IMBALANCE IN CHINA'S SEX RATIO AT BIRTH: A REVIEW

For decades, China's sex ratio at birth (SRB) has risen significantly. This trend was found in different provinces and between different parities. Three direct causes have led to the imbalanced SRB: underreporting of female births, which refers to girls who are alive but are hidden from the census count; high rates of female infanticide, which refers to the killing of female infants shortly after birth; and sex‐selective abortion, which refers to the selective abortion of female fetuses. In addition to these immediate causes, China's One‐Child Policy and the cultural preference for sons constitute underlying causes for the imbalanced SRB. Distortions in the SRB can have serious social and economic consequences, including the loss of potential population growth, a “marriage squeeze,” precipitated social instability, and an aging workforce. However, China can improve the status quo by taking appropriate measures such as relaxing fertility regulations and preventing sex‐selective abortions. Establishing a comprehensive pension system can help address the high SRB in the long run. However, a policy reversing the high SRB may have a negative effect on other demographic factors. China needs to find a way to reverse the SRB without harming other demographic indicators and has to do so soon.     

LOOKING TOWARDS 2030: A NEW WORLD COMING INTO FOCUS

This article examines global demographic trends to 2030, with a particular focus on projections for the world's major economies. All else held constant, ageing populations imply slower rates of economic development for Western Societies. However, a number of policy options are available to counteract the impact of demographic change.     

Understanding Employees’ Perceptions of Human Resource Practices: Effects of Demographic Dissimilarity to Managers and Coworkers

Strategic HRM researchers have increasingly adopted an employee perspective to understand the influence of HR practices on employee outcomes and have called for studies to explain variability in employees’ perceptions of HR practices. To address this research need, we used the social information processing perspective to examine the contextual influence of managers and coworkers on employees’ perceptions of HR practices and explore demographic dissimilarities as boundary conditions of the contextual influence. Conducting research in two organizational settings, we found that both manager‐perceived and coworker‐perceived HR practices were positively related to employees’ perceptions of HR practices. The results also revealed that employee demographic dissimilarity to coworkers in terms of age and organizational tenure weakened the positive relationship between coworker‐perceived and employee‐perceived HR practices. However, the relationship between manager‐perceived and employee‐perceived HR practices was not influenced by demographic dissimilarities. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Configurational demographic predictors of work–nonwork satisfaction

Contemporary work–life balance research tends to treat demographic variables as moderators, grouping variables, or control variables influencing work and nonwork satisfaction. Yet earlier theories were premised on the assumption that they are, in fact, predictors of work and nonwork satisfaction even though those assumptions have not yet been tested empirically. Drawing on an Australian study comprising 798 white‐collar employees and using a fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis technique, we investigate demographic variables as potential configurational predictors affecting work–nonwork satisfaction, defined as a combination of work satisfaction and nonwork satisfaction. The analysis revealed different scenarios and specific patterns between configurational solution terms leading to work–nonwork satisfaction. Employment status and age of children (specifically age differences between children) were the most important demographic variables influencing employees' work–nonwork satisfaction.     

The Economics of Crime in Britain

Has there been an economic miracle during Mrs Thatcher's decade in office? Richard Layard and Stephen Nickell describe the government's achievements, but ultimately conclude that despite benefits there nave been major costs.     

Negotiating the Politics of Exclusion: Georges Candilis,Housing and the Kuwaiti Welfare State

In the early stages of welfare planning, the Kuwaiti state restricted equal access to its housing programs in neighborhoods outside the city. The subsequent demographic shift, caused by a Kuwaiti exodus to the ‘suburbs' and non‐Kuwaiti urban labor migration, prompted calls for housing schemes to encourage city living for citizens. Georges Candilis's proposal for a residential neighborhood in Kuwait City emerged from this context. This article examining Candilis's unrealized project also offers a critical perspective on Kuwait's unbalanced housing policies. From this analysis, it draws observations on the role of architects and their limited impact on policies established by decision‐making networks within the welfare state. Seen from this perspective, the Candilis project bears witness to broader socio‐economic agendas that privileged some groups while marginalizing or excluding others.     

Walking on water? performance and industrial relations under Thatcher

The claim that Britain's economy has been transformed by an economic miracle in the 1980s is critically evaluated, as is the entrenched view that unions have damaged productivity and competitiveness. Reviewing the empirical evidence, this article argues that after 10 years of Conservative government supply side economic performance remains weak.     

