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Skilled
Terms modified by Skilled Selected AbstractsHighly Skilled and Business Migrants: Information Processes and Settlement OutcomesINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 2 2003Maureen Benson-Rea Summary This paper reports on a research programme that has investigated the migration experiences of highly skilled professional and business migrants to New Zealand. Over a four-year period, five separate studies have been conducted on the stages in the process of migration. The paper sets out a model of the stages of the migration process and the data and analysis which it has guided. Of particular interest are the information sources available to potential migrants and employers, the cultural sensitivity of settlement processes and the migrants' subsequent ease of access to the labour market. The paper analyses information flows available to migrants at crucial phases in the migration process based on a stages model of the migration process. The model indicates some of the critical steps, interactions, and decisions in the migration process from the individual's point of view. Crucial information gaps are identified and implications are drawn for actors involved at the different stages. [source] Accuracy and Fluency in List and Context Reading of Skilled and RD Groups: Absolute and Relative Performance LevelsLEARNING DISABILITIES RESEARCH & PRACTICE, Issue 4 2003Joseph R. Jenkins The purpose of this study was to examine (1) the performance levels and the magnitude of performance difference between students with reading disabilities (RD) and skilled readers when reading a typical classroom text; (2) the hypothesis that students with RD have specific difficulty using context in such a way that reading fluency is affected; and (3) whether RD subtypes may be differentiated according to performance on contextual and context-free reading tasks. Two groups of fourth graders (85 skilled readers and 24 students with RD) completed a standardized test of reading comprehension, read aloud a folktale, and read aloud the folktale's words in a randomly sequenced list. Performance was scored as correct rate and percentage correct. Based on the number of words per idea unit in the passage, we also estimated the rate at which reader groups encountered and processed text ideas. Compared to the RD group, skilled readers read three times more correct words per minute in context, and showed higher accuracy and rates on all measures. Both context and isolated word-reading rates were highly sensitive to impairment. We found no evidence for RD subtypes based on these measures. Results illustrate differences in reading levels between the two groups, the temporal advantage skilled readers have in linking text ideas, how word reading differs as a function of task format and performance dimension, and how limited word-identification skills (not comprehension) produce contextual reading difficulties for students with RD. [source] How Segmented are Skilled and Unskilled Labour Markets: the Case of Beveridge CurvesAUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC PAPERS, Issue 3 2003Lei Lei Song This paper tests whether there is evidence that two distinct Beveridge curves for the skilled and unskilled aggregate markets exist. The results support the hypothesis and specifically find that the unskilled labour segment is less efficient at matching workers with jobs, primarily due to higher labour turnover rates. Higher turnover rates can be indicative of a poor match between employers' and jobseekers' expectations. The results also indicate that other shift variables, such as the replacement rate, the incidence of long-term unemployment, the immigration rate and the market circumstances in the skilled segment were only important for the unskilled segment. [source] Using disputants' metaphors in mediationCONFLICT RESOLUTION QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2005Thomas H. Smith This article argues that a mediator, conscious of the metaphors disputants use, aware of their implications, and skilled in their use, will hear more; be better able to reframe, disentangle, and guide communications to explore meanings; enhance self-reflection; and expand possibilities. [source] Socioeconomic factors related to attendance at a Type 2 diabetes screening programmeDIABETIC MEDICINE, Issue 5 2009E-M. Dalsgaard Abstract Aims, The prevalence of diabetes is increasing, and screening of high-risk populations is recommended. A low attendance rate has been observed in many Type 2 diabetes screening programmes, so that an analysis of factors related to attendance is therefore relevant. This paper analyses the association between socioeconomic factors and attendance for Type 2 diabetes screening. Methods, Persons aged 40,69 years (n = 4603) were invited to participate in a stepwise diabetes screening programme performed in general practitioners' offices in the county of Aarhus, Denmark in 2001. The study was population-based and cross-sectional with follow-up. The association between screening attendance in the high-risk population and socioeconomic factors was analysed by odds ratio. Results, Forty-four percent of the estimated high-risk population attended the screening programme. In those with known risk for Type 2 