Recession Economy Research Articles

Marketing the Self vs. Preserving the Self: Resisting Downward Mobility in the New Economy

AbstractHow do dislocated workers try to avoid downward mobility as they navigate insecure, nonstandard, and precarious work in the contemporary American economy? Should they embrace flexibility, or follow their passions? Drawing on in-depth, qualitative interviews with 56 displaced job seekers, we extend the job searching literature to distinguish two kinds of job searching: self-marketing and self-preservation. Self-marketers are willing to reinvent themselves to pursue opportunities wherever they perceive the best payoffs. By contrast, self-preservers, drawing on affective commitments to particular kinds of work, limit their searches to their current occupation. In this paper, we show how the neoliberal economy buffets and preys on both types of job seekers and how bounded rationality and asymmetric information problems leave self-marketers vulnerable to downward mobility via cons, scams, and predatory business models. But self-preservation searches contain their own pathways to downward mobility: descents into low-wage work that begin as temporary measures often become permanent. Thus, even though self-marketers and self-preservers embrace very different job search strategies, neither flexibility nor passion offers protection against downward mobility in the post-Great Recession economy. We conclude with some reflections on how these two job search orientations may help us better understand current labor market upheavals.

Has the University Always Been “Neoliberal”?

Has the University Always Been “Neoliberal”?

Company Characteristics, Disability Inclusion Practices, and Employment of People with Disabilities in the Post COVID-19 Job Economy: A Cross Sectional Survey Study.

Purpose In the post coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) recession economy, rehabilitation counselors, transition specialists, and other disability service providers must redouble their efforts to connect with employers to create employment opportunities for people with physical and mental impairments. The purpose of the present study was to investigate company characteristics and effective disability inclusion practices that are related to employment of people with disabilities. Methods Four hundred sixty-six employers completed a demographic questionnaire and the Disability Inclusion Profiler. Results Results indicated company characteristics and disability practices were positively related to employment of people with disabilities. Conclusions Findings of the present study can be used by transition specialists, rehabilitation counselors, and other disability service providers to engage and connect with employers to increase employment opportunity for people with disabilities in the post COVID-19 economy. Future research and practice implications are provided.

State debt management in the context of Ukraine's economic development

The paper explores the theoretical and methodological basis of the concept of public debt management. The relationship between the problem of public debt and economic development of the country has been revealed. The dynamics of Ukraine's public debt for the period 2010-2019 have been analyzed. The default as a means of state debt policy has been investigated and its main economic consequences are presented. The international experience of managing public debt on the example of Argentina has been analyzed. The economic essence of technical default has been defined and the concept of technical default as a priority direction of Ukraine's state debt policy in the current conditions has been proposed. Public debt is a set of State commitments to internal and external creditors. State debt Management provides for state creation of the concept of debt policy. In economic terms, the main task of debt management is to maintain the level of public debt on a moderate level. In Ukraine, the problem of state indebtedness is particularly relevant after 2014. However, the most acute this problem was at the beginning of 2020 with the beginning of the recession economy and raising the deficit of the State budget. There are three main strategies to address public debt: investing in the country's economic development and timely repayment of liabilities, default and technical default. The strategy of investing in the country's economic development envisages emission of money or additional involvement in order to stimulate economic development, as well as timely payment of debts and interests. This strategy is appropriate in terms of relatively small amounts of public debt. Defaulted involves declaring the state insolvency payment obligations to creditors. Defaulted in the short run means a rapid deterioration in the economic situation in the country, but under certain conditions, there may be positive consequences in the long run. The technical default means the state's inability to pay debts on a certain date if there is a possibility of their payment in the future. In Ukraine today, the optimal decision of the state debt policy is the proclamation of technical default to restructure debts and prevent aggravation of socio-economic crisis in the country.

