Tuesday, May 31, 2005

2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty Report on Faculty and Instructional Staff in Fall 2003

"This publication is the first from the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:04), a study of faculty and instructional staff employed in degree-granting public and private not-for-profit postsecondary institutions in the United States. This report describes the gender, race/ethnicity, tenure status, and income of all faculty and instructional staff, by employment status, institution type, and program area." Source:National Center for Education Statistics

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Friday, May 27, 2005

Making Progress Toward Graduation : Evidence from the Talent Development High School Model

Talent Development, a high school reform initiative, produced substantial educational gains for students in very low-performing schools in Philadelphia. Talent Development increased school attendance by nine days per year for each student. For a high school with 500 first-time ninth-graders, it helped an additional 125 students pass algebra and an extra 40 students complete a basic academic curriculum and get promoted to tenth grade. There are also indications that positive effects are beginning to extend to eleventh-grade math test scores and to graduation rates. Source : MDRC

Link to site | PDF Download

Thursday, May 26, 2005

The Determinants of Faculty Patenting Behavior: Demographics or Opportunities?

Abstract:

We examine the individual, contextual, and institutional determinants of faculty patenting behavior in a panel dataset spanning the careers of 3,884 academic life scientists. Using a combination of discrete time hazard rate models and fixed effects logistic models, we find that patenting events are preceded by a flurry of publications, even holding constant time-invariant scientific talent and the latent patentability of a scientist's research. Moreover, the magnitude of the effect of this flurry is influenced by context --- such as the presence of coauthors who patent and the patent stock of the scientist's university. Whereas previous research emphasized that academic patenters are more accomplished on average than their non-patenting counterparts, our findings suggest that patenting behavior is also a function of scientific opportunities. This result has important implications for the public policy debate surrounding academic patenting.
Authors : Pierre Azoulay, Waverly Ding, Toby Stuart Source : NBER

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Media Reporting of Jury Verdicts: Is The Tail (of the Distribution) Wagging the Dog?

Abstract: In 1996, Daniel Bailis and I published a statistical content analysis of media reporting on tort litigation between 1980 and 1990, at the peak of the "tort reform" debate. Compared with objective data on tort cases, we found that the magazine articles considerably overrepresented the relative frequency of controversial forms of litigation (product liability and medical malpractice), the proportion of disputes resolved by trial (rather than settlement), the plaintiff victory rate at trial, and the median and mean jury awards. Since that study was published, several content analyses have extended our work with respect to methodology and legal domain (e.g., employment discrimination cases, air-bag litigation, pharmaceutical industry litigation). In my paper, I will first briefly review the findings of these studies and sketch out their implications for claiming rates, settlement rates, and deterrence. I will then contrast two classes of explanations for the distortion. One class involves functional explanations involving media markets, the political interests of corporations, and the motivations of ordinary citizens. The second class involves formal attributes of the trial narratives themselves (plot features, numerical magnitude, and so on). I will argue that a formal, perceptual account is surprising successful in accounting for the observed pattern of distortion. In contrast, the functional accounts are either tautological or contradictory. If in fact the media distorts trial outcomes in the service of powerful corporate interests, they may be doing those interests a disservice. Everything else being equal, rational choice and psychological accounts agree that exaggerated estimates of the expected value of a lawsuit should encourage blaming, claiming, large awards, and overdeterrence. Author : Robert J. MacCoun, Center for the Study of Law and Society Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program. Source: JSP/Center for the Study of Law and Society Faculty Working Papers.

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Cost of Probation Supervision Much Lower than Imprisonment: FY 2004 Costs of Incarceration and Supervision

"The cost of supervising a criminal offender on probation in fiscal year 2004 was $3,425.72. The cost for imprisoning an offender for that same year was $23,205.59." Source: Newsletter of the Federal Courts

Link to article

Census of Population and Housing : 1890 Census

Data now available online


The census of 1890 was taken, under the supervision of Robert P. Porter,1 according to an act of March 1, 1889, and modeled after that used for the 1880 Census.

