In Books One Finds a House of Gold: education and labor market outcomes in urban China

Data from a 1999–2000 survey of urban workers are employed here to examine the role of education and other factors in both preventing lay-offs and obtaining re-employment. The data are also used to compare the effect of education on the earnings of re-employed workers to that of workers who have never been laid off. The empirical results demonstrate that by the late 1990s education had become a key determinant of successful labor market outcomes. The more education a worker had, the less likely he or she was to be laid off. Similarly, the more education a worker had, the better his or her chances of finding new employment once laid off. Interestingly, the education of workers who experienced a lay-off and then found new employment was rewarded more, in terms of incremental earnings for each additional year of schooling, than that of continuously employed workers.     

Utilization of Employment Tax Credits: An Analysis of the Empowerment Zone Wage Tax Credit

This paper provides estimates of utilization for the Empowerment Zone (EZ) wage tax credit, a subsidy claimed by employers who operate in and hire residents of federally designated areas experiencing economic distress. The EZ credit is currently the largest employer‐based wage tax credit in the federal tax code in terms of dollars claimed, with almost $250 million claimed in 2002. I show that about 6.4 percent (and at least 3.5 percent) of the working age population was claimed under the EZ wage credit in 1999. In addition, I estimate that 24.2 percent (and at least 13.1 percent) of those employed inside of the target area were claimed for the credit. I create these national estimates of use with information on credit dollars claimed from the Internal Revenue Service and population data on the eligible population from the census. These measures of tax credit use are an alternative to the use rate of firms that are presented in the existing literature, and reveal how effective the credit is at reaching residents of the target area.     

FEAR OF CRIME IN RESIDENTIAL COMMUNITIES

Three variables were hypothesized to cause a fear of crime and a potential change in behavior. These were: (1) crimes against a person rather than crimes against property; (2) a crime committed in an area frequented rather than a crime occurring in an area one never entered; (3) a recurring crime rather than a crime that occurred once. Two different samples of female subjects (n = 249) were approached at their residences and were asked to read one of a number of fictitious crime stories that the news media supposedly had not reported and to complete two scales measuring: (1) an emotional response to crime and (2) a potential behavioral response to crime. The results indicate that a physical assault produces both more fear and more potential behavioral change than a burglary. A crime that occurs eight times causes people to consider taking precautions in comparison to a crime that occurs once. There is some evidence that a crime in an area one frequents causes more fear than a crime occurring in an area one never enters.     

Attitudes Toward Pornography in a Southern Community

The Supreme Court has determined that obscene speech should not be protected under the First Amendment, but an unambiguous definition of obscenity is required if negative legal sanctions are to be enforced without jeopardizing due process. According to current guidelines, a media presentation of sexually explicit materials must exceed limits of sexual candor to be defined obscene. However, establishing such limits requires articulation of a normative standard for a specified population—a population defined by the court as being a community. The present research is designed to identify such limits of sexual candor within a community in the South. The results demonstrate the existence of ambiguity in the articulation of community standards. First, little consistency is found between personal standards and the perceptions of community standards. This lack of consistency presents a problem for jury deliberation since a single frame of reference is not available to guide jurors in reaching decisions on obscenity. Second, both perceptions of community standards and personal standards are significantly influenced by extracommunity factors of sex, age, race, education, religiosity, and moral rigidity. Existence of such effects raises the additional question of jury bias in the event that there is an overrepresentation of any one segment of the community on a jury.