Many Americans Uneasy with Mix of Religion and Politics

"The relationship between religion and politics is a controversial one. While the public remains more supportive of religion's role in public life than in the 1960s, Americans are uneasy with the approaches offered by both liberals and conservatives. Fully 69% of Americans say that liberals have gone too far in keeping religion out of schools and government. But the proportion who express reservations about attempts by Christian conservatives to impose their religious values has edged up in the past year, with about half the public (49%) now expressing wariness about this." Source: Pew Research Center

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American Work Life is Worsening, But Most Workers Still Content

"Americans believe that workers in this country are worse off now than a generation ago - toiling longer and harder for less in wages and benefits, for employers who aren't as loyal as they once were, in jobs that aren't as secure, and in a global economy that might very well send their work overseas." Source: Pew Research Center

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Cubans in the United States

"Compared with the rest of the Hispanic population in the United States, Cubans are older, have a higher level of education, higher median household income and higher rate of home ownership. While there are important differences among Cubans, particularly between those who arrived before 1980 and those who arrived in subsequent years, as a group Cubans in the United States are distinct in many ways from the rest of the Hispanic populations." Source: Pew Hispanic Center

Online Report Link | Link to fact sheet (PDF)

U.S. v. Moussaoui documents

"The following web pages link to all 1,202 exhibits admitted into evidence during the trial of U.S. v. Moussaoui, with the exception of seven that are classified or otherwise remain under seal. This is the first criminal case for which a federal court has provided access to all exhibits online. The exhibits were posted on July 31, 2006.

Many of these exhibits are extremely large files; to view them, a broadband Internet connection is strongly recommended."

Link to site

Digital South Asia Library

"The Digital South Asia Library provides digital materials for reference and research on South Asia to scholars, public officials, business leaders, and other users. This project builds upon a two-year pilot project funded by the Association of Research Libraries' Global Resources Program with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Participants in the Digital South Asia Library include leading U.S. universities, the Center for Research Libraries, the South Asia Microform Project, the Committee on South Asian Libraries and Documentation, the Association for Asian Studies, the Library of Congress, the Asia Society, the British Library, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, MOZHI in India, the Sundarayya Vignana Kendram in India, Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya in Nepal, and other institutions in South Asia."

Link to Site

Early California Population Project

"The Early California Population Project (ECPP), a database developed by the Huntington Library, provides public access to all the information contained in the California mission registers from 1769 - 1850. Within the baptism, marriage, and burial records of each of the California missions sits an extraordinary wealth of unique information on the Indians, soldiers, and settlers of Alta California. But the vast potential of California’s mission records has in many ways remained unexploited. The original registers are scattered across California and too old and too brittle to handle. Microfilm copies of the registers exist in archives but are of poor quality and often hard to locate. Understanding the registers--written as they are in eighteenth-century Spanish script--demands rare skills and enormous effort. Lacking adequate staff and resources to facilitate genealogical and historical research, libraries, archives, missions, and dioceses each year turn away countless individuals who are eager to study early California’s Indian, Hispanic, and Anglo-American inhabitants." (free registration required)

Link to site

Are Levels of Democracy Influenced by Mass Attitudes? Testing a Central Premise of the Political Culture Approach

"Most research on political culture is driven by the assumption that mass attitudes impact on democracy. Despite the centrality of this premise, evidence showing that attitudes affect the level of democracy a society attains and sustains is rare and inconclusive in major points. This article presents the most comprehensive such evidence to date, testing attitudinal variables from three main schools in the political culture literature, as predictors of six different measures of democracy, using data from almost 70 societies. The results are remarkably consistent. Regardless of which measure of democracy is used, emancipative attitudes outperform other types of attitudes, giving the best predictions of later measures of democracy. This finding holds controlling for the impact of structural societal factors, such as economic development, world market integration, ethnic fractionalization, and prior democracy. Further specifications of the causal mechanism show that emancipative attitudes help both to attain and to sustain high levels of democracy. I conclude that a pro-democratic political culture is most firmly rooted in emancipative attitudes." Source: Center for the Study of Democracy. U.C. Irvine

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NSA domestic surveillance constitutionality ruling [US DC]

"ACLU v. NSA, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, August 17, 2006 [rejecting the government's assertion of the state secrets privilege, holding that the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program is unconstitutional and ordering the government to immediately cease using warrantless wiretaps to intercept communications of suspected terrorists when one party to the communication is outside the US]." via the Jurist

Download the PDF full text of the opinion | Download the PDF of the judgment and permanent injunction order.

Imad Mugniyah, Hezbollah’s Elusive Mastermind

"Relatively little is known about Imad Fayez Mugniyah, considered one of the most influential members of Hezbollah's inner circle. He is thought to be the organization's chief international operator, a shadowy figure behind its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, and he has been linked to nearly every major terrorist operation executed by Hezbollah over the last twenty-five years. Mugniyah was the most wanted terrorist in the world before Osama bin Laden came onto intelligence radar screens, and he remains a prime target of U.S. counterterrorism forces." Source: Council on Foreign Relations

Link to online backgrounder

Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision?

"A large and growing literature links high levels of ethnic diversity to low levels of public goods provision. Yet while the empirical connection between ethnic heterogeneity and the underprovision of public goods is widely accepted, there is little consensus on the specific mechanisms through which this relationship operates. To gain analytic leverage on the question of why ethnicity matters, we identify three families of mechanisms – what we term preference, technology, and strategy mechanisms. Our empirical strategy is to identify and run a series of experimental games that permit us to examine these mechanisms in isolation and then to compare the importance of ethnicity in each. Results from experimental games conducted with a random sample of 300 subjects in Kampala’s slums reveal that successful collective action among homogenous ethnic communities in urban Uganda is attributable to the existence of norms and institutions that facilitate the sanctioning of non-contributors. We find no evidence for a commonality of tastes within ethnic groups, for greater degrees of altruism toward co-ethnics, or for an impact of shared ethnicity on the productivity of teams." Source: Institute for the Study of Labor

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Americans See Weight Problems Everywhere But In the Mirror

"Americans believe their fellow Americans have gotten fat. They consider this a serious national problem. But when they think about weight, they appear to use different scales for different people.

Nine-in-ten American adults say most of their fellow Americans are overweight. But just seven-in-ten say this about "the people they know." And just under four-in-ten (39%) say they themselves are overweight." Source: Pew Research Center

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Understanding Global Imbalances

"Two contemporary issues provide reason to focus on national saving and investment: the debate over public pensions, and pensions more generally, in all rich countries; and the large global current account imbalances, conceptually the difference between national savings and domestic investment. Are we all saving enough to provide adequate retirement income for rapidly ageing populations—especially Americans, whose household savings seems to have disappeared altogether in 2005? And are the countries with large external deficits—notably the United States—mortgaging the income of future generations inappropriately, not to mention courting financial calamity in the meantime?" Source: Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University

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Statistics Calculators

UCLA provides online statistics calculators to the public.

Link to site

Defense Department shelves proposal to increase restrictions on foreign scientists

Report from Chron. of Higher Ed. (Subscription Required): "The U.S. Defense Department has backed off a proposal to require significant new controls, including security badges and restricted laboratory space, for foreign researchers working with sensitive technology at American universities. Instead, the agency said it would require researchers working on its contracts to follow existing "export control" rules of the U.S. Commerce and State Departments.

Instead, the agency said it would require researchers working on its contracts to follow existing "export control" rules of the U.S. Commerce and State Departments, which are designed to keep technology and weapons important to national security from falling into the hands of terrorists or spies."


Link to: Department of Defense announcement in Federal Register

Why money doesn’t bring happiness

from the Press Release: "For the article, titled "Would you be happier if you were richer? A focusing illusion," Princeton University psychologist Daniel Kahneman (CASBS fellow 1978) and colleagues, including University of Michigan psychologist Norbert Schwarz (CASBS fellow 2001), analyzed the link between money and happiness, presenting new evidence showing that what they call "the focusing illusion" affects how people respond when asked how happy or how satisfied they are with their lives.

"When people consider the impact of any single factor on their well-being—not only income—they are prone to exaggerate its importance," they wrote."


