WEIGHING THE MILITARY OPTION: THE EFFECTS OF WARTIME CONDITIONS ON INVESTMENTS IN HUMAN CAPITAL

Serving in the military is an important vehicle through which young Americans invest in their human capital. As such, changes in the desirability of military service may affect the attainment of enlistment requirements, such as a high school degree or equivalent. Using American Community Survey data, we find that exposure to home‐state combat fatalities during the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars decreased the probability of high school completion, and increased the probability of general equivalency diploma completion. Using military data, we confirm that exposure to home‐state fatalities selectively deterred some individuals from enlisting. The results suggest military service and educational investments are complements. (JEL I20, I26, J24)     

Leaving like an Englishman: Assisting institutional reform in post‐communist Ukraine

Scholars of Development Studies have largely distanced themselves from research into external advice on governance reform in Ukraine, regarding post‐communist reconstruction as a political rather than developmental project. This article suggests that these seemingly distinct fields of donor intervention have more in common than is usually thought. It examines the influence of external advice on an issue which has particular resonance in the light of recent events in Ukraine, the relationship between Kyiv and the regions. It is argued that the impact of international assistance in this area has been negligible, largely due to institutional factors on the donor side, and that the most persuasive explanations for this are to be found in the literature of Development Studies.     

On Elements of Chance

One aspect of the utility of gambling may evidence itself in failures of idempotence, i.e., when all chance outcomes give rise to the same consequence the `gamble' may not be indifferent to its common consequence. Under the assumption of segregation, such gambles can be expressed as the joint receipt of the common consequence and what we call `an element of chance', namely, the same gamble with the common consequence replaced by the status quo. Generalizing, any gamble is indifferent to the joint receipt of its element of chance and a certain consequence, which is called the `kernel equivalent' of the gamble. Under idempotence, the kernel equivalent equals the certainty equivalent. Conditions are reported (Theorem 4) that are sufficient for the kernel equivalents to have the kind of utility representation first discussed by Luce and Fishburn (1991), including being idempotent. This utility representation of the kernel equivalents together with the derived form of utility over joint receipts yields a utility representation of the original structure. Possible forms for the utility of an element of chance are developed.