What a difference peers can make: The impact of social (work) norms on unemployment duration

This article outlines a model of how social interactions among persons belonging to the same region might influence the individual unemployment duration. The impact is assumed to be enhanced through social work norms shared by peers within the group. Building on a range of German data sets and derived from multilevel analysis, the results show that social interactions in terms of social work norms, in conjunction with socio-demographic and regional characteristics, affect the individual unemployment duration. --regional social interactions,social work norms,group influence, regional unemployment,religious influences

Women and work: what role do social norms play?

Against the background of the current economic research which concentrates particularly on individual and structural factors, this paper examines if and to what extent social norms (in terms of attitudes towards gender roles and work commitment) can make a complementary statement in explaining women's employment status. The impact is presumed to be enhanced through norms shared by people belonging to the same households, peer groups, and by residents of the same region. The analysis relies on a rich German dataset and employs a zero inflated negative binomial model. The results highlight, among other things, the importance of 'relevant others' in explaining women's employment status. --women's employment status,households and families,social norms,probit model with sample selection

Migrant entrepreneurs in Germany: Which role do they play?

In recent years, self-employment among migrant groups has increased significantly in Germany. Against this background, this article aims at presenting an overview of recent entrepreneurial developments. By drawing on a wide range of secondary literature and statistical data, the present survey places the topic into a broad historical and socio-economic context. Furthermore it raises policy-oriented questions and discusses new directions for research. --migrant entrepreneurs,labour market integration,legal provisions,entrepreneurial developments

Women and Work: What Role Do Social Norms Play?

Against the background of the current economic research which concentrates particularly on individual and structural factors, this paper examines if and to what extent social norms (in terms of attitudes towards gender roles and work commitment) can make a complementary statement in explaining women's employment status. The impact is presumed to be enhanced through norms shared by people belonging to the same households, peer groups, and by residents of the same region. The analysis relies on a rich German dataset and employs a zero in ated negative binomial model. The results highlight the importance of `relevant others' in explaining women's employment status

Women and Work: What Role Do Social Norms Play?

Against the background of the current economic research which concentrates particularly on individual and structural factors, this paper examines if and to what extent social norms (in terms of attitudes towards gender roles and work commitment) can make a complementary statement in explaining women's employment status. The impact is presumed to be enhanced through norms shared by people belonging to the same households, peer groups, and by residents of the same region. The analysis relies on a rich German dataset and employs a zero infl ated negative binomial model. The results highlight the importance of `relevant others' in explaining women's employment status.women's employment status, households and families, social norms, zero in ated negative binominal model

Is unemployment a consequence of social interactions? Seeking for a common research framework for economists and other social scientists

This article aims to summarize the existing body of literature on social interactions and their effect on individual unemployment status. Two directions of the ongoing research are analyzed: the impact of social norms on unemployment and the importance of social networks in the job search process. Pointing out that the difficulties encountered in research are largely, but not entirely, the result of data constraints, this article assumes that the roots of the problems exhibited by current research might be found in the lack of common approaches among economists and other social scientists. In line with these ideas, there are two main strategies which could lead to a more accurate demonstration of the fact that group memberships plays an important role in the determination of individual economic outcomes. The first one concerns both the necessity of testing the viability of assumptions including more qualitative variables, as well as the need of supplementing the existing research with new inquiries regarding labor market outcomes of individuals. The second one, representing the core idea of the paper, requires that statistical, quantitative evidence should be combined in the future with qualitative studies and experiments. --social interactions,social norms,work norms,regional unemployment,social networks,subjective well-being

Migrant entrepreneurship in Hamburg: Results from a qualitative study with Turkish entrepreneurs

This article is an overview study on migrant entrepreneurship in Hamburg with a special focus on Turkish entrepreneurs. On the basis of 58 semistructured interviews conducted between October 2008 and January 2009, several patterns such as entrepreneurial motivation, business development and embeddednes in co-ethnic or mainstream networks are closely examined. Furthermore, this article refers to problems migrant entrepreneurs encounter in the business process and illustrates formal and informal strategies applied in solving these issues. Lastly, support structures for migrant businesses in Hamburg are discussed and evaluated. --migrant entrepreneurs,migrant entrepreneurs in knowledge-intensive service sectors,social capital,co-ethnic and mainstream embeddedness,support structures for migrant businesses in Hamburg

Mehr Studienanfänger: Mehr Studienabbrecher?

Ziel dieser Studie ist es, die allgemeine Studiensituation in Deutschland näher zu untersuchen und zu erläutern. Dabei wird insbesondere auf die Hauptursachen von Studienabbrüchen sowie auf die Arbeitsmarktintegration der betroffenen Personen eingegangen. Im Detail wird analysiert: Wie sich u. a. die Studienanfänger- und Studienabbruchquoten an deutschen Universitäten und Fachhochschulen entwickelt haben? Welche die Hauptursachen für die steigenden Studienabbruchquoten sind? Inwiefern eine erfolgreiche Arbeitsmarktintegration der Studienabbrecher gelingen kann? --

Analysis of Patterns and Similarities in Service Tickets using Natural Language Processing

In this paper we propose an approach for classifying documents, embedding documents into feature vectors and using these embeddings for finding similarities between them. Our chosen domain for applying this method is the IT-Service Support branch, where the documents we try to analyse are support tickets and the potential of classifying and finding patterns between tickets is huge for optimizing the service process. We aim to tackle the problem with multiple methods of text classification and recognition, and data analysis, followed by comparison and interpretation of the results. Following our previous work in this field, we propose further means of validating our models, so we can describe and visualize several methods of feature extraction and recognition for service tickets that help the business process for Service Support

Explaining ethnic inequality in the German labor market: Labor market institutions, context of reception, and boundaries

The descendants of immigrants comprise nearly a third of the West German population under the age of 25 years and will soon become a substantial proportion of the native born labor force. Owing to the young age of this group, and a lack of governmental data on parental place of birth, there is currently little research that compares the labor market outcomes of the second generation of different origins. Exploiting the first data set to allow the disaggregation of all immigrant groups in Germany, this article draws on the concepts of context of reception and boundary crossing to explain variation in the labor market performance of different immigrant origin groups. Positively received ethnic Germans consistently perform better than negatively received guest worker origin groups. Labor market inequality is greatest among men and in obtaining employment. Ethnic differences are more compressed among women and for occupational attainment among the employed. The boundary crossing mechanisms of naturalization and intermarriage have modest association with labor market success. Findings suggest that successful integration in Germany is influenced by labor market institutions, which encourage inequality in unemployment while diminishing inequality amongst the employed. © 2012 The Author