Mobilität,Wahlbeteiligung und Sozialkapital in Schweizer Gemeinden

This paper investigates the relationship between mobility and voting behavior at different spatial levels. To this end, voter turnout in local municipality issues is compared to that in national matters. We find that the difference between local and national turnout strongly correlates with the mobility of a municipality's population. An explanation for the observed negative relationship is that social networks and the sense of duty towards the local community are weaker in municipalities where people are more mobile. In addition to this core result, it is discussed how mobility affects turnout at the local and national level separately, and it is shown how the different measures might be used as proxies for local social capital in a municipality.     

Changing classes,changing preferences: how social class mobility affects economic preferences

Abstract

While many studies have identified an association between social class and economic preferences, we know little about the implications of changes in class location for these preferences. This article assesses how social class and intra-generational class mobility affect economic preferences drawing on longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey. In doing so, the article adopts a post-industrial perspective that considers horizontal and vertical class divisions. Even when time-invariant characteristics of individuals are kept constant (through fixed-effects estimation), it is found that both vertical and horizontal class location explain economic preferences. Thus, these estimations suggest that social class moulds preferences, even when accounting for factors that can lead to selection into classes. Moreover, people who change classes hold different economic preferences than their peers in the class of origin, but do not completely assimilate into their class of destination. This implies that growing intra-generational class mobility could undermine the class basis of political conflict.     

Visas and work permits: Possible global negotiating initiatives

We discuss global options for initiatives intended to ameliorate adverse impacts of visa and work permit systems used by national governments around the world. We first describe and document some of their effects, noting the relative lack of other research work on these issues. We then discuss proposals for a new and supplemental global visa structure which have been made as part of the Mode 4 GATS negotiations in the WTO, suggesting that the GATS/WTO may be an imperfect institutional location for negotiating on these matters. We then evaluate other approaches, including what realistically could be possible if a new body specifically created for global negotiation in the area were to be used.

论承包土地稳定与流动的关系

当前许多地方对承包土地有一个片面的理解 ,认为承包土地稳定 ,就是不能动 ,动了就会违背国家的政策 ,其实这是对国家政策的一种误解 ,承包土地应在流动中稳定 ,在稳定的基础上流动。目前 ,应规范、完善和稳定农民的承包权 ,在稳定承包权的基础上 ,推进土地有序流动     

结构性变动对劳动生产率的影响：模型与实证

结构性改革的重点是通过经济结构变动、调整和优化,在市场配置的基础上充分促进劳动力流动,让低效率部门劳动力充分向高效率部门流动,从而激发劳动者的生产积极性,促进劳动生产率增长。因此,理论上两部门结构性效率差异模型分析了高效率部门和低效率部门之间劳动力流动对于激发劳动者积极性、提升劳动生产率的影响。在此基础上,使用1978-2017年城乡结构、产业结构、所有制结构、区域结构等年度时间序列数据,分析各自对于劳动生产率变动的影响。计量结果表明,在各种结构性变动因素影响劳动生产率的作用中,按照大小顺序依次是城市化、区域经济适度均衡并允许有条件区域加快发展、市场化和产业结构优化。因此,要通过有效促进城镇化、发达区域经济适度领先发展、市场化和产业结构高度化,来提高劳动生产率。     

Does the Feldstein–Horioka puzzle exist among South Asian countries? A regime‐switching approach

A plethora of literature has been undertaken to study the validity of the Feldstein–Horioka (FH) puzzle. However, divergent views continue to persist in the FH puzzle literature. This study explores the empirical validity of the FH puzzle in the case of South Asian countries using annual data from 1960 to 2017. Both panel data approach and Markov‐switching regression approach are used to empirically analyze the FH puzzle. The results of the cointegration test confirm the long‐run relationships between saving and investment in the selected South Asian countries. The results of Markov‐switching regression confirm that the saving‐retention coefficient has shifted from high to low values and also from low to high values. Thus, the FH puzzle exists for a particular time period and mostly depends on the regime shifts in the South Asian countries. The results of panel fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) methods also confirm that FH puzzle holds for the South Asian countries. Therefore, the study suggests that any saving promotion policies are desirable for enhancing investment among the South Asian regions.     

A ‘society … divisible into the blessed and the unblessed’: Michael Young and Meritocracy in Postwar Britain

‘Meritocracy’ continues to unfold as both core conceptual framework and political ideal of the language of social mobility. In recent decades, politicians of various hues have declared it a sine qua non of the so-called ‘classless society’. The longer trajectory of postwar discourses of equality reveal a more chequered conceptual past. Its origins in the forums of revisionist social democracy of the 1950s, and subsequently popularised in the writings of social democratic polymath, Michael Young, are much more circumspect. The article considers pivotal contributions and developments of this conceptual history and trajectory. It considers the origins and emergence of meritocracy as a dimension of discourses of equality in the 1950s, and the formative contribution of Michael Young, reaction and responses on the left to his 1958 seminal work, The Rise of the Meritocracy, and the subsequent ‘meritocratic turn’. In spite of its satirical origins and warnings of dire social consequences, meritocracy presently enjoys a confirmatory position as a concept of opportunity and social mobility, as an embedded ideal of social organisation and means of allocating differential rewards.     

Walking Away From The Wire: Housing Mobility and Neighborhood Opportunity in Baltimore

Families using the Housing Choice Voucher Program rarely experience large gains in neighborhood or school quality when compared with unassisted poor renters. Research on housing mobility programs has reached mixed conclusions about whether vouchers can improve neighborhood and school quality, especially in the long term. We revisit these findings using new data from the partial remedy to the Thompson v. HUD desegregation case in Baltimore, known as the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program (BHMP). Through targeted vouchers, intensive counseling and innovative policy features, the BHMP helped families move to low-poverty, nonsegregated neighborhoods with higher performing school districts. We examine residential outcomes for the first 1,800 families that moved through the program for a period of up to 9 years. We find that BHMP families moved to more integrated and affluent neighborhoods, in school districts with more qualified teachers and fewer poor students—and most families stayed in these neighborhoods beyond their initial lease-up period. Eventually, a small proportion of families moved to neighborhoods that are less white, but still significantly less poor and less segregated than their original communities. We interpret these findings in light of past mobility programs and discuss policy implications for the Housing Choice Voucher Program.     

Migration and the formation of transnational economic networks between Africa and Turkey: the socio-economic establishment of migrants in situ and in mobility

Turkey is often perceived as a transit place for migrants and refugees from the African continent. While many indeed continue to other countries and the country still precludes official local integration, the past decade has witnessed a growing number of African migrants settling in Istanbul. This article draws attention to the opportunity structures that enable this type of settlement. The article presents the argument that it is the presence of small-scale transnationally embedded traders from the same countries that enable the socio-economic stability of their co-nationals both locally as well as transnationally. The concept that is able to account for this development is establishment in situ and establishment in mobility, which is seen as exactly the definitional barrier between transit and settlement.     

Intergenerational Interactions

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine interactions between elder volunteers and children in a campus-based child care center, using the revised Interaction Analysis Instrument (Newman & Onawola, 1989). Findings from video-taped interactions suggested that intergenerational interactions may be systematically related to the nature of specific program activities. Thus it may be important for program coordinators to consider the kind of intergenerational interactions they want to facilitate when choosing among various intergenerational activities. Additional recommendations are offered to child-care and elder-care organizers who are interested in developing intergenerational programs.