diabetes, attenders were more likely to be older, to be unemployed and to live in the countryside than non-attenders. The risk for Type 2 diabetes was unknown for 21% of the study population; this group was younger and less likely to be cohabitant, skilled, or employed and to have middle or high income than the study population with known risk score for diabetes. Conclusions, A low attendance rate was found in this screening programme for Type 2 diabetes. No substantial socioeconomic difference was found between attenders and non-attenders in the high-risk population. Further research is needed to uncover barriers to screening of Type 2 diabetes in socioeconomically deprived persons. [source] Teaching Evidence-based Medicine to Medical StudentsACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE, Issue 12 2004Richard B. Ismach MD Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is the rubric for an approach to learning and practicing medicine that applies skills from clinical epidemiology, library science, and information management to clinical practice. Teaching EBM effectively requires a longitudinal approach throughout medical education. This presents many opportunities for academic emergency physicians, especially in the setting of an emergency medicine clerkship. EBM is best taught at the bedside, although this depends on a skilled and interested faculty. Bedside teaching of EBM also requires ready access to modern information resources. Other venues for teaching EBM include morning report, teaching conferences, and journal clubs. Many tools can be used to aid the process, including Web-based sources such as UpToDate, textbooks, and Web-based tutorials, educational prescriptions, and critically appraised topics. [source] How skilled were English agricultural labourers in the early nineteenth century?1ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 4 2006JOYCE BURNETTE Using the wage accounts of two different farms in the 1830s and 1840s, matched with census records to determine the age of the workers, this article estimates age-wage profiles for male and female agricultural labourers. Females earned less than males, and had less wage growth over their life cycles. Male wage profiles peaked at age 30,5, earlier than the wage profiles of workers today. Before the age of 30 wage growth was more rapid than increases in strength, but less rapid than wage growth among factory workers. If wage increases after the age of 20 indicate skill acquisition, then male agricultural labourers acquired a significant amount of skill, but less skill than contemporaneous factory workers. [source] INDUSTRIAL DYNAMICS AND THE NEOCLASSICAL GROWTH MODELECONOMIC INQUIRY, Issue 4 2009WILLIAM F. BLANKENAU This paper studies industry-level dynamics and demonstrates the ability of a modified neoclassical growth model to capture a range of empirical facts. The paper begins by using U.S. data to document skilled and unskilled labor trends within industry sector classifications as well as industry sector output trends. Using Current Population Survey data from 1968 to 2004, it is shown that the ratio of skilled workers to unskilled workers employed has risen in all industries. The absolute increase in this ratio was larger in the more skilled industries, while the growth rate was larger in the less skilled industries. Furthermore, using national income account data, it is shown that relatively high-skilled industries have accounted for an increasing share of output over time. A version of the neoclassical growth model is then constructed to match these observations. One important feature of this model is a structure that introduces new goods into the economy at each moment of time. The model is able to capture a rich set of labor market movements between sectors and between skill levels as well as changes in the relative output shares across industries, yet preserves many nice features of the neoclassical growth model.(JEL E13, J20, 030) [source] International Trade and the Changing Demand for Skilled Workers in High-Tech ManufacturingGROWTH AND CHANGE, Issue 2 2008JULIE A. SILVA ABSTRACT States and localities in the U.S. put considerable effort into attracting and maintaining high-tech manufacturing industries to preserve manufacturing employment. However, little work has examined whether high-tech industries respond differently than traditional manufacturing to changing trade pressures. This study investigates the impact of international trade on skilled and unskilled labor demand across manufacturing sectors. Results of this study indicate that changes in exchange rates and trade orientation have similar effects across high-tech and traditional manufacturing sectors. In addition, findings suggest that there is a high degree of variation in the trade-related effects on labor demand across individual high-tech sectors, and that the direction of these effects often runs counter to the predictions of traditional trade theory. [source] Cities, Skills, and InequalityGROWTH AND CHANGE, Issue 3 2005CHRISTOPHER H. WHEELER ABSTRACT The surge in U.S. wage inequality over the past several decades is now commonly attributed to an increase in the returns paid to skill. Although theories differ with respect to why, specifically, this increase has come about, many agree that it is strongly tied to