Project acronym CBTC
Project The Resurgence in Wage Inequality and Technological Change: A New Approach
Researcher (PI) Tali Kristal
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2015-STG
Summary Social-science explanations for rising wage inequality have reached a dead end. Most economists argue that computerization has been primarily responsible, while on the other side of the argument are sociologists and political scientists who stress the role of political forces in the evolution process of wages. I would like to use my knowledge and experience to come up with an original theory on the complex dynamics between technology and politics in order to solve two unsettled questions regarding the role of computerization in rising wage inequality: First, how can computerization, which diffused simultaneously in rich countries, explain the divergent inequality trends in Europe and the United States? Second, what are the mechanisms behind the well-known observed positive correlation between computers and earnings?
To answer the first question, I develop a new institutional agenda stating that politics, broadly defined, mitigates the effects of technological change on wages by stimulating norms of fair pay and equity. To answer the second question, I propose a truly novel perspective that conceptualizes the earnings advantage that derives from computerization around access to and control of information on the production process. Capitalizing on this new perspective, I develop a new approach to measuring computerization to capture the form of workers’ interaction with computers at work, and build a research strategy for analysing the effect of computerization on wages across countries and workplaces, and over time.
This research project challenges the common understanding of technology’s role in producing economic inequality, and would thereby significantly impact all of the abovementioned disciplines, which are debating over the upswing in wage inequality, as well as public policy, which discusses what should be done to confront the resurgence of income inequality.
Summary
Social-science explanations for rising wage inequality have reached a dead end. Most economists argue that computerization has been primarily responsible, while on the other side of the argument are sociologists and political scientists who stress the role of political forces in the evolution process of wages. I would like to use my knowledge and experience to come up with an original theory on the complex dynamics between technology and politics in order to solve two unsettled questions regarding the role of computerization in rising wage inequality: First, how can computerization, which diffused simultaneously in rich countries, explain the divergent inequality trends in Europe and the United States? Second, what are the mechanisms behind the well-known observed positive correlation between computers and earnings?
To answer the first question, I develop a new institutional agenda stating that politics, broadly defined, mitigates the effects of technological change on wages by stimulating norms of fair pay and equity. To answer the second question, I propose a truly novel perspective that conceptualizes the earnings advantage that derives from computerization around access to and control of information on the production process. Capitalizing on this new perspective, I develop a new approach to measuring computerization to capture the form of workers’ interaction with computers at work, and build a research strategy for analysing the effect of computerization on wages across countries and workplaces, and over time.
This research project challenges the common understanding of technology’s role in producing economic inequality, and would thereby significantly impact all of the abovementioned disciplines, which are debating over the upswing in wage inequality, as well as public policy, which discusses what should be done to confront the resurgence of income inequality.
Max ERC Funding
1 495 091 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31
Project acronym HumanTrafficking
Project Human Trafficking: A Labor Perspective
Researcher (PI) Hila Shamir
Host Institution (HI) TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2017-STG
Summary This project conducts a theoretical, methodological, and normative paradigm shift in the research and analysis of human trafficking, one of the most pressing moral and political challenges of our times. It moves away from the currently predominant approach to trafficking, which focuses on criminal law, border control, and human rights, towards a labor-based approach that targets the structure of labor markets that are prone to severely exploitative labor practices. This shift represents an essential development both in the research of migratory labor practices and in the process of designing more effective, and more just, anti-trafficking measures, that are context-sensitive as well as cognizant to global legal and economic trends. The project will include four main parts: 1) Theoretical: articulating and justifying the proposed shift on trafficking from individual rights and culpabilities to structural labor market realities. 2) Case-studies: conducting a multidisciplinary study of a series of innovative case studies, in which the labor context emerges as a significant factor in the trafficking nexus – bilateral agreements on migration, national regulations of labor standards and recruiters, unionization, and voluntary corporate codes of conduct. The case studies analysis employs the labor paradigm in elucidating the structural conditions that underlie trafficking, reveal a thus-far mostly unrecognized and under-theorized set of anti-trafficking tools. 3) Clinical Laboratory: collaborating with TAUs Workers' Rights clinic to create a legal laboratory in which the potential and limits of the tools examined in the case studies will be tested. 4) Normative: assessing the success of existing strategies and expanding on them to devise innovative tools for a just, practicable, and effective anti-trafficking policy, that can reach significantly more individuals vulnerable to trafficking, by providing them with legal mechanisms for avoiding and resisting exploitation.
