The Paradox of Narrowing Wage Differentials and Widening Wage Inequality in Mexico

This article examines the parallel phenomena of narrowing wage differentials among major groups of workers and widening wage inequality in general in Mexico during the 1980s and 1990s. In trying to understand this paradox, it finds that a human-capital model cannot explain wage determination in the 1990s. Although employees with higher skills and education have enjoyed increasingly higher relative returns to their human capital, much of the variance in wages is not attributable to differences in human capital or rates of return. Discriminatory wage policies have combined with policies of trade liberalization to markedly widen the wage gap between lower-paid and higher-paid workers.     

RELIGIOUS LEADERS AS POLICY ADVOCATES: THE YOUNGSTOWN STEEL MILL CLOSING

Religious organizations have always played a major role in the formulations of public policy. In the case of plant closings and mass unemployment, religious organizations have always assumed a leadership role in comforting and caring for workers and families under distress from job loss. Recently, religious organizations have broken from this traditional role to become advocates and actors in the politics of plant closings, economic development, and worker ownership. In this article, the efforts of religious organizations spawned by the closing of Youngstown Sheet and Tube are examined.     

The Effects of Data Aggregation in Statistical Analysis

The problem of ecological correlation is now widely recognized but detailed analyses of the effects of aggregation on correlation and regression coefficients are rare. A short review of the aggregation problem is followed by an analysis of the specific effect of proximity aggregation on the slope coefficient of a bivariate linear model using data drawn from the Los Angeles Metropolitan region. The evidence suggests that changes in the slope coefficient are best related to the manner in which the covariation between the independent and dependent variables changes with increased aggregation.     

Dimensions of Spatial Price Dispersion Before and After the Crash of 1929

The spatial and temporal patterns of prices are analyzed over the 1919–40 period. Arguments are made for the distinctiveness of different economic episodes, including the crash of 1929, in terms of their local price effects. Nevertheless, it is also shown that the variability between cities and between components of their price series declined through the early 1940s. Alternative conceptions of spatial price systems are introduced, and due regard is also given to the structure and interpretation of city CPI data. Implications are drawn regarding the proper design of a theory that would explain the observed patterns of spatial price dispersion. This larger project is left, however, to another time.     

PUBLIC POLICIES FOR COMMUNITIES IN ECONOMIC CRISIS

The 1980's very likely will see a major restructuring of the nation's and the world economy. In the process industries and communities that were the growth centers of previous decades will experience economic crisis. This restructuring—presaged in this country by the decaying productivity of certain basic manufacturing industries—will mean that a number of places can no longer provide sufficient income or Jobs for their people nor maintain the quality of existing public amenities. As this process of disinvestment goes forward, these communities face the challenge of finding new economic and social roles, reducing the impacts of job losses, and maintaining the quality of life within severe fiscal limits.     

Paradigms in science and archaeology

The paradigm concept as developed in western philosophy of science contexts is reviewed, and the metaphysical paradigms that govern research protocols in mainstream Old and New World prehistoric archaeology are described and compared. It is concluded that post-1970 New World archaeological research receives its intellectual mandate from anthropology, is founded on postpositivist biases, and is governed by a critical-realist ontology, a modified-objectivist epistemology, and an experimental-manipulative methodology. Post-1970 Old World archaeological research is viewed as a kind of history, remains mostly in the strict empiricist tradition, and is governed by a realist ontology, an inductivist epistemology, and by an observational methodology. The claims of various kinds of postprocessual archaeology are also evaluated in terms of the paradigm concept.     

Poland in the ‘Paris system’: self‐determination,stereotypes, and decisions in 1919

One of the most important questions at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference was what to do about the newly re‐created state of Poland. The Paris peacemakers realised the importance of the settlement, thanks in part to dire warnings about Poland's future, and the leaders spent much time discussing the territorial settlement. Yet discussions of this important question regularly strayed from debates about policy to incorporate understandings of Polish national character. In particular, the leaders of the so‐called Big Three, Britain, France, and the United States, connected expert opinion and the broader political landscape to stereotyped understandings of national character, among other factors. With reference to scholarship on stereotyping, this article analyses how developing attitudes on Polish national character became integrated into the complex settlement of Poland's borders. The peacemakers' decisions, which were a compromise between different points of view, reflected interconnected understandings of the Polish settlement.