and that society decides should be provided to everyone.” Although EHPs are not often formulated from an explicitly human rights perspective, since they are conceptualized as a guaranteed minimum of health services, much like core health obligations, they have obvious human rights import. This article evaluates the principles from which the plans are developed, the content of the packages, and the experience of countries seeking to implement them from a human rights perspective. In the process, it seeks to gain greater clarity about the health service requirements of the right to health.     

Unemployment and Crime: Toward Resolving the Paradox

While official crime statistics from many countries show that unemployed people have high crime rates and that communities with a lot of unemployment experience a lot of crime, this cross-sectional relationship is very often not found in time-series studies of unemployment and crime. In Australia there have been no individual-level or cross-sectional studies of unemployment and adult crime which have failed to find a positive relationship and no time-series which have supported a positive relationship. Consistent with this pattern, a time series of homicide from 1921 to 1987 in Australia reveals no significant unemployment effect. A theoretical resolution of this apparent paradox is advanced in terms of the effect of female employment on crime in a partriarchal society. Crime is posited as a function of both total unemployment and female employment. When female employment is added to the model, it has a strong positive effect on homicide, and unemployment also assumes a strong positive effect.     

Predicting crime story salience: A replication

This study examined the presentation of crime stories in the media, and filled three gaps within the large body of research in this area: First, it examined the presentation of crime news in different sized cities with significantly different crime rates. Second, it examined not only the content of crime stories, but importantly addressed what factors explain the prominence of crime stories. Third, it demonstrated the importance of using multivariate statistical techniques in conjunction with content analysis. Consistent with previous research in this area, the study found that journalistic decision-making on crime news was influenced primarily by the seriousness of the offense. In addition, the occupation of the defendant was also important. This study also showed, however, that there was considerable variation depending on the size of city. Specifically, the seriousness of a crime event had a limited impact in cities with lower crime rates. Implications for media studies are discussed.     

Familiarity breeds contempt? Knowledge and understanding of democracy,support for democratization,and global city residence in Russia

Using Russian survey data from 2011 to 2012, this article examines public understanding of and support for democratization in a semi-authoritarian context. When knowledge of democracy is weak, and conceptual understanding of democracy is mixed—as in Russia—traditional measures of democratic support inadequately capture demand for democratization; that is, for more democracy than currently perceived. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Russians who adhere to “textbook” political definitions of democracy are more, not less, likely to advocate democratization. Residence in global cities increases support for democracy and democratization, while education fosters the latter but not the former. Other traditional indicators of middle-class status, such as income and urbanization, lack consistent effects. Based on these results we re-evaluate the mechanism linking modernization and support for democracy in developing, non-democratic societies. Rather than exert social-psychological or normative effects, modernization works primarily by raising exposure to global political discourses that define and promote democratic government.     

Sex differences in earnings: An analysis of Malaysian wage data

The conventional human capital earnings function is applied to a rich set of Malaysian wage data in an attempt to determine the origins of sex differences in average earnings. Several findings are of interest, the first being that the relationships estimated from the earnings function are similar to those typically reported for non‐LDCs. Second, less than a third of the average monthly wage difference between the sexes of about 34 per cent appears to be the consequence of either females having lower (measured) productivity than males, or females receiving lower rates of return to human capital than males. The major part of the earnings difference is apparently a consequence of employment distributions: females are much more likely to be in the low‐paying occupations.