Summary
This project conducts a theoretical, methodological, and normative paradigm shift in the research and analysis of human trafficking, one of the most pressing moral and political challenges of our times. It moves away from the currently predominant approach to trafficking, which focuses on criminal law, border control, and human rights, towards a labor-based approach that targets the structure of labor markets that are prone to severely exploitative labor practices. This shift represents an essential development both in the research of migratory labor practices and in the process of designing more effective, and more just, anti-trafficking measures, that are context-sensitive as well as cognizant to global legal and economic trends. The project will include four main parts: 1) Theoretical: articulating and justifying the proposed shift on trafficking from individual rights and culpabilities to structural labor market realities. 2) Case-studies: conducting a multidisciplinary study of a series of innovative case studies, in which the labor context emerges as a significant factor in the trafficking nexus – bilateral agreements on migration, national regulations of labor standards and recruiters, unionization, and voluntary corporate codes of conduct. The case studies analysis employs the labor paradigm in elucidating the structural conditions that underlie trafficking, reveal a thus-far mostly unrecognized and under-theorized set of anti-trafficking tools. 3) Clinical Laboratory: collaborating with TAUs Workers' Rights clinic to create a legal laboratory in which the potential and limits of the tools examined in the case studies will be tested. 4) Normative: assessing the success of existing strategies and expanding on them to devise innovative tools for a just, practicable, and effective anti-trafficking policy, that can reach significantly more individuals vulnerable to trafficking, by providing them with legal mechanisms for avoiding and resisting exploitation.
Max ERC Funding
1 492 250 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-04-01, End date: 2023-03-31
Project acronym RRHEDSPS
Project Reconsidering Representation: How Electoral Districts Shape Party Systems
Researcher (PI) Orit Kedar
Host Institution (HI) THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary An electoral system is an essential component of representative democracy. It translates preferences
of citizens to a legislative body and inevitably distorts preferences, voicing some more loudly than others.
Theorizing and empirically analyzing how the electoral system tilts the playing ground is the aim of this
study.
The number of seats allotted to an electoral district—the district magnitude (DM)—is perhaps the
most important component defining an electoral system. It is long established that DM affects key features
of the political landscape in a country, such as representation, the number of parties, the type of government
(single- or multi-party coalition), parties’ strategy, voters’ consideration, and even redistribution policy.
Most democracies, however, have districts of many different magnitudes, and the range often reaches thirty
seats gap between the smallest and largest districts in a country. Districts in Portugal, for instance, vary
between two and forty-eight seats, and in Switzerland between one and thirty-five. The voluminous
literature on electoral districts uniformly sidesteps this heterogeneity, focusing instead on a single middle
district per country.
The proposed study is the first large-scale study that theorizes about and empirically analyzes the
effects of within-country district structure. I address questions such as: how does district heterogeneity
shape representation at the national level? How does it affect the party system? And how does it affect party
coordination?
In the first part of the study I will theorize about various aspects of district heterogeneity in a country
(e.g., skewness, effective number of magnitudes). I will gain deep understanding for district distributions
and develop politically-relevant measures of heterogeneity. Drawing on insights from the theoretical part,
the second part will empirically examine how district heterogeneity affects the political landscape, and in
particular representation, party system, and party coordination. This part relies on extensive district- and
national-level data collection and data analysis in OECD countries as well as in-depth case analysis.
Analyzing the effect of district heterogeneity on representation, party systems, and party
coordination will open new avenues of research about design of electoral systems.
Summary
An electoral system is an essential component of representative democracy. It translates preferences
of citizens to a legislative body and inevitably distorts preferences, voicing some more loudly than others.
Theorizing and empirically analyzing how the electoral system tilts the playing ground is the aim of this
study.
The number of seats allotted to an electoral district—the district magnitude (DM)—is perhaps the
most important component defining an electoral system. It is long established that DM affects key features
of the political landscape in a country, such as representation, the number of parties, the type of government
(single- or multi-party coalition), parties’ strategy, voters’ consideration, and even redistribution policy.
