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We examine whether variations in the most fundamental aspects of state corporate income tax regimes affect state economic activity as measured by personal income, gross state product, and total non-farm employment. We focus on a variety of statutory components of state corporate income taxes that apply broadly in most U.S. states and for most multi-state corporate taxpayers. Our econometric strategy consists of a series of fixed effects panel regressions using state-level data from 1996 through 2010. Our results reveal important interaction effects of tax rates and policies, suggesting that policy makers should avoid making decisions about tax rates in isolation. The results demonstrate a relatively consistent negative economic response to the combination of high tax rates with throwback rules and heavy sales factor weights. Combined reporting has no discernible effect on personal income, GSP, or employment after controlling for tax rates, apportionment, and throwback rules. In an effort to gauge the relative impacts of tax policies on the location of economic activity, we also estimate alternative models in which each state’s economic activity is measured as a share of the national economic activity in each year. Statistically significant effects for tax rates, apportionment formulas, and throwback rules in the shares models suggest that at least some of their impact involves the movement of activity across state lines, thereby leaving open the possibility of a zero-sum game among the states.

Previous research assumes that economic development is the key to increasing the food supply and alleviating child malnutrition. However, economic development alone does not promise that income is distributed fairly, nor does it guarantee that other human needs will be fulfilled. What has been missing from cross-national research is an analysis of how gender inequality shapes women’s abilities to effectively maintain food security. The current study contributes to this literature by exploring the multidimensional effects of women’s empowerment on child stunting and wasting.

Pooling data from the Demographic and Health Surveys and the World Bank, the analysis estimates a series of multi-level models that examine the country-level influences on malnutrition, while also accounting for household and maternal characteristics that affect food security at the individual level.

Results suggest that improvements in women’s education, control over reproduction, representation in national politics, and life expectancy correspond to improvements in child malnutrition. Notably, the effects of gender inequality are comparable to or larger than those of economic development. The multi-level modeling technique illustrates how social forces that are larger than the individual shape the chances of experiencing food insecurity.

Cross-national data are limited in scope and cannot prove causality. Further research is also needed to better understand the process by which women wield advances in rights and empowerment to affect food security.

If policymakers want to facilitate food security in poor countries, they should not disregard the potential of policies that will promote more equitable rights for women.

Poor complaint management may result in organizations losing customers and revenue. Consumers exhibit negative emotional responses when dissatisfied and this may lead to a complaint to a third-party organization. Since little information is available on the role of emotion in the consumer complaint process or how to manage complaints effectively, we offer an emotions perspective by applying Affective Events Theory (AET) to complaint behavior. This study presents the first application of AET in a consumption context and advances a theoretical framework supported by qualitative research for emotional responses to complaints. In contrast to commonly held views on gender and emotion, men as well as women use emotion-focused coping to complain.

Purpose – In this chapter, we advance research on the socioeconomic ranking of religious groups by using both income and wealth to document the rankings of the six major religious groups in the United States – Jews, Catholics, mainline Protestants, evangelical Protestants, black Protestants, and the religiously unaffiliated – during 2001–2007, a period marked by both catastrophic economic losses and widespread economic gain.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Drawing from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics (PSID), we provide descriptive statistics to explore the socioeconomic differences among the six major religious groups. In addition, we note their ownership rates and changes in wealth and income during 2001–2007.

Findings – Overall, these findings point to enduring stratification in the U.S. religious landscape. Based on median net worth, leading into the Great Recession, the six major religious groups ranked in the following order: Jews, Catholics, mainline Protestants, evangelical Protestants, the unaffiliated, and black Protestants. At the same time, these findings point to the upward mobility of white Catholics, who increased their income and made the greatest increase in net worth between 2001 and 2007. These data also suggest a decline in the socioeconomic status of the religiously unaffiliated as compared to previous studies.

Research implications – These findings illustrate the degree to which certain religious groups have access to wealth and other resources, and have implications for how the years leading into the Great Recession may have influenced households’ vulnerability to financial shocks.

Originality/Value – We use both income and wealth to examine whether different religious groups experienced any changes in income and wealth leading into the 2008 economic downturn.

Purpose – This introductory essay to an edited volume proposes possible contributions from economic sociology to the study of work broadly defined. Weber had a vision of economic sociology as a study of not only economic phenomena but also economically relevant and economically conditioned phenomena. Work, in its market and nonmarket variety, falls in all these categories and thus presents a fruitful research arena for economic sociologists who have thus far primarily studied markets and corporations.

Methodology/Approach – The essay provides an analytic review of literature in economic sociology, uses information from the content analysis of recent publications in sociology of work, and provides an overview of chapters included in this edited volume.

Value of paper – Applying economic sociology to work means: (a) investigating its embeddedness in social structures, culture, and politics; and (b) uncovering the socially constructed nature of what constitutes paid market work. This article also proposes that economic sociologists can expand the boundaries of work by examining such activities as care work, work in the informal economy, and prison work.