The enumeration began on June 2, 1890, because June 1 was a Sunday. The census employed 175 supervisors, with one or more appointed to each state or territory, exclusive of Alaska and Indian territory. Each subdivision assigned to an enumerator was not to exceed 4,000 inhabitants. Enumeration was to be completed in cities with populations under 10,000 (according to the 1880 Census results) was to be completed within 2 weeks. Enumerators were required to collect all the information required by the act by a per­sonal visit to each dwelling and family.

As in 1880, experts and special agents were hired to make special enumerations of manufactures,2 Indians living within the jurisdiction of the United States, and a separate enumeration of Alaska. Furthermore, the schedule collecting social statistics was withdrawn from enumerators; the work of obtaining statistics concerning mines and mining, fisheries, churches, education, insurance, transportation, and wealth, debt, and taxation, also was conducted by experts and special agents.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Link to site

U.S. Voter Turnout Up in 2004, Census Bureau Reports

"Sixty-four percent of U.S. citizens age 18 and over voted in the 2004
presidential election, up from 60 percent in 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. Tables from a November survey also show that of 197 million citizens, 72 percent (142 million) reported they were registered to vote. Among those registered, 89 percent (126 million) said they voted. In the 2000 election, 70 percent of citizens were registered; and among them, 86 percent voted.

Other highlights from the Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2004 online tables pertaining to the voting-age citizen population:

* In 2004, turnout rates for citizens were 67 percent for non-Hispanic whites, 60 percent for blacks, 44 percent for Asians and 47 percent for Hispanics (of any race). These rates were higher than the previous presidential election by 5 percentage points for non-Hispanic whites and 3 points for blacks. By contrast, the voting rates for Asian and Hispanic citizens did not change. These data pertain to those who identified themselves as being of a single race.
* Minnesota had the highest citizen-voting rate at 79 percent, and North Dakota the highest citizen-registration rate at 89 percent.
* Citizens age 65 and older had the highest registration rate (79 percent) while those age 18 to 24 had the lowest (58 percent). The youngest group also had the lowest voting rate (47 percent), while those age 45 and older had the highest turnout (about 70 percent).
* Among citizens, turnout was higher for women (65 percent) than for men (62 percent). The turnout rate for people with a bachelor’s degree or higher (80 percent) was greater than the rate for people whose highest level of educational attainment was a high school diploma (56 percent).
* Seventy-three percent of veteran citizens cast ballots, compared with 63 percent of their nonveteran counterparts.

Voting rates in the online tables are calculated using the voting-age population, which includes citizens and noncitizens."
Source: U.S. Census

Press Release | Detailed Tables | Historical Data

Labor Force Characteristics of Foreign-born Workers

"This news release compares the labor force characteristics of the foreign born with those of their native-born counterparts. The data on nativity are collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly sample survey of approximately 60,000 households. The foreign born are persons who reside in the United States but who were born out- side the country or one of its outlying areas to parents who were not U.S. citizens." Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Link to online report

Buzz, Blogs and Beyond: The Internet and the National Discourse in the Fall of 2004

"Experimental research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project and BuzzMetrics suggests that political bloggers can make an impact on politics, but they often follow the lead of politicians and journalists. A report released today, entitled 'Buzz, Blogs and Beyond: The Internet and the National Discourse in the Fall of 2004,' employed new word-of-mouth tracking and cross-media correspondence techniques to examine the impact of online buzz on the national agenda during the last two months of the 2004 presidential election." Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project

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Allophilia: A Framework for Intergroup Leadership

