October 2006 (No. 16)
Editor: Terence K. Huwe
Contributors: Elizabeth del Rocío Camacho, Janice Kimball


IIR News & Events
60th Anniversary Celebration
IIR Colloquium Series, October 2006
Wall Street Journal Features Living Wage Debate
The Library Commons Reopens
Clair Brown publishes new book on Economic Turbulence
The Interdisciplinary Immigration Workshop:  New Website
Visiting Scholar Carolina Carbajal de Nova Lectures in Milan

IIR Unit News
Labor Center News
California Public Employee Relations News
Center for the Study of Child Care Employment News
Institute of Industrial Relations Library
Labor Project for Working Families


Campus News and Events
Center for Latin American Studies
Economics Department
Demography Department
Haas School of Business
Institute of Governmental Studies




IIR NEWS & EVENTS


60th Anniversary Celebration:  November 17, 2006
 
The program and day’s celebratory events will soon be widely broadcast. In the mean time, mark your calendars and plan to attend this full day of engaging scholarly dialogue and celebrations.



IIR Colloquium Series, October 2006
Held in the IIR Conference Room
2521 Channing Way
RSVP:  Myra Armstrong, zulu2@berkeley.edu
 

Monday, October 9, 2006 – 12PM
"Why Comply?: Civil Rights Enforcement in the Workplace"
Sean Farhang, Professor of Public Policy, Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley
 
 
Monday, October 16, 2006 –12 pm
 "Moving Up in the New Economy"
Joan Fitzgerald, Professor,
Director, Law, Policy, and Society Program
Director, Urban Studies Minor,
Northeastern University.
 
 
Wednesday, October 18, 2006 – 12PM
"Uncovering the American Dream:  Inequality and Mobility in Social Security Earnings Data since 1937"
Emmanuel Saez, Professor of Economics
Joint with Wojciech Kopczuk,Columbia University and Jae Song, Social Security Administration
 
 
Monday, October 30, 2006 – 12PM
"Inequality, Opportunity, and Regional Innovation:  Workforce Development in New York and San Francisco"
Karen Chapple, Professor, City & Regional Planning, UC Berkeley





Wall Street Journal Features Living Wage Debate
 
Michael Reich and Richard Epstein, professor and director of the University of Chicago's Law and Economics program, have had a sustained dialogue about living wage issues, which is freely accessible on the Wall Street Journal's Blog site.  The dialogue has several back-and-forth interchanges which include references to substantive research on the topic.  Take a look at: http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=28&highlight=econoblog


The Library Commons Opens
 
After a year’s planning, the Library Commons reopens on October 2. See more information below, under Library news.



Clair Brown Publishes Economic Turbulence: Is a Volatile Economy Good for America?
 
Clair has two co-authors, John Haltiwanger and Julia Lane.  Full citation:
 
"Economic Turbulence: Is a Volatile Economy Good for America?
Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2006. 212 pages • $21.00
 
Description:
 
National economies are naturally turbulent and ours is no exception. On any given day, companies come and go and jobs are lost and created. But it's the lost jobs that create a buzz. Evening news reports from folks like Lou Dobbs and others routinely paint a gloomy picture of lost “good” jobs and a middle class shrinking in size and fortune. But, according to three leading labor economists, volatility may not necessarily be a bad thing. Julia Lane, John Haltiwanger, and Clair Brown set out on a rigorous research project to find out what the true effect of all this turbulence is on American jobs and firms. Their conclusions, presented here in Economic Turbulence, will astound many of those who have grown accustomed to the popular view that this cycle of creation and destruction is harmful to the economy.
 
Though factors like technological change, increased international competition, and shifts in consumer demand play a role in the chaotic changes that lead firms to grow and shrink, turbulence, in several ways, strengthens the American economy by forcing it to become more flexible. Commandeering census and interview data based on millions of workers in five key and diverse sectors of the American economy­financial services, retail food services, trucking, semiconductors, and software­the authors untangle many of the complex relationships that exist between turbulence and firm performance/survival and on workers' wages and job ladders. In the course, they also reveal many of the damaging effects of such tumult on certain areas of the economy.
 
The bottom line is that newspaper and television anecdotes about lost jobs and disappearing career ladders typically fail to recognize that there are both winners and losers from economic turbulence. Providing fact-based evidence about the real effect of all this change on workers and the firms that employ them, Economic Turbulence changes forever what we thought we knew about this phenomenon.




The Interdisciplinary Immigration Workshop:  New Website
 
Irene Bloemraad’s Interdisciplinary Immigration Workshop has a new Website, which will be of considerable interest to those who study the many issues surrounding immigration and emigration.  The site will grow over time, and includes syllabi, a news Blog (contributor:  Janice Kimball), links to resources, guides to literature, and members-only services for Workshop participants.  The site was designed by the IIR Library’s Elizabeth del Rocio Camacho, who worked closely with students and Irene.  The site may be found at:
 
http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/immigration




Carolina Carbajal de Nova Lectures in Milan
 
IIR Visiting Scholar Carolina Carbajal de Nova is presenting a lecture titled “Health Investment and Equity in Mexico” at the the XVII Annual Conference of the Latin Association for the Health System Analysis, CALASS 2006, which will take place October 5-7 at the University of Bocconi in Milán, Italy.  The conference is organized by the Latin Association for Health Systems.