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The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on university faculty, unduly those from underrepresented groups, causing many faculty to disengage. Writing communities represent a promising tool to (re-)engage faculty and build an inclusive climate. As part of U See I Write, a faculty development initiative at the University of California, Irvine, we convened a series of monthly writing retreats between March and June of 2021, with between-retreat weekly writing sessions in smaller groups and an expectation to write daily for at least 30 minutes. In a diverse cohort of 34 faculty writers, program participation resulted in a significant increase in writing and work engagement. Similar initiatives at other institutions of higher education may prove successful in faculty (re-)engagement while also advancing faculty diversity.

The American parenting economy is built around the notion that raising children is a matter of private parental investment. This essay outlines briefly the features of what is best characterized as, not family-friendly, but rather family-hostile policy in the United States, before it proposes two reasons for why the ideal of parental investment holds its grip. The first is the historical political entanglement of neoliberalism with neoconservatism that continues to entrench the focus on traditional family values. The second is the more recent cultural backdrop of building knowledge infrastructure around “the economic way of looking at parents” to repurpose economist Gary Becker's Nobel Laureate lecture title, which has permeated public discourse and reframed “childrearing” as “parental investment.” Therefore, the possibility of policy change is not simply a matter of political struggle. A potent obstacle to family-friendly policy is cultural. Parents and nonparents will not demand, nor will politicians embrace, radical institutional transformation of the American family policy if we do not shift our thinking. We need less economic reasoning and more sociological imagination, recognizing that parenting, no matter how intimate and personal it seems, is inextricably and thoroughly bound up with social structures and culture. And that raising children—all children in the manner they deserve—is not a matter of private investment but a common responsibility.

Extant research on the gender pay gap suggests that men and women who do the same work for the same employer receive similar pay, so that processes sorting people into jobs are thought to account for the vast majority of the pay gap. Data that can identify women and men who do the same work for the same employer are rare, and research informing this crucial aspect of gender differences in pay is several decades old and from a limited number of countries. Here, using recent linked employer-employee data from 15 countries, we show that the processes sorting people into different jobs account for substantially less of the gender pay differences than was previously believed and that within-job pay differences remain consequential.

This article takes Viviana Zelizer's (1985) Pricing the Priceless Child to the new millennium. Zelizer documented the transformation between the 19th and 20th century from an "economically useful" to an "emotionally priceless" child. She observed that by the 1930s, American children were practically economically worthless but invested with significant emotional value. What has happened to this emotionally priceless child at the dawn of the new millennium? Has there been a new transformation in the social value of children, and, if so, what might have such a transformation entailed? To address these questions, we examine overtime trends that point to increasing devotion of resources and time to children's education, a key input in the exceedingly influential human capital theory, which connects investment into children's human capital with their future market value. Therefore, we argue that the priceless child 2.0 is a useful-to-be human capital investment child. We use four empirical examples of overtime growth in children's human capital investment: (a) enrollments in early childhood education, (b) federal spending on early education, (c) federal spending on K-12 programs, and (d) parental spending on child care, education and extracurricular activities. In the conclusion, we discuss some potential consequences and concerns about raising children as human capital investment.

We link the theory of gender performance to the perspective on the social meaning of money and relational work. Using longitudinal Panel Study of Income Dynamics data on young adult women and men, ages 18 through 24 in the US, we examine survey responses to different money-related situations. We question the expected gender-typical meanings of money, offering a more contextual understanding. Specifically, we find that when asked about the present, young women express that they worry more frequently about money than men do. However, when asked about the future–likelihood of having difficulty with financially supporting one’s family and likelihood of having a job that pays well–we find no significant gender differences. Instead, we find expressions of optimism rather than worry by young women and men alike. These results hold when controlling for psychological dispositions, financial obligations, and demographics. Overall, we note the importance of contextually situating ‘gender effects’ in relation to money matters, and call for more sociological research that places gender performance centrally into the analyses of economy and examines gendered relational work across different time orientations.

Correction for "Rising between-workplace inequalities in highincome countries," by Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Anthony Rainey, Dustin Avent-Holt, Nina Bandelj, István Boza, David Cort, Olivier Godechot, Gergely Hajdu, Martin Hällsten, Lasse Folke Henriksen, Are Skeie Hermansen, Feng Hou, Jiwook Jung, Aleksandra Kanjuo- Mrčela, Joe King, Naomi Kodama, Tali Kristal, Alena Křížková, Zoltán Lippényi, Silvia Maja Melzer, Eunmi Mun, Andrew Penner, Trond Petersen, Andreja Poje, Mirna Safi, Max Thaning, and Zaibu Tufail, which was first published April 13, 2020; 10.1073/ pnas.1918249117 (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 117, 9277-9283). The authors note that the affiliation for Silvia Maja Melzer should instead appear as Department of Political and Social Sciences, University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona 08005, Spain. The corrected author and affiliation lines appear below. The online version has been corrected.

