US Class Research Articles

Class, Political Economy, and Institutionalism: Toward a Rapprochement?

Institutionalists are often troubled by the kind of class analysis employed by orthodox Marxists because it overlooks the many and varied institutional factors present in modern labor markets. By the same token, heterodox economists of all stripes find it difficult to teach social class to modern students who see themselves as members of a ubiquitous middle class. Two recent books, Michael Zweig's The Working Majority and Baiman et al.'s Political Economy and Contemporary Capitalism (PECC) highlight some key institutional features of US social classes and the important implications that follow from a broadly heterodox analysis of class. The important empirical, historical, and institutional analysis contained in these works should redeem class analysis for institutionalists and provide a rich background for students. Zweig's book presents a modern interpretation of the class structure of the United States. His main contribution is the comprehensive empirical analysis that he employs in delineating the US class structure. Key to his analysis is his definition of social class: Class is about the power some people have over the lives of others, and the powerless-

Trend analysis by patent information. Patents of US Class 705 through the "Patent Map".

USのビジネスモデル特許の出願動向が検討された。この結果，上位のIBMは「データ情報の伝送」，富士通は「アナログ計算機」，日立製作所は「チケット発行機，料金登録機，郵便料金計算機」などが主力分野であること，最近の新規分野には，縺C歯，化粧の各製剤?電気，磁気，放射線，超音波の各治療器?ヤ両?錠，手錠l々な知見が得られた。一方，特許から動向に関する情報を得るためには，パテントマップ作成が有効であり，これを実現化するためには，まとまった特許データを収集できること，データ形式の統一ができること，得られた数千件以上の情報をまとめて高速に，多角的に，スムーズに解析できること，このような条件が必要であった。

Paule Marshall's Critique of Capitalism and Cold War Ideology: Brown Girl, Brownstones as a Resistant Working-Class Text

Brown Girl, Brownstones, Paule Marshall tells story of Boyces, a workingclass Barbadian immigrant family struggling to create a home in United States during Depression and World War II. Silla Boyce and her fellow Bajans are part of what Carol Boyce Davies calls the first wave of Caribbean migration to US (60), and as recent immigrants, they struggle to gain acceptance in a culture characterized by property and status, buying into a predominantly white, middle-class vision of American Dream. Sadly, belief in this mythic American Dream has devastating effects for most of characters in text; Marshall's awareness of destructive aspects of US class system permeates novel. She holds capitalism responsible for multiple tragedies in lives of her black workingclass characters, and I will discuss ways in which novel both engages class issues and critiques capitalist ideology. However, I further plan to link Marshall's treatment of class and capitalism to Brown Girl's specific historical context, because although much of story takes place during World War II and years immediately preceding it, Marshall wrote novel during early years of Cold War. A materialist ethic of success became cultural

The Res Judicata Effect in England of a US Class Action Settlement

In US courts the procedural device of the class action is available by virtue of Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Subject to certain conditions, this rule enables one person to bring an action on behalf of a large number of others (the “class members”) and the resolution of such an action, whether it is by way of judgment following trial or by the entry of an order of settlement, has res judicata effect on the class members. In most cases the majority of class members are all resident in the United States.

Estimation of evapotranspiration from rice in southern New South Wales: a review

This paper reviews field measurements of evapotranspiration from rice (ET rice) in the Murrumbidgee Valley of southern New South Wales. The results are compared with US Class A open pan evaporation (E pan) at CSIRO Griffith, and with reference evapotranspiration (ETo) calculated using a locally calibrated Penman equation. Both methods (+ETrice = +Epan or +ETrice = +ETo) give good estimates of total evapotranspiration from flooded rice over the ponded season of about 5 months, from October to February. Variation between seasons in total ETo, rainfall, and ETo minus rainfall is large. Over 32 years, total seasonal ETo varied by a factor of 1.5, while rainfall varied >10-fold. The irrigation water requirement for rice +(ETo - rainfall) varied from 685 mm in 1992-93 to 1350 mm in 1990-91. This large variation highlights the need to adjust the rice water use limit (16 ML/ha or 1600 mm) on a seasonal basis, to detect and eliminate high water use paddocks where percolation to the groundwater or surface runoff is excessive (>2 ML/ha). On average, an irrigation requirement of 10.5 ML/ha is needed to replace net evaporative loss +(ETo - rainfall) for rice flooded for 5 months, October-February. Monthly totals of ETo are compared for several locations within the rice-growing areas of southern New South Wales, and differences between locations are found to be small and not significant. This reflects the strong dependence of evaporation on radiant energy, which is unlikely to vary spatially to a significant extent across the region. ETo calculated from meteorological data collected at CSIRO Griffith therefore provides a definitive basis for estimating evapotranspiration from rice in southern New South Wales. Furthermore, CSIRO Griffith has a computerised meteorological data base going back to the 1930s. Current meteorological data and historical records are readily available by contacting the Metdata Manager. Therefore, the case is made for using CSIRO Griffith ETo as the reference for estimating evapotranspiration from rice in southern New South Wales. This study provides farmers, Land and Water Management Plan groups, and policy makers with a tool that can be used, on a yearly basis, to evaluate rice paddock water use efficiency. It should be adopted to confine rice growing to the least permeable soils.