Flexibility bites back: the multiple and hidden costs of flexible employment policies

Flexible labour markets are increasingly regarded as the answer to a wide spectrum of labour market and societal challenges from creating jobs to reducing segmentation and welfare dependency, improving public finances and supporting workforce diversity and innovation. The contention is that, contrary to these claims, flexible labour markets generate fundamental contradictions and unsustainable long‐term trends. The jobs miracle is exaggerated and based on low productivity jobs, outsiders often lose most from competition, claimants must work flexibly but still secure a full‐time wage, low‐wage employment is shrinking the fiscal base, jobs are not being adjusted to accommodate workers' changing needs and capacities and the disposable labour model is undermining long‐term productivity.     

Menopause and the workplace: New directions in HRM research and HR practice

This paper offers two key arguments. The first is that HRM scholars and HR practitioners need to pay a good deal more attention to the bi‐directional relationship between menopause and the workplace—how menopausal symptoms can affect women's experience of work and how work can exacerbate a woman's symptoms. We outline the social responsibility, demographic, legal and business cases which explain the urgency of more research and more concerted practice in this area. Our second argument concerns the importance of future research and practice adopting an intersectional political economy approach, in order to better understand the considerable differences between how women going through menopause transition experience work. Here, we offer arguments ranging from the macro‐ through the meso‐ down to the micro‐level of these differences, in so doing setting an agenda for the work to come on this very significant issue.     

Value at Risk in the Suburbs: Eminent Domain and the Geographical Politics of the US Foreclosure Crisis

Several US counties and local governments have recently considered a novel solution to the foreclosure crisis. They plan to use eminent domain to compel the owners of mortgage debt—and specifically of private‐label mortgage‐backed securities—to sell the debt to the government at a price reflecting the loan's market value. The government would then restructure the debt and resell it to new investors. The plans are striking because—in contrast to both development‐driven eminent domain and the federal subprime bank bailout—they would force investors to assume asset devaluation and increased long‐term risk. Notably, the plans have emerged as an instance of financialization‐focused politics in suburbs and suburban cities of color, specifically majority‐black and ‐Latino/a suburbs. Local support for the plans, we argue, is rooted in the long‐term disinvestment of these ‘suburbs of exception', which became targets of subprime lending and eventually sites where the ‘financial exception' has been localized. But these demographic shifts, fragmentation and fiscal pressures have at the same time created a suburban political terrain in which the plans have gained their strongest political support.     

THE CHINA MODEL: IS IT A GOLDEN FORMULA?

The economic crisis is an opportunity for governments to face the fact that Keynesian interventionist policies are not the path to success. However, support for such policies is being sustained by misperceptions of China's remarkable economic progress in recent years. Its success is commonly attributed to government‐led initiatives, labelled as ‘The China Model’, which divert credit away from the true source of growth: its experience of the free market. This article examines the development of the free market in China and explains why the government's recent behaviour threatens to undermine the gains of recent decades.     

Socio‐demographic factors and shared leadership behaviors in dispersed teams: Implications for human resource management

Companies increasingly make use of geographically dispersed teams to capture knowledge residing at different locations. In this context, shared leadership is considered a key enabler of team performance. Taking a functional perspective on shared leadership, we thus investigate the relationship between shared leadership behaviors and team performance in dispersed teams. Furthermore, we analyze how socio‐demographic factors that are characteristic for dispersed teams (i.e., high female‐to‐male ratio, high mean age, and high levels of national diversity) affect shared leadership behaviors. Based on data from 96 dispersed teams, we show that shared leadership behavior fosters team performance. Further, we find the socio‐demographic characteristics typical for dispersed teams to foster shared leadership. Theoretical and managerial implications for human resource management are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

POPULATION AND THE ECONOMY DURING THE DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION

The changes in population structure currently taking place in both developed and less‐developed nations are part of a very long‐term trend of demographic change that has yet to run its full course. The starting point of this trend is the complete rearrangement of demographic regimes characterised by significant declines in mortality coupled with widespread fertility control. This process started in a small group of European and non‐European societies during the nineteenth century and by the second half of the twentieth century had spread to much of the world. It has brought with it significant economic and social implications for societies affected which have differed by the timing of the transition but not in their basic thrust. Eventually the demographic transition promises to bring with it very rapid and widespread ageing and, within a few decades, world population decline. Some of the long‐term economic implications of this entire process are discussed in this article.     

China's One‐Child Policy: Some Unintended Consequences

This paper gives a brief overview of China's family planning policy which, although recently relaxed, still controls a large swath of the population. Unofficially known as the ‘one‐child policy’, it resulted from the social strife of the 1970s coupled with a Malthusian pessimism concerning the capability of the still largely closed and isolated Chinese economy to care for itself. We discuss the motivations for the policy, the unfortunate demographic future that it will create, and some policy reforms that can be undertaken today.     