Abstract: One of the most pressing concerns confronting leaders is intergroup conflict, often inspired or facilitated by prejudice. Not only might leaders inherit conflicts between political, religious, or organizational groups, but they may unwittingly contribute to them. Foundations of strong intragroup leadership, such as fostering strong group identification and cohesion, are often stepping stones to intergroup conflict. I refer to this as the "ingroup/outgroup leadership tradeoff." While the reduction of prejudice is essential to the reduction of intergroup conflict, I argue that the necessary approach is not to replace prejudice with the neutral stance of tolerance. Something critical lies beyond the reduction of prejudice and the promotion of tolerance: positive intergroup attitudes, allophilia. While the academic and applied literature on intergroup relations is well supplied with terms for negative intergroup attitudes (e.g., xenophobia, sexism, racism, anti-Americanism, classism, ageism, homophobia), there are surprisingly few terms for positive intergroup attitudes. Allophilia is a term I coin, derived from the Greek words meaning "liking, or love, of the other." The concept of allophilia provides a powerful anchor for a new framework for understanding intergroup leadership. To initiate the development of a framework of allophilia and leadership, I address three interrelated questions in this article: (1) What is allophilia in the context of intergroup relations?; (2) What role does-and might-allophilia play in intergroup leadership?; and (3) What are the keys to further developing allophilia as a framework for intergroup leadership theory and practice? The framework prompts leaders to push their societies and the world community away from the natural direction in which individuals and social system might otherwise unfold, leading them instead on a trajectory of positive intergroup relations. Author: By Todd L. Pittinsky | Source: Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government, Faculty Research Working Paper Series

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Tuesday, May 24, 2005

GATT Digital Library

"At present this site provides access to over 30,000 public documents and 200 publications of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The public documents include reports, studies, and meeting records covering a broad range of topics related to international trade in the post-war period. Each document bears a unique symbol number and the entire collection is searchable by a range of fields including symbol, date, keyword in title, keyword in title, and organization name."

Link to library site

Monday, May 23, 2005

Does Money Buy Happiness in Unhappy Russia?

ABSTRACT: Surveys rank Russians among the unhappiest people in the world. Contrary to popular accounts of a uniquely melancholic national character, the subjective wellbeing of Russians depends heavily on both individual and collective economic wellbeing. Individual differences in living standards account for much of the variation in happiness levels among Russians in cross-sectional survey data. These effects are particularly sharp when we expand our measure of economic status beyond income to incorporate household wealth. Individual changes in wealth, however, cannot explain the recent, dramatic improvement in the distribution of happiness in Russia. Based on panel analysis of longitudinal survey data, this shift should be attributed to the collective experience of recovery from the shock of the 1998 ruble crisis, rather than to individual economic trajectories. Authors: Jane Zavisca and Michael Hout Source:Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies.

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Friday, May 20, 2005

Freakonomics blog

Where "a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything." Authors Steven D. Levitt (CASBS fellow 2003) and Stephen J. Dubner offer this blog as a companion to their new best-seller Freakonomics. Previous posts include transcripts from interviews and updates.

Link to blog

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Would Equal Opportunity Mean More Mobility?

"Adult economic status is positively correlated with parental economic status in every society for which we have data, but no democratic society is entirely comfortable with this fact. As a result, all democratic societies have adopted policies aimed at reducing the effect of family background on life chances, and most left-of-center political parties think that governments should do even more. This paper makes two main arguments. First, equal opportunity does not imply eliminating all sources of economic resemblance between parents and children.... Second, the size of the correlation between the economic status of parents and their children is not a good indicator of how close a society has come to equalizing opportunity." Authors : Christopher Jencks and Laura Tach | Source: Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government, Faculty Research Working Paper Series

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An Exploratory Look at Supermarket Shopping Paths

"We present exploratory analyses of an extraordinary new dataset that reveals the path taken by individual shoppers around an actual grocery store, as provided by RFID (radio frequency identification) tags located on their shopping carts. In order to explore the spatial patterns observed in the data, we present a multivariate clustering algorithm not yet seen in the marketing literature that is able to handle data sets with unique (and numerous) spatial constraints. The resulting output conveniently summarizes each cluster with an observed shopping path, thus enabling us to familiarize ourselves with the 'canonical trip types' that are typical of grocery store travel." Source: Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania

Online Article | Full PDF Report

University of Minnesota Human Rights Library

"The University of Minnesota Human Rights Library houses one of the largest collections of more than twenty-one thousand core human rights documents, including several hundred human rights treaties and other primary international human rights instruments. The site also provides access to more than four thousands links and a unique search device for multiple human rights sites. This comprehensive research tool is accessed by more than a 175,000 students, scholars, educators, and human rights advocates monthly from over 135 countries around the world. Documents are available in six languages - Arabic, English, French, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish."

