Advanced Industrial Countries Research Articles

Justifying gender discrimination in the workplace: The mediating role of motherhood myths.

The issue of gender equality in employment has given rise to numerous policies in advanced industrial countries, all aimed at tackling gender discrimination regarding recruitment, salary and promotion. Yet gender inequalities in the workplace persist. The purpose of this research is to document the psychosocial process involved in the persistence of gender discrimination against working women. Drawing on the literature on the justification of discrimination, we hypothesized that the myths according to which women’s work threatens children and family life mediates the relationship between sexism and opposition to a mother’s career. We tested this hypothesis using the Family and Changing Gender Roles module of the International Social Survey Programme. The dataset contained data collected in 1994 and 2012 from 51632 respondents from 18 countries. Structural equation modellings confirmed the hypothesised mediation. Overall, the findings shed light on how motherhood myths justify the gender structure in countries promoting gender equality.

Analysis on carbon emission pathways of global industry sector: sustainability, middle of the road and fossil-fueled development

As the cornerstone of social progress, industry’s future development pathway is greatly influenced by basic socio-economic assumptions, thusly is of big uncertainties, especially in developing countries, and the developing pattern of industry will bring significant differences in the whole energy system and carbon emission pathway. In order to explore industrial energy demand and emission under different developing patterns, this paper designed three scenarios describing discrepant socio-economic development characteristic based on SSP1, SSP2 and SSP5, conducted energy system optimization with application of GTIMES model, and presented main comparative results under three pathways. To reflect the great differences in industrial characteristics of advanced industrial countries and emerging economies both on industrial energy consumption and carbon emission, this paper also took America and India as instances to conduct simple comparison.

Housing Aspirations of the Elderly in Malaysia: A Comparison of Urban and Rural Areas

Recent population censuses in many advanced industrial countries have highlighted the growing number of elderly in the rural areas. Additionally, industralisation in the urban areas of developing countries has, to a certain degree caused significant changes of traditional family structure and has resulted in nuclear conjugal families. Likewise, the ageing phenomenon in Malaysia is inevitable due to the exponential increase in the elderly population. Furthermore, rapid urbanisation and out-migration of rural young generation, has had a significant impact on the population of Malaysia. This is reflected by the high proportion of elderly and high dependency in the rural areas. The issues and demographic pattern of the elderly are divergent and varies from the urban to the rural setting. This article looks at the housing implications of the ageing population in Malaysia in general, and in the rural and urban setting specifically. The study examines the housing aspirations of the elderly living in the urban and rural areas in Malaysia. Future housing plans and the kind of living arrangement the Malaysian elderly seek are explored based on the urban-rural locational aspect. In the effort to provide better quality housing for urban and rural elderly, a face-to-face survey interview was conducted on Malaysian aged 50 years and older living in the Kuala Lumpur (urban) and Kelantan (rural) areas. The findings indicate that most elderly in the urban and the rural areas prefer to age-in-place and stay in a familiar environment. The rural elderly has a stronger preference to ageing in place. A majority of the elderly also indicated a preference to live close to their children, which suggests strong family values amongst Malaysians. The study further revealed that the elderly are more likely to either renovate or improve, especially, the bedroom and bathroom areas to avoid accidents. The elderly in the rural area preferred landed housing in the form of either a single or double storey bungalow, whilst, the elderly in the urban area are more open and willing to move to other housing options, for example, strata housing, and other forms of landed housing, for example, terrace house and bungalow. It is recommended that a policy be introduced to promote ageing-in-place and takes into account the aspirations, preferences, behaviour and opinions of the elderly in Malaysia.

International Labor Mobility and the Variety of Democratic Political Institutions

AbstractUsing a new measure of immigration policy and examining thirty-six advanced industrial countries between 1996 and 2012, we seek to explain systematically the variation in external labor openness among the more advanced democracies as primary destination countries, using a model where the government feels political pressure through both a voter/electoral channel and a special-interests channel. With voters primarily pressing for immigration restrictions and special interest pressure aimed at immigration openness, democratic political institutions—like a parliamentary system and proportional representation voting with greater district magnitude that make governments more responsive to voters and less responsive to special interests—should be associated with less change toward a more open official immigration policy. Our statistical evidence accords with this expectation.

