Michele Matis Hoyman

• PhD
• Professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Objective This article tests how income inequality mediates and moderates the relationship between racial diversity and social capital. We posit that racial diversity leads to higher levels of income equality, which reduces social capital. We also hypothesize that racial diversity has a stronger negative effect on social capital in places with high...

The authors examine major aspects of the connection between social capital and economic development in U.S. counties. They test the conclusions of Putnam, who saw associations as a force for positive development, and Olson, who concluded the opposite. The authors find that Putnam organizations have a negative effect on income, while Olson organizat...

This study seeks to quantify the impact of the nonprofit sector on economic development by more clearly defining the diverse roles that nonprofits may play in development – instrumental, expressive, and connective. We begin by summarizing existing research on nonprofit organizations and economic development. Using secondary data, we test our model...

Public policies designed to encourage ecotourism in the Galapagos Islands have evolved in the decades since the islands became center stage in the international dialogue about environmental conservation. One of the most important pieces of legislation that regulates how the islands’ governments should balance economic development and environmental...

In 1998, the government of Ecuador enacted a special law with the goal of both promoting environmental preservation and economic development in the Galapagos Islands. The reforms in the Special Law of 1998 were sweeping. Among other things it created the Galapagos Marine Preserve, limited the ability of immigrants arriving from mainland Ecuador to...

Eminent domain is an urgent problem facing local government administrators and scholars throughout the United States. However, the literature is sparse regarding how local leaders make decisions on this hot-button issue. A 2006 Government Accountability Office report noted a lack of data about local governments’ use of their eminent domain authorit...

Richard Florida in The Rise of the Creative Class introduced one of the most widely adopted urban growth strategies in decades. However, scholars have found little theoretical support for the connection between the creative class and economic development. This article empirically tests the creative class theory as compared to the human and social c...

We gauge the relative impact of economics, demographics, and politics on the decisions of 79 rural North Carolina counties whether to site a prison in the period 1970–2000. The results of this model demonstrate that, contrary to the expectation that counties site prisons in response to economic distress, the demographic characteristics of each coun...

This article defines “family friendly” policies of employers more broadly as “worker friendly” policies. Second, it presents a fourfold typology of these worker friendly policy types, using these systematic criteria: Who/what is the focus of the policy? What is the goal of the policy? Who benefits (is favored) by the policy? Who bears the financial...

A prison construction boom is currently underway nationwide. Non-urban areas are forming the impetus behind this movement. As rural areas become the sites of these new prisons, the local economies are experiencing associated growth through the provision of stable employment in often economically depressed locales. This is the case in North Carolina...

In Marysville, Ohio; Georgetown, Kentucky; and Smyrna and Spring Hill, Tennessee, life will never again be the same. Once small rural communities, they're now boom towns--thanks to Honda, Toyota, Nissan, and Saturn. It's happening all over America: communities desperate for economic development lure large companies looking for a docile labor force...

In the United States in recent years, there have been many instances of successful direct action by working women, including the Willmar Eight organizing effort, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (A.F.C.S.M.E.) strike over comparable worth, the J.P. Stevens boycott, the Oneita Knitting Mills strike, and the formation...

The author examines three questions: how much females participate in the informal economy; why they participate; and what the policy implications of their participation are. In the process of examining these issues, the author develops a behavioral theory of female participa tion, involving exit, voice, loyalty, and dual loyalty, following Hirschma...

This article considers the current state of knowledge about informal economies. Criticism of the value of the informal economy concept is addressed by considering the multiple disciplinary interests in the topic, the confusion over an appropriate definition, and the problems of classification and explanation. A multidisciplinary, macro-micro ap pro...

This article compares the participation of black and white union members in their local unions. Using more detailed measures of union participation than those employed in earlier studies, and focusing on members, not just leaders, the authors find little difference between the extent of participation by blacks and that by whites. This surprising re...

The author looks at the process of compliance which local unions follow in response to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, analyzing local unions as organizations. Three models of compliance are presented: the voluntary model in which compliance is initiated and sustained through a voluntary and local process, the bureaucratic model in which...

This article analyzes recent changes in the leadership of international unions. There has been a trend toward leaders who are lifetime bureaucrats rather than rank-and-file members with charisma. This change toward more technocratic leadership is due to the different environment and new challenges that labor currently faces. The United Mine Workers...

published or submitted for publication

Some observers believed that the Supreme Court's 1974 ruling blunted the usefulness of arbitration in resolving Title VII-related grievances; a recent survey of lawyers shows that most regard arbitration as still viable but believe that changes would make the process a more effective means of redress In its 1974 decision in the case of Alexander v....