Link to Library

Head Start Reauthorization: Enhancing School Readiness for Hispanic Children

"This white paper serves as a tool for policy-makers and advocates to shape the Head Start reauthorization debate in order to address the school readiness needs of Latino children. Head Start is our nation’s premier early childhood education program; however, it can be improved to better meet the needs of Hispanic families. This analysis documents key access and quality challenges for Latinos, examines provisions in recent legislation to reauthorize Head Start, and provides policy recommendations for improving the program for Latino families." Source: National Council of La Raza

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A New Beginning: Strategies for a More Fruitful Dialogue with the Muslim World

"Focus groups in three Muslim countries--Egypt, Indonesia, and Morocco--show better communication could change opinions and reduce widespread anti-Americanism, concludes a Council Special Report, A New Beginning: Strategies for a More Fruitful Dialogue with the Muslim World." Source: Council on Foreign Relations

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Modernizing China's Military: Opportunities and Constraints

"Projects future growth in Chinese government expenditures as a whole and on defense in particular, evaluates the current and likely future capabilities of China’s defense industries, and compares likely future expenditure levels with recent defense expenditures by the United States and the U.S. Air Force. The authors forecast that Chinese military spending is likely to rise from an estimated $69 billion in 2003 to $185 billion by 2025-approximately 61 percent of what the Department of Defense spent in 2003." Source: RAND Corporation

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Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Leadership by the Numbers? It's One Part of Todd Thomson's Management Strategy at Citigroup

"At a time when the accounting scandals of Enron, WorldCom and other corporations are still fresh in people's minds, it's interesting to note that Todd S. Thomson, chairman and CEO of Citigroup Inc.'s Global Wealth Management division, describes the role of CFO as "the conscience of a company." Source: Knowledge@Wharton.

Read Full Interview

Republicans Divided About Role of Government - Democrats by Social and Personal Values

Beyond Red vs. Blue : "Republicans have neither gained nor lost in party identification in 2005. Moreover, divisions within the Republican coalition over economic and domestic issues may loom larger in the future, given the increasing salience of these matters. The Democratic party faces its own formidable challenges, despite the fact that the public sides with them on many key values and policy questions. Their constituencies are more diverse and, while united in opposition to President Bush, the Democrats are fractured by differences over social and personal values. " Source: The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

Report website includes questionnaire, and detailed demographic tables.
Link to website

Overworked and Overpaid: The Costs of Learning by Doing

Abstract: In medicine, law, consulting, and many other careers, a significant proportion of human capital is created throgh profession-specific learning-by-doing (LBD. In the absence of long-term wage contracts, if LDB effects are sufficiently large, then young workers should face a negative wage in return for high future wages. However, if workers are liquidity constrained, then young workers compete away those returns to expereience by working inefficiently hard. This inefficiency results in higher lifetime earning, causes older workers to exert too little effort, and tends to lower the observable (monetary) returns to experience. Unlilke traditional models, this can explain "career concerns" in professions where effort and ability are observable. Source: Institute of Industrial Relations. Institute of Industrial Relations Working Paper Series. Paper iirwps-119-05. Author: Marko Tervio, University of California, Berkeley

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Monday, May 16, 2005

The Economic Costs of Drug Abuse in the United States 1992–2002

"The economic cost of drug abuse in 2002 was estimated at $180.9 billion. This value represents both the use of resources to address health and crime consequences as well as the loss of potential productivity from disability, death and withdrawal from the legitimate workforce. This estimate has incorporated extensive new data, although several major components have been trended forward." Source: Office of National Drug Control Policy

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Friday, May 13, 2005

ClinicalTrials.gov

"ClinicalTrials.gov offers up-to-date information for locating federally and privately supported clinical trials for a wide range of diseases and conditions." The database "currently contains approximately 13,000 clinical studies sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, other federal agencies, and private industry. Studies listed in the database are conducted in all 50 States and in over 100 countries."