Changing Family Identity Through the Quinceañera Ritual

Prior research has examined the quinceañera’s role in Hispanic female adolescents’ identity development processes, but few have examined the quinceañera as a site of group-level continuity and change whose relevance persists in a post–Great Recession economy. This gap in the family science literature reflects a larger epistemic shortcoming stemming from the field’s use of White mainstream family processes as the reference from which to operationalize normative family values, attitudes, and behaviors. Using historical and demographic data in tandem with contemporary literature on the consumptive behaviors of Hispanic families, we conceptualize the quinceañera as a consistently symbolic, yet flexibly enacted ritual performed by diverse U.S. Hispanic families as they co-construct family identity against the backdrop of changing immigration patterns, fertility rates, and financial practices.

A Big Win in Smalltown: Demanding Dignity in an Era of Neoliberal Austerity

This article explores the concepts of dignity at work and worker voice in the public workplace during a period of surging neoliberal austerity intended to reduce taxes, government regulations, and public services. I ask how the changing landscape of public employment in the neoliberal era has created new and exacerbated existing threats to dignity at work and how workers have responded to such threats. The question is answered by exploring how and why an unlikely group of workers in Smalltown chose to use their collective voice on the job to organize a union. Using ethnographic methods, I am able to look at the strategies of public workers coping with a changing work environment in real time. The case of Smalltown offers a window into the interplay of the global and the local by examining how macro-level neoliberal forces can shape workers’ micro-level responses to attacks on their dignity at work. The findings reveal how neoliberal attacks on public workers in particular settings can trigger collective responses that confront not merely austerity but other threats to dignity as well. This study informs our understanding of dignity at work and worker resistance in the post-Great Recession economy.

“That’s not how it works”: economic indicators and the construction of partisan economic narratives

ABSTRACTThis study examines the processes through which partisans update their (biased) economic judgments during periods of mixed and asymmetric economic performance. I show evidence that citizens express relatively unbiased perceptions of the movement of the stock market, suggesting that partisans do not engage in processes of motivated reasoning when reporting judgments of widely available economic data. Instead, partisans respond to fluctuations in stock market performance by revising their assumptions about the way the economy works: in response to positive or negative developments, the stock market is perceived to be more or less important for the health of the broader US economy depending upon Americans’ partisan worldviews. This form of biased narrative construction has substantial importance in light of a “two-speed” post-Great Recession economy.

Is Urban Sprawl Good for Minorities?

This article investigates the effect of urban sprawl, as measured by employment decentralization, on minority housing consumption gaps since the housing bust. Previous research contends that sprawl contributes to reducing the Black–White housing consumption gap by increasing the supply of land in housing markets and thereby increasing affordability. Antisprawl policies may therefore exacerbate the Black–White housing disparity. This research makes two contributions to the literature. First, the article examines how changes in sprawl may have varying influences on the Black–White housing gap, a previously unexamined facet of this relationship. In the vast majority of metropolitan areas in this sample, sprawl is predicted to exacerbate the Black–White housing gap until sprawl reaches a threshold. Only in a limited number of high-sprawl metropolitan areas does sprawl contribute to reducing the Black–White housing gap. Second, the article examines differences in housing gaps for three distinct minority groups—Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics—using recent data from the 2009 American Housing Survey. For Blacks, sprawl continues to have varying effects on housing consumption. For Asians, urban sprawl yields significant gains in housing consumption relative to Whites. However, no significant results occur for Hispanics. This article demonstrates that the independent effect of urban sprawl on U.S. minority housing consumption is a highly uneven process in the post–Great Recession economy. As such, arguments that antisprawl policies reduce minority gains in housing should be treated with considerable skepticism.

Gender Bifurcation in the Recession Economy: Extreme Couponing and Gold Rush Alaska

Gender Bifurcation in the Recession Economy: Extreme Couponing and Gold Rush Alaska

Session 4 ‐ Markets, Media and Meanings Simon Roberts (Intel, Ireland), Curator: How Consumers Create Value in a Recession Economy

This essay examines a conscious shift in the cultural flows of consumption practices. It explores the ways consumers are generating and sharing shopping competence as a new form of value. I argue that a shift in consumer consciousness and resulting open social discourse around shopping practices are creating a new consumption narrative in the recession. This narrative celebrates the resourceful and collective acts of people who transform modes of restriction (cutting back) into a positive social value of thrift. As people are practicing more thoughtful purchasing styles they are also more communicative with others in sharing their shopping strategies and ways of savings. Social changes are thus arising out of these adjustments in shopping behaviors. Such emergent shopping behaviors amplify a new sociability that demonstrates more appropriate ways to spend and save on commodities. This change shows that consumers are not just accepting new attitudes and behaviors towards shopping because they have to, but are doing so to be in tune with the spirit of the times.