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American Attitudes Hold Steady in Face of Foreign Crises

"The public is paying a great deal of attention to major overseas events - the reported terrorist plot against U.S. trans-Atlantic jet liners, the war in Lebanon, as well as the ongoing violence in Iraq. However, there is little indication that these dramatic stories have materially changed public attitudes. Worries about another terrorist attack have not surged. The public continues to express high levels of support for Israel, even as a sizable minority views Israel as mostly responsible for the civilian casualties arising from the fighting. And while more Americans say the U.S. is losing ground in preventing a civil war in Iraq, basic attitudes about the conflict are largely unchanged." Source: Pew Research Center for People and the Press

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International AIDS Conference Materials Online

The 2006 International AIDS Conference official website offers A five-page fact sheet to go along with the address of World Health Organization's (WHO) HIV/AIDS Director Dr Kevin De Cock's address.

Download PDF fact sheet | Download PDF full text WHO Director's Address

California History Lectures

The Bancroft Library is pleased to present a series of seven lectures of California history, first recorded before a live audience in its Edward H. Heller Reading Room on the University of California, Berkeley campus and broadcast on KQED FM. These one-hour lectures include a 10-minute question and answer period with the audience, moderated by Dr. Charles Faulhaber, Director of The Bancroft Library. In announcing the broadcasts on KQED FM, Ms. Jo Anne Wallace, Vice President and General Manager of KQED Public Radio stated, "We are delighted to be joining with an esteemed institution like The Bancroft Library to demonstrate that history can be exciting. We believe our KQED listeners will find these talks both extremely interesting and highly educational." Dr. Faulhaber added, "We hope the programs will stimulate interest in and support of The Bancroft Library, which contains indispensable resources for understanding the history of California and western North America. These programs will help us develop the public's understanding of the depth of resources at Bancroft. We hope this will be the first in a long series of interesting and informative Bancroft programs with KQED Public Radio." Source: Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

Link to lectures

The Arts and State Governments

Even though a majority of Americans claim to support public funding of the arts, state government spending on the arts is minimal — and may be losing ground relative to other types of state expenditures. Moreover, most state arts agencies, or SAAs, have not succeeded in convincing state government leaders that the arts should be integral to their planning for their states’ futures. This report, the second in a series commissioned by The Wallace Foundation to cover the findings of a multiyear RAND Corporation study of SAAs’ changing roles and missions, examines SAA leaders’ efforts to more firmly establish their agencies’ value to state government in a changing political and fiscal environment. Case studies of two SAAs are used to illustrate a more strategic approach to public management, and to clarify some of the risks and rewards of bringing the arts and political worlds closer together. Source: RAND Corporation

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Visible Invisibility: Women of Color in Law Firms

“Despite the efforts of law firms to expand diversity efforts, Hispanic, African-American, Native American and Asian-American women lawyers in law firms nationwide report a lack of networking and access to significant billable hours, being skipped over for client development opportunities and desirable assignments, and being subjected to demeaning comments or harassment and unfair performance evaluations.” Source: American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession

Download PDF Report | Link to press release

Waking Up on the Wrong Side of the Desk: The Effect of Mood on Work Performance

"The researchers found that both positive and negative moods affect employee productivity, but that positive moods are more potent. Most importantly, they discovered, the mood you bring with you to work has a stronger effect on the day's mood -- and on work performance -- than mood changes caused by events in the workplace. This finding, according to Rothbard, suggests that a business's performance might be enhanced by efforts to help employees cope with mood-affecting influences in their private lives -- including advising employees on how to best handle commuting hassles or offering counseling for family problems." Source: Knowledge@Wharton

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International Terrorism: Threat, Policy, and Response

This report examines international terrorist actions, threats, U.S. policies and responses. It reviews the nation's use of tools at its disposal to combat terrorism, from diplomacy, international cooperation, and constructive engagement to physical security enhancement, economic sanctions, covert action, and military force.

A modern trend in terrorism appears to be toward loosely organized, selffinanced, international networks of terrorists. Increasingly, radical Islamist groups, or groups using religion as a pretext, pose a serious threat to U.S. interests and to friendly regimes. Of concern as well is the growing political participation of extremist Islamist parties in foreign nations. Also noteworthy is the apparent growth of cross-national links among different terrorist organizations, which may involve combinations of military training, funding, technology transfer, or political advice. Source: Congressional Research Service

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Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women

The official cite of the convention is part of the United Nations' Division of the Advancement of Women. Here you can find the full text of the convention, information on its history, and various country reports. Source: United Nation


Link to site

In Great Britain, Muslims Worry About Islamic Extremism

"Concerns Pre-Date Airplane Plot"

"A Pew Global Attitudes Project survey conducted this spring found 43% of British Muslims "very concerned" about the rise of Islamic extremism among Muslims living in that country. That's twice the proportion that expressed similar fears in Spain (21%) and significantly more than in Germany (23%) or France (26%).

In Great Britain, Muslim worries about Islamic extremism were broadly shared by the general public, which expressed more concern in 2006 than it did in a comparable survey conducted in spring 2005, prior to the London subway bombings on July 7, 2005."

Source: Pew Research Center

Link to online report

Growth in the Foreign-Born Workforce and Employment of the Native Born

Rapid increases in the foreign-born population at the state level are not associated with negative effects on the employment of native-born workers, according to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center that examines data during the boom years of the 1990s and the downturn and recovery since 2000.

An analysis of the relationship between growth in the foreign-born population and the employment outcomes of native-born workers revealed wide variations across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. No consistent pattern emerges to show that native-born workers suffered or benefited from increased numbers of foreign-born workers. Source: Pew Hispanic Center

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Public Holds Conflicting Views of Press Reports about Government Monitoring Bank Records

The public is of two minds about news reports that the government has been secretly examining the bank records of American citizens who may have ties to terrorist groups. By a margin of 50%-34%, Americans think that news organizations have hurt rather than helped the interests of the American people with these reports. However, an even larger 65%-28% majority believes that these news accounts told citizens something that they should know about.

Partisanship is strongly related to how people think about these questions. Democrats are almost unanimous (82%) in believing that the public needed to know about the government's bank monitoring program. Republicans are evenly divided on this question – 45% say it was something the public should know about, 47% say the public did not need to know. Source: Pew Research Center

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Pragmatic Americans Liberal and Conservative on Social Issues

Americans cannot be easily characterized as conservative or liberal on today's most pressing social questions. The public's point of view varies from issue to issue. They are conservative in opposing gay marriage and gay adoption, liberal in favoring embryonic stem cell research and a little of both on abortion. Along with favoring no clear ideological approach to most social issues, the public expresses a desire for a middle ground on the most divisive social concern of the day: abortion.

Together, the results of the latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life suggest that the public remains reluctant to move too far from current policies and practices on many key social policy questions. Despite talk of "culture wars" and the high visibility of activist groups on both sides of the cultural divide, there has been no polarization of the public into liberal and conservative camps. Source: Pew Research Center

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The aging of the homeless population: fourteen-year trends in San Francisco

"The homeless population is aging by about two thirds of a year every calendar year, consistent with trends in several other cities. It is likely that the homeless are static, aging population cohort. The aging trends suggest that chronic conditions will become increasingly prominent for homeless health services. This will present challenges to traditional approaches to screening, prevention, and treatment of chronic diseases in an aging homeless population." Source: UCSF ? Journal of General Internal Medicine.

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Qualifications of Public Secondary School

Abstract: "Previous studies of the qualifications of elementary and secondary school teachers have focused on whether teachers have educational backgrounds (a postsecondary major/minor or equivalent) and state certification that match the subjects they teach. If not, they are commonly considered “out-of-field.” This Issue Brief reports the combination of certifications and majors and minors to which secondary-level history students are exposed and how these qualifications vary across schools with differing levels of student poverty. Data from the NCES 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) teacher and school questionnaires indicate that students in the lowest poverty schools were the least likely to have a teacher with both an out-of-field certification and an out-of-field major or minor." Source: National Center for Education Statistics

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Qualifications of Public Secondary School

Abstract: "Previous studies of the qualifications of elementary and secondary school teachers have focused on whether teachers have educational backgrounds (a postsecondary major/minor or equivalent) and state certification that match the subjects they teach. If not, they are commonly considered “out-of-field.” This Issue Brief reports the combination of certifications and majors and minors to which secondary-level history students are exposed and how these qualifications vary across schools with differing levels of student poverty. Data from the NCES 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) teacher and school questionnaires indicate that students in the lowest poverty schools were the least likely to have a teacher with both an out-of-field certification and an out-of-field major or minor." Source: National Center for Education Statistics

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Risk Taking and Gender in Hierarchies