The Reputational Penalty Firms Bear from Committing Criminal Fraud

Introduction Optimal penalties for corporate fraud require that firms face expected penalties equal to the total social costs of the crime. Yet formal courtimposed sanctions for committing fraud often represent a small fraction of the damage produced by the fraud. Sheer and Ho (1989), for example, estimate that the median and mean ratios of criminal fines to the private loss from private fraud were 0.14 and 0.73 in 1988. The corresponding median and mean ratios for government procurement fraud were 0.29 and 1.60. Including criminal restitution raises the median dollar sanction-to-loss ratio for private fraud to 0.84 and for government procurement fraud to 0.68. These ratios are for private parties convicted of fraud. The ratio of the expected court-imposed penalty to the social cost of the fraud is undoubtedly smaller. Particularly when compared to other crimes such as environmental pollution, where the median ratio of criminal fines to private loss is 3.71, the penalty for fraud seems surprisingly low. The perceived underpunishment of corporate frauds has recently affected public policy. Reflecting popular opinion that existing penalties were too low, the US Sentencing Commission – the federal agency responsible for setting the penalty guidelines used by judges – established corporate sentencing guidelines in 1991 that raised median corporate fraud penalties by over twentyfold. This article criticises the conventional wisdom about corporate fraud in two ways. First, we explain that the typical optimal criminal penalty for private corporate fraud is small because the external effects of such frauds are usually small. An increase in criminal penalties for corporate fraud can do more harm than good because it encourages the substitution of criminal penalties for reputation as a mechanism to police fraudulent behaviour.

An automated recording atmometer: I. calibration and testing

A newly designed automated atmometer (porous-surface evaporimeter) capable of short-interval recording of potential evaporation is calibrated and tested. The rate of evaporation from a carborundum stone surface is measured with the use of a view tube of the type used in medical intravenous systems and an IR light-emitting diode (LED)-photodetector pair to count water drops. A resolution of approximately 0.66 μm pan evaporation equivalent is obtained with the new design. Simultaneous measurements using the new atmometer, a manual atmometer of similar design, and a US Class A pan evaporimeter are used in the calibration. Evaporation estimates from four Penman-type models are also compared with estimates from the new atmometer. At the 1 h interval, 95% of the variance in atmometer evaporation is explained by the Penman-Monteith model. In comparison with other evaporimeters, the new instrument offers improvements in resolution, accuracy, response time, short-interval measurement capability, unattended operation, and portability.

The new US class struggle: financial industry power vs. grassroots populism

In a complementary article to Cleaver's discussion of the debt crisis in Capital & Class 39, Bond considers the explosive growth of debt in us finance and the populist campaigns ranged against this new financial power. Bond suggests that the bases of new local, national and international coalitions to refuse the imposition of the costs of devaluation onto exploited groups can be seen in these campaigns.

Economic performance of US Class 1 railroads: a stochastic frontier approach

In this paper we estimate technical and allocative inefficiency and cost thereof of 13 US Class 1 railroads using stochastic frontier production methodology in a panel data framework. In addition to passenger and freight services, we included quality of these services in our analysis. Empirical results show that the cost of technical inefficiency varies quite substantially among the roads. The most inefficient road is 29.91 % above the cost frontier while technical inefficiency on an average increased cost by 16-23%. On the contrary, allocative inefficiency does not differ much among the roads. Increase in cost due to . allocative inefficiency is in between 4% and 9% with a mean of around 7%. Thus while the roads are quite competitive and efficient in allocating their inputs, there is substantial scope for some of them to improve their technical efficiency.

Variations of evaporation in time and space I. Study of diurnal changes using evaporimeters and grass lysimeters

Daily variations in measured and calculated evaporation rates were accounted for by changes in various weather factors, using simple and multiple regression analyses. Partial correlations indicated that solar radiation accounted for about 70% of the variations in water losses from dish evaporimeters, whereas the corresponding influences of temperature, vapour pressure deficit and wind, as individual factors, were about 35%, nil and 60 %, respectively. However, radiation, temperature and wind, as component factors, each showed a lower correlation with evaporation, whereas vapour pressure deficit showed a higher and significant correlation. The degree of association between evaporation and weather factors was greater when the number of daily observations used in the analysis was doubled. Multiple regression analyses showed that the combined effects of the four weather parameters were responsible for about 90 and 50 % of the observed variations in evaporation and transpiration rates, respectively. The rates of evaporation, calculated by the multiple regression equations, agreed well with evaporation observed on days other than those used for making the regression. Significant correlations were also found between evaporation from small dishes and a US Class A pan, and between evaporation and transpiration from grass in lysimeters.