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Pope John Paul II's views on social economy is examined from an urban perspective based on the encyclicals 'Laborem Exercens,' 'Sollicitudo Rei Socialis' and 'Centesimus Annus.' The Pope advocates the preferential option for the poor and ideas associated with the common use of goods. He also promotes suburban residents' moral obligation to help the poor people of inner cities. A couple of theories addressing the spatial element of urban poverty is also given.

A study was conducted to analyze whether economics support an ethical component. The influence of instrumentalist and personalist perspectives on economics as a discipline is examined, including the parallelism between economics and human affairs. Pope John Paul II's thoughts on social economics have arguably contributed to the development of the personalist perspective, treating human beings as instrumentalities in the production process.

The issue of social inequalities in health has become politically salient during the 1990s in many European countries. Research evidence and ideas that eventually came to the attention of national policy makers helped to trigger this change. The pathways of this information flow are traced through an examination of the work of international agencies and a presentation of case studies from three countries: the Netherlands, Britain, and Sweden. Each country's experience was different but nevertheless influenced and reinforced the courses of action adopted by the others. It is clear that, in order to meet the challenge that health inequalities pose to public health and policy, cooperation will become even more important in the future.

The increase in income inequality in the United States over the past 20 years has been accompanied by a pronounced increase in economic segregation in urban areas. No research to date has analyzed the potential effects of such spatial segregation on mortality. To investigate these effects, the mortality experience of respondents aged 30 years and older on the 1986-94 National Health Interview Surveys residing in any one of 30 large metropolitan areas in the United States was analyzed. Concentrated poverty was associated with significantly elevated risk of mortality, even after controlling for individual household income. Concentrated affluence showed a consistent, protective effect only among the elderly. The effects were most pronounced among the poor, but were not confined to them. Urban planning should take into account the effects associated with economic residential segregation.

A study was conducted to examine the establishment of residuals of cultural and economic vision advocated by Edward Said in the academic and diplomatic analyses of post-communist Balkans. The impact of this development on the international community's failure to interfere in the Balkan conflicts was also analyzed. Results showed that national groups are characterized by regional, historically reinforced factors that cannot be correlated with notions of collective interests.

This article presents an overview of the origins, development, rapid diffusion, and current usage of the concept of social capital in both the academic (research-oriented) and more applied (social policy) literature. Following a short quantitative survey of the appearance of the term in both theses and journals, various meanings of social capital are examined in the light of classical and contemporary sociological theory. Three main research approaches, which are based on the operationalization of social capital or its application as a heuristic device, are critically examined. These approaches are associated with the work of James Coleman, Pierre Bourdieu, and Robert Putnam, but there are also some references to the work of economists. The authors contend that, while social capital has value and appeal as a new term, basic theory needs greater development. In particular, attention should be paid to acknowledging the specific perspective on social capital that underlies its usage, the scale or level of analysis employed, and the value of a qualitative use of social capital.

An analysis of unilateral divorce effects on overall divorce rates reveals that divorce rates would have been 6% lower had states not adopted unilateral divorce laws. The study also reveals that unilateral divorce accounted for 17 of all divorces between 1968 and 1988 and that there are a number of other factors responsible for raising divorce rates in the US. The study concludes that controlling for no-fault divorce can lower divorce rates in the US.

An analysis of socialist upper class income during economic transition from socialism to capitalism reveals that upper class membership translates to economic success with the effect growing as transition proceeds. The study seeks to find the social economic mechanism prevalent in Eastern Europe during economic transition and reveals that socialist upper classes had average incomes of 8.5% higher than average households' before the transition and had average income of 12.5% higher than average during transition.

Definition and Plan of Attack Inequality is the systematic division of the members of a society into separate groups for the benefit of one group at the harm of the [...]

A new research program of equilibrium versus disequilibrium method has found that science allows values and value-judgements with the limitation that they must refer only to social values, such as collective phenomena that can be examined through scientific method. A comparison between the orientation table in logic and that in ethics reveals an excellent relation between the two. Substituting virtues for truth-functions in logic reveals that the two has a perfect consistency.

The equilibrium versus disequilibrium approach appear to provide an introductory to any future study of ethics of social science. The first basic question involves a clear identification of the limits of ethical investigations within the field of science. The second question refers to the connection between meta-ethics and normative ethics while the third is related to the problem of value judgements in science.

