Suchergebnisse

Though highly visible, top corporate executives are not accessible. Surrounded by gatekeepers, leverage is often needed to gain access, & that done, the researcher is in foreign territory; unless fully prepared, inaccurate or scripted information can result. Personal or professional contacts, personalization of the research, & accommodating the interviewee's schedule can help lower barriers to access. The researcher can maximize the probability of obtaining useful information by: (1) having a clear agenda; (2) clarifying ground rules for the interview; (3) using a semistructured interview format; (4) supplementing the interview with other data; & (5) establishing the opportunity for follow-up access. 29 References. D. Generoli

In the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, new dangers to privacy have emerged in the US. To better understand these, this article explains the legal background of American concepts of "privacy." For this purpose, it first reconstructs concepts of privacy in American constitutional law jurisprudence & outlines existing American privacy legislation. It then describes legal developments since September 11 (especially in the USA PATRIOT Act), focusing on the issues of data surveillance & analysis, in order to illustrate their effects on protection of the private sphere & the difficulties that arise from the specific American legal tradition in this area. Existing or future data mining programs are described, &, finally, the article discusses various ways of approaching the new quality of data surveillance in the US & the possibility of a positive right to privacy. 57 References. Adapted from the source document.

Analysis of data from the 1987/88 National Study of Intercollegiate Athletes are used to examine differences in educational performance between revenue- & nonrevenue-producing athletes at the collegiate level & the extent to which this gap is a function of background attributes & institutional pressures surrounding athletic participation. Given the disproportionate concentration of African Americans in big-money collegiate sports, racial implications of these patterns are also considered. Ordinary least squares & logistic regression techniques reveal disparities among revenue- & nonrevenue-producing athletes in terms of proximate academic difficulties & long-term academic achievement. While these patterns are partially a function of the concentration of poorer & African American students in revenue-generating sports, they are also due to institutional pressures, including time use & level of competitive intensity. Implications for whether collegiate sports provide a straightforward educational opportunity or whether, in fact, contradictory institutional pressures undermine potential academic success are discussed. 4 Tables, 49 References. Adapted from the source document.

"Some economists argue that the neoclassical growth model cannot account for the macroeconomic effects of big fiscal shocks. This paper reassesses this view. We test the theory using data from World War II, which is by far the largest fiscal shock in the history of the United States. We take observed changes in fiscal policy during the war as inputs into a parameterized, dynamic general equilibrium model and compare the values of all variables in the model to the actual values of these variables in the data. Our main finding is that the theory quantitatively accounts for macroeconomic activity during this big fiscal shock"--Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis web site

There is a considerable body of theoretical literature that argues that the nature of economic structure (eg, the function, size, ownership, diversity, & location of firms) has a powerful effect on community politics & on social networks & norms that may affect politics. Specifically, many claim that manifestations of increasing economic scale such as larger firm size, more commuting, & less independent business ownership disrupt a community's social fabric which, in turn, results in political disengagement among community members. Despite these assertions, there have been few efforts to empirically assess the effect of economic context on mass-level political participation. This article seeks to investigate several of these propositions about the effect of economic scale. These propositions are empirically tested using a cross-level data set created by integrating the 1996 National Election study with information about each respondent community economic context collected from various sources. These analyses reveal that, contrary to many contemporary claims, retail size, retail density, & independent ownership have little effect on political participation. Commuting, however, does have a strong effect on political participation, but it is the aggregate level of commuting within one's community that apparently matters more that one's own commuting status. 2 Tables, 3 Figures, 1 Appendix, 63 References. Adapted from the source document.

This paper uses firm-level panel data for the manufacturing sector in four African countries to estimate the effect of exporting on efficiency. Estimating simultaneously a production function and an export regression that control for unobserved firm effects, it finds both significant efficiency gains from exporting, supporting the learning-by-exporting hypothesis, and evidence for self-selection of more efficient firms into exporting. The evidence of learning-by-exporting suggests that Africa has much to gain from orientating its manufacturing sector towards exporting. (InWent/DÜI)

As recently as 2002, Southeast Asian politicians and business leaders fretted publicly about losing foreign direct investment (FDI) originally earmarked for the region to China. They are more sanguine these days. Chinese companies not only look to Southeast Asia to supply raw materials to feed China's industrialization; they are increasingly investing there. Analysts understandably focus on China sucking in over US Dollar 50 billion of inward FDI per year - some of which was indeed previously earmarked for Southeast Asia - but in doing so they rarely notice that the flipside of Chinese investment is the rising wave of mainland outward direct investment (ODI), particulary into neighbouring countries. This paper notes the trend by way of a preliminary investigation into two broad issues: what sort of mainland companies are moving into ASEAN and how much are they investing; and what are the potential effects of that investment? Initial data suggest that most mainland investment comes via state-owned interprise (SOEs). And although in is impossible to know how much mainland money flows into Southeast Asia, it is certainly more than the US Dollar 2 billion for 2002 cited in official Chinese statistics. Growing Chinese investment in ASEAN has important implications, two of which are briefly canvassed: the effect of increasing Chinese investment on sanctions regimes designed to improve human rights (with specific reference to Burma), and whether pressure can be maintained on foreign investors to comply with international labour standards in the face of Chinese investment. (Pac Rev/DÜI)

Research focused on the socio-economic and political attitudes of the medium and small bourgeois in Argentina during the Alfonsin presidency. Data reveal clear positions critical of the pro-big business orientation of the regime. However, because of the increasing dependence on illegal sources of income, the small and medium size bourgeoisie were shifting toward the neo-liberal right as a means of legalizing their activity

Previous research has found that the level of electoral mobilization, generally lower in European elections compared to first-order national elections, is also lower among party adherents. Variation in the capability of political parties to mobilize their adherents is mainly explained by the coincidence or not of European & (first-order) national elections & of compulsory voting. Here, data from the 1989 European Voters Study (Ns not provided) reveal parties in government do not fair considerably worse in mobilizing their support, but did significantly better in the 1989 European elections. Also, big parties were not disadvantaged in getting their adherents to the ballots -- they did equally well or even better than their smaller competitors. However, results suggest that big parties competing in European elections cannot profit from the tremendous mobilizational advantages they have in first-order national elections. Also, their adherents are more vulnerable to mobilizing appeals of competing parties than to those of smaller parties. 1 Table, 4 Figures, 17 References. Adapted from the source document.