You can browse trials by condition, sponsor, and status. Valuable not only for those doing research on conditions, but also those conducting competitive intelligence on participating corporations. Searchable

Link to site

Thursday, May 12, 2005

The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2005

"In 2004, CAIR processed a total of 1,522 incident reports of civil rights cases compared to 1,019 cases reported to CAIR in 2003. This constitutes a 49 percent increase in the reported cases of harassment, violence and discriminatory treatment from 2003 and marks the highest number of Muslim civil rights cases ever reported to CAIR in our eleven year history." Source: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

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Life Histories of North American Birds

"A web browser-based electronic book collection of Life Histories of North American Birds, selected from the hundreds of species biographies assembled and written by Arthur Cleveland Bent and his collaborators and published in a twenty-one volume series between 1919 and 1968 by the United States Government Printing Office. "

About the Work of Arthur Cleveland Bent (1866-1954)
His extraordinary Life Histories of North American Birds, published in a twenty-one volume series (1919-1968), provided behavioral information not available in the standard field guides. These pioneering studies are the durable foundation on which almost all other compilations of North American bird biology (including the contemporary Birds of North America) rest. In them Bent and his collaborators present, in enthusiastic, readable prose, comprehensive information about courtship, nesting, eggs, young, plumages, food, behavior, voice, enemies, and more. Readers who supplement their field guides with these delightful accounts acquire a deeper understanding of both the birds and their observers (as well as an interesting cultural history lesson).

Link to Site


Publication and the Internet: Where Next?

"There are, I believe, two important components to a new publishing model. The first is to rely as much as possible on the authors of scientific papers to take over functions now carried out by scientific journals. Good software tools can facilitate this. The second is to recognize tasks that -- irreducibly -- require professional editors and staff, and to assign the real costs and collect revenues for these tasks. In the following, I will quote costs for these services as a fraction of the present cost for the Physical Review to process a paper." Source: APS News

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Foreign Doctoral Dissertations Database

Center for Research Libraries (CRL) "has more than 750,000 uncataloged foreign doctoral dissertations, of which approximately 20,000 are included in this database."

Link to Database

The Hive and the Honey Bee

"The Hive and the Honeybee now consists of the full text of ten books from the Phillips Collection, chosen by a team of scholars for their historical importance and usefulness to beekeepers today. Each book is fully searchable." Source:Albert R. Mann Library at Cornell University.

Books by author:
  • Alley, Henry. The beekeeper's handy book, or, Twenty-two years' experience in queen-rearing, containing the only scientific and practical method of rearing queen bees, and the latest and best methods for the general management of the apiary Henry Alley, Wenham, Mass. : 1883.
  • Doolittle, Gilbert M.. Scientific queen-rearing as practically applied; being a method by which the best of queen-bees are... T. G. Newman, Chicago : 1889.
  • Dzierzon, Jan. Dzierzon's rational bee-keeping, or, The theory and practice of Dr. Dzierzon Houlston & sons, London : 1882.
  • Huber, François. New observations on the natural history of bees Printed for J. Anderson ; Edinburgh : 1806.
  • Langstroth, L.L. Langstroth on the hive and the honey-bee; a bee keeper's manual... Hopkins, Bridgman, Northampton : 1853.
  • Miller, C. C. Fifty years among the bees A. I. Root Co., Medina, Ohio : 1911.
  • Munn, W. Augustus. A description of the bar-and-frame hive John Van Voorst, London : 1844.
  • Phillips, Everett Franklin. Beekeeping [1915?]
  • Quinby, M. Mysteries of bee-keeping explained; being a complete analysis of the whole subject : ... C. M. Saxton & Co., New York : 1853.
  • Root, A. I. The A B C of bee culture; a cyclopædia of everything pertaining to the care ... A.I. Root, Medina, Ohio : 1879.
Link to Site

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Renditions: Constraints Imposed by Laws on Torture

"This report discusses relevant international and domestic law restricting the transfer of persons to foreign states for the purpose of torture. The U.N. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), and its domestic implementing legislation (the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998) impose the primary legal restrictions on the transfer of persons to countries where they would face torture." Author: Michael John Garcia, Legislative Attorney Source: Congressional Research Service

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The Grand Old Spending Party: How Republicans Became Big Spenders