National income and environmental concern: Observations from 35 countries.

National income produces mixed impacts on public environmental concern. In a cross-national survey, environmental concern was measured in terms of propensity to act and environmental risk perception. Results of a multilevel regression analysis show that these two measures respond to gross domestic product per capita in opposite ways. Citizens of advanced industrial countries are more likely than those of lower-income countries to contribute to environmental protection. However, they are less likely to see the harmful impacts on the environment as very dangerous. Using an indicator of national adaptive capacity, this article demonstrates that environmental risk perception is a function of a country's estimated capacity for coping with condition changes. The stronger sense of collective security among citizens of wealthier nations offers a possible explanation for the negative effects of national income. These results indicate the complex relationship between development and public environmental concern across countries.

Patent and product piracy

Advanced industrial countries are affected by technology theft. German industry annually loses more than 50 billion euros. The main causes are industrial espionage and fraudulent copying patents and industrial products. Many Asian countries are profiteering saving up to 65% of production costs. Most affected are small medium enterprises, who do not have sufficient economic power to assert themselves against some powerful countries. International organizations, such as Interpol and World Customs Organization - WCO - work together to combat international economic crime. Several methods of protection can be achieved by registering patents or specific technical methods for recognition of product originality. They have developed more suitable protection, like Hologram, magnetic stripe, barcode, CE marking, digital watermarks, DNA or Nano-technologies, security labels, radio frequency identification, micro color codes, matrix code, cryptographic encodings. The automotive industry has developed the method “Manufactures against Product Piracy”. A sticker on the package features original products and it uses a Data Matrix verifiable barcode. The code can be recorded with a smartphone camera. The smartphone is connected via Internet to a database, where the identification numbers of the original parts are stored.

Inequality, Labor Market Segmentation, and Preferences for Redistribution

We formalize and examine two overlapping models that show how rising inequality combined with ethnic and racial heterogeneity can explain why many advanced industrial countries have experienced a drop in support for redistribution as inequality has risen. One model, based on altruism and homophily, focuses on the effect of increasing “social distance” between the poor and the middle class, especially when minorities are increasingly overrepresented among the very poor. The other, based on self‐interest, combines an “insurance” model of preferences for redistribution with increasingly segmented labor markets, in which immigration of workers without recognized skills leaves most native workers better off but intensifies competition for low‐end jobs. Empirically, when we estimate parameters from the two models using data from multiple waves of ISSP surveys, we find that labor market segmentation, previously omitted in this literature, has more consistent effects than social distance.

American Exceptionalism and the Welfare State: The Revisionist Literature

Recent research has argued that the American welfare state is not necessarily smaller than the welfare state in other advanced industrial countries. Rather, it is organized on principles that make it seem smaller: Because it functions through tax expenditures and public–private partnerships, it is less visible than welfare states that operate on the principle of direct spending. This review summarizes the most important messages of this revisionist scholarship, particularly in how this form of welfare provision undermines support for the welfare state, increases the complexity and decreases the efficiency of the system, and hides regressive policies from public scrutiny. I then argue that although this work has taught us much about American politics, several gaps need to be addressed. First, the explanation of the origins of this state of affairs is incomplete and unconvincing. Second, while private welfare is an important part of the American experience, the scholarship on private welfare provision has not yet grappled with the fact that private welfare was also historically found in many other advanced industrial countries, but did not crowd out the public welfare state there as it has in the United States. Finally, although the scholarship has usefully called attention to the invisibility of tax expenditures, we should not consider tax expenditures part of the “welfare state,” because they only rarely accomplish the functions of redistribution and risk pooling of public welfare programs. Rather, in most cases, tax expenditures should be seen as tax cuts, that is, diminishment of state capacity. These observations suggest that the scholarship would benefit from broader engagement with the comparative literature on political economy and from a more precise and conceptually grounded definition of the “welfare state.”

