Publikationsliste KOPS

The classical outbidding model of ethnic politics argues that democratic competition involving ethnic parties inevitably leads to ethnic outbidding where parties adopt ever more extreme positions. However, recent small-N studies show that ethnic outbidding is only one of a range of strategies available to ethnic parties. This article seeks to explain why some ethnic parties are extremist, whereas others adopt moderate positions. Drawing on the ethnic outbidding and the nested competition model of ethnic party competition, it is hypothesised that the ethnic segmentation of the electoral market, and the relative salience of an ethnically cross-cutting economic dimension of party competition, account for the varying degrees of extremism. Hypotheses are tested drawing on a novel, expert-survey-based dataset that provides indicators for the positions of 83 ethnonational minority parties in 22 European democracies in 2011. Results of ordinary least squares and two-level linear regressions show that as the economic dimension gains importance, parties become more moderate relative to the party system mean. The electorate's ethnic segmentation has a positive effect on extremism, but this effect is not significant in all models. Contrary to expectations, higher ethnic segmentation of the party system is associated with more moderate positions in the majority of the estimated models.

In this article, we offer an explanation for varying patterns of territorial reforms aimed at accommodating claims for more substate autonomy in multinational states. We argue that the interaction between preferences of state-wide and non-statewide parties, their negotiation power and the negotiation mode accounts for specific patterns of territorial change. Analytically, we advance existing research in two ways: First, by analyzing territorial change in a two-dimensional space (vertical and horizontal), we pay explicit attention to jurisdictional heterogeneity between substates. Second, by applying an actor-centered institutionalist approach, we highlight the strategic potential of actors within the institutional setting. The comparative analysis of thirteen processes of territorial change in four multinational Western democracies—Canada, Belgium, Spain, and the UK—reveals, first, certain conditional effects of the independent variables on specific patterns of territorial change and, second, how the negotiation mode impacts on a party’s negotiation power.

Existing estimates of the labor-market returns to human capital give a distorted picture of the role of skills across different economies. International comparisons of earnings analyses rely almost exclusively on school attainment measures of human capital, and evidence incorporating direct measures of cognitive skills is mostly restricted to early-career workers in the United States. Analysis of the new PIAAC survey of adult skills over the full lifecycle in 23 countries shows that the focus on early-career earnings leads to underestimating the lifetime returns to skills by about one quarter. On average, a one-standard-deviation increase in numeracy skills is associated with an 18 percent wage increase among prime-age workers. But this masks considerable heterogeneity across countries. Eight countries, including all Nordic countries, have returns between 12 and 15 percent, while six are above 21 percent with the largest return being 28 percent in the United States. Estimates are remarkably robust to different earnings and skill measures, additional controls, and various subgroups. Instrumental-variable models that use skill variation stemming from school attainment, parental education, or compulsory-schooling laws provide even higher estimates. Intriguingly, returns to skills are systematically lower in countries with higher union density, stricter employment protection, and larger public-sector shares.

This paper examines the impact of social heterogeneity on in-kind redistribution. We contribute to the previous literature in two ways: we consider i) the provision of several public goods and ii) agents different not only in income, but also in their preferences over the various goods provided by the public sector. In this setting, both the distribution and size of goods provision depend on the heterogeneity of preferences. Our main result is that preference heterogeneity tends to decrease in-kind redistribution, while income inequality tends to increase it. An empirical investigation based on United States Census Bureau data confirms these theoretical findings.

We develop and analyze a labor market model in which heterogeneous firms operate under decreasing returns and compete for labor by posting long-term contracts. Firms achieve faster growth by offering higher lifetime wages, which allows them to fill vacancies with higher probability, consistent with recent empirical findings. The model also captures several other regularities about firm size, job flows, and pay, and generates sluggish aggregate dynamics of labor market variables. In contrast to existing bargaining models with large firms, efficiency obtains and the model allows a tractable characterization over the business cycle.

In this paper, we address two empirical puzzles: Why are cross-country differences in the division of labour between public and private education funding so large and why are they politically sustainable in the long term? We argue that electoral institutions play a crucial role in shaping politico-economic distributive coalitions that affected the original division of labour in education financing. In proportional representation systems, the lower and middle classes formed a coalition supporting the establishment of a system with a large share of public funding. In majoritarian systems, in contrast, the middle class voters aligned with the upper income class and supported private education spending instead. Once established, institutional arrangements create feedback effects on the micro-level of attitudes, reinforcing political support even among upper middle classes in public systems. These hypotheses are tested empirically both on the micro level of preferences as well as on the macro level with aggregate data and survey data from the ISSP for 20 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.