the increase in the relative supply of skilled (i.e., highly educated) workers in the U.S. labor market. A greater supply of skilled labor, for example, may have induced skill-biased technological change or generated greater stratification of workers by skill across firms or jobs. Given that metropolitan areas in the U.S. have long possessed more educated populations than non-metropolitan areas, these theories suggest that the rise in both the returns to skill and wage inequality should have been particularly pronounced in cities. Evidence from the U.S. Census over the period of 1950 to 1990 supports both implications. [source] Promoting breast-feeding in a deprived area: the influence of a peer support initiativeHEALTH & SOCIAL CARE IN THE COMMUNITY, Issue 6 2003Pamela Raine PhD Abstract The present article describes a qualitative study designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a peer-support intervention to promote breast-feeding in a deprived area. The aims of the study were to: explore stakeholders' experiences of the intervention; explore the development of a ,culture' of breast-feeding; and consider the potential of the initiative for building community capacity. The methods used in the research were in-depth interviews, diaries and direct observation. The findings describe the social and cultural barriers to breast-feeding experienced by women, and the ways in which professional and lay participants in the peer-support project attempt to reduce them. The advantages of partnership working between health professionals and lay volunteers are then explored. These include: sharing the workload; providing an informal tier of support to mothers; and importantly, offering support and advice stemming from personal experience. For lay supporters, the benefits of taking part in the project range from personal satisfaction at being recognised as skilled, to gains in confidence which potentially open up further educational and training opportunities. In conclusion, it is suggested that the ,success' of such interventions is unlikely to be captured solely by monitoring breast-feeding rates, but needs to take into account the wider context of community development. [source] Honour and duty at sea, 1660,1815HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 190 2002N. A. M. Rodger This article looks at the changing meaning of the concepts of honour and duty among sea officers over the ,long eighteenth century'. As gentlemen and as fighting men, sea officers felt particularly close to the concept of honour; but as members of a skilled, semi,bourgeois profession which was substantially open to talent, they were seen by others as being on the margins of gentility. The rise of the middle,class virtues of duty and service in public esteem at the end of the century, benefited the sea officers by making their long,standing combination of honour and duty fashionable. [source] Interactive knowledge management for agent-assisted web navigationINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS, Issue 10 2007Vincenzo Loia Web information may currently be acquired by activating search engines. However, our daily experience is not only that web pages are often either redundant or missing but also that there is a mismatch between information needs and the web's responses. If we wish to satisfy more complex requests, we need to extract part of the information and transform it into new interactive knowledge. This transformation may either be performed by hand or automatically. In this article we describe an experimental agent-based framework skilled to help the user both in managing achieved information and in personalizing web searching activity. The first process is supported by a query-formulation facility and by a friendly structured representation of the searching results. On the other hand, the system provides a proactive support to the searching on the web by suggesting pages, which are selected according to the user's behavior shown in his navigation activity. A basic role is played by an extension of a classical fuzzy-clustering algorithm that provides a prototype-based representation of the knowledge extracted from the web. These prototypes lead both the proactive suggestion of new pages, mined through web spidering, and the structured representation of the searching results. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 1101,1122, 2007. [source] Pubic symphyseal face eburnation: an Egyptian sport story?INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OSTEOARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 3 2010M. A. Judd Abstract Strenuous physical activity leaves scars on bone that attest to the demands of occupation, sport, aggression and recreation. During the assessment of 74 C-Group Nubians from Hierakonpolis (Egypt) dated to the Egyptian Middle Kingdom,Second Intermediate Period (2080,1700 BC), robust muscle insertions along the ilia and ischia were observed among some adults. In addition, a disproportionate degeneration of the pubic symphyseal faces when compared to other age-related features was also noted. In the case of one male (Burial 32), the pubic symphyseal faces were completely flattened and polished so that they resembled the eburnation that is pathognomic of osteoarthritis. Differential diagnoses are discussed and