Trade openness and the Phillips curve: The neglected heterogeneity and robustness of empirical evidence

A cross-country parameter homogeneity assumption is usually imposed in the literature to test the effect of trade openness on the slope of the Phillips curve. A conclusion from this literature is that trade openness has no significant effect in advanced industrial countries. In this paper, we argue that the validity of the parameter homogeneity assumption is not guaranteed from a theoretical perspective, and we find that this assumption is not valid for advanced industrial countries. Trade openness has significant effects on the slope of the Phillips curve in several industrial countries but the signs of the effects vary across countries.

The Imperative of Teaching Cost Consciousness in Graduate Medical Education.

Residents are taught, or should be taught, the fallacy of believing that “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”1 Using the wrong technique, the wrong drug, or the wrong therapy can do more harm than good. An important lesson is that sometimes doing little or nothing is appropriate care. The rapid rise in health care costs in the United States—from an inflation-adjusted $2,855 per person in 1990 to $9,255 in 2013—reflects, in part, that physicians are working with more than a hammer in caring for patients.2 But it may also indicate an indiscriminate use of the resources available. Other advanced industrial countries, with access to the same tools but often constrained by costs, spend far less than the United States, a country that also underperforms its peers on most measures of quality and access.3

Effects of policy characteristics and justifications on acceptance of a gasoline tax increase

Many economists argue that increasing the gasoline tax is an effective way to reduce fuel consumption. Yet, public support for such a tax increase has been rather low among US residents. We performed eight survey experiments (total N approximately 3000) to examine how selected policy characteristics and persuasive messages influence support for a gasoline tax increase. Several policy characteristics significantly increased support for a gasoline tax increase. Having the increase phased in over five years modestly increased support. Compared with giving the extra revenue to the US Treasury’s General Fund, both refunding the extra revenue equally to all American families and having this revenue used for energy efficient transportation strongly increased support. Support for a gasoline tax increase was not affected by the nature of the mechanism to achieve revenue neutrality. Most people supported a 20 cent per gallon tax increase to repair roads and bridges. Explaining how the gasoline tax increase would reduce fuel consumption slightly increased support for a gasoline tax increase, but neither being informed of the high gasoline prices in other advanced industrial countries nor the actual pump price of gasoline at the time of the experiment influenced support for a gasoline tax increase.

Certifying voluntary living wage employers

Purpose– Living wage campaigns are popular responses to counter increasing inequality in advanced industrial countries. The purpose of this paper is to examine how voluntary living wage employer certification engages business in multi-sectoral coalitions to reduce poverty.Design/methodology/approach– The authors utilize qualitative interviews with 30 members of a living wage employer certification program in Vancouver, Canada as a case study to explore campaign participation by the business community and business case outcomes.Findings– Certifying voluntary living wage employers engaged business community members as partners and advocates in a living wage campaign. Certified living wage employers fulfilled business case projections for worker compensation fairness, human resource improvements and corporate branding advantages.Research limitations/implications– The study focussed on the early stages of a living wage employer certification program. As the number of living wage certification programs and ordinances grows, future research would benefit from examining how different social policy contexts in other Canadian and international regions affects whether these two avenues support one another or one avenue becomes favoured.Originality/value– Most studies of living wage campaigns have not dealt with how voluntary employer certification programs affect campaign participation and outcomes. The approach the authors adopt in the case takes into account the role of voluntary employer certification programs on campaign participation by the business community and business case outcomes. The study findings are of value to businesses, activists and policy analysts, who engage in or study corporate social responsibility initiatives to facilitate the creation of “good jobs” that provide family sustaining wages and benefits, particularly to lower-tier workers.

