Guerrilla warriors on the Brooklyn Bridge: a case-study of the Unbearables' poetic terrorism (1994-2001)

On 13 September 1994, a loose collective of Downtown poets known as the Unbearables lined up on the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian walkway, all the way from Manhattan to Brooklyn. During rush hour, they simultaneously ranted erotic poems in six-minute loops, so that, at least theoretically, "a few words from each reader would have reached each pedestrian's ear, and the whole string of phrases would add up to a single 'stochastic' poem, a different version for each and every passerby" (Bey 1994, n.p.). The Unbearables' thirty-minute performance was repeated in six consecutive years with only minor variations. The current article reconstructs the annual Brooklyn Bridge readings on the basis of previously unpublished sources that include personal interviews with the Unbearables and archival material from New York University's Fales Library Downtown Collection and the SUNY of Buffalo Poetry Collection. On the basis of this reconstruction, the article analyzes the event as a poetic implementation of anarchist philosopher Hakim Bey's theories on the Temporary Autonomous Zone, Poetic Terrorism and Artistic Disappearance

Arabic dialects in Turkey — towards a comparative typology

In a workshop devoted to Turkish dialects it is my pleasure to present a short survey of the dialectology of a language which is also spoken on the territory of Turkey and offers considerable dialect variation, namely Arabic

Organizational Data

Organizational data describe central characteristics of organizations, their internal structures and processes as well as their behavior as corporate actors in different social and economic contexts. Firm and enterprise data are the most frequently used type of organizational data, but there is also a growing interest in data on schools, universities, and hospitals in the economic and social science research. In the last several years, there has been a substantial improvement in the accessibility and scientific usability of organizational data from official statistics. However, nonofficial organizational data produced within publicly funded research projects are practically impossible to obtain for secondary analyses. There is no documentation of the existing stock of non-official organizational data, and the methodological standards used for organizational research in Germany are low compared to the standards of international research. Against this background, it is recommended that efforts be focused on documenting and archiving the existing non-official organizational data for secondary analyses and on establishing higher methodological standards within this research field.firms, organizations, methods of organizational research, micro data, secondary analysis

Female labor supply and parental leave benefits – the causal effect of paying higher transfers for a shorter period of time

We study the labor supply effects of a major change in child-subsidy policy in Germany in 2007 designed to both increase fertility and shorten birth-related employment interruptions. The reform involved a move from a means-tested maternity leave benefit system that paid a maximum of 300 Euro for up to two years to an income dependent benefit system that replaced two third of the pre-birth income for at most one year. As the reform took place very recently, we estimate the labor supply effect by using data drawn from the German Socio-Economic Panel on the intention of women to return to the labor market; notably whether women are likely to return and whether they intend to return quickly. Our results show that the reform yields most of the intended effects: The fraction of mothers who responded that they were going to return to the labor market within a year since the interview increased by 14 percentage points.Female labor supply; fertility; child subsidy; parents money

Industrial clusters and economic integration : theoretic concepts and an application to the European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg

"Economic integration typically goes along with disintegration of production through outsourcing and offshoring (Feenstra 1998). As horizontal and vertical links between firms become more and more pronounced, value chains within regions are increasingly organized by production and innovation clusters. On the basis of a literature overview, we argue that in a world of economic integration clusters can be expected to play a prominent role. Therefore clusters can also be seen as a key element in the European Metropolitan Region concept. Within such an economic space, localisation economies according to the 'Marshallian trinity' (knowledge spillovers, input sharing and labour market pooling (Rosenthal/Strange 2003)) can be realized. The paper builds on a comprehensive company survey for the core of the European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg that includes customer-supplier relationships and various forms of cooperation. As indicated by numerous empirical studies, the characteristics of clusters differ substantially. In order to overcome the fuzziness of the concept we suggest a bottom-up methodology of cluster identification using a set of qualitative and quantitative indicators. Given that many kinds of barriers to interregional and international trade are becoming less and less important and transport cost are falling, modern production clusters tend to have a higher geographical extension than traditional ones. We therefore raise the question of whether clustering is relevant for economic integration on the regional, national and supra-national level." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))Stadtregion, regionales Cluster, Standort, Industrieregion, Regionalökonomie, zwischenbetriebliche Kooperation, Zulieferer, Wirtschaftsstruktur, regionales Netzwerk, Nürnberg, Oberfranken, Mittelfranken, Franken, Bayern

Who is targeted by One-Euro-Jobs? : a selectivity analysis

"In 2005 major reforms of the means-tested unemployment benefit system were implemented in Germany. One element of the reforms was to activate benefit recipients by a workfare programme, the so-called One-Euro-Job programme. More than 600,000 benefit recipients entered this programme in the year 2005. This paper investigates for a sample of means-tested unemployment benefit recipients the selection into One-Euro-Jobs in spring 2005 with the help of binary probit models. As there are substantial gender and regional effects, we estimate the selection equations for men and women in East and West Germany separately. Women have a lower probability of participating if they have a child under the age of three, whereas this makes no difference for men. Then, we find that young adults below 25 years begin a One-Euro-Job with a higher probability than other age groups. Moreover, special target groups such as individuals with migration background are not promoted with One-Euro- Jobs. They participate with a lower probability than Germans without migration background. Overall, we conclude that a concentration on defined target groups cannot be observed. To analyse the sizable differences in participation probabilities of women in East and West Germany a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition of effects is applied. It turns out that the differences can partly be traced back to characteristics such as qualification and employment history and to the availability of child care facilities." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))Arbeitsgelegenheit, Teilnehmer, Teilnehmerauswahl, Teilnehmerstruktur, arbeitslose Frauen, arbeitslose Männer, arbeitslose Jugendliche, ausländische Arbeitnehmer, Eltern, Altersstruktur

Female Labor Supply and Parental Leave Benefits: The Causal Effect of Paying Higher Transfers for a Shorter Period of Time

We study the labor supply effects of a change in child-subsidy policy designed to both increase fertility and shorten birth-related employment interruptions. The reform yields most of the intended effects.female labor supply, fertility, child subsidy, parents money