"The GOP was once effective at controlling nondefense spending. The final nondefense budgets under Clinton were a combined $57 billion smaller than what he proposed from 1996 to 2001. Under Bush, Congress passed budgets that spent a total of $91 billion more than the president requested for domestic programs. Bush signed every one of those bills during his first term. Even if Congress passes Bush’s new budget exactly as proposed, not a single cabinet-level agency will be smaller than when Bush assumed office." Source: The Cato Institute

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Attention, Speculators: Here's a Lesson from Hong Kong's Housing Bubble

"Whenever housing prices soar -- in Shanghai, San Francisco or Santiago -- experts wonder whether the cause is a speculative bubble that could eventually burst, causing widespread distress. Such frenzied swings are not confined to real estate alone, of course, as any investor who lost his shirt during the dot-com mania of the 1990s knows. What causes such bubbles? Is there a way of spotting them while the bubble is actually being formed -- rather than after the fact? A new research paper that examines volatility in Hong Kong's residential market between 1992 and 1997 offers interesting insights into these questions." Source: Knowledge@Wharton

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Commerce Department Forecasts Record Arrivals and Spending by 2006 for Travel to the United States

"The United States is projected to achieve record arrivals and receipts by 2006, according to the semi-annual Forecast of International Travel to the United States released today by the U.S. Department of Commerce. In 2006, the United States is forecasted to host more than 52 million international visitors who will generate almost $110 billion in exports. The previous record arrival year was 2000 when over 51 million international travelers visited the United States." Source: U.S. Department of Commerce

Press Release
Forecast of Top Overseas Travel Markets to the United States
Forecast of International Travel to the United States

Small Classes in the Early Grades, Academic Achievement, and Graduating From High School

"It is well established that small class size in the early elementary grades boosts student achievement in those grades and allows students to be more engaged in learning than they are in larger classes. But there has been little research on the long-term effects of small class size. A new study involving a large sample of students followed for 13 years shows that four or more years in small classes in elementary school significantly increases the likelihood of graduating from high school, especially for students from low-income homes." Source: Journal of Educational Psychology (via American Psychological Association)

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Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Is the Melting Pot Still Hot? Explaining the Resurgence of Immigrant Segregation

Abstract : "This paper uses decennial Census data to examine trends in immigrant segregation in the United States between 1910 and 2000. Immigrant segregation declined in the first half of the century, but has been rising over the past few decades. Analysis of restricted access 1990 Census microdata suggests that this rise would be even more striking if the native-born children of immigrants could be consistently excluded from the analysis. We analyze longitudinal variation in immigrant segregation, as well as housing price patterns across metropolitan areas, to test four hypotheses of immigrant segregation. Immigration itself has surged in recent decades, but the tendency for newly arrived immigrants to be younger and of lower socioeconomic status explains very little of the recent rise in immigrant segregation. We also find little evidence of increased nativism in the housing market. Evidence instead points to changes in urban form, manifested in particular as native-driven suburbanization and the decline of public transit as a transportation mode, as a central explanation for the new immigrant segregation." Source : NBER

Link to PDF Report (available to Stanford Community)

Human language: Resources from linguistics and beyond

"This article aims at introducing and reviewing language-related Internet sites covering computational linguistics, which is closely interconnected with library and information science, computer science, and engineering, as well as linguistics per se, which itself is interconnected with various disciplines. These sites encompass language data covering field notes, lexical resources, written and spoken corpora, and language fonts and software, together with second-language learning resources, linguist-mediated digitization activities for preserving endangered human cultures and languages, e-books and e-journals, and more."

Link to site

FRASER - The Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research

"The Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research (FRASER™) is a unique project of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis that currently consists of over 40 thousand pages of historical economic data. The goal of FRASER™ is to contribute to the quality of scientific economic research through the creation of a public electronic archive of economic statistical publications and data, furthermore, it represents a logical extension of the long-standing mission of the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis to provide timely and convenient data to scholars, analysts, students and interested observers of the U.S. economy."