The Establishment of Indonesian Securities Investor Protection Fund Related To The Supreme Court Decision No. 535.K/Pid/2013 About The Case of PT Sarijaya Permana Securities

<p><em>Indonesia is one of the developing countries who are actively carried out their development. In the development of the national economy, a country requires financing either from the government or the community. Acceptance of the government to build a national economy gained through taxes and other admission. One of the sources government use are the community investment through bank, other financial institutions and capital markets. Capital Market in Indonesia is one of the essential elements and benchmarks of the country's economy. One of the characteristics in advanced industrial countries and new industries is the presence of capital markets growth and development. With the growth in the Capital Market, there are so many problems that occurred such as embezzlement, fraud, misuse of funds, and misuse from the irresponsible Market Intermediary. With the problems that occurred, the victim of these problem is the investor who investing their funds in Indonesian Capital Market. Lots of this problems that occurred because there is no institution directly concentrate in investor protection fund. </em></p><p><em>So, the government established Indonesian Securities Investor Protection Fund (ISIPF) for protecting, controlling, monitoring, and regulating the activities that occurred in Capital Market. With the establishment of Indonesia Securities Protection Fund (ISIPF), investor that invest their funds can claim their investment if the violation occurred. With their protection, capital market in indonesia will gain more trust from domestic and foreign investor in the future.</em></p>

Competing against yourself: State duopoly in the Luxembourg telecommunications industry

The Luxembourgish telecommunications market, not too dissimilar to many other advanced industrial countries around the world, is undergoing a process of market liberalisation. However, there are some particular features of Luxembourg’s ‘informed follower’ mode of market liberalisation, which are sociospatially distinct and therefore warrant investigation. In particular, the government of Luxembourg has sought to proactively intervene in the direct provision of telecommunications services, in the form of two competing but 100% state-owned operators, whilst simultaneously supporting market liberalisation. An understanding of the role of the state in this process is clarified through the conceptual lens of the state as policy-maker, regulator and operator. Through examining the multiple roles performed by the Luxembourgish state in the wider context of the EU telecommunications reform packages, the paper reveals the competitive tension that exists between each of the different arms of the state, that is, between POST and Luxconnect. The paper critically appraises the intertwining decisions, factors and considerations that led to this state-controlled duopoly and analyses the outcomes to date of attempts to liberalise the telecommunications market as well. This analysis of the geographical and historical complexity of the Luxembourgish telecommunications sector helps to reveal the powerful role of the state in market liberalisation.

Comment on “Public Pension Programs in Southeast Asia: An Assessment”

Asher and Bali (2015) is a wide-ranging paper, reviewing current pension issues in Southeast Asia, reporting demographic trends, and making recommendations for reform. The demographic forecasts reviewed in Chomik and Piggott (2015), Asher and Bali (2015), and some alternative projections reported in Table 1 underscore the challenges that some Southeast Asian countries face. Three countries stand out. First, Thailand appears to be remarkably “old,” resembling Singapore on some of the indices that Asher and Bali (2015) report. Second, the Philippines stands out as the only Southeast Asian country that does not become an aged society over the relevant time horizon. Third, Vietnam is expected to age quite rapidly, indeed becoming an aged society while most of the population is still rural. The joke about many Asian countries is that they will get “old” before they get “rich”; Vietnam is on a trajectory to get “old” before it gets “urban.” The large share of the population remaining rural matters: rural areas are characterized by lower population densities and higher rates of self-employment and informal employment which make these populations harder and more costly to serve in terms of the pension issues discussed in the paper. In this respect, Thailand stands out as having achieved universal health-care coverage while still having a relatively large low-income rural population. The contrast with socialist Vietnam, which appears to have trouble extending benefits to the rural populace, and the Philippines, whose pension program is characterized by extraordinary inefficiency, is striking. Ultimately public pensions are political arrangements. Looking at conditions today, the divergence between Thailand and Vietnam is remarkable, and presumably not simply a function of Thailand’s higher income level. A deeper exploration of the political economy of these outcomes could be fascinating. Looking forward, the question arises as to whether the ageing of these Asian societies will generate political economies to promote perverse intergenerational transfers favoring the old over the young as has happened in many of the advanced industrial countries.

