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Copyright of Soziale Systeme is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Bibliotheksdienst is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Unternehmens- und Gesellschaftsrecht is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of the tax and transfer systems in the European Union and the US to act as an automatic stabilizer in the current economic crisis. We consider two scenarios: a proportional income shock and a shock on employment which increases the rate of unemployment. We find that automatic stabilizers absorb 38 percent of a proportional income shock in the EU, compared to 32 percent in the US. In the case of an unemployment shock 48 percent of the shock is absorbed in the EU, compared to 34 percent in the US. Under the assumption that only credit constrained households adjust current spending on consumption goods to current disposable income, the cushioning of disposable income leads to a demand stabilization of 26 to 35 percent in the EU and 19 percent in the US. There is large heterogeneity within the EU. Automatic stabilizers in Eastern and Southern Europe are much lower than in Central and Northern European countries. With respect to income stabilization, Germany is above the European average for both scenarios. Demand stabilization in Germany is weaker because the number of liquidity constrained households is below the EU average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Unternehmens- und Gesellschaftsrecht is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Fifty years after the Rome Treaties, is there empirical evidence for arguing that the EU today is a fully integrated goods and services market in which the "law of one price" prevails at large? Based on a number of consumer price surveys for goods and services in major cities all over the world since the seventies and, comparing the EU to a benchmark, the US market, the paper is affirmative. Price dispersion between EU cities has declined with the Eurozone as the core EU region in the lead surrounded by two concentric circles. EU goods price dispersion has generally approximated the level in the US market. Yet, price dispersion has declined throughout the world underlining the relevance of global integration rather than only regional integration. Furthermore, there is ample evidence that gravity factors against the "law of one price", such as distance costs and borders, are still effective. INSET: E. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social organization of care has many important implications for economic inequality in the U.S. today. In this paper, three dimensions are discussed: 1) Care affects standards of living. Flows of money and time within the family have profound impacts on relative standards of riving. Standard measures of poverty and inequality generally understate the needs of dependents, and therefore overstate the well-being of families caring for children, the elderly, or the sick or disabled. 2) Care affects political alignments. The costs of providing family care represent an increasingly important component of earnings inequality between men and women. Opportunities to »outsource« care services intensify differences based on citizenship, race/ethnicity and class. Yet the growing importance of outsourcing may also foster alliances between producers and consumers who share an interest in maintaining and improving care quality 3) Care inequalities reproduce income inequalities. Differences in the quantity and quality of care that children receive have a significant impact on their future earnings. Women are particularly vulnerable to poverty in old age because they accumulate fewer Social Security and pension credits in the labor market. Growing recognition of these dynamics is generating support for new public policies focusing on investments in human capital that could potentially reduce inequality among children and among caregivers or carers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Monatsschrift fuer Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article analyses the impact of the exchange rate on the role of dollar and euro as international currencies. It is found that exchange rate fluctuations are a major determinant of the international role of currencies only if they reflect sizeable inflation differentials. Accordingly, major changes in the international role of dollar and euro are not to be expected given the continuation of a stability-oriented US monetary policy. However, a move towards more exchange rate flexibility in emerging market economies, reflecting the need for greater monetary policy autonomy, might lead to a relative strengthening of the international role of the euro. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes the stations of a study tour to selected US American libraries which give particular attention to their special collections and whose special collections contribute to their distinctive image. Of particular interest was the question of what German libraries can learn with regard to practice and strategy related to their special collections. The authors visited among other libraries the New York Public Library, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Yale University Library with the Beinecke Library and the Harvard College Library with the Houghton Library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Neue Soziale Bewegungen is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Sozialreform is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An editorial is presented on the sexual abuse of children by the Catholic Church. The author notes the number of papers written on the subject and the Church's first official acknowledgement of such abuses in 2002. The offense is seen as a violation of the priests' authority and pastoral role, as well as of children's trust in an unequal power relationship. Numerous statistics on priestly sexual abuse of children are cited from U.S. records covering 1950-2002 involving some 4,400 Catholic clergy and 10, 667 child victims, with most instances unpunished and having caused considerable psychic injury to the afflicted children.

Critical Whiteness Studies, as they emerged in the U. S., attempt a critical understanding of whiteness as unmarked yet dominating social category and position. In many instances, authors who are engaged in this field of scholarship are convinced that color-blind patterns of argumentation, whether in academic work or in politics, foster racism -- and that addressing issues of »race«, especially addressing issues of whiteness, is therefore an appropriate tool of antiracism. In this essay, Ina Kerner assesses strengths and limits of this project for critiquing racism in contemporary Germany. Drawing on the current critical whiteness debate and on critical whiteness scholarship in that country, she suggests ways in which the core insights of Critical Whiteness Studies might be adapted to also fulfill their normative tasks in a context that historically differs from the one this field of inquiry was developed in. She also points to self-limitations of the current German debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article interprets the art installation by U.S. conceptual artist Robert Gober that was displayed at the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2001. A detailed description of the installation, which consisted of various everyday objects meant to represent aspects of American social life and customs in the late 20th century, is provided. Theoretical approaches to installation art are also discussed, such as the notions of a total installation and of the representation of ambiguity and contrasts in contemporary art.