Knowledge spillovers through worker mobility between firms, found in previous research, imply that knowledge production within firms creates a positive externality to the hiring firms and their workers. We calculate the shares in the gains from spillovers retained by these parties using matched employer–employee data from Danish manufacturing. We find that around two-thirds of the total output gain (0.1% per year) is netted by the firms as extra profit, about a quarter goes to the incumbent workers as extra wages, while the workers who bring spillovers receive no more than 8% of it. This gains distribution, which favors the hiring firms, is similar for different types of moving workers, and is stable over time.

Two studies were conducted to examine gender differences in trait (habitual) versus state (momentary) mathematics anxiety in a sample of students (Study 1: N = 584; Study 2: N = 111). For trait math anxiety, the findings of both studies replicated previous research showing that female students report higher levels of anxiety than do male students. However, no gender differences were observed for state anxiety, as assessed using experience-sampling methods while students took a math test (Study 1) and attended math classes (Study 2). The discrepant findings for trait versus state math anxiety were partly accounted for by students’ beliefs about their competence in mathematics, with female students reporting lower perceived competence than male students despite having the same average grades in math. Implications for educational practices and the assessment of anxiety are discussed.

dc.title:

dc.contributor.author: Hinzelin, Marc-Olivier

This paper seeks to advance the diversity literature by investigating organizational performance consequences of age diversity. Drawing from social-identity and social-categorization theory, we theoretically argue that, in age-diverse companies, age-based subgrouping processes occur, favouring a shared perception of a negative age-discrimination climate. This perceived negative age-discrimination climate in turn negatively relates to organizational performance. As the main contribution, top managers' negative age-related stereotypes and diversity-friendly HR policies are introduced as organizational-level moderators that increase and attenuate, respectively, the social categorization processes affecting performance in age-diverse companies. We utilized structural equation modelling (SEM) to test the proposed hypotheses using a multisource dataset comprising 147 companies. The results supported all hypotheses, indicating that low negative top managers' age stereotypes as well as high diversity-friendly HR policies are potential organizational factors that can prevent the negative relation of age diversity with organizational performance transmitted through the negative age-discrimination climate. These results are discussed in light of their contribution to the diversity literature and social-categorization theory as well as their implication for practitioners.

dc.title:

We provide experimental evidence on how unequal access to performance enhancing education affects demand for redistribution. People earn money in a real effort experiment andcan then decide how to distribute it among themselves and another subjects. We comparesituations in which randomly chosen people get access to performance enhancing education with situations in which either only luck or only performance determines outcome. Wefind that unequal opportunities evoke a preference for redistribution that is comparable tothe situation when luck alone determines the allocation. However, people with unequalaccess to education are more likely to disagree about the appropriate distribution.

This study sets out to explore the institutional embeddedness of civic engagement in the form of monetary donations and volunteering by firms in Western Europe. Drawing on a recent analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), two contradictory hypotheses—institutional mirror versus substitute—are discussed focusing on three institutional spheres: corporatism, welfare arrangements and statism. The paper argues for moving beyond a linear perspective and takes the interaction of institutional spheres into account. Using a comparative quantitative multilevel approach, institutional, sectoral and organizational determinants of enterprises' civic engagement are empirically analysed drawing on a survey of small- and medium-sized firms in 17 Western European countries. While firm size remains an important determinant of civic engagement, it is shown that the impact of welfare arrangements is conditional on the presence of corporatist arrangements and vice versa. This suggests that civic engagement both mirrors and substitutes for existing institutions, depending on underlying institutional complementarities.

The article describes how the Internet can be used for research both with migrants and on the psychological impressions others have of migrants. Internet-based research methods are currently one of the hot fields in methodology. Though Internet-based research has only a brief history—around 15 years—the field has seen a massive increase in the number of studies conducted on the Internet, and the collection of tools with which to conduct Internet-based research. This development demonstrates a grass-roots change in how research in the behavioural and social sciences is often conducted. In our paper, we use the example of examining social networking Web pages (in terms both of its quantitative and its qualitative aspects) for markers of biculturalism in migrants to illustrate how this type of investigation can be a fruitful avenue for researchers in the area.

A central assumption of deliberative theory is that political preferences are endogenous to decision-making processes in which they are transformed by communicative interaction. We identify discursiveness and coordination of interaction as central determinants of preference change and develop a typology of political modes of interaction that affect the likelihood of preference change differently. These properties are in turn influenced by institutional characteristics of the fora in which communicative interaction takes place. To illustrate our approach empirically we present a comparative analysis of two extreme modes of interaction, ‘debate’ and ‘deliberation’, providing a case study of a parliamentary debate and a citizen conference on the same conflict: the import of embryonic stem cells in Germany. We assess the discursiveness and coordination as well as the amount of preference transformation in both forums.