5,215 research outputs found
How important is cultural background for the level of intergenerational mobility?
No full textUsing results on brother correlations of different groups of second generation immigrants based on administrative data from Denmark, this note analyzes the role of cultural background in the determination of the level of intergenerational mobility. The estimated correlations indicate that cultural background is not an important factor for the level of intergenerational mobility. --Intergenerational mobility,Sibling correlations
"In Germany, equal opportunities are almost as bad as in the US and much worse than in Denmark": Nine questions to Daniel Schnitzlein
No full text"Closing the R&D Gap, Evaluating the Sources of R&D Spending"
No full textBoth spending and tax policies have been implemented in the United States with the goal of stimulating private sector research and development (R&D). Karier questions whether current R&D policy, especially the research and experimentation tax credit, can contribute to closing the gap between nondefense expenditures on R&D in the United States and such expenditures in other countries, such as Japan and Germany. He also explores possible changes to our current R&D policy to make it more effective.
Reconfiguring Absence: Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin and the Rhetorical Negotiation of Cultural Display
No full textThis study traces the development of the Jewish Museum Berlin from its inception as the winning entry in a competition for an extension to the Berlin Museum in the summer of 1989 to 2005. Tracking Daniel Libeskind’s design inspirations, public arguments over continuation of the building and its eventual use, I argue that a consistent argumentative trope, characterized by Ernst Bloch’s concept of anticipatory illumination, shows up in these various conversations and influences the building’s eventual use as the Jewish Museum Berlin. The rhetoric of anticipatory illumination, in this case, shifts over time, first emphasizing Jewish cultural absence in Berlin and the need to make that absence visible, but later pushing cultural absence to the background in favor of expressing the need for multicultural tolerance in Germany and beyond. The resulting museum, the Jewish Museum Berlin, combined the specificity of the history of the former in its curatorial design with injunctions for wider concern about intolerance in contemporary societies around the world. The author argues that the shift produces a “doubled heterotopia” in the arrangement of the museum that ultimately is effective for addressing the diverse audiences for the Jewish Museum Berlin. The case study emphasizes that public art and architecture projects can be rich sites of rhetorical invention worthy of close study over the time of their development
Lauretta and Daniel Kress
No full textThe author discusses the life of Lauretta and Daniel Kress and their contribution to the Seventh-day Adventist church as pioneer missionary physicians and health educators
Competing models of socially constructed economic man : differentiating Defoe's Crusoe from the Robinson of neoclassical economics
No full textDaniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe has seldom been read as an explicitly political text. When it has, it appears that the central character was designed to warn the early eighteenth-century reader against political challenges to the existing economic order. Insofar as Defoe’s Crusoe stands for "economic man", he is a reflection of historically-produced assumptions about the need for social conformity, not the embodiment of any genuinely essential economic characteristics. This insight is used to compare Defoe’s conception of economic man with that of the neoclassical Robinson Crusoe economy. On the most important of the ostensibly generic principles espoused by neoclassical theorists, their "Robinson" has no parallels with Defoe’s Crusoe. Despite the shared name, two quite distinct social constructions serve two equally distinct pedagogical purposes. Defoe’s Crusoe extols the virtues of passive middle-class sobriety for effective social organisation; the neoclassical Robinson champions the establishment of markets for the sake of productive efficiency
Relating quantitative soil structure metrics to saturated hydraulic conductivity
