Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper investigates the conditions under which developing and transition nations engage in currency redenomination. Given that many governments of developing countries experience high levels of inflation and deterioration in their currency’s value against other currencies, why do some elect to redenominate, while others do not? And why do some governments wait many years after a bout of hyperinflation, or after their currency is priced at 1000 or 5000 units to the dollar, to redenominate, while others do so relatively quickly? I suggest that the explanations rest in a combination of economic and political factors, including inflation, governments’ concerns about credibility, and the effect of currencies on national identity. I employ survival analysis to test these expectations, using a set of data for developing and transition nations, covering the 1960-2003 period. I find, not surprisingly, that inflation is an important predictor of redenomination. Redenomination also is related to political variables, including governments’ time horizons, the governing party’s ideology, the fractionalization of the government and legislature, and the degree of social heterogeneity.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Latino students currently have the highest dropout rates of any population subgroup in the United States. This paper seeks to combine the literature on language assistance classes and tracking in a multi-level modeling framework in order to find an answer to how individual and contextual variables differentially explain why Latino students drop out of high school. I use data from the first three waves of the National Education Longitudinal Study for the Latino sub-sample of 1387 students nested within 393 schools. My hypothesis is that Latinos who have taken language assistance classes prior to 8th grade are more likely to drop out of high school primarily due to tracking in non academic classes. The preliminary findings suggest that language assistance classes may have a negative effect on the probability of dropping out of high school – especially for students who attend urban schools with gang conflicts. A tentative conclusion from these results is tha t contrary to the stated hypothesis, having had taken language assistance classes prior to 8th grade may in fact arm Latino students with some skills and/or resources which deter them from eventually dropping out of high school.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study assessed the job satisfaction of current and former newspaperwomen and their reasons for leaving their last newspaper position. Recent research has found women are leaving the newspaper industry at a higher percentage than other mediums. A job-satisfaction theory was applied to form many of the questions in an online survey that used snowball sampling, and the study found many women left their previous position because of salary and management-related issues.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Research has shown that societal authoritarianism (e.g. conventionalism, submission to authorities, and outgroup aggression, etc.) rises as the level of economic threat increases (Sales, 1973; Doty et al, 1991). The present study extends past findings by hypothesizing that feelings of threat in fact polarize groups in society, provoking increases of authoritarianism in those who already lean toward it, while decreasing it those who are more liberal or unconventional to begin with (e.g. artists, musicians). Thus we hypothesize a rise in anti-authoritarianism in music during high-threat periods, when there is a documented higher level of authoritarianism in mainstream society. Statistical tests confirmed our categorization of 1996-2000 (pre-911) as a low-threat period and 2001-2005 (post-911) as a high-threat period using standard indicators of economic threat (e.g. higher unemployment, lower disposable income, rises in consumer price index, increased likelihood of war, etc.). Next, we developed a content-analysis scheme to code authoritarian trends in music from 1997-2004 using the two main scales of authoritarianism (Adornoâ??s F-scale and Altemeyerâ??s RWA scale). The top yearly albums from Billboard were coded for each year. After coding all the lyrics of each album, we found a clear increase in anti-authoritarian sentiments and a decrease in authoritarian ones from the low-threat to the high-threat period. Previous studies on threat and authoritarianism have been mostly one-sided, showing that as threat increases societal authoritarianism also rises. Our study suggests that there may simultaneously be a strong opposition to authoritarianism in music. Future research is needed to confirm this hypothesis.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Much of our knowledge about police behavior “on the street” is based on in-person observation of the police. A large body of research utilizing police observational data has demonstrated that situational factors (or the immediate context of police-citizen encounters) are the strongest predictors of police behavior. However, there has been little research on how the observer can act as a key part of the immediate context of police behavior and influence police behavior. One theme in the field research literature is that observer effects (or observer behavior) can act as a source of bias in observational data. This paper utilizes descriptive and quantitative data on reactivity from a large scale observational study of police (Project on Policing Neighborhoods or POPN) to develop a model to predict this form of reactivity during encounters with suspects. In other words, which observers are more likely to help officers during encounters (net of a variety of controls for situational factors and officer characteristics)? Multivariate analyses indicate that observers with higher academic rank (e.g., advanced graduate students), those with comparatively lower overall grade point averages, and those with conservative attitudes toward criminality were significantly less likely to get involved in police work during encounters with suspects. The implications of these findings for recruiting and training social observers for police research are discussed.