Migration,Human Resource Transfers,and Development Contexts: A Logit Analysis of Venezuelan Data

This paper is concerned with the reciprocal relationship between migration and development in Third World settings. Using individual-level data for Venezuela, migration behavior is related to a person's age, educational attainment, gender, and characteristics of his/her place(s) of residence as an out-migrant, in-migrant, or stayer. Place characteristics are in terms of four groups based on employment patterns: the core, regional centers, resource frontiers, and traditional rural areas. Four questions are of concern. First, does development influence migration? All analyses indicate this is so. Second, does migration influence development? Findings are ambiguous in that places experiencing improvement in their mix of human capital lagged in the net number of persons obtained through migration whereas a gain in numbers was accompanied by deterioriation in human capital profiles. Third, was incipient polarization reversal occurring in Venezuela in the late 1960s, early 1970s? This paper departs from the usual approach by addressing this question in terms of human capital attributes instead of population aggregates. On this basis, polarization reversal is in evidence, particularly in regional centers. Finally, this study answers in the affirmative that places with different development characteristics generate migration streams differing in type, magnitude, explanation, and impact.     

NETWORK LOADING VERSUS EQUILIBRIUM ESTIMATION OF THE STOCHASTIC ROUTE CHOICE MODEL MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD AND LEAST SQUARES REVISITED*

Daganzo (1977, 1979), Daganzo and Sheffi (1977), Sheffi (1985), and Sheffi and Daganzo (1980) have used one assumption about traveler behavior in developing estimation techniques for the stochastic route-choice problem and another assumption in predicting flows on networks by using the same model. In estimation, they calculate the congested travel costs of the network links from observed flows on the network, and the network is loaded based on these costs. In prediction, they follow their stochastic user-equilibrium assumption by which travelers evaluate costs using the mean of the observed flows (or equilibrium flows). The travel-cost coefficient obtained from the loading method systematically overestimates the true travel-cost coefficient from which the observed flow data (which must be used in loading) is generated. The estimates of the same coefficient, obtained in this paper, by constraining the estimation results to conform to the equilibrium conditions are unbiased, and only marginally less efficient (have larger standard deviations). The average percentage error and inefficiency of the link flow predictions based on the loading method increases as the level of congestion on the network rises. In contrast, the average percentage error of link flow predictions based on the equilibrium estimation method declines and their efficiency remains very high as the level of congestion on the network rises.     

Experimental Boat and Ship Archaeology: Principles and Methods

The need for experiments to study physical aspects of craft of the past is stated, as well as the necessity for them to have clear aims and to follow the established principles of scientific enquiry. These principles are discussed in this joint paper by ten maritime archaeologists and others, together with methods and some points of management critical to their application in this field.     

Zopilotes,Alacranes, y Hormigas (Vultures,Scorpions, and Ants): Animal Metaphors as Organizational Politics in a Nicaraguan Garbage Crisis

While scholars frequently frame conflicts over urban waste in terms of a politics of infrastructure, this article frames such conflicts in terms of a politics of organization. In 2008, self‐employed recyclers in and around Managua, Nicaragua blockaded local dumps in an effort to secure rights to scavenge for resellable material. Over the course of this “garbage crisis”, a material and semiotic entanglement of human labor organization with animal ecology became politically salient. At different points, recyclers were compared to ants (hormigas), vultures (zopilotes), and scorpions (alacranes). State officials, NGOs, and recyclers themselves used these animal metaphors to describe the organization of waste collection. Drawing on theories of value from political ecology and economic anthropology, as well as analysis of the deployment of these “organic” metaphors, we outline an “organizational politics” of urban waste.