Abstract: "If promotion in a hierarchy is based on a random signal of ability, rates of promotion are affected by risk-taking. Further, the statistical properties of the surviving populations of risk-takers and non-risk-takers will be different, and will be changing throughout the hierarchy. I define promotion hierarchies with and without memory, where memory means that promotion depends on the entire history of success. In both types of hierarchies, surviving risk-takers have lower average ability than surviving non risk-takers at any stage where they have a higher probability of survival. However, that will not apply in the limit. With a common set of promotion standards, risk-takers will survive with lower probability than non risk-takers, and will have higher average ability. I give several interpretations for how these theorems relate to affirmative action, in light of considerable evidence that males are more risk-taking than females." Source: Economics Department, University of California, Berkeley, Working Paper

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Transcultural Battlefield: Recent Japanese Translations of Philippine History

Abstract: "This essay discusses the transnational tensions that emerged in recent Japanese translations of studies of Philippine history. It focuses on an anthology of eight essays written by historians Reynaldo C. Ileto, Vicente L. Rafael and Floro L. Quibuyen, as well as on the Japanese edition of Reynaldo C. Ileto’s seminal text, Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910. By reflecting on the process of translating the works of Filipino scholars into a Japanese context, this essay shows how translation becomes a kind of transcultural intellectual battlefield, revealing the different stakes of Filipino and Japanese writers in their approach to Philippine history." Source: UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies

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Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah: The Current Conflict

"This report analyzes the current conflict between Israel and two U.S. State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), the Lebanese Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah and the radical Palestinian Hamas organization. On July 12, 2006, what had been a localized conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip instantly became a regional conflagration after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a surprise attack along the Israeli-Lebanese border. Israel has responded by carrying out air strikes against suspected Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, and Hezbollah has countered with rocket attacks against cities and towns in northern Israel. Fighting on the ground has also started. Meanwhile, Israeli clashes with Hamas and other Palestinian militants have continued unabated in the Gaza Strip." Source: Congressional Research Service

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Earnings Inequality and Market Work in Husband-Wife Families

Abstract: Constructing pseudo-panel data from successive Current Population Surveys, this paper analyzes earnings inequality in husband and wife families over the life cycle and over time. Particular attention is devoted to the role of labor supply in influencing measures of earnings inequality. Compact and accurate descriptions of earnings inequality are derived that facilitate the analysis of the effect of the changing market employment of wives on earnings inequality. The growing propensity of married women to work for pay has mitigated the increase in family earnings inequality. Alternative measures of earnings inequality covering people with different degrees of attachment to the labor market are constructed. Inferences about the extent and changes in earnings inequality are sensitive to alternative labor supply definitions especially in the case of wives. Source: Institute for the Study of Labor

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The Patriot Act and Civil Liberties: A Closer Look

“This paper examines the provisions of the Patriot Act which were designed to increase information sharing between intelligence and law enforcement agencies underscores the implications of their broader investigative scope with respect to our nation’s civil liberties and provides recommendations to improve future versions of this legislation. The following analysis maintains that the Patriot Act, with respect to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), designed to improve and increase information sharing between intelligence and law enforcement agencies, goes too far in its reach and includes unnecessary provisions. It is another example of legislative overcompensation enacted in a time of crisis similar to those of the 1950’s anti-Communist era and the 1960’s civil rights movement. The Patriot Act’s broader investigative scope invades our nation’s civil liberties and once again unsettles the delicate balance between our nation’s strategy on domestic security and the civil liberties that we as a nation and people protect and embrace.” Source: U.S. Army War College



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Health Service Delivery in China: A Literature Review

Summary: The authors report the results of a review of the Chinese-language and English-language literatures on service delivery in China, asking how well China's health care providers perform, what determines their performance, and how the government can improve it. They find current performance leaves room for improvement in terms of quality, responsiveness to patients, efficiency, cost escalation, and equity. The literature suggests that these problems will not be solved by simply shifting ownership to the private sector, or by simply encouraging providers-public and private-to compete with one another for individual patients. In contrast, substantial improvements could be (and in some places have already been) made by changing the way providers are paid-shifting away from fee-for-service and the distorted price schedule toward prospective payments. Active purchasing by insurers could further improve outcomes. Source: World Bank

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Americans and Their Cars: Is the Romance on the Skids?

"Any nation with more passenger vehicles than licensed drivers has a pretty serious love affair with the automobile. But the romance seems to be cooling off a bit -- a casualty of its own intensity.

Today 69% of American drivers say they like to drive, down from 79% in a 1991 Gallup survey. And just 23% say they consider their car "something special -- more than just a way to get around," barely half of the 43% who felt this way in 1991." Source: Pew Research Center

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Americans' Support for Israel Unchanged by Recent Hostilities

"Israel's offensive into Lebanon has not resulted in a public opinion backlash in the U.S. so far. A new Pew poll conducted July 6-19 finds little change in public sympathy for Israel in its dispute with the Palestinians. A 44%-plurality of U.S. adults say they sympathize more with Israel, while 9% sympathize with the Palestinians, figures that have remained largely unchanged in polls taken since late 2001. One in five (20%) say they sympathize with neither side, while a similar number (22%) say they don't know with whom to sympathize." Source: Pew Research Center

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Fast-Food Restaurant Advertising on Television and Its Influence on Childhood Obesity

Abstract: Childhood obesity around the world, and particularly in the United States, is an escalating problem that is especially detrimental as its effects carry on into adulthood. In this paper we employ the 1979 Child-Young Adult National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to estimate the effects of fast-food restaurant advertising on children and adolescents being overweight. The advertising measure used is the number of hours of spot television fast-food restaurant advertising messages seen per week. Our results indicate that a ban on these advertisements would reduce the number of overweight children ages 3-11 in a fixed population by 10 percent and would reduce the number of overweight adolescents ages 12-18 by 12 percent. The elimination of the tax deductibility of this type of advertising would produce smaller declines of between 3 and 5 percent in these outcomes but would impose lower costs on children and adults who consume fast food in moderation because positive information about restaurants that supply this type of food would not be banned completely from television. Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

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Unfinished Business: The Impact of Race on Understanding Mentoring Relationships

“Race is clearly ‘unfinished business’ because of the plethora of conflicting emotions that are unleashed as we approach the taboo (Thomas, 1989). This tension speaks to the importance of this chapter as we explore the issue of mentoring as embedded within the social context of race within today’s dynamic and diverse organizations. First, we delineate several important reasons why it is critical to discuss mentoring and race. We explore how race has been positioned within the literature to provide a context for our review of how the mentoring literature has discussed (and omitted) race as a key factor. We ask a critical question within this review: what do we know about the intersection of mentoring and race in organizations? Finally, we explore some of the unfinished business concerning race and mentoring and present a model to drive future research in this vital area.” Source: Harvard Business School Working Papers

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Investigation and Prosecution of Homicide Cases in the U.S.: The Process for Federal Involvement

“This research builds on earlier studies conducted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) that focused on the federal death penalty system. It responds directly to a call for research into the process by which homicide cases are investigated and how and why some of those cases enter the federal system and others enter the state system. The findings make clear that no one factor likely predicts whether homicide cases are brought to the federal system. Instead, the findings suggest a framework that organizes the myriad factors that influence decision-making into two categories: openness that is influenced by expertise, capabilities, and track record; and coordination and interaction that is influenced by task forces and other mutually beneficial relationships reinforced by shared crime concerns and respect. Using qualitative research techniques, this study examined the processes by which criminal cases, especially homicide cases, entered the federal criminal justice system. The research plan called for ten districts, which were selected purposefully and should not be considered representative of the 94 federal districts. Researchers visited nine federal districts and interviewed federal, state, and local investigators, prosecutors, and defense attorneys who potentially played a role in determining whether homicide cases were investigated and prosecuted in the state or federal systems. The findings in this report are limited to the first four districts analyzed. These districts are geographically diverse, with and without state capital provisions, and sent among the highest and lowest number of cases to DOJ for capital consideration during the study reference period, 1995-2000.” Source: National Opinion Research Center

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Employment-Focused Programs for Ex-Prisoners: What Have We Learned, What Are We Learning, and Where Should We Go from Here?

