Look Who's Talking: The Impacts of the Intrahousehold Allocation of Mobile Phones on Agricultural Prices

Using data from the Philippines, we study the impact of mobile phones on the prices agricultural producers receive for their cash crop. We first look at the impact on price of mobile phone ownership at the household level. Because this masks a considerable amount of heterogeneity, we then look at the impact on price of the intrahousehold allocation of mobile phones. We find that whether the household owns a mobile phone has no impact on price, but whether a farmer or spouse owns a mobile phone is associated with a 5- to 8-per cent increase in price.     

WHEN WAL-MART WIMPED OUT

Abstract

This article offers one China analyst's perspective on a variety of questions related to the unionization of all sixty-six Wal-Mart outlets in China. Why did China force Wal-Mart to unionize? If, as Marx, paraphrasing Hegel, wrote, “all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice,” is Mao making his comeback? Or if, as Marx immediately continued in his own right, “He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce,” is Hu Jintao playing Louis Bonaparte to Mao's Napoleon? Is the Chinese state acting out of a new level of confidence that it can now challenge the world's most prepossessing corporate giants in order to make good on its communist commitments? Is it running scared in the face of a working class that has at last managed to score a victory? Or is it actually strengthening its power through time-honored tactics of mass organizational control that have not really changed despite the new market context? Are China's workers being protected, empowered, or co-opted and subjected to new forms of state control? And why did one of the world's most militantly antiunion corporations go along? Did they have a choice? Did they fear China's state-run union federation? And finally, what does all this portend for the future of labor relations in China?     

A Review of Alcohol‐Impaired Driving: The Role of Blood Alcohol Concentration and Complexity of the Driving Task

The operation of a motor vehicle requires the integrity of sensory, motor, and intellectual faculties. Impairment of these faculties following the consumption of alcohol has been studied extensively through laboratory, closed‐course and on‐road driving, and epidemiological studies. The scientific literature was reviewed critically, with a focus on low‐to‐moderate blood alcohol concentrations (BAC ≤ 0.100%), to identify the most reliable determinants of alcohol‐impaired driving. Variables such as age, gender, driving skill, and tolerance were shown to have limited impact on impairment. It was concluded the most relevant variables are BAC and complexity of the driving task. The scientific literature provides a high degree of confidence to support the conclusion that a BAC of 0.050% impairs faculties required in the operation of a motor vehicle. Whether impairment is apparent depends upon the complexity of the driving task, which applies to both study design and actual driving.     

Sacrificial lambs,women candidates,and district competitiveness in Canada

Women's continued political underrepresentation suggests that women candidates might be more likely than men to be ‘sacrificial lambs’ – that is, more likely than men to serve as party standard bearers in districts where their party has little chance to win. Using data from the 2004–2011 Canadian federal elections, we find support for the sacrificial lamb hypothesis when district competitiveness is measured dynamically, rather than statically. Our dynamic measurement of district competitiveness further shows that women incumbents' seats are not as safe as are men's. We conclude that these two factors help to explain why women remain underrepresented in Canadian federal politics.     

The parliamentary reforms of the Witte administration (October 19, 1905‐April 23, 1906)

SUMMARY

This article examines mobility across constituencies among members of parliament in eighteenth-century Britain, using quantitative methods. Recent historiography has suggested that more attention should be paid to those members who changed seats during their careers in the House of Commons. The scale and significance of that movement, however, has remained unexplored. The article begins by showing that about half of the 2,217 members examined changed seats at least once during their careers and that the frequency of movement varies with the type of constituency they represented. For example, members sitting for English independent constituencies (counties and open boroughs) tended to change scats rather infrequently. Mobility was more apparent for boroughs under the control of patrons. This article also considers why this occurred, by paying attention to the inclination of members to take office under the crown. Members sitting for independent constituencies were less inclined to take office, because they were usually local men and tended to have closer relations with their electorates, who were suspicious of office-holding members. In contrast, members who owed their seats to patrons could behave more autonomously, for they did not depend upon electorates. Thus they probably changed scats more frequently in order to avoid the constraints of locality and patronage.     

Productivity and fiscal pressure

Under the pressure of fiscal crises, elected officials and their constituents are demanding that productivity improvement be institutionalized in government. Pressured public administration is responding with innovations ranging across measurement and auditing, joint labor-management cooperation, incentives tied to performance, training, information resources, microcomputer applications, and new means of financing productivity investments. Potential progress is limited, however, by bureaupathologies, private sector assumptions, capital underfunding, statutory or procedural obstacles, and labor-management differences. Nevertheless, public sector productivity programs promise to benefit all interested parties.     

Organization theory as ideological battleground in the year 2000

Organization theorists have always been divided among departments of political science, public administration, business, and so on, but they have traditionally shared a common acceptance of the natural science model as the vehicle for building new knowledge. The growth of nontraditional approaches to organization theory has led to conflict between mainstream and dissenting theorists on two levels: First, is the choice of topics to be studied a value-neutral decision, or is it a subtle way of promoting a traditional ideological agenda? Second, is the scientific method itself a vehicle for subtly introducing a bias into organization theory scholarship? The gap between mainstream and nontraditional scholars is wide and becoming wider; sadly, the prospects are bleak for a synthesis of these two approaches.