Book reviews—comptes rendus

Themes in Political History—Thèmes en histoire politique

Peter BLICKLE ed., Resistance, Representation and Community, Oxford University Press, Origins of the Modern State in Europe, 13th‐18th Centuries Series, Oxford, 1997, 401 pp. ISBN 0–19–820548–1. £50.00.

J. L. MERRITT ed., The Political World of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford 1621–1641, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, 307 pp. ISBN 0–521–560–411. £40.00.

Themes in Napoleonic Studies—Etudes sur Napoléon

Malcolm CROOK, Napoleon comes to power: Democracy and Dictatorship in Revolutionary France, 1795–1804, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1998 ISBN 0–7083–1461–9 (hardback) £15.00, ISBN 0–7083–1401–5 (paperback) £7.95.

Christopher PRENDERGAST, Napoleon and History Painting. Antoine‐Jean Gros's La Bataille d'Eylau, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997, xiv + 223 pp., ISBN 0–19–817402–0 £45.00.

Matthew TRUESDELL, Spectacular Politics. Louis‐Napoleon Bonaparte and the Fête Impériale, 1849–1870, Oxford University Press Oxford, 1997, viii + 238 pp., ISBN 0–19–510689‐X £35.00.

Themes in Twentieth‐Century History—Aspects de l'histoire du vingtième siècle

Götz ALY, Macht‐Geist‐Wahn. Kontinuitäten deutschen Denkens, Argon, Berlin, 1997, 220pp., ISBN 3–87024–361–9.

Holger H. HERWIG, The First World War: Germany and Austria‐Hungary 1914–1918, Modern Wars, Arnold, London, 1997, xx + 490 pp. ISBN 0–340–67753–8 (hb), 0–340–57348–1 (pb) £16.99.

Lonnie R. JOHNSON, Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbours, Friends, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, xi + 339 pp., ISBN 0–19–510071–9 (hardback) £27.00. 0–19–510072–7 (paperback) £15.00.

Iwao Peter SANO, One Thousand days in Siberia: The Odyssey of a Japanese‐American POW, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 1997, xvii + 210pp., ill., ISBN 0–8032–4262‐X £23.95.

Martin THOMAS, Britain, France and Appeasement: Anglo‐French Relations in the Popular Front Era, Berg, Oxford, 1996, x + 268pp., ISBN 1–85973–192–9 £29.95 and £12.95.     

Domesticated Landscapes: The Subsistence Ecology of Plant and Animal Domestication

Harvesting different species as foods or raw materials calls for differing skills depending on the species being harvested and the circumstances under which they are being taken. In some situations and for some species, the tactics used are mainly behavioral—that is, people adjust, or adapt, their own actions to fit the behavior and circumstances of the species they are taking. Under other circumstances and for other species, the skills and tactics used may call for greater environmental preparation or manipulation. Therefore, instead of trying to distinguish people today and in the past as either foragers or farmers, it makes sense to define human subsistence behavior as an interactive matrix of species and harvesting tactics, that is, as a provisions spreadsheet.     

“Bluewashing” the Firm? Voluntary Regulations,Program Design,and Member Compliance with the United Nations Global Compact

Voluntary programs have emerged as important instruments of public policy. We explore whether programs lacking monitoring and enforcement mechanisms can curb participants’ shirking with program obligations. Incentive‐based approaches to policy see monitoring and enforcement as essential to curb shirking, while norm‐based approaches view social mechanisms such as norms and learning as sufficient to serve this purpose. The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), a prominent international voluntary program, encourages firms to adopt socially responsible policies. Its program design, however, relies primarily on norms and learning to mitigate shirking. Using a panel of roughly 3,000 U.S. firms from 2000 to 2010, and multiple approaches to address endogeneity and selection issues, we examine the effects of Compact membership on members’ human rights and environmental performance. We find that members fare worse than nonmembers on costly and fundamental performance dimensions, while showing improvements only in more superficial dimensions. Exploiting the lack of monitoring and enforcement, UNGC members are able to shirk: enjoying goodwill benefits of program membership without making costly changes to their human rights and environmental practices.     

TAXATION AND INTERNAL MIGRATION—EVIDENCE FROM THE SWISS CENSUS USING COMMUNITY‐LEVEL VARIATION IN INCOME TAX RATES*

ABSTRACT We investigate the relationship between income tax rate variation and internal migration for the unique case of Switzerland, whose system of determining tax rates primarily at the community level results in enough variation to permit analysis of their influence on migration. Specifically, using Swiss census data, we analyze migratory responses to tax rate variations for various groups defined by age, education, and nationality/residence permit. The results suggest that young Swiss college graduates are most sensitive to tax rate differences, but the estimated effects are not large enough to offset the revenue‐increasing effect of a rise in tax rate. The migratory responses of foreigners and other age‐education groups are even smaller, and reverse causation seems negligible.     

Opportunities and competition in thick labor markets: Evidence from plant closures

Since Marshall (1890), it has been widely held in urban economic theory that cities insure workers against the risk of unemployment by offering a larger pool of potential jobs. Using a large administrative panel data set on workers displaced as a result of plant closures, we examine whether positive effects from a higher urban job density are offset by more intense competition between workers. When controlling for the sorting of workers between regions, we find robust evidence that the effect of job competition on unemployment duration exceeds that of job opportunities in absolute value. Our results put the idea of urban risk-sharing into perspective and provide an explanation for observed longer unemployment durations in cities.