“It is clearly difficult to increase employment and earnings for disadvantaged men. Yet the results described above do not support the view that ‘nothing works.’ Some programs seem to be modestly successful: those for older ex-prisoners, integrated services both before and after release, and perhaps models using financial incentives. Further attention to design and evaluation of prisoner reentry programs may produce useful results, as most of the studies are quite old, and both the economic and criminal justice contexts have changed dramatically in recent years.” Source: MRDC

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Consensual and Conflictual Democratization

We study the process of endogenous democratization from inefficient oligarchic systems in an economy where heterogeneous individuals can get involved in predation activities. The features of democracies are shown to be crucially related to the conditions under which democratization initially takes place. The political regime and the extent of redistribution implemented under it depend on the allocation of de facto political power across the different social groups. The cost of public enforcement of property rights depends on the extent of predation activities in the economy. The theory highlights the importance of inequality in natural resources and availability of human capital for endogenous democratic transitions. Multiple politico-economic equilibria can be sustained conditional on expectations about property rights enforcement. This generates history dependence. Democratic transitions supported by a large consensus serve as coordination device and lead to better protection of property and more stable political systems than democratic transitions imposed in conflictual environments. We test the novel predictions using available cross-country data. The link between the type of democratic transition and the outcomes under democracy is also investigated using novel data on constitutional principles. The findings support the theoretical predictions. Source: Institute for the Study of Labor

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Happiness and Loss Aversion: When Social Participation Dominates Comparison

A central finding in happiness research is that a person’s income relative to the average income in her social reference group is more important for her life satisfaction than the absolute level of her income. This dependence of life satisfaction on relative income can be related to the reference dependence of the value function in Kahneman and Tversky’s (1979) prospect theory. In this paper we investigate whether the characteristics of the value function like concavity for gains, convexity for losses, and loss aversion apply to the dependence of life satisfaction on relative income. This is tested with a new measure for the reference income for a large German panel for the years 1984-2001. We find concavity of life satisfaction in positive relative income, but unexpectedly strongly significant concavity of life satisfaction in negative relative income as well. The latter result is shown to be robust to extreme distortions of the reported-life-satisfaction scale. It implies a rising marginal sensitivity of life satisfaction to more negative values of relative income, and hence loss aversion (in a wide sense). This may be explained in terms of increasing financial obstacles to social participation. Source: Institute for the study of Labor

Genetic, Cultural and Geographical Distances

Abstract: This paper investigates how the measures of genetic distance between populations, which have been used in anthropology and historical linguistics, can be used in economics. What does the correlation between genetic distance and economic variables mean? Using the measure of genetic distance, a newly-collected database on transport costs, as well as more refined measures of geography within Europe, we show that i) geography explains both genetic distance and transportation costs between European countries, and ii) genetic distance does not explain economic outcomes once we control for geography. We conclude that genetic distance in economics capture transportation costs between countries and not cultural differences. Source: Institute for the Study of Labor

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Arts Instruction of Public School Students in the First and Third Grades

This Issue Brief uses the First- and Third-Grade Spring Teacher Questionnaires of the ECLS-K to examine the changes over time from first to third grade in how often young children are exposed to arts education in the general classroom. The Brief also looks at differences in these characteristics by level of poverty and/or urbanicity of the school. In both first and third grade, most public school students received weekly instruction in music and art at least weekly, while weekly instruction in dance and theater occurred less often within each year. About 32 percent of students in high poverty public schools never received theater instruction in either grade compared with 24 percent of students in low poverty public schools. Of the students who received music instruction in either first or third grade, 29 percent of students in urban public schools received weekly music instruction less often in third grade than in first compared with 20 percent of students in suburban public schools and 22 percent in rural public schools. Source: National Center for Education Statistics

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Fathers of U.S. Children Born in 2001

This E.D. TAB presents information about the biological fathers of children born in the United States in the year 2001. It is the first publication of findings using the data collected from fathers during the base-year collection of the ECLS-B. It presents information on specific demographic characteristics of resident and nonresident biological fathers’ involvement in pregnancy and birth, fathers’ attitudes about fathering, and father involvement. Source: National Center for Education Statistics

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Nursing Home Quality as a Public Good

There has been much debate among economists about whether nursing home quality is a public good across Medicaid and private-pay patients within a common facility. However, there has been only limited empirical work addressing this issue. Using a unique individual level panel of residents of nursing homes from seven states, we exploit both within-facility and within-patient variation in payer source and quality to examine this issue. We also test the robustness of these results across states with different Medicaid and private-pay rate differentials. Across our various identification strategies, the results generally support the idea that quality is a public good within nursing homes. That is, within a common nursing home, there is very little evidence to suggest that Medicaid-funded residents receive consistently lower quality care relative to their private-paying counterparts. Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

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Inside the Family Firm: The Role of Families in Succession Decisions and Performance

This paper uses a unique dataset from Denmark to investigate the impact of family characteristics in corporate decision making and the consequences of these decisions on firm performance. We focus on the decision to appoint either a family or external chief executive officer (CEO). The paper uses variation in CEO succession decisions that result from the gender of a departing CEO’s firstborn child. This is a plausible instrumental variable (IV), as male first-child firms are more likely to pass on control to a family CEO than are female first-child firms, but the gender of the first child is unlikely to affect firms’ outcomes. We find that family successions have a large negative causal impact on firm performance: operating profitability on assets falls by at least four percentage points around CEO transitions. Our IV estimates are significantly larger than those obtained using ordinary least squares. Furthermore, we show that family-CEO underperformance is particularly large in fast-growing industries, industries with highly skilled labor force and relatively large firms. Overall, our empirical results demonstrate that professional, non-family CEOs provide extremely valuable services to the organizations they head. Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

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Estimated Costs of U.S. Operations in Iraq Under Two Specified Scenarios

“The Congress has appropriated $432 billion for military operations and other activities related to the war on terrorism since September 2001. According to CBO’s estimates, from the time U.S. forces invaded Iraq in March 2003, $290 billion has been allocated for activities in Iraq, of which $254 billion has gone to the Department of Defense (DoD) and other defense agencies for military operations. Approximately $14 billion has been provided to establish, train, and equip Iraqi security forces. Another $22 billion has been appropriated for reconstruction and relief efforts, diplomatic and consular operations, embassy construction, economic support, and foreign aid. In addition to the amounts specifically appropriated for the war on terrorism, CBO estimates that from 2003 to the end of fiscal year 2006, VA will spend about $1 billion on medical care, disability compensation, and survivor benefits resulting from military activities in Iraq.” Source: Congressional Budget Office

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Mexico's Split Vote: What Will It Mean for Sustainable Economic Growth?

For the 41 million Mexican voters who went to the polls on July 2, the major decision was whether they were going to continue to follow the same free-market model with limited spending and greater foreign investment that the country has had for the past six years, or opt for change. Felipe Calderón, the political heir apparent of Vicente Fox, represented the conservative National Action Party (PAN). Calderón was the candidate of continuity and free markets, while Andrés Manuel López Obrador -- of the Party of the Democratic Revolution -- was the candidate of change. Source: Knowledge @ Wharton

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Little Consensus on Global Warming Partisanship Drives Opinion

"Americans generally agree that the earth is getting warmer, but there is less consensus about the cause of global warming or what should be done about it. Roughly four-in-ten (41%) believe human activity such as burning fossil fuels is causing global warming, but just as many say either that warming has been caused by natural patterns in the earth's environment (21%), or that there is no solid evidence of global warming (20%).

The public also is divided over the gravity of the problem. While 41% say global warming is a very serious problem, 33% see it as somewhat serious and roughly a quarter (24%) think it is either not too serious or not a problem at all. Consequently, the issue ranks as a relatively low public priority, well behind education, the economy, and the war in Iraq." Source: Pew Research Center

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G8 Summiteers Inspire Little Confidence Around the Globe

When President George W. Bush is greeted by his host, President Vladimir Putin at this weekend's G8 summit meeting in St. Petersburg, neither leader can feel secure in the confidence placed in their leadership by the citizens of major countries around the globe. To be sure, Putin can take some comfort in the 82% level of confidence he inspired among the people of Russia in the latest Pew Global Attitudes Project survey. By comparison, Bush scored only a 51% confidence rating among those of his own countrymen who registered an opinion. But, with a few exceptions, neither man can point to substantial levels of support elsewhere in the world. Source: Pew Research Center

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2006 National Survey of Latinos

"Latinos are feeling more discriminated against, politically energized and unified following the immigration policy debate and the pro-immigration marches this spring, according to the 2006 National Survey of Latinos conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center."

