Sebastiano Fadda, & Pasquale Tridico, (edt.), The Economic Crisis in Social and Institutional Context

Book Revie

40 Years after Hirschman's Tunnel Parable: Income Inequality, Economic Development and Aspirations Failures in Latin America

Originating from Albert O. Hirschman's tunnel parable and the recently evolving aspirations literature, this paper investigates the effect of income and economic variables at country level on an individual's aspiration level. A locus of control variable from the World Values Survey is used to estimate these effects in a multilevel model for six Latin American countries. The results seem to be in line with key aspects of Hirschman's tunnel effect: different interplays of growth and inequality dynamics can lead to different patterns of perceived control within a society. Growth is associated to higher perceived control in all income spheres when it is inclusive. This is important in the context of poverty alleviation and development because aspiration levels have been shown to be an important determinant of economic behavior and decision-making

Interpreting sufficiency in fsQCA: A reply to Marques and Salavisa (2017)

Marques and Salavisa (2017) use fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze age-based labour market dualization in Southern European, Anglo-Saxon and a few Nordic countries. They argue that segmentation at the expense of young outsiders is driven by several factors in non-linear ways: different configurations of deindustrialization, labour market coordination, employment protection, and liberalization can lead to youth outsiderness. We question the validity of their empirical analysis and argue that a more complete interpretation of fsQCA measures of fit does not confirm their conclusions. We use the occasion for a hands-on discussion of how the consistency and PRI scores of the sufficiency solution terms are calculated. A good understanding of these allows the researcher to understand which cases and configurations drive high or low scores, and thus facilitates a better understanding of the results