Between here and there: Immigrant fertility patterns in Germany

This paper focuses on the role of the home country’s birth rates in shaping immigrant fertility. We use the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to study completed fertility of first generation immigrants who arrived from different countries and at different time. We apply generalized Poisson regression to account for the underdispersion of the dependent variable. The results favor the socialization hypothesis holding that immigrants follow childbearing norms dominant in their home countries. We find that women from countries where the average birth rate is high tend to have significantly more children themselves. In addition, this relationship is the stronger, the later in life migration occurred.migration, fertility, socialization, underdispersion

Engineering Bacillus megaterium for production of functional intracellular materials

Background: Over the last 10-15 years, a technology has been developed to engineer bacterial polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) inclusions as functionalized beads, for applications such as vaccines, diagnostics and enzyme immobilization. This has been achieved by translational fusion of foreign proteins to the PHB synthase (PhaC). The respective fusion protein mediates self-assembly of PHB inclusions displaying the desired protein function. So far, beads have mainly been produced in recombinant Escherichia coli which is problematic for some applications as the lipopolysaccharides (LPS) co-purified with such inclusions are toxic to humans and animals. Results: In this study, we have engineered the formation of functional PHB inclusions in the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus megaterium, an LPS-free and established industrial production host. As B. megaterium is a natural PHB producer, the PHB-negative strain PHA05 was used to avoid any background PHB production. Plasmid-mediated T7 promoter-driven expression of the genes encoding β-ketothiolase (phaA), acetoacetyl-CoA-reductase (phaB) and PHB synthase (phaC) enabled/effected PHB production by B. megaterium PHA05. To produce functionalized PHB inclusions, the N- and C-terminus of PhaC was fused to four and two IgG binding Z-domains from Staphylococcus aureus, respectively. The ZZ-domain PhaC fusion protein was strongly overproduced at the surface of the PHB inclusions and the corresponding isolated ZZ-domain displaying PHB beads were found to purify IgG with a binding capacity of 40-50 mg IgG/g beads. As B. megaterium has the ability to sporulate and respective endospores could co-purify with cellular inclusions, a sporulation negative production strain was generated by disrupting the spoIIE gene in PHA05. This strain did not produce spores when tested under sporulation inducing conditions and it was still able to synthesize ZZ-domain displaying PHB beads. Conclusions: This study provides proof of concept for the successful genetic engineering of B. megaterium as a host for the production of functionalized PHB beads. Disruption of the spoIIE gene rendered B. megaterium incapable of sporulation but particularly suitable for production of functionalized PHB beads. This sporulation-negative mutant represents an improved industrial production strain for biotechnological processes otherwise impaired by the possibility of endospore formation.fals

Standing on Shaky Ground: Americans' Experiences With Economic Insecurity

Based on 2009 Surveys of Economic Risk Perceptions and Insecurity, examines Americans' experience of economic insecurity, such as frequency and duration, buffers against hardship, and concerns by income, family structure, race/ethnicity, and education

Unemployment Compensation and High European Unemployment: A Reassessment with New Benefit Indicators

Generous unemployment benefits lie at the heart of the conventional explanation for persistent high unemployment. The effects of benefit generosity are more ambiguous in a broader behavioral framework in which workers get substantial disutility from unemployment controlling for income, and know that unemployment has scarring effects in the future. The micro evidence suggests modest effects of changes in generosity, but there are reasons to doubt that the impacts on national unemployment rates are consequential. The strongest evidence for the orthodox prediction comes from cross-country regressions on the OECD’s gross replacement rate (GRR), but we find little support in the pattern of annual changes in the GRR and the unemployment rate for OECD countries over the last three decades. We take advantage of newly released and much improved net replacement rate indicators from the OECD, which show little correlation with either the GRRs or with unemployment and employment rates. The evidence does not offer compelling support for the view that benefit generosity is at the root of high European unemployment. ��

Risks at work: the demand and supply sides of government redistribution

To understand how the welfare state adjusts to economic shocks it is important to explain both the genesis of popular preferences and the institutional incentives of governments to respond to these preferences. This paper attempts to do both, using a general theoretical framework and detailed data at both the individual and national levels. In a first step, we focus on how risk exposure and income are related to preferences for redistribution. To test our hypotheses, we extract detailed risk exposure measures from labor force surveys and marry them to cross-national survey data. In a second step, we turn our attention to the supply side of government redistribution. Institutions, we argue, mediate governments’ reactions to redistributional demands following economic shocks. Using time-series cross-country data, we demonstrate how national training systems, electoral institutions as well as government partisanship shape government responses. -- Um zu verstehen, wie Wohlfahrtsstaaten auf ökonomische Schocks reagieren, ist es wichtig, sowohl die Nachfrage- als auch die Angebotsseite von Umverteilung zu analysieren. Wie entstehen Umverteilungs-Präferenzen in der Bevölkerung? Welche institutionellen Anreize haben Regierungen, darauf zu reagieren? Das vorliegende Papier wendet einen generellen theoretischen Rahmen und umfangreiche Individual- und Aggregat-Daten an, um diesen Fragen nachzugehen. Dazu wird zuerst analysiert, wie Risiken im Arbeitsmarkt und das Einkommen Umverteilungs-Präferenzen von Individuen beeinflussen. Die abgeleiteten Hypothesen werden an neuen Datensätzen getestet. Diese kombinieren Informationen von Arbeitsmarkterhebungen und Umfrage-Daten für mehrere Länder und Jahre. In Sachen Angebotsseite wird argumentiert, dass unterschiedliche Regierungen auf ökonomische Schocks unterschiedlich reagieren, abhängig von Institutionen. Das Papier testet diese und andere Hypothesen auf der Aggregatsebene anhand von vergleichenden Zeitreihen. Es zeigt sich, dass die Art und Weise, wie Regierungen auf ökonomische Schocks reagieren, von Ausbildungs- und Wahlsystemen sowie der parteipolitischen Färbung der Regierung mitbestimmt werden.Public Opinion,Preferences,Redistribution,Varieties of Capitalism,Partisanship,Unemployment,Occupations