The right path towards modern civilization involves the realization of the old and new great ideals of man and humanity. These include personal freedoms of others, and justice of equality and justice of equity in the distribution of national income and wealth. Meanwhile, Schumpeter stated that in capitalism, there are two ways of capital formation and two methods of financing new investments. One method is the common, natural capital formation while the other is through monetized credit by the banks and other financial institutions.

Economists and other social scientists should focus on and consider both the statistical and non-statistical information of any given problem. The two should be clearly identified and handled in accordance with their own nature, although they cannot, and should not be intermingled. Pure and social economics, positive and normative economics do not seem opposing, but rather complementary, with the requirement to offer the right qualification.

A sound, stable and efficient government institution can be attained only if both society and economy are also healthy, characterized by stability-from-within the system. An analytical agreement among those with political, social and economic light on a stable, equitable and workable institutional and legal framework are necessary. To attain this, political analysts, economists and sociologists should cooperate.

The use of conventional macro monetary and fiscal policies can not assure economists that the fundamental problems of the present can provide solutions in the future. Although 'social safety nets' are utilized worldwide, there is still no assurance that it can provide solutions to problems of financial instability. Countries gifted with political, professional and intellectual leaders can focus on the future and adopt all necessary measures to attain a general stable equilibrium that will protect the national economy from imported crises.

An analysis of decreased social security participation in the United Kingdom reveals that the relatively low demand for unskilled labor and the generous incentive plans available have contributed to the decline. The study also shows that significant increases in pension wealth and the generous treatment of early retirement have had a significant positive effect on early retirement.

An analysis of the effects of retirement on social security participation reveals that there is a strong relationship between available benefits and social security participation across countries. The study points out that the social security practice of giving generous benefits to young retirees and penalizing labor earning beyond retirement age contribute to decreased participation.

The reduction of the sociological analysis of money has restricted its political and economic understanding. This resulted to the promotion of the misconception that money solely acts as a commodity. Sociology should assume responsibility for explaining financial phenomena such as interest rates and inflation. This deeper understanding may contribute to understanding capitalism's banking system and state credit-money.

The failure of the federal government to achieve Pareto or near-Pareto improvements for the public interest can be explained by four interrelated hypotheses. One such hypothesis is the inability of the government to make commitments. Another is coalition forming and bargaining that result in suboptimal outcomes. The third explanation is destructive competition which is very common in zero-sum games. The last hypothesis for the failure of the government to implement Pareto improvements is the uncertainty about the consequences of change.

INTRODUCTION The major question to be addressed in this paper is the following: Is socio-economics a distinctive social science discipline focusing on the societal setting of economic action and thus [...]

INTRODUCTION In both experimental economics and psychology, framing research has focused primarily on the reflection effect of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky's (1979) prospect theory. Recently, however, economic research on [...]

This paper reviews recent developments in economic anthropology. It argues that an underlying concern with the cultural constitution of material life unites many current studies -- and not just the few works offered to date as studies in cultural economics. Such current work has to be recognized for what it is, namely an emergent, broadly based culturalist school in economic anthropology.

Institutional economics has come to focus on institutional forms and the way that they compete with each other. This has parallels with evolution, in that one institutional form will tend to displace others, and the most efficient form will survive. Variations driving the process of evolution may not be random as is sometimes supposed, but rather they may be patterned, which leads to questions about the origins of these patterns. Purposeful behavior is not random, but is patterns and so gives rise to patterned variations.

Differences found in the incidence of suicide between the psychiatric catchment areas of the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm were investigated in relation to health and socioeconomic indicators during the study period 1990-1994. The hypothesis of the study was that negative socioeconomic indicators and psychosocial and health indicators denoting less favourable socioeconomic status may negatively influence the suicide rate of the demographic units in this cross sectional study. The incidence of suicide between the areas was significantly different and increasingly divergent in the last year of the study period. The area with a higher proportion of suicides had also an increased proportion of individuals who retired early, lower life expectancy at birth, higher nonemployment, lesser income among the employed, less public expenditure for education, less proportion of home ownership, and a higher proportion of persons bound to one-room dwellings. Disregarding the influence of ethnicity (there were no statistically significant differences on immigrants' suicide between the areas) as well as in the availability of psychiatric care (assuming that similar quality of psychiatric care was provided by both sectors), or other demographic indices commonly shared by the areas, the possibility of strong effects of unfavourable health and socioeconomic indices appeared relevant for the explanation of an increased incidence of suicide. The findings provide new empirical contradiction to the socioeconomic hypothesis of the incidence of suicide, which postulated that populations with higher socioeconomic status may have increased suicide rates.