osteitis pubis, an increasingly diagnosed injury among modern athletes who participate in intense activity that involves running, kicking, twisting or leaping, is proposed as the most likely etiology. The exaggerated muscle insertions and pubic symphyseal wear, epitomised by the individual interred in Burial 32, are unique features that may be linked to the unexplained presence of this Nubian group deep in Egyptian territory during a period of political instability. Artefactual, artistic and documentary evidence records how the Egyptian pharaohs and elites conscripted Nubian athletes to the royal courts for staged contests and entertainment, part of a propaganda program engineered to reinforce among the general populace the dogma of Egyptian supremacy over the enemy. This Nubian community, serviced by Cemetery HK27C, may have functioned as a source for individuals skilled in athletics or other activities that required exceptional physical dexterity. The extraordinary modification of these pubic symphyseal faces underscores the importance of recognising paleopathological conditions that may further confound current macroscopic methods used to ascertain the chronological age of an individual. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Migration of Highly Skilled Chinese to Europe: Trends and PerspectiveINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 3 2003Guochu Zhang Since China's economic opening and reforms in 1978, the country has broadened and deepened its exchanges and relations with other countries. This has contributed to the increase in the scale of international migration of highly skilled Chinese abroad. The impact of the migration of highly skilled Chinese on China and the relevant nations particularly deserve attention and study. Following the earlier migration flows mainly to the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the migration of highly skilled Chinese to Europe has become a notable new trend. Currently, the flow of international migration of highly skilled Chinese personnel is mainly oriented toward Europe and the United States. While studying abroad has been the main form of migration of the skilled, this has now been joined by the migration of technical and professional staff, and the trend is increasing. The main country of destination for Chinese students is the United States, which absorbs more than half of the total, while Australia and Canada receive the largest number of skilled Chinese manpower. The United States also receives a large number of Chinese technical personnel, but its proportion has declined, while the flow to Europe has sharply increased. This development may be attributed to the global expansion of economic, scientific and technological, as well as cultural and educational exchanges and cooperation. But it is also the result of an increase in the educational investment made by the Chinese people following the continuous increase in China's economic strength and the population's personal income. Of greater importance are the gaps between China and Europe at the scientific, technological, and educational levels and the research and marketing environment. The intervening changes in labour market and immigration policies in European and American countries accelerate the trend further. For all of these and other reasons, the spatial distribution of Chinese students will become more balanced and play a positive role in the promotion of mutually beneficial exchanges between China and other countries. [source] Shifting Paradigms of Globalization: The Twenty-first Century Transition Towards Generics in Skilled Migration from IndiaINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 5 2001Binod Khadria Globalization of human capital through international migration is no longer about global physical presence only; it is also about global applicability of skills across various fields of specialization. This marks the main characteristics of skilled migration from India to developed countries in the twenty-first century. The focus is shifting away from professionals in specific occupations, like doctors, engineers, scientists, architects, bankers, to information technology (IT) professionals embodying, in a way, more generic skills. In other words, it is the generic applicability of information and communications technology (ICT) which has led to large-scale migration of Indians skilled in IT. Moreover, the exodus comprises not only the fully trained and educated workers going abroad for employment, but also students - the semi-finished human capital - pursuing higher education in onshore as well as offshore universities of the developed countries. The new emigration is directed towards traditional host countries in the West such as the UK, Canada, and the US, but also towards newly emerging destinations in continental Europe (Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Denmark), Australasia (Australia, New Zealand), East Asia (Japan, Republic of Korea), and South-East Asia (Singapore, Malaysia). By using mainly current information and informal data as reported in the media, this article perceives emerging trends and changes in the context of the global labour market for skills, and suggests a possible framework towards evolving strategies of remedial development. [source] Testing of a measurement