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The Renminbi’s Dollar Peg at the Crossroads

Abstract: In the face of huge balance of payments surpluses and internal inflationary pressures, China has been in a classic conflict between internal and external balance under its dollar currency peg. Over the longer term, China’s large, modernizing, and diverse economy will need exchange rate flexibility and, eventually, convertibility with open capital markets. A feasible and attractive exit strategy from the essentially fixed RMB exchange rate would be a two-stage approach, consistent with the steps already taken since July 2005, but going beyond them. First, establish a limited trading band for the RMB relative to a basket of major trading partner currencies. Set the band so that it allows some initial revaluation of the RMB against the dollar, manage the basket rate within the band if necessary, and widen the band over time as domestic foreign exchange markets develop. Second, put on hold ad hoc measures of financial account liberalization. They will be less helpful for relieving exchange rate pressures once the RMB/basket rate is allowed to move flexibly within a band, and they are best postponed until domestic foreign exchange markets develop further, the exchange rate is fully flexible, and the domestic financial system has been strengthened and placed on a market-oriented basis. Source: Center for International and Development Economics Research. Paper C06-148.

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Mobilization Lawyering: Community Economic Development in the Figueroa Corridor

Abstract: The emergence of Community Economic Development (CED) as a distinct field of cause lawyering highlights the complexities of community mobilization in the post-regulatory state. Defined by a set of social policies and grassroots practices that promote neighborhood revitalization, CED is associated with a transactional model of cause lawyering focused on negotiating deals between community-based nonprofit organizations, public funders, and private investors. Whereas cause lawyers have traditionally sought to mobilize claims of legal rights to advance systemic reform, CED lawyers attempt to mobilize community participation to change local economic circumstances through the creation of innovative institutional structures. Source: U.C. L.A. School of Law

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Affordable Housing: Liveable Communities

"Housing is one of today's most persistent problems. From the "experts there has been no shorate of answers. Over the years we have tried them all. But space-age construcation methods, ingenious financial techniques, increasing subsidies, and lowering standards have done little to improve the quality, quantity or affordability of housing. The problem is not that we have overlooked some new angle, or good idea, or form of construction, financing or subsidy that will allow us to make housing more "affordable." It is that we continue to engage each of these issues in isolation rather than as part of a way of life." Places: Vol. 2: No. 1, via the University of California Digital Library.

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Economic, neurobiological, and behavioral perspectives on building America’s future workforce

Abstract: A growing proportion of the U.S. workforce will have been raised in disadvantaged environments that are associated with relatively high proportions of individuals with diminished cognitive and social skills. A cross-disciplinary examination of research in economics, developmental psychology, and neurobiology reveals a striking convergence on a set of common principles that account for the potent effects of early environment on the capacity for human skill development. Central to these principles are the findings that early experiences have a uniquely powerful influence on the development of cognitive and social skills and on brain architecture and neurochemistry, that both skill development and brain maturation are hierarchical processes in which higher level functions depend on, and build on, lower level functions, and that the capacity for change in the foundations of human skill development and neural circuitry is highest earlier in life and decreases over time. These findings lead to the conclusion that the most efficient strategy for strengthening the future workforce, both economically and neurobiologically, and improving its quality of life is to invest in the environments of disadvantaged children during the early childhood years. Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Article in Stanford Reporter | Link to Abstract | Link to download PDF paper (Subscription Required)

Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush

"In recent judicial confirmation battles, President Bush has repeatedly—and correctly—stressed fidelity to the Constitution as the key qualification for service as a judge. It is also the key qualification for service as the nation's chief executive. On January 20, 2005, for the second time, Mr. Bush took the presidential oath of office set out in the Constitution, swearing to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." With five years of the Bush administration behind us, we have more than enough evidence to make an assessment about the president's commitment to our fundamental legal charter." Source: CATO Institute

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Research, Training and Information for Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality

INSTRAW is the only United Nations entity mandated at the international level to promote and undertake research and training programmes to contribute to the advancement of women and gender equality worldwide. By stimulating and assisting the efforts of inter-governmental, governmental and non-governmental organizations, INSTRAW plays a critical role in advancing the global agenda of gender equality, development and peace. INSTRAW is funded entirely through voluntary contributions from UN Member States and donor agencies; the Institute does not have a regular UN budget. Source: United Nations

Resources: Directory of participating organizations | Main Site

United Nations World Economic and Social Survey

"The World Economic and Social Survey (WESS) provides objective analysis of pressing long-term social and economic development issues, and discusses the positive and negative impact of corresponding policies. The analyses are supported by analytical research and data included in the annex." Source: United Nations

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A Research Agenda: Impacts of Welfare Reform on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs)

"This document summarizes the proceedings from a research symposium held on June 29 th, 2006, on the impact of Welfare Reform on Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs). This population has not received adequate attention in most welfare studies, despite the severity of the problem facing some ethnic subgroups. The symposium’s goals are to review existing research, identify future research needs, and to develop a strategy to implement a research agenda. Included in this document are background information, abstracts of the papers presented during the symposium, recommendations for future research, biographical information and an annotated bibliography of selective publications." Source: The Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Conference Proceedings.

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Lost Children: Addressing the Under – Identification of Trafficked Alien Minors in Los Angeles County

"Children are being trafficked in the United States for commercial and sexual exploitation – many of them from overseas. In April of 2002, a young Egyptian girl was freed by federal authorities from a couple’s home in Irvine, California, where she was forced to work as a domestic servant for two years. 2 During those two years, she lived in “squalid conditions.” 3 She was denied access to a formal education and was threatened with physical harm by the couple. In 2005, seven individuals were charged by federal authorities for smuggling children across the U.S.Mexico border for the purposes of selling them to American families looking to adopt foreign children. 4 In New Jersey, the Russian Mafia transported under-age girls from Eastern Europe to the U.S. and forced them to work as dancers in exotic dance clubs. 5 There are many more stories of foreign children being sold, rented, and enslaved in the U.S." Source: The Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
UCLA School of Public Affairs

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San Francisco Bay Area’s Spare the Air/Free Morning Commute Program: Program Effectiveness in Comparison to the Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles Area

Abstract: The Spare the Air/Free Morning Commute (Spare the Air) program in the San Francisco Bay Are funds up to five mornings of weekday transit when air quality is forecasted to exceed federal 8-hour ozone levels during the summer months. Spare the Air has existed for two years and data is limited to three fare free morning commute days. A similar program exists in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area known as Code Red Air Quality Action Days, which funds free transit with the exception of rail and buses within the District of Columbia. These two programs are contrasted with one another along with the Los Angeles region transportation related air quality strategy in order to provide insight on which programs are most effective and appropriate for each region. In order to determine policy appropriateness, a literature review of transit fare elasticity and major air quality strategies in the three regions is undertaken. Lastly, the current Spare the Air program evaluation and the ridership collection, analysis, and reporting methodology are reviewed in order to make suggestions for more effective program administration. Source: The Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. UCLA School of Public Affairs

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Stories, Scripts, Roles, and Networks

Abstract: In Identity and Control, Harrison White (1992) stresses the importance of stories as a medium for and outcome of efforts at control. Stories as social ties retell the events that have occurred between people or identities and they offer scripts for social action. The notion of stories as scripts is in line with an early result in the study of literature, where Vladímir Propp (Morphology of the Folktale, 1928) showed that a large corpus of Russian folktales are characterized by a script with a limited number of functions or roles that appear in a fixed order. It will be demonstrated that these roles can be identified by a signed dyadic tie with a particular chronological order and that the scripts culminate in a balanced situation. Furthermore, it will be shown that the temporally ordered ties occur in a social network and that the associated fairytale meanings seem to apply here as well. Finally, a nesting rule is proposed that captures the scripting of roles within fairytales. This rule, however, does not seem to exert a profound influence on the dynamics of the social network of literary authors and critics studied. Source: Structure and Dynamics: eJournal of Anthropological and Related Sciences: U. C. Irvine.

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Do the Democrats Have a 'God Problem'?