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Unternehmens- und Gesellschaftsrecht is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Neue Soziale Bewegungen is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Border measures to support unilateral climate policy efforts are being discussed in particular in the EU and the US. The EU has stipulated in its 2008 Directive on the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) that in order to address the potential for carbon leakage, an inclusion of importers in the ETS could be a policy option amongst others. A climate policy adjustment at the border could take various forms and it could be motivated in three ways. First, trade measures could be announced as a "stick", sanctioning those countries who are not willing to cooperate on climate protection. Second, the border adjustment for importers (making them pay at the border according to the carbon they emitted for producing the traded good) or a rebate for exporters for the CO2-price they paid at home, would take away the competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis producers from third countries. Third, and as the flip side of the competitiveness effects, the border adjustment could be motivated from a climate policy point of view: in order to secure the environmental integrity of a domestic carbon pricing scheme, such measures could prevent leakage of emissions (caused by relocation of production, in parts or as a whole). While a strong economic case could be made for preventing leakage and also competitiveness effects from CO2 pricing through a cost adjustment at the border for a few sectors, there is little evidence that trade measures as such help to create international leverage for climate policy cooperation. From a legal point of view the justification of such measures very much depends on their designs and motivations. From a political point of view, the risk of disruptions amongst trade partners is fairly high and this is a major argument for limiting the use of border adjustments altogether. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Arbeit is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Unternehmens- und Gesellschaftsrecht is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Both inter-literary and translational transfer contributed to the making of a distinctive English-language literature in British America and the early United States. Writers residing in America either kept the Britain-based Atlantic reading culture homogeneous by catering to the British reading tastes of many immigrants or, by means of “deviating responses” to eminent British works, helped to bring about an “Americanizing” dissociation. – We need a conceptual frame of reference for this kind of historical study. Americans who studied at German universities, German immigrants, and American literati working from their own country gave nineteenth-century American literary culture a recognizably German dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) was the largest international women's organization of the post- 1945 period and contributed significantly to the international women's rights agenda, but is not yet part of the historiography of inter/transnational women's movements and feminisms. This article provides a basic outline of the organization in its early years. Who were involved, and what did they believe in? It uses personal accounts to convey some impressions of the WIDF's founding congress in Paris. As an example of the work and impact of an organization affiliated with the WIDF, the article then briefly discusses the Congress of American Women (CAW), a grassroots organization that united women of different backgrounds and addressed gender, class and racial inequalities. In the context of the Communist witch hunt in the USA in the late-1940s and 1950s, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) accused the CAW of being a Communist organization that aimed at undermining the United States. In 1950 the CAW was forced to disband - which makes it a striking case of the impact of Cold War politics on women's activism. The article ends with a broader assessment of the impact of the early Cold War on the WIDF and its utopian potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Sozialreform is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Most observers ascribe the recent stagnation in Europe and her falling back behind the US-economy to insufficient and delayed deregulation and privatization, excessive social expenditure, a lag in new technology; some observers mention restrictive economic policy as well. The stagnation, however, affects the large countries primarily, while the northern ones tend to grow as fast as the United States. This study argues that one important explanation for the current economic problems is a strong worldwide trend towards uncertainty. The competitive edge of Scandinavian economies results from the fact that they managed to compensate this trend by a well-designed combination of education policy, technology policy, distribution policy and social policy. The US-policy succeeded primarily with expansive monetary and fiscal policy. The large European countries, in contrast, aggravated social uncertainty even more by an unsystematic and uncoordinated policy, so that the citizens, heavily afraid of reforms, rejected them forcefully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article illustrates how the integration of modern theory of finance and stochastic dynamic macroeconomic analysis provides a deeper understanding of the link between asset prices and consumption. It shows that this approach gives only a partial explanation for recent trends in US consumption. Comparing wealth effects in Anglo- Saxon countries with continental Europe, the article provides a perspective of the challenges for European monetary policy arising from wealth effects on consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on an August 2008 joint conference of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) held in New York, NY on the theme "Contextualizing Economic Behavior." Presenters spoke on a number of subjects in socio-economics and interdisciplinary research in economic behavior.