This paper proposes a method to incorporate a concern for distributional inequalities of income, education, and longevity into the framework of the Human Development Index (HDI), as it is presently designed by the United Nations Development Programme. The paper constructs Gini coefficients, for a set of 20 developing countries, measuring inequalities in annual income, educational attainment, and life-span attainment. These calculations are combined with data from the HDI to produce an Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index (IAHDI). The implications of this proposed index for evaluating and promoting development are considered. Key words - inequality, development, distribution, index, Gini coefficient, Sen

Welfare benefit levels, economic restructuring and skills mismatches are factors in the economic disadvantages suffered by African Americans. However, they play a different role in poverty exits among whites. There are only limited connections between changing levels of racial residential segregation and poverty exits among both African Americans and whites. Social stratification is enhanced by the fact that structural factors have a different impact on African Americans and whites. The differing impact also highlights racial divisions which are still entrenched in the labour market.

The social network metaphor is widely used by sociologists to study socioeconomic behavior and processes. The use of social networks generally takes place within the ranks of sociology. However, a more complete social science would result by combining work being done on social networks within sociology with mainline economic theory. The insights from such a research agenda will help us better understand socioeconomic behavior. With this in mind, the main objective of this paper is to demonstrate the utility of the network metaphor to economists. This objective will be accomplished through developing four basic components of social networks, and using them to navigate through the existing literature in economic sociology. Furthermore, topics for future research in which social networks can provide contributions to the explanation of socioeconomic behavior are explored as well.

Previous theoretical and empirical research on economic sociology leaves much to be desired in terms of consistently defining the agenda and objectives of the discipline. As a result, economic sociology often appears to lack a clearly defined mission and purpose. This is epitomized by various failures to establish adequate epistemological relations of the proper realm of economic sociology with those of economics and sociology, and especially with the domain of rational choice theory. This failure is compounded by a misplaced distinction between the subject matter of economic sociology and that of sociological economics, or socioeconomics. And some recent works in the discipline (including the ambitious Handbook of Economic Sociology) have not helped to remedy this situation. In this paper, we try to address this situation by suggesting some reformulations of the subject matter of economic sociology in relation to those of related disciplines. In addition, we attempt to redefine the field of the sociology of the market which is seen as the focal specialty of economic sociology.

Introduction There have been many attempts to relate and integrate the social into the economic and vice versa. The conception and theory of cultural lag is well suited to a [...]

This article discusses research conducted by Tom Nicholson on socio-economical impacts on education. The author criticizes Nicholson's methodology and claims he does not support his research in which he argues working class students are hindered educationally due to their backgrounds, whereas the author maintains the school curriculum is not conducive for working class students.

The effects of social class composition on education and individual student performance is examined. The author discusses the impact of socio-economic schools and school mixing, and claims school mixing reduces educational inequality.

INTRODUCTION The roots of human moral responsibility - in the specific sense of obligations to be responsive to the needs of others - have been credibly sought in two directions. [...]

Capitalism emerged from the UK and slowly extended to western Europe, Canada, US, Australasia and Japan. The globalization of capitalism has achieved an unlimited capacity to produce, diversify, improve and and exploit human and natural resources. Impoverishment, human degradation and environmental deterioration are consequences as the world grew richer in capital accumulation and and material goods.

Institutions are staffed and are created to do the job of regulating organizations. This staffing, and all the creative work that is involved in financing, governing, training, and motivating institutional actions by that staff in organizations, has been lost in recent institutional theorizing. This staffing was central to the old institutionalism, which is why it looked so different. The argument is exemplified by applying the insights of classical institutionalists to the legitimacy of court decisions as determined by the law of evidence, to the legitimacy of competition and the destruction of other organizations by competition, to the noncontractual basis of contract in commitments to maintain competence to do the performances required in contracts, and to the failure of institutions of capitalist competition and the substitution of mafia-like enforcement of contracts in postcommunist Russia. The institutions of the new institutionalism do not have enough causal substance and enough variance of characteristics to explain such various phenomena. KEY WORDS: formal organization, competition, performance, contracts, Introduction I was recruited into sociology by the institutional economists, especially by Thorstein Veblen; sociologists at Central Michigan College of Education read Veblen, while economists there did not. I started [...]