Link to Site

Poverty and Place in North America

"This paper provides an overview of poverty in North America: in Mexico, the United States and Canada. It begins with an overview of growth and inequality in the three countries. The second section of the paper presents concepts and measures of poverty and reports the overall incidence of poverty in the three countries using various measures. The third section explores the relationship between the level of economic development and poverty, both between and within countries. The fourth section looks at the relationships between household composition and poverty and between race/ethnicity and poverty in the US and Mexico. The final section briefly raises policy issues that emerge from the analysis." Source: Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government, Faculty Research Working Paper Series Authors : Mary Jo Bane and Rene Zenteno

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Does Teacher Preparation Matter? Evidence about Teacher Certification, Teach for America, and Teacher Effectiveness

"Recent debates about the utility of teacher education have raised questions about whether certified teachers are, in general, more effective than those who have not met the testing and training requirements for certification, and whether some candidates with strong liberal arts backgrounds might be at least as effective as teacher education graduates. This study examines these questions with a large student-level data set from Houston, Texas that links student characteristics and achievement with data about their teachers’ certification status, experience, and degree levels from 1995-2002." Source: American Educational Research Association Authors: Linda Darling-Hammond, Deborah J. Holtzman, Su Jin Gatlin, Julian Vasquez Helilig

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Migrants entering or leaving the United Kingdom and England and Wales, 2003

"...provides detailed estimates about international migrants for the years 1994 to 2003. t includes analyses by citizenship, country of last or next residence, main reason for migration, usual occupation, age and sex and length of stay. Headline figures of international migration in 2003 were published on 4 November 2004." Source: National Statistics Office, UK

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Data-Mining Journals and Books: Using the Science of Networks to Uncover the Educational Resarch Community

"To investigate the process through which the educational research community can become more vibrant and cohesive, the authors of this article ask: How can the numerous networks that constitute the field of educational research be analyzed in an effort to understand and influence the pattern through which knowledge of educational phenomena are exchanged? The authors contend that understanding these complex networks will illuminate the dynamic processes through which community members identify with one another, researchers collaborate, and ideas connect—three social processes that shape replication and generalization efforts. The authors outline three ways in which examining the field’s members and products can be used to move closer to the ambitious yet attainable goal of establishing an academic community that exchanges information in ways that allow others to confirm, extend, and generalize research findings." Source: American Educational Research Association

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State Court Sentencing of Convicted Felons -- Statistical tables

"Presents detailed data from the nationally representative sample survey of felons convicted in State courts in 344 counties. Tables present the number of felony offenders in State courts, sentences received, demographic characteristics of convicted felons, the number of felons sentenced to probation, the number of felons convicted by trial and guilty plea, and the time required to process felony conviction cases." Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics

Tables are available in both PDF and Spreadsheet format

Link to download site

How Program Officers at Education Philanthropies View Education

"This paper examines the educational views of program officers at education philanthropies. It reports the results of a survey conducted in 2005."Source: The Brookings Institution, Brown Center on Education Policy Author : Tom Loveless Senior Fellow, Governance Studies

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Hispanics Gaining Jobs But Suffering Worse Wage Losses in U.S. Labor Force

"Hispanic workers accounted for more than 1 million of the 2.5 million new jobs created by the U.S. economy in 2004. But Hispanics are the only major group of workers to have suffered a two-year decline in wages and they now earn 5 percent less than two years ago, according to a Pew Hispanic Center analysis of latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau." Source: Pew Hispanic Center

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Tuesday, May 03, 2005

The Evolution of the Mexican-Born Workforce in the United States

Abstract : "This paper examines the evolution of the Mexican-born workforce in the United States using data drawn from the decennial U.S. Census throughout the entire 20th century. It is well known that there has been a rapid rise in Mexican immigration to the United States in recent years. Interestingly, the share of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. workforce declined steadily beginning in the 1920s before beginning to rise in the 1960s. It was not until 1980 that the relative number of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. workforce was at the 1920 level. The paper examines the trends in the relative skills and economic performance of Mexican immigrants, and contrasts this evolution with that experienced by other immigrants arriving in the United States during the period. The paper also examines the costs and benefits of this influx by examining how the Mexican influx has altered economic opportunities in the most affected labor markets and by discussing how the relative prices of goods and services produced by Mexican immigrants may have changed over time." Source : NBER

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(available to Stanford Community)