It is well documented that earnings inequalities have risen in many high-income countries. Less clear are the linkages between rising income inequality and workplace dynamics, how within- and between-workplace inequality varies across countries, and to what extent these inequalities are moderated by national labor market institutions. In order to describe changes in the initial between- and within-firm market income distribution we analyze administrative records for 2,000,000,000+ job years nested within 50,000,000+ workplace years for 14 high-income countries in North America, Scandinavia, Continental and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. We find that countries vary a great deal in their levels and trends in earnings inequality but that the between-workplace share of wage inequality is growing in almost all countries examined and is in no country declining. We also find that earnings inequalities and the share of between-workplace inequalities are lower and grew less strongly in countries with stronger institutional employment protections and rose faster when these labor market protections weakened. Our findings suggest that firm-level restructuring and increasing wage inequalities between workplaces are more central contributors to rising income inequality than previously recognized.

It is well documented that earnings inequalities have risen in many high-income countries. Less clear are the linkages between rising income inequality and workplace dynamics, how within- and between-workplace inequality varies across countries, and to what extent these inequalities are moderated by national labor market institutions. In order to describe changes in the initial between- and within-firm market income distribution we analyze administrative records for 2,000,000,000+ job years nested within 50,000,000+ workplace years for 14 high-income countries in North America, Scandinavia, Continental and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. We find that countries vary a great deal in their levels and trends in earnings inequality but that the between-workplace share of wage inequality is growing in almost all countries examined and is in no country declining. We also find that earnings inequalities and the share of between-workplace inequalities are lower and grew less strongly in countries with stronger institutional employment protections and rose faster when these labor market protections weakened. Our findings suggest that firm-level restructuring and increasing wage inequalities between workplaces are more central contributors to rising income inequality than previously recognized.

American households owe more than $12 trillion in mortgages, which represents the main source of a family's debt. Scholars connect mortgages to the desire of families, especially better-off households, to seek housing in neighborhoods with good schools for their children, which tend to be more expensive. Although this perspective assumes a children–mortgage link, we do not know whether having children actually increases mortgage, nor whether and how this relationship varies by household income. To examine these issues, we use eleven waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics data between 1997 and 2017 and individual fixed effects, as well as propensity score matching and a quasi-experimental design. Our analyses show that generally, (1) families with children are more likely to have mortgage debt and in greater amounts; (2) it is families in the 60th to 100th income percentile who have the most mortgage debt; and (3) critically, families in the roughly 10th to 60th income percentile have more mortgage debt due to having children. These findings defy assumptions that it is well-to-do families that take on more mortgage debt as part of intensive or concerted cultivation parenting practices. Rather, our findings suggest that families who take on mortgage debt related to their children tend to be those in more economically precarious positions for whom debt for the sake of kids may be a financial burden. As such, our findings provide suggestive evidence that financially intensive parenting may contribute to growing wealth inequality among American families with children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article connects Viviana Zelizer's theory of the social meaning of money to family studies, using the case of American parents' spending on children. We investigate how money spent on the youngest children—babies and toddlers—reflects the growing expert emphasis on the importance of parental investment in the critical early period for child development. First, we review literature on expert knowledge to trace the shift in increasing emphasis on the importance of building children's cognitive skills through formal education beginning in infancy, offered in center‐based care, moving from spaces of "childcare" to "early childhood education" centers. Second, we use quantitative data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (1995–2017) to show that parents have increasingly spent money, and an increasing share of their income, on center‐based care for babies and toddlers but not on other child items. Additionally, lower income families have been spending a greater share of their income on center‐based care for their infants than other families. We interpret our findings using Zelizer's theory about the cultural influences on the meaning of money, showing how these can be expert‐led and persist even when families are faced with structural economic constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that economists, as well as other social scientists, have increasingly focused on parenting as a means of building children's human capital and reducing poverty. This is reflected, in part, in the use of the concept of 'parental investment' to study parenting, which has gained prominence over the past thirty years. This intellectual program is also evident in interventions targeting low-income parents to change parenting behavior to reflect the 'parental investment' model. Our study first documents the rise of the use of 'parental investment' in economics, psychology, and sociology, using a SCOPUS-generated corpus of academic documents. Through a critical analysis of two highly influential articles, we uncover the key assumptions of the economic approach to the study of parenting. We then show how this approach informs parenting programs that directly affect parenting behavior. Finally, we offer preliminary reflections on the consequences of the economization of parenting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In uncertain economic times, who are those young adults that show positive expectations about their economic future? And who are those who worry? Based on previous stratification research and extending economic sociology insights into the realm of young people’s economic expectations, we focus on the impact of family class background and a sense of current meaningful community relations on young adults’ general and job-specific economic expectations. Analysis of Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data reveals that a sense of community belonging has a robust and positive impact on economic optimism of young adults, but the role of family socioeconomic background is weaker. We conclude that imagining one’s economic future is less about realistic calculation determined by early structural conditions but more about identity work of young people who assert their moral worth in how they imagine their economic lives and manage uncertainty and well-being in ongoing social relations.