Food Retail Competitive Strategy in Recession Economy: A case of Successful Foreign Discount Stores in Finland

The study aims to increase our knowledge of how a retailer can survive in recession economy by changing its competitive strategy. In particular, the study is to identify those strategies that can help retailers to maintain successful performance despite turbulence in the operational environment. A case study approach is employed to explore a whole picture of a successful retailer’s actions and strategy to scope with down turn economy. Results of the study show that retailers can maintain and improve their performance in times of crisis by adjusting their competitive strategies properly. We found that in recession period, retailers need to exercise a combination of competitive strategies including low cost focus and differentiation focus strategy. To be able to enhance low cost strategy, retailers need to have logic logistic center, to increase effectiveness of employees, and to reduce wastes from right-ordered for fresh food products, to strictly utilize first-in-first-out food product displaying methods. For focus strategy, firms need to pull unprofitable products from the shelves, and to focus on profit-driven product selection, to focus their promotion campaign on the most effective time and channel. In differentiation strategy, retailers need to be more selective for which products to offer, and to be more creative in their promotion program.

America Cinches Its Purse Strings on Government Contracts: Navigating Section 8(A) of the Small Business Act through a Recession Economy

America Cinches Its Purse Strings on Government Contracts: Navigating Section 8(A) of the Small Business Act through a Recession Economy

Planning the Next Wave of SCHIP Research

Was the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) a flash in the pan or is it the future of children's health insurance? Your answer may depend on the news you read. As states have grappled with tight budgets in the recession economy and the long-ago planned “dip” in federal funding for SCHIP for fiscal years 2002–2004, several states made decisions to limit their SCHIPs through restricting enrollment, increasing premiums, limiting benefits, and decreasing outreach activities. As a consequence, July through December 2003 marked the first period since SCHIP was enacted in 1997 that program enrollment decreased nationally, attributable to marked declines in 11 states and the District of Columbia.1 On the other hand, during the latter half of 2003, a handful of states expanded SCHIP eligibility and enhanced program benefits, and the majority of states continued to report modest increases in SCHIP enrollment.1 Despite the national recession beginning in 2001 that led to increased unemployment and associated decreases in employer-sponsored insurance coverage for children, increased child enrollment in SCHIP and Medicaid more than offset the reduction in employer-sponsored coverage.2 As a result, the rate of uninsurance among US children declined from 15% in 19973 (at SCHIP inception) to 11.4% in 2003,4 a decline attributable in large part to SCHIP enrollment that was particularly robust among children living in households with annual incomes 2 to 3 times the poverty level, beyond the eligibility limits of most Medicaid programs. The findings of Kempe et al5 in this issue of Pediatrics regarding the Colorado version of SCHIP, Child Health Plan Plus, offer good news about SCHIP beyond enrollment statistics. Families reported higher rates of being able to see providers for a variety of routine and acute care needs and also reported a significant decline … Reprint requests to (M.M.D.) University of Michigan, 300 NIB, 6C23, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0456. E-mail: mattdav{at}med.umich.edu

Retail Pricing Strategies in Recession Economies: The Case of Taiwan

In a recession economy, consumers tend to be more sensitive about price, and firms have difficulty obtaining necessary resources for effective pricing. However, previous studies into pricing appear to overlook the possible effect of economic environment on the effectiveness of a pricing strategy. By observing the current recession and the resultant price war in Asian countries, the authors examine marketing decisions by retailers in a recession economy. The authors propose a contingent model, based on organizational resources and consumer price consciousness, to guide the examination of the strategy–performance bond. The results show that only resource-abundant retailers are able to use strategies proposed in this study to thrive in a recession. A value-centric strategy outperforms all other approaches.

