Public sector unions push for unmerited wage increases, exacerbating inflation and deficits. Despite this conventional wisdom, governments in several European countries successfully limited public sector wage growth during the 1980s and 1990s. It is argued in this paper that the recent rise in public sector wage inflation in the Euro-zone...
The Varieties of Capitalism literature offers two competing hypotheses on institutional resilience. One argues that globalization promotes convergence towards a neo-liberal system. Another stipulates that diverse capitalist regimes promote different comparative advantages, enabling diverse systems to co-exist. In this paper, we argue that the compatibility of diverse models of capitalism...
BACKGROUND: In the prenatal period, women can have sustained contact with nurses and other clinicians, forming relationships that are likely to be health enhancing both for the woman and her unborn child. Yet first trimester care use in Oregon dropped noticeably over the past decade. In comparison with Washington State,...
Excessive fiscal spending is commonly cited as a root of the current European debt
crisis. This paper suggests, like others, that the rise of competitiveness imbalances contributing
to national imbalances in total borrowing are a better explanation for systemic differences
towards EMU countries’ exposure to market speculation. We identify one...
The comparative political economy literature has been inconclusive in its assessment of the extent of welfare state retrenchment. One strand of research emphasised that welfare states have not undergone outright retrenchment, but recalibration. Another strand argued that there is a shift towards the privatization of risks and increased reliance on...
Across Western Europe, unions have increasingly engaged in staging general strikes against governments since 1980. This increase in general strikes is puzzling as it has occurred at the same time as economic strikes have been on the decline. We posit that theories developed to explain economic strikes hold little explanatory...
Research suggests that electoral pressures may provide an explanation for why governments offer pacts to unions and employers rather than acting through legislation when faced with the need to pass potentially unpopular reforms to welfare policies, wages, and labour markets. Here, we analyse whether governments’ pursuit of pacts affects their...
Objective: To translate a behavioral weight loss intervention for mid-life, low-income women in real world settings.
Design and Methods: In this pragmatic clinical trial, we randomly selected six North Carolina county health departments and trained their current staff to deliver a 16-session evidence-based behavioral weight loss intervention (special intervention, SI)....
Air-breathing marine animals face a complex set of physical challenges associated with diving that affect the decisions of how to optimize feeding. Baleen whales (Mysticeti) have evolved bulk-filter feeding mechanisms to efficiently feed on dense prey patches. Baleen whales are central place foragers where oxygen at the surface represents the...
Volunteers are increasingly being recruited into citizen science projects to collect observations for scientific studies. An additional goal of these projects is to engage and educate these volunteers. Thus, there are few barriers to participation resulting in volunteer observers with varying ability to complete the project’s tasks. To improve the...