model for baccalaureate nursing students' self-evaluation of core competenciesJOURNAL OF ADVANCED NURSING, Issue 11 2009Li-Ling Hsu Abstract Title.,Testing of a measurement model for baccalaureate nursing students' self-evaluation of core competencies. Aim. This paper is a report of a study to test the psychometric properties of the Self-Evaluated Core Competencies Scale for baccalaureate nursing students. Background. Baccalaureate nursing students receive basic nursing education and continue to build competency in practice settings after graduation. Nursing students today face great challenges. Society demands analytic, critical, reflective and transformative attitudes from graduates. It also demands that institutions of higher education take the responsibility to encourage students, through academic work, to acquire knowledge and skills that meet the needs of the modern workplace, which favours highly skilled and qualified workers. Methods. A survey of 802 senior nursing students in their last semester at college or university was conducted in Taiwan in 2007 using the Self-Evaluated Core Competencies Scale. Half of the participants were randomly assigned either to principal components analysis with varimax rotation or confirmatory factor analysis. Results. Principal components analysis revealed two components of core competencies that were named as humanity/responsibility and cognitive/performance. The initial model of confirmatory factor analysis was then converged to an acceptable solution but did not show a good fit; however, the final model of confirmatory factor analysis was converged to an acceptable solution with acceptable fit. The final model has two components, namely humanity/responsibility and cognitive/performance. Both components have four indicators. In addition, six indicators have their correlated measurement errors. Conclusion. Self-Evaluated Core Competencies Scale could be used to assess the core competencies of undergraduate nursing students. In addition, it should be used as a teaching guide to increase students' competencies to ensure quality patient care in hospitals. [source] Review of upper airway resistance syndrome: nursing and clinical managementJOURNAL OF CLINICAL NURSING, Issue 17 2009Tara B Giblin Aims., This study aims to help nurses and nurse practitioners identify and manage paediatric patients with upper airway resistance syndrome. A review of upper airway resistance syndrome is provided, including the signs and symptoms of upper airway resistance syndrome, criteria for diagnosis, recommendations for treatment and implications for nursing in paediatric primary care. Background., Nurses often encounter sleep-related problems in the paediatric primary care setting. Commonly, these problems are well known and include snoring and obstructive sleep apnoea. Upper airway resistance syndrome is a relatively new diagnosis among sleep-related breathing disorders with which nurses and nurse practitioners should be familiar. Upper airway resistance syndrome is characterised by incomplete obstruction of the airway during sleep, leading to increased respiratory efforts and frequent arousals despite normal oxygen saturations. Design., Systematic review. Method. A review of the sleep literature identified articles regarding sleep and/or sleep-related breathing disorders and paediatrics, and upper airway resistance syndrome. Articles published since 2002 were prioritised; however, all articles describing upper airway resistance syndrome since 1993 were considered. Conclusion., Timely recognition of sleep-disordered breathing is crucial to ensuring that patients receive effective and appropriate treatment. Upper airway resistance syndrome should be a part of the differential diagnosis when assessing a child with a sleep-related breathing disorder. Relevance to clinician practice., Nurses and nurse practitioners should become comfortable and skilled in performing a thorough sleep history and physical examination to help identify when a child should receive a sleep study or referral to a specialist. [source] The labour market effects of globalization in KenyaJOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2004Damiano Kulundu Manda Since the 1980s, Kenya has been gradually integrating with the global economy. Using both industry-level and firm-level data, the paper examines the effects of globalization on employment and earnings in the Kenyan manufacturing sector. The industry-level analysis suggests that the overall effect of international trade on manufacturing employment has been negative in the 1990s. The firm-level analysis indicates that less skilled workers experienced losses in earnings, and that the inequality in earnings between skilled and unskilled workers increased during this period. This suggests that globalization has been associated with adverse labour market outcomes in Kenya. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Leadership styles among nurse managers in changing organizationsJOURNAL OF NURSING MANAGEMENT, Issue 6 2000M. Lindholm RNT Aim, The intention in this study was to explore the meaning, exposition and application of nurse managers' leadership styles within the organizational culture of a changing healthcare system. Background, Nurse managers are expected to act, under the pressure of a changed and restructured healthcare system, as skilled and competent future managers of people, operations, budgets and information. Knowledge concerning nurse managers' thoughts and ideas is important if their leadership development is to be supported and their management strengthened. Method, Open-ended, tape-recorded interviews were conducted with 15 nurse managers from three Swedish hospitals. The analysis was inductive, and made use of two deductive perspectives. Findings, Four leadership styles were identified: the formation of hierarchical authority; the formation of hierarchical adjustment; the formation of a career approach; and the formation of a devotional approach. Conclusion, Nurse managers who had a clear leadership style related mainly to a transformational or transactional leadership model, experienced fewer management problems than nurse managers with a composite leadership style. There was a connection between nurse managers' attitudes to the existing organizational culture and the leadership model adopted, the strategy towards the top level and their management idea. [source] Second Best Redistributive Policies: The Case Of International TradeJOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMIC THEORY, Issue 1 2001Roger Guesnerie The paper presents a brief review of recent work that focuses on the normative economics of international trade. In a Heckscher,Ohlin-like economy, with skilled and unskilled workers, the available redistributive tools (that include income taxation) are not powerful enough to allow the separation of efficiency and equity issues, and "production efficiency" is no longer desirable. At a social optimum that calls for redistribution toward the unskilled workers, the social value of the unskilled intensive good is necessarily smaller than its production price. This finding allows us to unify existing results and suggests conjectures. [source] PREFERENCE HETEROGENEITY AND ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY,JOURNAL OF REGIONAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2009Antonella Nocco ABSTRACT We investigate the effect of preference heterogeneity between skilled and unskilled workers on agglomeration, and we identify a new source of dependence of equilibrium prices on the demand properties shaped by the inter-regional distribution of workers. We find a new preference effect, and we show that when the intensity of skilled workers' preference for the modern good and its variety is strong enough, prices charged by firms may even increase when the mass of local firms increases, therefore acting as a new dispersion force when trade costs are low or as a new agglomeration force when trade costs are high. [source] The Politics of Caring for the Poor: Anglican Responses in 1890s TasmaniaJOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 3 2007ROBERT S. M. WITHYCOMBE Relieving poverty amongst skilled but unemployed workers during the Tasmanian economic collapse in the 1890s challenged both a conservative government's policy of avoiding public debt by initiating minimal relief and the limited financial and human resources of voluntary philanthropic agencies, the Anglican Church amongst them, whom the Tasmanian governments expected to carry the burden of delivering relief to those deemed to deserve it. With labour organisations too weak to lead, and amidst the silence of church leaders, it fell to individuals like the Reverend Archibald Turnbull to articulate a Christian socialist critique of government policies and values and to advocate the desperate plight of the poor. In this context, this study examines how contemporary government and Anglican Church leaders responded to Turnbull's political and pastoral initiatives in Hobart in 1893,96. [source] Sentential and discourse context effects: adults who are learning to read compared with skilled readersJOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN READING, Issue 4 2007Katherine S. Binder In a series of three experiments, we examined how sentential and discourse contexts were used by adults who are learning to read compared with skilled adult readers. In Experiment 1, participants read sentence contexts that were either congruent, incongruent or neutral with respect to a target word they had to name. Both skilled and less skilled adults benefited from a congruent context, and were not disadvantaged by an incongruent context. Contrary to research conducted on children learning to read, skill level of the adult reader did not interact with context. Experiments 2 and 3 tested readers' ability to make predictive inferences. Again, all readers, regardless of skill level, provided evidence that they were making predictive inferences. This finding is inconsistent with research that has examined individual differences in college readers. [source] Does weak reading comprehension reflect an integration deficit?JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN READING, Issue 2 2006Alice L. R. Spooner Seven- and eight-year-old skilled and less-skilled comprehenders were compared on a sentence recognition task in two conditions varying in memory load and retention interval. Integration of story information during comprehension was indexed by inflated recognition errors of foils that had been constructed by integrating information across original story