"In the immediate aftermath of George W. Bush's 2004 victory over John Kerry, many journalists and other political observers declared the election to have been decided, in large part, on the basis of moral values and cultural issues. According to the national exit poll, more than one-in-five voters (22%) cited moral values as the most important issue in the campaign.1 Gay marriage was identified as being a particularly important issue, since same-sex marriage initiatives were on ballots in 13 states (including the crucial swing state of Ohio) and served, ostensibly, to mobilize turnout among conservative opponents of same-sex unions. These initial reactions turned out to have overstated the importance of moral values and cultural issues--and gay marriage in particular--in the campaign. (See, for instance, Pew Research Center 2004 and others.2 ) Still, careful analyses of the national exit poll and other post-election surveys3 revealed the persistence of what Prothero4 referred to as the "God gap"; those who attend church frequently and conservative Christians (especially white evangelical Protestants) supported Bush over Kerry by large margins. In other words, insofar as religion has become a political force, it seems generally to help Republicans and hurt Democrats." Source: Gregory A. Smith, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and Peyton M. Craighill, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press

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Muslims in Europe: Economic Worries Top Concerns About Religious and Cultural Identity

"Muslims in Europe worry about their future, but their concern is more economic than religious or cultural. And while there are some signs of tension between Europe's majority populations and its Muslim minorities, Muslims there do not generally believe that most Europeans are hostile toward people of their faith. Still, over a third of Muslims in France and one-in-four in Spain say they have had a bad experience as a result of their religion or ethnicity." Source: Pew Research Center

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Understanding the Use of Digital Resources in Humanities and Social Science Undergraduate Education

Final Report from a research project studying the use of digital resources in undergraduate education in the humanities and social sciences.
From the introduction:
"There is consensus among many scholars, developers, and the public that high-quality knowledge should be freely available where economically feasible. Almost every American research university campus, including those in the University of California (UC) system, has made significant investments in digitizing its intellectual and cultural resources and making them available to faculty, students, and the general public. However, we have little empirical data about how these resources are being used by the originating campus or by other institutions for educational activities. The general lack of knowledge about level and quality of use of unrestricted, or free, resources has been identified as a pressing concern by those who fund, use, and develop these types of resources. The build it and they will come approach has resulted in a widely acknowledged supply-driven movement. For example, after providing millions of dollars for the creation of digital libraries, NSF and JISC (the U.K. equivalent of NSF)5 are both concerned about the low level of use of available digital resources among the teaching faculty of our institutions. Those who fund open educational resource initiatives, such as the Hewlett Foundation, are interested in users and how understanding them will provide insights into the sustainability of the significant activities they fund in this space."

Source: Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley


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Gender and Migration

"Reflecting broad changes in their social and economic status, women around the world have been migrating more in recent decades and have thus constituted an increasing share of migrant populations almost everywhere. But the U.S. has defied this global trend, according to a Pew Hispanic Center analysis of data from the U.S, Census Bureau and the United Nations. Women have made up ever larger shares of legal immigrants to the United States in recent years, as they have elsewhere. However, an increasing flow of mostly-male unauthorized migrants has more than counterbalanced the feminization of legal migration, making the U.S. the only industrialized country where the percentage of female migrants has declined over the past 25 years." Source: Pew Hispanic Center

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The Effect of Female Education on Fertility and Infant Health: Evidence from School Entry Policies Using Exact Date of Birth.

"This paper uses age-at-school-entry policies to identify the effect of female education on fertility and infant health. We focus on sharp contrasts in schooling, fertility, and infant health between women born just before and after the school entry date. School entry policies affect female education and the quality of a woman’s mate and have generally small, but possibly heterogeneous, effects on fertility and infant health. We argue that school entry policies manipulate primarily the education of young women at risk of dropping out of school." Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

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New Evidence on Gender Difference in Promotion Rates: An Empirical Analysis of a Sample of New Hires.

Using a large sample of establishments drawn from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality (MCSUI) employer survey, we study gender differences in promotion rates and in the wage gains attached to promotions. Several unique features of our data distinguish our analysis from the previous literature on this topic. First, we have information on the wage increases attached to promotions, and relatively few studies on gender differences have considered promotions and wage increases together. Second, our data include job-specific worker performance ratings, allowing us to control for performance and ability more precisely than through commonly-used skill indicators such as educational attainment or tenure. Third, in addition to standard information on occupation and industry, we have data on a number of other firm characteristics, enabling us to control for these variables while still relying on a broad, representative sample, as opposed to a single firm or a similarly narrowly-defined population. Our results indicate that women have lower probabilities of promotion and expected promotion than do men but that there is essentially no gender difference in wage growth with or without promotions. Source : National Bureau of Economic Research

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Full text of UN torture treaty protocol [UN]

Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, UN General Assembly, June 22, 2006 [protocol strengthening provisions for international visitation of prisoners in detention]. Source: United Nations [via The Jurist]

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Reflections on Compassion & Social Healing: An Interview with Judith Thompson

"Judith Thompson has been engaged in projects promoting social healing for over twenty years, working primarily with survivors of war and political violence. As part of her doctoral research for the Union Institute, she recently convened a three day dialogue hosted by the BRC which brought together 25 people from all over the world to explore the question, 'How does compassion arise in the process of social healing?'" Source: Boston Research Center [thanks Mark Brady]

Link to online transcript

Transcript: Imperialism, Anti-Americanism and Anti-Semitism

In his new book, Überpower: The Imperial Temptation of America, Josef Joffe offers an analysis of the danger and burden of America's standing as a singular global power. He also investigates similarities between classical anti-Semitism and the recent rise of anti-Americanism throughout the world. Joffe was interviewed following an event on Capitol Hill co-sponsored by the Pew Forum and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Featuring:
Josef Joffe, Marc and Anita Abramowitz Fellow in International Relations, Hoover Institution; Publisher-Editor, Die Zeit

Interviewer:
Mark O'Keefe, Associate Director, Editorial, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Link to online transcript

Democrats More Eager to Vote, But Unhappy with Party

"With less than five months to go before Election Day, Democrats hold two distinct advantages in the midterm campaign that they have not enjoyed for some time. First, Americans continue to say they favor the Democratic candidate in their district, by a 51% to 39% margin. Second, the level of enthusiasm about voting among Democrats is unusually high, and is atypically low among Republicans. In fact, Democrats now hold a voter enthusiasm advantage that is the mirror image of the GOP's edge in voter zeal leading up to the 1994 midterm election." Source: Pew Research Center


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Also available: Summary | Detailed Demographic Tables (PDF) | Topline Questionnaire (PDF)

What is Indonesian Islam?

"This paper is a preliminary essay thinking about the concept of an Indonesian Islam. After considering the impact of the ideas of Geertz and Benda in shaping the current contours of what is assumed to fit within this category, and how their notions were built on the principle that the region was far more multivocal in the past than the present, it turns to consider whether, prior to the existance of Indonesia, there was ever such a notion as Jawi Islam and questions what modern Indonesians make of their own Islamic history and its impact on the making of their religious subjectivities." Source: UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies. CSEAS Occasional Papers


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Getting the Offer: Sex Discrimation in Hiring

"The hiring process is currently the least understood aspect of the employment relationship. It may be the most important for understanding the broad processes of stratifications with allocation of demographic groups to jobs and firms. The lack of knowledge is due to difficulty of assembling data on the processes that occur at the point of hire. Against this background we analyze data on all applicants to positions in one of the largest Scandinavian banks in 1997-1998, providing what we believe to be the first study using applicant pool data and information about the extended offers in a private-sector European firm, adding to the record about half a dozen such U.S. studies. The hiring agents in the organizations are fully conscious and concerned about the nonconscious biases and gender schemas they carry when making hiring decisions. Their effects on hiring are considered to be beyond dispute: Women are at a clear disadvantage. For actual hiring practices we found that the opposite is true: Women are not a disadvantage and may even be at an advantage in getting offers. Two organizational practices may lead to female advantage. The hiring agents had been educated about the role of nonconscious biases, which perhaps mitigated their effects. But they had also been instructed to search actively for qualified females in the applicant pool. With no qualified females in the first pass, they go through the pool a second and third time hoping to find one. We discuss reasons why the interpretations and meanings the hiring agents attribute to the hiring process are at odds with what actually occurs." Source: Institute of Industrial Relations. Institute of Industrial Relations Working Paper Series. U.C. Berkeley

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United Nations Peacekeeping: Issues for Congress

"A major issue facing the United Nations, the United States, and Congress concerning United Nations peacekeeping is the extent to which the United Nations has the capacity to restore or keep the peace in the changing world environment. Associated with this issue is the expressed need for a reliable source of funding and other resources for peacekeeping and improved efficiencies of operation. For the United States, major congressional considerations on U.N. peacekeeping stem from executive branch commitments made in the U.N. Security Council. The concern with these commitments, made through votes in the Council, is the extent to which they bind the United States, both militarily and financially, to fund and to participate in some way in an operation." Source: Congressional Research Service.