Journalistic Reviewing and Children's Books: A Personal and Professional Perspective

Journalistic Reviewing and Children's Books:A Personal and Professional Perspective Mary Harris Veeder (bio) Once a month, for almost four years now, I have written a column reviewing recent children's books for the Sunday Chicago Tribune. The review appears on the color page of the "Book World" section, which is folded, somewhat ingloriously, I feel, upside down in the "Arts" section. This experience makes me, on quite a regular basis, excited, overwhelmed, and thoughtfully frustrated, about what it means to review children's books in a popular, journalistic medium, about where children's literature is situated in our culture, and where journalistic reviewing fits into our discipline. First, let me explain some of the constraints of my own writing situation—not because this is "My Article About Me," but because dealing with them makes me very aware of the larger issues of interest to readers of this journal. The choice of which books to review is entirely my own. I consult the catalogues, the bi-annual Publisher's Weekly issues on children's books, and I scan both The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books and Horn Book to see which books have received starred reviews. I am very careful not to read the reviews in either journal before I write my own, but, since they regularly receive more material in galleys than I do, I can use them as a check on my own scanning. Many publishers send selections to the Tribune. Occasionally books come with a post-it or a letter indicating that someone else on the Tribune staff knows the author. Some of these I have not reviewed, some I have. The choice was mine; pressure has never been exerted on me by the paper. Actually, the paper works as a shield for me from outside pressure. Because I do not have an office at the Tribune (where the amount of space and privacy available to any writer is so meager as to reveal academic offices as paradisal), and because they do not pass on my phone number or address without my permission, the "Book World" editorial staff receives the mail and the fevered phone-calls from authors or publishers begging for special attention. There are, however, two constraints which do come from the "Book [End Page 83] World" editorial staff. Let me say before noting these that my working relationship with the editorial staff is excellent, and that I recognize that the constraints they impose come from pressures exerted upon them, and not from their own personal choice. The first constraint is space. Five-hundred words a month is what I have, and those five-hundred words must include the biographical citations as well. The November issue is a more generous allotment, but even that usually comes in around fifteen-hundred words. Further, the editor wants four or five books covered in that space. My genre becomes review-as-haiku, requiring evocative compression, perfectly chosen diction, and a word-counting function on my software. The primary factor curtailing the space the editor can offer me is the journalistic bottom line. The average "Book World" section runs from eight to sixteen pages, and is supposed to be pulling its own weight in advertising revenue, an area of special concern during a recession economy. There is only one journalistic venue where expansive coverage of children's books is featured—The New York Times Book Review—and it is a much larger document, and has, after all, its own independent subscription list helping to finance its expansive articles. Of the 161 citations listed for "children's books" in the Newspaper Abstracts Ondisc (University Microfilms) file for 1989, for example, 56 were from The New York Times Book Review. Slightly more than one-third of the discussion appearing before the American general public came from that one journalistic site. Of the remaining seven papers indexed by the service, the three leaders (The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and The Los Angeles Times) had 29, 26, and 24 citations respectively, roughly less than half of the space allotted by The New York Times Book Review. In addition, in each case the citations for the other newspapers also...

Decision rules and regulatory reform

ABSTRACTThe regulation of risks to health and the environment in the United States is currently undergoing serious criticism for its impact on the recession economy. Attempts to diminish health risks by placing stringent limitations on potentially harmful substances are thought to be excessively expensive and ineffective. To remedy this problem, basic reforms in the way these regulations are fashioned have been proposed. Perhaps the best known is cost-benefit analysis. Nevertheless, there are a number of areas where agencies purposely avoid making tradeoffs between costs and benefits and instead assign priorities among levels and types of benefits. However, despite a considerable literature examining the merits of making tradeoffs in regulatory decisions, little attention has been given to the disparate premises of the tradeoff and no-tradeoff rules and how the choice of decision rules determines the role of cost considerations in agency decision making. This paper not only examines these issues, but develops an analytical framework for restructuring the choice between rules. Instead of abolishing the no-tradeoff rules, the analytical framework proposed here can be used to generate a compromise rule which permits partial tradeoffs under certain well-defined circumstances.