Reports of the dollar's demise greatly exaggerated

• ? Speculation that the dollar could lose its status as the world's main reserve currency “sooner rather than later”ⁱ looks, in our view, wide of the mark. Across a range of international uses, the dollar accounts for 40–60% of transactions – a share that has been stable or even increasing in recent years. Potential rivals are far behind, especially the Chinese renminbi, which accounts for just 1–2% of transactions. As a result, the dollar's pre‐eminence looks unlikely to be seriously threatened for many years to come. The US's gains from the dollar's global role may also be more modest than often thought.
• ? The dollar's position is supported by factors including its widespread use as a trading and commodity‐pricing currency, the size and liquidity of US financial markets, and the continued lack of a credible rival. None of these is likely to be significantly eroded in the near term, even with some moves afoot to shift away from dollar payments in oil and other areas. Historical evidence suggests that a world of multiple reserve currencies is possible but also shows it can take decades for reserve currencies to lose their dominant status.

     

Predicting Malaysian managers' objective and subjective career success

Compared with the extensive research on managerial career in the west, little has emerged from Asia. This study reports an investigation of the determinants of objective and subjective career success of managers working in the Malaysian public sector. Surveys were received from 288 managers of various managerial grades. The findings revealed that managers' objective and subjective career success were predicted by different variables. Objective career success was predicted by human capital and demographic variables. Subjective career success was predicted by structural variables, individual variables, and demographic variables. The implications for research and practice are highlighted.     

A Brief History of the American Economic Association

The 20^th‐century American economics profession and its leading professional organization—the American Economic Association (AEA)—were privileged and shaped by the federal government's need to direct resources and to call on experts. Bureaucratic tendencies to classify and count had an impact on the discipline's self‐concept, the articulation of subdisciplines, and the establishment of multiple research agendas. They also powerfully framed the strategies for growth and development formulated and deployed by the AEA itself. A consensus of professional opinion and the standardization of curriculums emerged out of the involvement of economists and the AEA with governmental affairs. At the same time, such public engagement was fraught with risks and contradictions—posing challenges and difficulties with which the AEA and the profession would have to contend for decades to come.     

The Demography of Resources

A longitudinal event‐history analysis using complete data on the aircraft fleets of all British airlines over the period 1919 to 1975 was applied to elucidating how a firm's internal resource demography can explain its resource divestiture decisions. The likelihood of divestiture for any particular aircraft was found to depend strongly on its age and size, but also on the age and size heterogeneity of an airline's entire fleet. The results constitute a demonstration of the utility of taking a demographic approach to studying the management of resource portfolios. This approach may also prove fruitful in the study of other types of strategic resources and their management.     

The Sorting of Female Careers after First Birth: A Competing Risks Analysis of Maternity Leave Duration

A number of contributions have found evidence that motherhood is a critical life event for women's employment careers. This study presents a detailed analysis for the duration of maternity leave in which young mothers can make a transition into different types of employment, unemployment as well as the next birth. We provide a comprehensive picture of the sorting mechanisms that lead to the differentiation of women's employment careers after birth. Our empirical evidence is derived from large‐linked administrative individual labour market data from Germany for a period of three decades. We obtain unprecedented insights into how women's skills, the quality of the previous job match, firm level characteristics, labour market conditions and leave legislation are related to the length of maternity duration. Expansionary leave policies, e.g. are found to be a key factor for the rising share of women who have their second child out of inactivity.     

Determinants of price mark‐up tolerance for green electricity – lessons for environmental marketing strategies from a study of residential electricity customers in Germany

This paper develops hypotheses on the effects of various attitudinal and perceptual variables as well as socio‐demographic characteristics of residential electricity customers on an individual's willingness to pay a mark‐up for electricity generated from renewable energy sources compared with the price due for electricity from conventional sources. The hypotheses are tested with data from a standardized telephone survey of 238 household electricity consumers in Germany. 53.4% of the participants are willing to pay a mark‐up for green electricity. 26.1% report a price tolerance equal to a 5–10% increase in their current electricity bill. Binary logistic and ordinal regression analyses indicate that price tolerance for green electricity is particularly influenced by attitudes (1) towards environmental issues and (2) towards one's current power supplier, (3) perceptions of the evaluation of green energy by an individual's social reference groups, (4) household size and (5) current electricity bill level. The findings are used to derive suggestions for energy related informational activities of public institutions, green marketing strategies of energy companies and future consumer research regarding demand for pro‐environmental goods. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.