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Social Isolation in America

Abstract : Have the core discussion networks of Americans changed in the past two decades? In 1985, the General Social Survey (GSS) collected the first nationally representative data on the confidants with whom Americans discuss important matters. In the 2004 GSS the authors replicated those questions to assess social change in core network structures. Discussion networks are smaller in 2004 than in 1985. The number of people saying there is no one with whom they discuss important matters nearly tripled. The mean network size decreases by about a third (one confidant), from 2.94 in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. The modal respondent now reports having no confidant; the modal respondent in 1985 had three confidants. Both kin and non-kin confidants were lost in the past two decades, but the greater decrease of non-kin ties leads to more confidant networks centered on spouses and parents, with fewer contacts through voluntary associations and neighborhoods. Most people have densely interconnected confidants similar to them. Some changes reflect the changing demographics of the U.S. population. Educational heterogeneity of social ties has decreased, racial heterogeneity has increased. The data may overestimate the number of social isolates, but these shrinking networks reflect an important social change in America. Source: American Sociological Review [via Crooked Timber]

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Dictatorship or Reform? The Rule of Law in Russia

“The Foreign Policy Centre launched the publication of ‘Dictatorship or Reform? the Rule of Law in Russia’, a collection of essays by international experts in the field, including Alena Ledeneva and Mary McAuley. Rule of law is a cornerstone of democracy and essential to a well-functioning market economy that protects individual human rights. Yet it is ironic that in the six years since he pledged to uphold democracy in Russia as a ‘dictatorship of the law’, President Putin has increased the role of the federal security service in governing Russia and arbitrarily wielded the power of state institutions such as the courts, the tax inspectors, and the police for political ends." Source: Foreign Policy Centre (UK)


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The Great Divide : How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other

"There is a considerable divide between people in the West and those in predominantly Muslim countries. Many in the West see Muslims as fanatical, violent, and as lacking tolerance. Meanwhile, Muslims in the Middle East and Asia generally see Westerners as selfish, immoral and greedy - as well as violent and fanatical.

The latest survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, conducted among roughly 14,000 people in 13 nations, finds that publics of predominantly Muslim nations have an aggrieved view of the West - they are much more likely than Americans or Western Europeans to blame Western policies for their own lack of prosperity. Generally, Muslim publics feel much more embittered toward people in the West than vice versa." Source: Pew Research Center

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Empathy and Emotions: Do Women Judge Better?

"The legal profession was one of the traditionally male dominated professions: Women gained access very late, only about a hundred years ago. Male gatekeepers watched the doors to the profession jealously. One of the arguments used to keep women out had been that women were - due to their female character, implying emotionality and (resulting from it: moodiness) unable to judge objectively, particularly over men. Initially women made slow, from the 70ies onward steady progress in the profession. Meanwhile in most Western countries half or even more of law students are female and the participation in all fields of legal occupation is rising constantly. In Germany 30% of the judiciary are female, in other countries like France and Italy considerably more. The question is whether this growing participation of women has changed judicial decision making according to the historical assumptions? Do women indeed judge differently or do they even judge better? This latter conclusion would be in line with positions of gender difference cherished by parts of the second women´s movement especially in the eighties. On the other hand it has to be taken into account that obviously no open complaints on women judges and their professional competence have been reported. In my paper I will look deeper into theoretical assumptions of gender difference and compare them to empirical results presented in contributions to a big international comparative project on women in the legal profession and what I found in my own ongoing research. One intriguing outcome is that the perception of women law professionals and their abilities is still influenced by gender prejudice and that this may in a more unexpected and not openly visible way influence judgments and lead to unbalanced results." NOTE: Document in German. Source: Social Science Research Network.

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National Women's Health Report: Women & HIV

"Women & HIV," spotlights the growing prevalence of HIV in women in the United States and the unique burden the disease presents for women. No longer can HIV be ignored as a major women's health issue—especially for African-American and Hispanic women. Here, you'll learn how HIV affects women differently than men; that women are at greater risk for HIV; which major study is now looking specifically at HIV in women; what HIV-infected women can expect during pregnancy..." Source: National Women's Health Resource Center

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Beyond the Ivory Tower: What Do Sociologists Do in Applied and Research Settings?

"The survey examines the skills, graduate school training, productivity, and career satisfaction of sociologists employed outside the professorate."

Source: American Sociological Association, the Rural Sociological Society, and the newly-merged Society for Applied Sociology and Sociological Practice Association.

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The Relativity of Judgment as a Challenge for Behavioral Law and Economics

From the introduction: "The impact of the law and economics movement on legal scholarship and legal policy analysis has been astonishing. Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman has referred to it as the most important development in legal scholarship of the twentieth century. But while economic theory and research was making inroads into legal scholarship, psychological theory and research was making inroads into economics. Psychologists working in the judgment and decision making (JDM) tradition have has challenged two core aspects of the rational choice model its assumptions about human rationality and human motivation. Psychologists have conclusively demonstrated persuasively that human cognition routinely operates via processes that systematically violate the axiomatic assumptions of rational choice theory. Less conclusively, psychologists have argued that human motivation is more volatile and more complex than can be captured in a simple self-interested utility function." Source: JSP/Center for the Study of Law and Society Faculty Working Papers. Paper 42.

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Europe and United States, 1944-2006: Two Destinies in an Uncertain World

An Atlantic partnership is acceptable if the European cultural, linguistic, social and economic diversities are preserved. And yet, Europe feels a threat through the now Globalisation which is so often seen as a form or aspect of Americanisation. The European Union is weak but not drifting away. If the Union do wants to behave as “a global power in the Economic, Social, Environmental governance of the world” (Josaiane Tercinet), it must talk as a united power. This short overview of the period 1945-2006, made by an historian who is aware of the long term influence, shows that it is European integration that has recreated the conditions of the European renewal. Of course, Atlantic economic integration represents a mighty trend ever since 1944. But the Atlantic economic and financial interactions do not necessarily create the political unity of action between the two sides of the Atlantic ocean. It seems that trouble between the two banks of Atlantic is rising because the political, even mental, position of now US leaders and not because economic or commercial tensions. However, it doesn’t only depend on the short term situation. We will conclude on the specificity of the two sides of Atlantic. Beyond an economic integration which seems inevitable in an open world and which will spread to another part of industrial countries, beyond the necessary bilateral cooperation due to the old friendship, to hope overcoming the political and cultural differences between the two is both an unrealizable dream and a mistake. Source: Institute of European Studies. Paper 060530. U.C. Berkeley

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Media Markets and Localism: Does Local News en Español Boost Hispanic Voter Turnout?

"Since the dawn of broadcasting, and especially in the past decade, Americans have turned their attention from local to more distant sources of news and entertainment. While the integration of media markets will raise the private welfare of many consumers, a globalized information and entertainment industry can undermine civic engagement, transforming locally engaged citizens into viewers consuming programming from distant sources. In response to such concerns, many regulatory agencies, including the Federal Communication Commission in the United States, curtail the integration of media markets to promote “localism.” Determining the right balance between the private benefits of integrated markets and the public value of civic engagement requires evidence on the size of the positive spillovers from local media. In this paper, we exploit the rapid growth of Hispanic communities in the United States to test whether the presence of local television news affects local civic behavior. We find that Hispanic voter turnout increased by 5 to 10 percentage points, relative to non-Hispanic voter turnout, in markets where local Spanish-language television news became available. Thus, the tradeoff between integrated media markets and civic engagement is real, and our results provide a basis for the continued pursuit of regulatory policies that promote localism." Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

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What Do We Know About Competition and Quality in Health Care Markets?

"The goal of this paper is to identify key issues concerning the nature of competition in health care markets and its impacts on quality and social welfare and to identify pertinent findings from the theoretical and empirical literature on this topic. The theoretical literature in economics on competition and quality, the theoretical literature in health economics on this topic, and the empirical findings on competition and quality in health care markets are surveyed and their findings assessed. Theory is clear that competition increases quality and improves consumer welfare when prices are regulated (for prices above marginal cost), although the impacts on social welfare are ambiguous. When firms set both price and quality, both the positive and normative impacts of competition are ambiguous. The body of empirical work in this area is growing rapidly. At present it consists entirely of work on hospital markets. The bulk of the empirical evidence for Medicare patients shows that quality is higher in more competitive markets. The empirical results for privately insured patients are mixed across studies." Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

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Lobbying Database

From OpenSecrets.org, this database contains "totals spent on lobbying, beginning in 1998, for everyone from AAI Corp. to Zurich Financial." Search options include: "name for a company, lobbying firm or individual lobbyist; search for the total spending by a particular industry; search for the total spending by lobbyists on a specific issue; or view the amount spent to lobby a particular government agency."

