Industry, occupation, and disability insurance beneficiary work return.

This article uses the New Beneficiary Data System to describe the first job held after award of Disability Insurance benefits, in terms of occupation and industry. It examines work activity within sectors of employment, and looks at the issues of whether work return in certain industries and occupations varies according to the demographic characteristics of the beneficiaries. The article also presents data on sector-specific employer accommodations that can aid in sustained work return. Postentitlement work was fairly evenly distributed across occupational and industrial sectors. Persons with higher levels of educational attainment were found to be in white-collar employment sectors. There were noticeable differences in the availability of employer accommodations across postentitlement occupations and industries.     

Specificity versus representativeness: methodological approaches to the study of Mexico-U.S. migration

"This article compares two sources of data on Mexico-U.S. migration, based on radically different methodologies: the Mexican Migration Project (Promig) and the National Survey of Population Dynamics (Enadid).... This comparative study shows that a micro-social design drawing on multiple community samples, such as Promig, can solve the methodological conflict between specificity and representativeness.... The authors' research also highlights the problem of selectivity and specificity entailed by traditional surveys such as Enadid as a result of restricting their samples to international residents in Mexico and attempting to explain such a complex, socioeconomic process using a limited number of variables." (EXCERPT)     

TexPool's Experiences in the 1990s: Policy Implications for Other State Investment Pools

The State of Texas's local government investment pool, TexPool, has faced major challenges in the 1990s. This article provides an overview of two major events involving TexPool: (1) a $2.2 billion "run" on the pool in 1994 and (2) the out-sourcing of TexPool's functions in 1997. The article describes these events and analyzes potential implications for other state-administered investment pools. The article addresses issues such as: (1) the need to develop investment policies and practices that are suitable for a particular pool's objectives and purpose, (2) whether a state government has a responsibility to ensure that participants in a state investment pool do not incur losses, (3) the possible implications of having an elected official as the person with primary responsibility for overseeing the pool, and (4) concerns related to the outsourcing of state investment pools. This article is intended to encourage debate on the policies and practices of state investment pools, which currently are serving more than 15,000 local governments in the United States.     

The China model of Korean reunification

Like Germany's reunification, essentially the annexation of East Germany by West Germany, Korean reunification looms as most likely, ultimately and largely entailing South Korea's annexation of North Korea. The awesome cost borne by West Germany for reunification has been instructive to South Korea, particularly in recognition that the material and ideological gaps between North and South Korea are far greater than those which existed between East and West Germany. A possible solution to the negative implications of cataclysmic reunificationmay rest in gradual reunification of the Koreas, with an interim industrialization of North Korea by South Korea, based on the model of the economic development zones in southeastern China; hence, the “China Model”. In such a scenario the investors in North Korea's gradual industrialization would be (primarily) the huge conglomerate South Korean corporations chaebol which seek cheaper labor pools abroad. Investment by such corporations, in cooperation with the South Korean government, and possibly supplemented by western and Japanese capital investment, would presumably raise levels of productivity and the standard of living in the economically and agriculturally ravished North. The North-South gaps would thus be gradually reduced as would the financial and other burdens South Korea would otherwise have to bear for cataclysmic reunification.