Most democracies, however, have districts of many different magnitudes, and the range often reaches thirty
seats gap between the smallest and largest districts in a country. Districts in Portugal, for instance, vary
between two and forty-eight seats, and in Switzerland between one and thirty-five. The voluminous
literature on electoral districts uniformly sidesteps this heterogeneity, focusing instead on a single middle
district per country.
The proposed study is the first large-scale study that theorizes about and empirically analyzes the
effects of within-country district structure. I address questions such as: how does district heterogeneity
shape representation at the national level? How does it affect the party system? And how does it affect party
coordination?
In the first part of the study I will theorize about various aspects of district heterogeneity in a country
(e.g., skewness, effective number of magnitudes). I will gain deep understanding for district distributions
and develop politically-relevant measures of heterogeneity. Drawing on insights from the theoretical part,
the second part will empirically examine how district heterogeneity affects the political landscape, and in
particular representation, party system, and party coordination. This part relies on extensive district- and
national-level data collection and data analysis in OECD countries as well as in-depth case analysis.
Analyzing the effect of district heterogeneity on representation, party systems, and party
coordination will open new avenues of research about design of electoral systems.
Max ERC Funding
1 038 686 €
Duration
Start date: 2010-11-01, End date: 2016-10-31
Project acronym SNSNEWS
Project The new flow of news : how social network sites transform news organization and citizens political behavior
Researcher (PI) Shira Dvir Gvirsman
Host Institution (HI) TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2015-STG
Summary News industry is undergoing a major transition: Traditional news consumption is on the decline, while citizens increasingly turn their attention to social network sites (SNSs). To accommodate this trend, news industry has been incorporating SNSs into its platforms, changing news into a social product. The project will explore this process and reveal its implications for news production and audiences’ political behavior. I develop a new model anchored in network logic and involving three key actors in news creation and distribution: news organizations, which are adapting news production to the logic of sharing; news feeders – users who select and disseminate news stories, thereby serving as a bridge between their online followers and news organizations; and news feedees – individuals whose news consumption is limited to stories fetched for them by feeders in their SNSs. The model points to some long-term effects on individuals' political beliefs and behavior as a consequence of acting as feeders or feedees. Multiple innovative methods will be employed, some of which will be implemented in the field of media and political studies for the first time. The methods are mutually complementary, combining ‘big data’ analysis with small-N in-depth designs. To study news organizations, I will interview news editors and analyze traffic data juxtaposing it against content analysis. To study users’ behavior and identify feeders and feedees, I will conduct a laboratory observation in which surfing behavior and physiological attention indices will be measured unobtrusively. Long-term political effects will be tested using a combination of survey panel data and web-based behavioral data spanning a period of two years. The proposal is theoretically and empirically innovative and can impact future research by providing novel conceptualization of news distribution, consumption and influence, as well as by introducing a new methodological ‘golden standard’ to audience research.
Summary
News industry is undergoing a major transition: Traditional news consumption is on the decline, while citizens increasingly turn their attention to social network sites (SNSs). To accommodate this trend, news industry has been incorporating SNSs into its platforms, changing news into a social product. The project will explore this process and reveal its implications for news production and audiences’ political behavior. I develop a new model anchored in network logic and involving three key actors in news creation and distribution: news organizations, which are adapting news production to the logic of sharing; news feeders – users who select and disseminate news stories, thereby serving as a bridge between their online followers and news organizations; and news feedees – individuals whose news consumption is limited to stories fetched for them by feeders in their SNSs. The model points to some long-term effects on individuals' political beliefs and behavior as a consequence of acting as feeders or feedees. Multiple innovative methods will be employed, some of which will be implemented in the field of media and political studies for the first time. The methods are mutually complementary, combining ‘big data’ analysis with small-N in-depth designs. To study news organizations, I will interview news editors and analyze traffic data juxtaposing it against content analysis. To study users’ behavior and identify feeders and feedees, I will conduct a laboratory observation in which surfing behavior and physiological attention indices will be measured unobtrusively. Long-term political effects will be tested using a combination of survey panel data and web-based behavioral data spanning a period of two years. The proposal is theoretically and empirically innovative and can impact future research by providing novel conceptualization of news distribution, consumption and influence, as well as by introducing a new methodological ‘golden standard’ to audience research.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 044 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-04-01, End date: 2021-03-31