Link to Lobbying Database

America's Image Slips, But Allies Share U.S. Concerns Over Iran, Hamas

"America's global image has again slipped and support for the war on terrorism has declined even among close U.S. allies like Japan. The war in Iraq is a continuing drag on opinions of the United States, not only in predominantly Muslim countries but in Europe and Asia as well. And despite growing concern over Iran's nuclear ambitions, the U.S. presence in Iraq is cited at least as often as Iran - and in many countries much more often - as a danger to world peace.

A year ago, anti-Americanism had shown some signs of abating, in part because of the positive feelings generated by U.S. aid for tsunami victims in Indonesia and elsewhere. But favorable opinions of the United States have fallen in most of the 15 countries surveyed. Only about a quarter of the Spanish public (23%) expresses positive views of the U.S., down from 41% last year; America's image also has declined significantly in India (from 71% to 56%) and Indonesia (from 38% to 30%)." Source: Pew Global Attitudes Project.

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Housing instability and food insecurity as barriers to health care among low-income Americans

BACKGROUND: Homelessness and hunger are associated with poor health outcomes. Housing instability and food insecurity describe less severe problems securing housing and food. OBJECTIVE: To determine the association between housing instability and food insecurity and access to ambulatory health care and rates of acute health care utilization. DESIGN. Secondary data analysis of the National Survey of American Families. Source: Journal of General Internal Medicine. 21 (1), pp. 71-77. [via California Digital Library]

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Calibration Trumps Confidence as a Basis for Witness Credibility

Abstract: "Confident witnesses are deemed more credible than unconfident ones, and accurate witnesses are deemed more credible than inaccurate ones. But are those effects independent? Two experiments show that errors in testimony damage the overall credibility of witnesses who were confident about the erroneous testimony more than that of witnesses who were not confident about it. Furthermore, erroneous statements expressed with low confidence can actually enhance credibility. Our interpretation of these results is that people make inferences about source calibration when evaluating testimony and other social communication." Source: Center for the Study of Law and Society Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program. JSP/Center for the Study of Law and Society Faculty Working Papers.

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Hospital-Based Emergency Care: At the Breaking Point

Today our emergency care system faces an epidemic of crowded emergency departments, patients boarding in hallways waiting to be admitted, and daily ambulance diversions. Hospital-Based Emergency Care addresses the difficulty of balancing the roles of hospital-based emergency and trauma care not simply urgent and lifesaving care, but also safety net care for uninsured patients, public health surveillance, disaster preparation, and adjunct care in the face of increasing patient volume and limited resources. Source: Committee on the Future of Emergency Care in the United States Health System via National Academies Press

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Also Available:
Report Brief. The Future of Emergency Care in the United States Health Care System:
The Future of Emergency Care series includes: Hospital-Based Emergency Care: At the Breaking Point; Emergency Medical Services At the Crossroads; and Emergency Care for Children: Growing Pains. In these three volumes, the committee has identified what it believes are the most important issues facing the nation’s emergency care system and has made a series of recommendations for how best to deal with those issues.

Over-Represented and De-Minoritized: The Racialization of Asian Americans in Higher Education

Abstracts: "Two predominant representations of Asian Americans in higher education are the yellow peril foreigner and the model minority. Using Omi and Winant's (1994) framework of racial formation and racist projects, this essay describes the construction of these representations, articulates their dialectical inter-connection, and demonstrates how their manifestations in higher education reinforce white dominance. The author discusses racist projects of the yellow peril foreigner (which depicts Asian Americans as overrepresented in institutions of higher education) and the model minority (which depicts Asian Americans as no longer needing minority services, essentially de-minoritizing them) in the contexts of the removal of Asian Americans from affirmative action, anti-Asian campus backlash, the Asian admissions controversy, and the representation of Asian Americans as victims of affirmative action." Source: InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies.

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A Profile of the Working Poor

"In 2004, 37.0 million people, or 12.7 percent of the population, lived at or below the official poverty threshold, according to the Census Bureau. Although the majority of the Nation’s poor were children and adults who had not participated in the labor force during the year, 7.8 million individuals spent 27 weeks or more in the labor force (working or looking for work) and still earned incomes below the official poverty level. These individuals, classified as “working poor,” represented 5.6 percent of all persons 16 years and older who were in the labor force for 27 weeks or more -- a 0.3-percentage-point increase (408,000 persons) from the prior year." Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

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How Many Ward Churchills? A Study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni

"Any institution that fails to guarantee the free exchange of ideas and students’ rights to learn has failed to do its job. Faced with substantial evidence of academic bias and pedagogical malfeasance, with course catalogs and professorial websites that openly declare war on impartial, objective teaching, institutions that do not take action deserve the criticism of public officials, taxpayers, students, and parents. Colleges and universities must ensure that they provide education, not indoctrination.This report aims to inform elected officials, trustees, administrators, alumni, parents, students, and citizens about what is happening, virtually unrecognized and unchallenged, on campuses across the nation. And it is designed to induce the public to demand better information and more accountability from the colleges and universities they support. Likewise, colleges and universities must amend their questionable practices and begin fulfilling their professional obligations. They must also recognize that if they do not take swift and decisive action, they risk losing the independence and the privilege they have traditionally enjoyed." Source: American Council of Trustees and Alumni

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Snapshot: Employer-Based Insurance Coverage and Cost

"The cost of health insurance remains a perennial preoccupation of employers, employees, and policymakers. About two-thirds of California businesses offer health insurance to at least some workers as a benefit of employment. These businesses account for 89 percent of California workers. This report, Employer-Based Insurance: Coverage and Cost, provides an overview of the employment-based insurance landscape. It addresses a range of issues, including how costs are distributed; which types of employers offer coverage; the number of workers enrolled; and how employer premiums vary among offering businesses. It also examines how employer costs would change if every business provided coverage for all full-time workers." Source: Calfornia Healthcare Foundation

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Economic, Neurobiological and Behavioral Perspectives on Building America's Future Workforce.

A growing proportion of the U.S. workforce will have been raised in disadvantaged environments that are associated with relatively high proportions of individuals with diminished cognitive and social skills. A cross-disciplinary examination of research in economics, developmental psychology, and neurobiology reveals a striking convergence on a set of common principles that account for the potent effects of early environment on the capacity for human skill development. Central to these principles are the findings that early experiences have a uniquely powerful influence on the development of cognitive and social skills, as well as on brain architecture and neurochemistry; that both skill development and brain maturation are hierarchical processes in which higher level functions depend on, and build on, lower level functions; and that the capacity for change in the foundations of human skill development and neural circuitry is highest earlier in life and decreases over time. These findings lead to the conclusion that the most efficient strategy for strengthening the future workforce, both economically and neurobiologically, and for improving its quality of life is to invest in the environments of disadvantaged children during the early childhood years. Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

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Would Higher Salaries Keep Teachers in High-Poverty Schools? Evidence from a Policy Intervention in North Carolina.

For a three-year time period beginning in 2001, North Carolina awarded an annual bonus of $1,800 to certified math, science and special education teachers working in high poverty or academically failing public secondary schools. Using longitudinal data on teachers, we estimate hazard models that identify the impact of this differential pay by comparing turnover patterns before and after the program’s implementation, across eligible and ineligible categories of teachers, and across eligible and barely-ineligible schools. Results suggest that this bonus payment was sufficient to reduce mean turnover rates of the targeted teachers by 12%. Experienced teachers exhibited the strongest response to the program. Finally, the effect of the program may have been at least partly undermined by the state’s failure to fully educate teachers regarding the eligibility criteria. Our estimates most likely underpredict the potential outcome of a program of permanent salary differentials operating under complete information. Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

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China Human Rights And Rule Of Law Update

Seventeen years after the world witnessed the devastating events in and around Tiananmen Square, we remember the courage of the students and workers who peacefully exercised their rights to freedom of expression and assembly. Today, Chinese citizens are turning to the law to assert their rights and speak out against government abuses. They do so in the tradition of those who gathered at Tiananmen, appealing to their leaders through peaceful means for the ability to enjoy rights protected by the Chinese Constitution.

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China remains hopeful that this type of positive change will continue to grow. But developments over the past year undermine the government's stated commitment to build a fair and just society based on the rule of law. New government rules published this year punish lawyers who defend politically sensitive cases. Chinese citizens, like Chen Guangcheng and Guo Feixiong, have faced harassment and imprisonment for legal challenges against government abuses. Political change is complex and imperfect, but China's leaders must take steps to build a more open and participatory society, and the United States must continue to assist in that effort. Source: United States Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC)

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