My Enemy's Enemy Is My Friend

Like many other leftists working in labor or community organizations, I have long struggled to understand the role I can play in building a larger left movement. I have spent nearly a decade organizing for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and have only recently caught a glimpse of what a vibrant and popular leftist practice could look like.&hellp; In this analysis, I take inspiration from Antonio Gramsci's ideas. He described a "war of position"—a protracted revolutionary effort to create an anti-capitalist hegemony—as a methodology for anti-capitalists in advanced industrial countries. Counter-hegemony is a process, built by concrete effort both through political education and political action. As a labor union organizer, I have become quite skilled at political action, but not at political education.&hellp;One alignment of organizations in Minnesota—Minnesotans for a Fair Economy (MFE)—has the potential to be part of such a counter-hegemonic process. On a day-to-day basis, member organizations of MFE organize people to confront their bosses and banks, as well as the corporations holding back their communities. On a sporadic basis, the member organizations come together to create a new narrative of what kind of a world we want.&hellp; It was in a MFE "week of action" that I first began to understand how the process of creating a counter-hegemony might play out in practice.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-67-number-1" title="Vol. 67, No. 1: May 2015" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>

NATURAL ANALOGIES IN CONSTRUCTIONS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURAL OBJECTS

The article views the questions of using of constructions based on nature principles in modern architectural objects. A brief analysis of history of bionic structures development on the example of Gothic is given. Modern objects of famous architects having nonlinear structure and complex structural system are examined. The article presents the objects designed and built mainly in China during the last 3 years. A detailed description of the materials and compositional techniques is presented. The latest technologies used in the construction in advanced industrial countries permit to create surfaces of any curvature like the natural surfuces. Тhe close collaboration оf an engineer with an architect for the creation of structures, structural systems and architectural objects shell is described.

Energy engenderment: An industrialized perspective assessing the importance of engaging women in residential energy consumption management

This study assesses gender role and participation in energy utilization at the residential household level in an advanced industrial country setting. Two hundred and twenty one (221) standardized surveys of single-family residential households in San Antonio, Texas – the seventh largest city in the United States of America – are collected and used as a test case. The objective is to highlight the role of women in improving household energy efficiency. By coupling the behavioral and analytical sciences, studies such as this one provide better insight for the effective deployment of targeted energy efficiency programs that can benefit both households and municipalities while reducing impact on environmental resources. Study conclusions highlight 80% higher per capita consumption in female dominant households versus male dominant households (p=0.000) driven by approximately double the gas consumption in female-headed households (p=0.002), and 54% more electric usage (p=0.004). The higher use in female dominant homes is examined through the socio-demographic impacts of education, income, vintage of home occupied and size of home occupied. The theoretical framework and test case presented in this study promote the need for market segmented energy efficiency initiatives that better engage women in energy demand-side management in industrialized populated cities.

The Two Facets of Social Policy Preferences

Most political economy models start from the assumption that economic self-interest is a key predictor of support for income redistribution. A growing literature, in contrast, emphasizes the role of “other-oriented” concerns, such as social solidarity or affinity for the poor. These frameworks generate distinct, often conflicting predictions about variation in mass attitudes toward redistribution. We argue that this tension is in part an artifact of conceptualizing demand for redistribution as unidimensional and propose distinguishing between redistribution conceived as taking from the “rich” and redistribution conceived as giving to the “poor.” These two facets of redistribution prime different individual motives: self-oriented income maximization on the one hand and other-oriented social affinity with welfare beneficiaries on the other. We find strong evidence for this framework using British longitudinal survey data and cross-sectional data from four advanced industrial countries. We discuss the implic...

Analyses of Intergenerational Mobility

This article reviews the sociological and economic literature on intergenerational mobility. Findings on social class, occupational status, earnings, and income mobility are discussed and discrepancies among them are evaluated. The review also examines nonlinearities in the intergenerational association, variation in mobility across advanced industrial countries, and recent mobility trends in the United States. The literature suggests an association between inequality and economic mobility at the country level, with the United States featuring higher inequality and lower mobility than other advanced industrial countries. However, mobility has not declined in the United States over the recent decades in which inequality has expanded. The inequality-mobility relationship fails to emerge when occupational measures of mobility are used, likely because these measures do not fully capture some mechanisms of economic reproduction.