Research on the labor market returns to education focus on explanations based on human capital, signaling, and closure. Drawing on the case of Slovenia from 1993 through 2007 – as it transitioned from a planned to a market-based economy – we propose an alternative institutionally coordinated perspective. We delineate the key features of this arrangement, which include: (1) strong educational criteria for occupations; (2) pre-set job-level pay; (3) within-job educational premia (pay sub-classes) in some sectors; and (4) a portion of pay that is performance-based. This institutionally coordinated perspective helps us understand both the role education plays in matching Slovenians to jobs, and how education contributes to differential pay between individuals in the same job. We use matched employer-employee data on all Slovenians to examine the degree to which the returns to education result from sorting into different establishments, occupations, and occupation-establishment units. We find that sorting processes account for the majority of the returns to education under this institutionally coordinated arrangement. Further, the degree to which sorting matters varies by education type, with the returns to vocational education being somewhat less driven by sorting processes.

Unlike recent tendencies to specify the variety of postsocialist trajectories, this article attempts to characterize the common features of postsocialist capitalism, as it has developed since the 1990s in Eastern Europe. Using conceptual tools of economic sociology, the postsocialist socio-economic organization is analyzed as embedded economy, the institutionalization of capitalism as a moral project, and the pervasiveness of informality from the networks and culture perspectives. Economic development is viewed as dependent, simultaneously, on the system’s structural, political and cultural features. For postsocialist capitalism, these features include lack of state autonomy due to close coupling of political and economic roles; the embrace of greed and self-interest as legitimate motives for action; and persistence and bolstering of informality as modus operandi. Stipulations about developmental consequences are provided in the conclusion.

A unique dataset on bilateral investment treaties provides a novel source of evidence on the link between neoliberal globalisation and market transition. We argue that postsocialist countries of Europe and Eurasia, more than other developing regions in the world, signed such treaties to signal demand for foreign investment in the spirit of neoliberalism. We calculated the density of the whole BIT network since its inception in 1959 to 2009, and density and centrality of different regional blocks within it, and found strong support for our argument. Yet, even if bilateral investment treaties are designed to promote foreign direct investment, dynamic panel regression models show that signing them does not automatically translate into foreign direct investment inflows for postsocialist European and Eurasian countries in the 1990–2010 period.

© 2015 Taylor & Francis Ten years after European Union (EU) enlargement, democracy in the East European new member states is still a topic of discussion. This paper focuses on the initial years of democratisation in these countries, and asks what economic, political, and social processes explain its variation. Cross-sectional time series analysis (1990–2002) shows the impact of political orientation of ruling parties to reform, electoral institutions, size of ethnic minorities, and the extent of EU integration, but not economic development. Further, we disaggregate the effect of EU integration and find that early Europe Agreements signing has a more significant effect than the pre-accession membership negotiation stage.

Economic sociologists have devoted most of their attention to the activities of individuals and firms in markets. However, recent attempts have pushed for a better understanding of the relationship between intimacy and economy. Such efforts have been inspired, in large part, by Viviana Zelizer (2000, 2005). In her inquiry on the purchase of intimacy, Zelizer proposed seminal differentiations between the "hostile worlds," "nothing but," and "connected lives" perspectives, and advanced a cultural relational analysis of the economy. In this essay, we review research that applies Zelizer's framework, and suggest substantive and analytical avenues for future research on economy/intimacy nexus.

This essay focuses on the productive role of children in immigrant families, and their various resource contributions. We first identify a contemporary understanding of children as targets of emotional and financial investment that parents make to secure their children's future success. This investment model views children as mostly passive receivers of resources. In contrast, we review research that showcases various productive contributions of children in immigrant families, including academic and language help, emotion work, and financial contributions. We end the review by identifying two theoretical perspectives that scholarship on productive role of children in immigrant families relies on, the social exchange theory, and the culture of collectivism. We contrast these two theories with a relational work perspective in economic sociology, which suggests that children's productive role in immigrant families is not only an example of instrumental reciprocity, or expression of collectivism, but part and parcel of relational work that involves dynamic negotiation of economic and social relations within and outside of immigrant families.

