Job Vacancies: Project Officer and Research Assistant

Our center is looking for the following positions for a household panel survey and other research projects:

(1) Project Officer
The appointee will be required to coordinate a household panel study and other research projects, specifically to work with fieldwork team to conduct in-person interview, and liaise with local and oversea partners and government offices to coordinate the survey activities. He/She will also moniter, evaluate, and report on data collection when the survey is fielded; recommend and implement corrective action to keep the project plan and targets; and be responsible for daily office operation and supervision of junior staff.

(2) Research Assistant
The appointee will required to coordinate and conduct in-depth qualitative interviews with young people, administer questionnaires, liaise with NGOs and social workers, supervise student helpers, conduct literature searches and undertake preliminary analysis of data. Involvement in other research projects is also required.

For the job requirements and application procedure, please refer to
http://eng.caser.ust.hk/vacancy.html

QSS Seminar: "Spatial Intelligence with Statistics, Census, and GIS Data" by Dr. Shuming Bao

A series of seminars on the quantitative social science research will start in spring 2011. We are pleased to invite Dr. Shuming Bao from University of Michigan to give the first seminar on March 25.

QSS Seminar: "Spatial Intelligence with Statistics, Census, and GIS Data"
Speaker: Dr. Shuming Bao
Date: 25 March 2011 (Friday)
Time: 2:30pm
Venue: Room 3402 (Lifts 17-18)

Please welcome to join the seminar. For more details, Please visit:
http://eng.caser.ust.hk/seminars.html

"Trade and Poverty: When the Third World Fell Behind" by Prof. Jeffrey Williamson, Harvard University: 3:30pm on March 22 (Tuesday)

IAS Distinguished Lecture Series: "American Science on the Decline?" by Prof. Yu Xie

It was our honor to have Professor Yu Xie given a public lecture on “American Science on the Decline?” in our fifth lecture of the IAS Distinguished Lecture Series on Inequality and Poverty held on 7 March 2011 at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Prof. Xie obtained his PhD from University of Wisconsin-Madison in sociology in 1989. He has since then taught at the University of Michigan, where he is currently Otis Dudley Duncan Distinguished University Professor of Sociology and Statistics at the University of Michigan. He is also a Research Professor at the Population Studies Center and Survey Research Center of the Institute for Social Research and a Faculty Associate at the Center for Chinese Studies. His main areas of interest are social stratification, demography, statistical methods, Chinese studies, and sociology of science.

Prof Xie is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an academician of Academia Sinica.

Abstract:

In their forthcoming book “Is American Science on the Decline?” the speaker and his coauthor Killewald rigorously investigate claims and counter-claims concerning the current state of American science. Responding to ongoing policy debates about the health of American science, the authors provide compelling evidence for rejecting simplistic extremes. American science, they point out, may be robust by some indicators but face decline by others. After conducting in-depth analyses of eighteen large, nationally representative statistical datasets, the authors provide a nuanced, objective assessment of science in America that embraces the full complexity of their subject. In doing so, they demonstrate that American science is continuing to grow, to recruit youth, and to receive strong support from the public. At the same time, the authors also point out areas of concern, such as the stagnation of scientists’ earnings since the 1960s, increasingly intense international competition, and the formidable challenges to young scientists aspiring to academic careers.

我們很榮幸邀請到謝宇教授蒞臨香港科技大學為我們主講第五次不平等和貧窮系列的IAS傑出學人講座，講題為「美國科學的衰落﹖」。謝教授於1989年在威斯康星大學麥迪遜分校的社會科學系博士畢業，自此便開始於美國密歇根大學任教。謝教授現在為密歇根大學Otis Dudley Duncan社會及統計學傑出教授，同時為社會研究所調查研究中心和人口研究中心高級研究員，以及中國研究中心副研究員，其主要研究興趣為社會分層、人口學、統計方法研究、中國研究以及科學社會學。

謝教授是美國國家科學院會員、美國文理科學院及中央研究院的院士。

謝教授演講之內容摘要，請參閱上述所提供的英文版本。

"American Science on the Decline?" by Prof. Yu Xie, University of Michigan: 4pm on March 7 (Monday)

IAS Distinguished Lecture Series: “Market Failure and the Spectacular Rise in Inequality” by Prof. David Grusky

It was our honor to have Professor David Grusky given a public lecture on “Market Failure and the Spectacular Rise in Inequality” in our forth lecture of the IAS Distinguished Lecture Series on Inequality and Poverty held on 17 February 2011 at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Prof. Grusky is Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, Director of the Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality, coeditor of Pathways Magazine, and coeditor of the Stanford University Press Social Inequality Series. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, recipient of the 2004 Max Weber Award, founder of the Cornell University Center for the Study of Inequality, and a former Presidential Young Investigator.

The abstract of Prof. Grusky’s lecture is as follows:

We typically understand inequality as a by-product of a smoothly functioning labor market in which the rise of skill-demanding technologies increases the demand for skilled labor and bids up the price for skilled labor. This account, which stresses simple supply and demand forces, has inequality playing the role of message-deliverer to labor, the message being to “get skill.” The core purpose of the speaker's research is to build an alternative model that estimates how market failure in the form of rent-seeking explains much of the takeoff in inequality.

In Prof. Grusky’s lecture, the concept of rent was introduced to explain the occurrence of inequality. Rent is, by definition, the wage in excess of counterfactual wage under perfect market competition. According to Prof. Grusky, the inequality undergoing currently in U.S., is in fact a consequence of the asymmetric trend in rent. On the one hand, there is much rent creation at the top of class structure. On the other, rent at the bottom of class structure is diminishing. These two processes have led to the failure of a well-functioning market.

With the market failure in U.S., Prof. Grusky made policy advice at the end of the lecture that U.S. should build a better and less corrupt market for the purpose of addressing the problem of inequality. Hong Kong and U.S. share similarities on both GDP per capita figure and Gini coefficient which are prevailing indicators of inequality level. We are here again to thank Prof. Grusky for him sharing the U.S.’s experience for our valuable reference.

If you are interested in the details of the lecture, please view the following link for the lecture video:

http://videochannel.ust.hk/Watch.aspx?Section=Channels&Channel=2&SubType=All&View=Icon&Sort=Date&Page=1&Current=1

我們很榮幸邀請到Prof. David Grusky蒞臨香港科技大學為我們主講第四次不平等和貧窮系列的IAS傑出學人講座，講題為「市場失效及社會不平等的攀升」。Prof. Grusk是美國史丹福大學社會學系的教授、貧窮及不平等研究中心的主任、Pathways Magazine及史丹福大學出版社 - 社會不平等系列的合編者、American Association for the Advancement of Science的研究員、2004 Max Weber Award的得獎者、康乃爾大學不平等研究中心的創辦者等。

Prof. Grusky演講之內容摘要，請參閱上述所提供的英文版本。