No full textSoil structure affects saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks) by creating highly conductive macropores that preferentially transmit soil water. In this study, we explore the relationship between Ks and macropores in an Oxyaquic Vertic Argiudoll in northeastern Kansas. Macropores were quantified from an excavation wall using multistripe laser triangulation (MLT) scanning. Soil water contents were measured at four depths within a soil lysimeter installed within 2 meters of the MLT-scanned soil profile and adjacent to an Ameriflux tower monitoring precipitation, air temperature, and solar radiation. Selected hydraulic properties of soil horizons within the lysimeter were optimized to water content data using a Markov chain Monte Carlo technique in combination with the mobile-immobile water (MIM) model in HYDRUS-1D. Estimates of Ks varied between 4198 cm d-1 in the A horizon and 0.6 cm d-1 in a 2Btss2 horizon with strongly expressed wedge structure. Approximately 87% of the variation in Ks was explained by the geometric mean of the widths of pores quantified with the MLT technique and modified by the coefficient of extensibility (COLE). The use of COLE allows the widths of the macropores obtained at dry conditions to be approximated at saturation. Two models that predict Ks from either texture or water retention data resulted in Ks estimates that were similar to each other, but significantly lower than Ks values predicted with MIM in horizons where structural pores dominate water flow. This technique shows a great deal of promise in better understanding and predicting the relationship of soil structure to water flow.Peer reviewe
Inter- and intragenerational economic mobility: Germany in international comparison
No full textDie Ungleichheit der Lohneinkommen in Deutschland verschärft sich seit geraumer Zeit deutlich. Umso mehr muss zumindest die Gleichheit der Chancen in unserer Gesellschaft gewährleistet sein. Die Höhe des Einkommens sollte - aus gesellschaftlichen wie ökonomischen Gründen - von der individuellen Leistungsfähigkeit abhängen, nicht vom Status der Eltern. Doch wie ist es um die Gleichheit der Chancen in Deutschland tatsächlich bestellt? Ist das hiesige Einkommensgefüge so durchlässig, dass auch Menschen aus sozial schwachen Familien eine realistische Aufstiegschance haben? Wie hoch ist in Deutschland die ökonomische Mobilität zwischen sowie innerhalb von Generationen? Und wie schneidet Deutschland im Vergleich zu anderen Ländern ab? Der Autor untersucht diese Fragen mit neuen methodischen Ansätzen und analysiert die Ursachen für das unterschiedliche Ausmaß an ökonomischer Mobilität im internationalen Vergleich.For a considerable time now, the lack of equality in wage incomes in Germany has been getting clearly worse. Hence it is all the more important to at least guarantee equal opportunities in our society. The level of income - both for social and economic reasons - should be dependent on individual performance and not on one's parents' status. But what shape is equality of opportunity in Germany actually in? Is the income structure here so permeable that people from socially weak families also have a realistic chance of advancement? How high is economic mobility in Germany both between and within generations? And how does Germany do in comparison with other countries? The author examines these questions using new methodological approaches and analyzes the causes of differing extents of economic mobility in international comparison
How Important Is Cultural Background for the Level of Intergenerational Mobility?
No full textBased on brother correlations in permanent earnings for different groups of second generation immigrants, the findings in this paper indicate that cultural background is not a major determinant of the level of intergenerational economic mobility.This is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Economics Letters. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Economics Letters 114(2012), 3, pp. 335-337 and is online available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2011.11.007
Ethnic identity, political identity and ethnic conflict: simulating the effect of congruence between the two identities on ethnic violence and conflict
No full textThis thesis outlines and presents an alternative hypothetical process to the emergence of ethnic conflict. Ethnic conflicts, rather than being dependent upon pre-existing 'ancient hatreds', are instead the result of a congruence between ethnic and political identity which grants individuals the ability to use ethnicity to identify and eliminate political threats. This hypothesis is formed by the examination of three case studies of ethnic conflict: Lebanon, Northern Ireland and Croatia. This hypothesis is then formalised and tested using an agent based simulation in which agent interactions are dependent upon ethnic and political identity and the congruence between the two. As predicted there was a strong positive correlation between how accurately ethnic identity reflected political identity and the level of ethnically motivated violence in the simulation, although the relationship was not linear. Furthermore the effect of a shift in congruence was found to be roughly comparable to the effect of initialising agents with a moderate level of pre-existing ethnic antagonism
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