How do emotions influence economic action? Current literature recognizes the importance of emotions for economy because they either help individuals perform economic roles through emotion management or enhancement of emotional intelligence, or because they aid rationality through their influence on preference formation. All these strands of research investigate the link between emotions and economy from an atomistic/individualistic perspective. I argue for a different approach, one that adopts a relational perspective, focuses on emotional embeddedness and examines how emotions matter in economic interactions. Emotional embeddedness research starts with a premise that emotions result from and are influenced by interactions between economic actors during the economic process where emotional currents and their visceral and physical manifestations come to the fore. This increases the uncertainty in economic transactions and complicates the given means-ends logic of rational economic decision making, yielding economic action principles different from utility maximization. I propose two types of such creative economic action in this paper: improvisation and situational adaptation. Improvisation characterizes situations where ends (goals) and means are unclear at the beginning of a transaction process and get articulated as a consequence of emotional embeddedness experienced during a process. Situational adaptation characterizes situations in which means or ends of action change because of interaction-induced emotions that prompt actors to choose new means/ends. The article concludes with a call for empirical research that explicates further the influence of emotions not merely for rational economic action but also creative economic interactions.

Most of the scholarship on the political transformations in Central and Eastern Europe focuses on explaining the fall of communist regimes and democratic transition. To complement this research, the present paper turns attention to the political developments after 1989 and is among the first attempts to quantitatively assess which factors have contributed to the speed and extent of democratic consolidation among the most advanced postcommunist states. We argue that political transformations in Central and Eastern Europe should be viewed as part and parcel of broad-scale changes whereby democratization is intertwined with concurrent social transformations, and influenced by transnational forces. Using originally collected data for 11 most advanced transition countries for the period from 1990 to 2002, we find that democratic consolidation is facilitated after the country has signed the European Union association agreement, when the governments in power have a pro-reform orientation, and when higher electoral thresholds are put in place to aid political party affiliation and stability. In addition, nationalism in countries with sizable ethnic minority populations impedes democratic consolidation. While other researchers strongly emphasize the importance of economic development for democracy, our study finds little support for the influence of GDP per capita levels on the speed of democratic consolidation. Overall, these results substantiate the institutional rather than modernization perspe ctive on political development in postcommunism.

The peer-reviewed papers gathered here are representative of the work presented at the first graduate student conference organized by the Center for the Study of Democracy, in February 2005. The conference focused on the development of democracy to better understand the fundamentals of the process. The conference drew submissions from Ph.D. candidates from seven schools in the Southern California area, covering a range of disciplines, methodologies, geographic concentrations and substantive questions about democratic development in the "established" democracies, consolidating democracies, or democratic transitions.

Theorizing market transition, the orthodox economic perspective stipulates that markets will emerge spontaneously once the control of the party-state is abolished and the incentive structure is put in place for self-interested actors to exchange and maximize utility. The institutional perspective emphasizes the role of states, politics and path dependency on creation and operation of markets. The study uses originally collected data on foreign direct investment (FDI) in eleven Central and East European countries since 1989 to examine the proliferation of market-exchange. Pooled cross-sectional time series analysis shows that economic incentives and stabilization in host countries contribute little to explaining the inflow of FDI into Central and Eastern Europe. Similarly, instituting democratic order in post-socialism is not significantly related to the speed of marketization. However, the direct involvement of post-socialist states in the economic transformation is crucial. The extent of privatization, a pro-market reform government in place, and host states acting as market players by selling large state monopolies to foreigners all significantly induce FDI. Overall, the results show that, at least in the first decade of post-socialism, it is the involvement of the state rather than its withdrawal from the economy that facilitates marketization. Providing details of the substantive variety of state-market embeddedness in the post-socialist context, the study also advances a perspective on market creation, in contrast to market emergence.

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on university faculty, unduly those from underrepresented groups, causing many faculty to disengage. Writing communities represent a promising tool to (re-)engage faculty and build an inclusive climate. As part of U See I Write, a faculty development initiative at the University of California, Irvine, we convened a series of monthly writing retreats between March and June of 2021, with between-retreat weekly writing sessions in smaller groups and an expectation to write daily for at least 30 minutes. In a diverse cohort of 34 faculty writers, program participation resulted in a significant increase in writing and work engagement. Similar initiatives at other institutions of higher education may prove successful in faculty (re-)engagement while also advancing faculty diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]