sentences. Skilled comprehenders exhibited more accurate memory for sentences than less-skilled comprehenders. However, the groups did not differ in the degree to which they integrated information with minimal memory demand, or in their tendency to integrate information and retain the integrated representations with increased memory demand. These results were interpreted as evidence that integration deficits do not lie at the root of reading comprehension difficulties in mainstream children. [source] Matching Efficiency and Labour Market Reform in Italy: A Macroeconometric AssessmentLABOUR, Issue 1 2007Sergio Destefanis We re-parameterize the matching function as a Beveridge Curve and estimate it as a production frontier, finding huge differences in matching efficiency between the South and the rest of the country. The Treu Act appears to have improved matching efficiency in the North of the country, particularly for skilled workers, but also to have strengthened competition among skilled and unskilled workers, especially in the South. [source] Reasons for Wage Rigidity in GermanyLABOUR, Issue 2 2006Wolfgang Franz Based on a survey of 801 firms in Germany and an econometric analysis, we find strong support for explanations based on the effects of labour union contracts and efficiency wages that differ between skill groups. Survey respondents indicate that labour union contracts and implicit contracts are important reasons for wage rigidity for the (less) skilled. Specific human capital and negative signals for new hires are causes of the stickiness of wages for the highly skilled. Compared with US evidence, German firms seem to attach more importance to labour union contracts and specific human capital. [source] Trade and Labour Markets: Vertical and Regional Differentiation in ItalyLABOUR, Issue 3 2000Giuseppe Celi The labour market misfortunes of the less skilled and rapid growth of international trade in manufactured goods with less advanced countries are linked by the paradoxical observation that trade theorists are in the forefront of those denying the importance of trade in income distribution. This paper analyses this conclusion by stressing the importance of vertical differentiation of trade flows and regional differentiation of skills in order to identify labour market effects of trade integration. Vertical and regional differentiation in trade and labour markets are analysed for a country, Italy, where these two elements seem to play a crucial role. The results show a likely displacement effect on unskilled labour due to trade flows with less advanced countries. Given the characteristics of Italian trade and labour markets, a stronger trade-induced displacement effect on demand for unskilled labour takes place in the North of the country. Thus the vertical differentiation in Italian intra-industry trade is a warning against understating the effect of trade on labour markets if product heterogeneity is not adequately considered. The regional differentiation of skill intensity is another warning against understating the effect of trade on labour markets whenever cross-sectoral effects and the change in relative specialization are not adequately considered. [source] Moulding the migrant familyLEGAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2009Dr Helena Wray This paper offers a critical perspective on how immigration control regulates the family lives of British residents and nationals of migrant descent. Family migration is problematic for a government determined to restrict long-term immigration to the skilled. The extended or ,corporate' family is particularly problematic because it also causes the reproduction of forms of family life that are regarded as oppressive and a barrier to cohesion. Policies have tended to minimise these forms of migration, and recent changes and proposals are consistent with that. The result is the increased marginalisation or exclusion of some migrants and pressure on migrant family life to conform more closely to majority norms. [source] Friction and wear effects on a micro/nano-scaleLUBRICATION SCIENCE, Issue 1 2001E. Santner Abstract In this paper are described tribological effects which can be found in micro-tribological systems, and in those macro-systems which can be analysed by micro-methods, e.g., by atomic force microscopy (AFM) or related methods. Micro-tribology systems have friction contacts with loads in the micro/nano-newton range and/or dimensions in the micro/nanometre range. Experiments on the micro/nano-scale should be easier to explain by theoretical modelling due to their simpler system structure. An example is discussed of adhesion and friction measurements between AFM tips and clean, flat, solid surfaces in ultra-high vacuum, which shows some of the special aspects of micro/nano-tribology. Surprising friction characteristics on surfaces with an artificial micro-structure can be explained by skilled and careful topographical analysis of the friction path with an AFM. In micro-sensor contacts, ,single wear events' can be detected using AFM analysis of the contact region. For ceramic compounds, different friction levels for the components of the material can be found. The problems, difficulties, and dangers of misinterpretation are also discussed. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||