Food fight! Immigrant Street Vendors,Gourmet Food Trucks and the Differential Valuation of Creative Producers in Chicago

Immigrant street vendors in Chicago have fought for decades without success to change the restrictive and punitive city ordinance governing their work. The failure of the immigrant street vendors stands in marked contrast to the successful efforts of gourmet food truck entrepreneurs, who within only two years convinced the Chicago City Council to pass an ordinance permitting their work. The differential regulation of street vending reveals how local politicians use the rhetoric of the ‘creative’ city to justify building a city that appeals to young urban professionals, while simultaneously marginalizing the possibilities of working‐class immigrants to shape the city to their desires. This article aims to add to the literature on the politics of the creative class by demonstrating how discourses of creativity and entrepreneurialism get mobilized by competing interests, and how racial‐ethnic attitudes become integral to these discourses. The contrasting experiences of the vendors force us to ask: Why is the creativity of food truck entrepreneurs valued over the creativity of street vendors when, according to Richard Florida, creative class cities are supposed to be tolerant and immigrant‐friendly? Whose ‘creativity’ gets to be part of the ‘creative’ city? I draw on interviews with street vendors and a discourse analysis of media coverage of vending debates.     

Combining Statistical Evidence

The combination of evidence from independent studies has a curious history. The origins reach back at least to the beginning of the 20th century. Since the mid‐1970s, meta‐analysis has become popular in several fields, among them medical statistics and the behavioural sciences. The most widely used procedures were perfected in early papers, and subsequently, a kind of groupthink has taken hold of meta‐analysis. This explains the need for a review in a statistics journal, destined for a statistical audience. Meta‐analysis is not a hot research topic among graduate students in statistics, and by writing this article, we hope to change this. We wish to point out the shortcomings of the mainstream view and exhibit some of the open problems that await the attention of statistical researchers. A host of competent reviews of meta‐analysis have been published, and several book‐length treatments are also available. We have listed many of these in the bibliography but cannot guarantee completeness.     

面向对象分析在软件测试中的应用

测试是保证软件质量、提高软件可靠性的关键。文章主要讨论了编码完成后的方法的测试和类的测试,并分别给出了测试策略。最后,结合实际基于类的测试和类的方法的测试,设计了相应的测试用例。     

论高校"两课"教学

从对思想教育史的反思和教育方针的基本要求及思想政治素质在素质教育中的位置的高度认识思想政治教育的重要性,是提高对"两课"教育重要性认识,增强"两课"教育自觉性的基础;转变教育理念,贴近实际,贴近生活,贴近学生,提高针对性和感染力,是提高"两课"教学效果的关键;实行教育与社会实践及班风建设相结合是促使书本知识向学生个人素质转化、提高"两课"教育效果的基本途径.     

企业创新绩效影响因素研究

本文以广东省134家企业截面数据作为样本,选择新产品销售收入比例指标测度企业的创新绩效,实证分析了企业规模、研发强度、吸收能力等指标与创新绩效之间的关系。结果表明,企业规模、研发强度对企业创新绩效呈现显著负向影响。而吸收能力对企业创新绩效存在显著的正向影响。     

城市体系与中国省域发展:结构主义视角的实证研究

基于结构主义的视角,利用中国23个主要省域的地级市2005—2011年常住人口数据,从地区生产总值、地区劳动生产率与地区人均生产总值三个维度来界定区域经济发展。研究发现,首位度越大、集中度越大、人口分布越不平等,越能够促进区域经济发展。并且,在区域经济增长模型中,已经出现"要素投入规模报酬递减"的现象,"工业化"倾向的产业结构对于中国区域经济发展具有负的显著作用。说明在促进区域发展的作用动力中,工业化的影响在逐渐减弱,城市化的作用慢慢凸显。同时,以"户籍人口占常住人口比重"的城市人口融合度对于区域经济发展具有负向影响。这表明更开放包容的城市人口政策,不仅有助于实现社会稳定和社会公平,最终也会促进区域经济发展。     

Patterns of integration

This paper compares the distribution of jobs by complexity and firms' willingness to hire low‐educated labour for jobs of varying complexity in Norway, Italy and Hungary. In investigating how unqualified workers can cope with complex jobs, it compares their involvement in various forms of post‐school skills formation. The countries are also compared in terms of the proportion of small businesses, which, it is assumed, manage and tolerate the losses from functional illiteracy more than large firms do. Unskilled Norwegians benefit from synergies that exist between work in complex jobs, post‐school skills formation and civil integration. Italy has an abundant supply of simple jobs and its small businesses employ unqualified workers even in complex jobs. Inadequate post‐school skills formation and the lack of a sizeable small‐business sector set limits on the inclusion of low‐educated Hungarians.     

3～6岁儿童上体体型数据分析

近年来人们生活水平显著提高,儿童生长发育较早,当今儿童体型与以前的同龄儿童体型相比发生了明显变化。儿童体型的变化影响童装的设计生产。以石家庄地区3～6岁学龄前儿童为研究对象,采用接触式的测量方法获取大量与服装有关的部位的体型数据,并运用数理统计软件对数据进行分析,分析当今儿童体型特征,并与国标进行比较。     

Choosing strategic responses to address emerging environmental regulations: size,perceived influence and uncertainty

How companies respond to impending regulations is a significant aspect of corporate strategy. Regulations, especially environmental regulations, are expanding quickly and increasingly important to firm success. The threat of impending environmental regulation forces companies to choose levels of strategic responses on a continuum from passive to active. Using practitioner oriented research and existing theoretical models of corporate response, this study finds that the type of strategic response is negatively related to size, positively related to state uncertainty and negatively related to effect/response uncertainty. Based on existing literature and the results of this study, the paper suggests that simplifying the uncertainty construct could lead to more definitive findings in future research. The study results also suggest that a curvilinear relationship may exist between managerial perception of influence and level of strategic response. Most importantly, the findings could have a significant impact on firm decision making regarding environmental investments. For example, it is hoped that firms will be able to use the findings of this study to further understand and anticipate their competitors' decisions. Practitioners may also benefit from the conclusions on uncertainty in that they may be able to more cleanly parse the types of uncertainty immersed in impending environmental regulations. Finally, firms may be better able to understand decisions by their own managers and their competitors' managers in terms of their perceived influence over the regulatory process. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Is the Value Spread a Good Predictor of Stock Returns? UK Evidence

Abstract:  This paper explores the predictive ability of the value spread in the UK. I replicate the US analysis of Liu and Zhang (2007) using UK data. In addition, I extend their work by exploring the predictive ability of the book-to-market, market-to-book and value spread on other size and value investment strategies, namely: large-caps only; small-caps minus large-caps (SML); value stocks only; growth stocks only; value stocks minus growth stocks (VMG) and a market portfolio that includes all stocks. The results are consistent with Liu and Zhang (2007) on the value spread. The value spread shows no predictive power for portfolio returns. Therefore, I show that the predictive power of book-to-market and market-to-book spreads depend on the portfolio formation strategies and the relative proportion of small-cap, large-cap, value and growth stocks in the portfolio.