THE HAYEK HYPOTHESIS IN EXPERIMENTAL AUCTIONS: INSTITUTIONAL EFFECTS AND MARKET POWER

We report twelve market experiments utilizing a "seller market power" supply and demand structure where two of five sellers can unilaterally increase their profit by withholding supply. The data indicate that both the double auction and posted offer institutions result in traders extracting the bulk of the potential gains from exchange in the market; however, prices generally occur above the competitive equilibrium prediction. Market power in the form of strategic supply withholding does not appear to be responsible for the supra-competitive prices.     

A ‘good,average man’: calculation and the limits of statistics in enrolling insurance customers

Drawing upon the historical relationship between statistics, probabilistic reasoning and life insurance, the article argues that mathematical calculation played a necessary but limited role in making markets for life insurance. Insuring publics have been fairly consistently cautious in the use of probabilistic and statistical reasoning to inform investment in life insurance. In this they follow a pattern set by early insurance companies who themselves were slow to alter their commercial practices in line with emerging knowledge. I examine some of the reasons for this glacial pace and some of the ambiguities on which statistical ‘certainties’ were built as part of an argument that the role of statistics and mathematics in market calculation is both less and more than it seems. This is manifest in the history of industrial life assurance, an industry with a phenomenally successful track record in the mass enrolment of consumers. Unlike their predecessors, industrial companies disdained swamping their target markets with probabilistic arguments in favour of a very different sort of argument that, nevertheless, carried a trace of statistical thinking with it. This trace came in the form of ‘good, average men’, the agents who became industrial insurance's core marketing device and who translated the essentials of a statistically informed product into a more palatable, more calculable form.     

Converging health inequalities in later life--an artifact of mortality selection

An emergent issue in the health inequalities debate is how socioeconomic status (SES) and physical health relate over the life course. Many studies indicate that the SES-health relationship diminishes in later life. The present research tests the hypothesis that this convergence in health inequalities is an artifact of mortality selection, which biases downwards the "true" association between SES and health in later life. By including respondents who had subsequently died or were loss-to-followup into the analysis, I assess the sensitivity of the age-specific association between education and health to sample selection processes. I study U.S. adults followed for approximately ten years using the NHANES I Epidemiologic Followup Study. Results based on the surviving sample are robust to the inclusion of people selected out of the sample due to mortality or attrition. Sample selection biases do not appear to explain the convergence in health inequalities in late life.     

上海文化创意产业人才策略研究

上海文化创意产业发展的关键时期,人才问题愈加突出。在对上海文化创意产业人才发展基本情况调查的基础上,指出目前人才发展问题主要受认定机制、培养机制、知识产权保护机制、长效生活保障机制等几个方面的影响,上海应重视人才问题,不断创新人才发展策略,加大政策创新突破力度,为文化创意产业人才培养、发展创造良好环境,充分发挥其创意成果的转化、形成新的竞争优势、推动城市在"创新驱动、转型发展"中的独特作用。     

Life History and the Critique of American Sociological Practice

This paper is a contribution to the uses of life histories and the dialogue regarding the "standards" for their use. Through a meta-analysis of life histories in the United States since the publication of the Polish Peasant , we develop a typology to critically evaluate their methodological/theoretical practices in sociology. We find a broad range of uses of life histories in the areas of substantive focus, analysis, relationship of oral history and the subject, relationship of oral/life history to other materials, purpose of the research, and relationship of oral/life history to other phenomena. We conclude that life history methods have not had the transformative effect on sociology that they have had in other disciplines. By and large, the actual production of life histories continues to be a historical, to be characterized by abstract empiricism, to extinguish subjects, and to ignore the link between biography and history.     

Fundamental accrued capital gains and the measurement of top incomes: an application to Chile

Most previous studies of income inequality have either ignored capital gains or have used taxable realized capital gains to estimate top incomes. Neither of these approaches is fully satisfactory. We apply for the first time a new methodology that allows us to account for fundamental accrued capital gains as part of the top incomes in a theoretically consistent manner. We estimate the shares of the super-rich in Chile showing that accrued capital gains have a large impact on these estimates. Also, the top income shares estimated using fundamental capital gains appear to exhibit a more stable and presumably more plausible time profile than estimates based on capital gains derived from asset market variations.     

市场经济主导下佛山空间结构演变的影响要素分析

佛山从历史上著名的“四大名镇”到“珠三角制造业重地”,集合了历史文化、村镇经济、广州辐射的多重动力,佛山市行政区划调整已历时近十年,佛山空间结构的演变,已成为中国快速城镇化值得探讨的生动案例。2002年底,行政调整后的佛山市在战略规划中确定了“2＋5”的组团结构,而后又相继提出“中心组团”、“东平新城”的空间布局概念并成立了相应的管理机构,与此同时佛山市下辖的南海区和顺德区也在进行适应产业提升的空间重新布局,貌似无序的村镇布局在市场经济的主导下,能否不断加以改善并实现城市产业转型和生活品质的提升,本文试图以佛山活跃的村镇经济为背景,解析佛山空间形态形成的动力,探索行政意愿和市场导向共同作用下的空间结构演变。     

Testing Fair Wage Theory

Fairness considerations often are invoked to explain wage differences that appear unrelated to worker characteristics or job conditions, but non-experimental tests of fair wage models are rare because market data rarely permit researchers to measure individual workers’ productivity and its value. We use data from the baseball labor market to address this problem, and find no support for fair wage theory. We do find, however, that fairness premia can be illusory: Wages appear to incorporate fairness premia in regressions that control for variation in individuals’ physical output, but such premia evaporate when the value of that output is held constant.

The Appeal of the Life Care Facility to the Older Widow

Older widows residing in the metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona, area were interviewed concerning their relocation to a life care facility. Moving primarily for reasons of medical care and financial security, their needs appear to have been met by the facility. Safety, a third facet of security, was also a prime reason for moving to life care. Aspects of the environment desired by the respondents to promote feelings of safety and environmental competence are discussed. The implications of women's longer life expectancies and subsequent consequences of the length of their active life expectancy upon policy are noted.     

Accountability revisited: the arrival of client outcome evaluation

In the past few years, "accountability" for public mental health programs has become differentiated in the minds of not only program evaluators, but also program managers and funders, including state and local-level legislators. Increasingly, these officials are becoming concerned with more than just the numbers and targets of services delivered, and the cost involved, and are looking for evidence of positive outcome or impact on clients to justify program implementation and maintenance. This represents a significant move beyond the two accountability models that most recently seemed to be the focus of most formal accountability efforts--performance measurement and quality assurance. Pressures for implementing these two alternatives seem to have been reduced somewhat by the new federal Administration, but even prior to its advent there had been a rapid escalation in awareness of and concern for client outcome measurement among important audiences, including state and local mental health policy-makers and the U.S. Congress. This presents a major new opportunity and challenge for program evaluators at this new accountability focus continues to gather momentum.     

Leadership criteria in the Pacific Northwest of the USA 19972002

Abstract

There have been very little follow-up leadership behaviour studies. This study describes an investigation of the US insurance industry. Management behaviour was studied in the beginning and at the end of the five-year period 19972002. On the whole insurance managers in the Pacific Northwest in the hard market conditions of 2002 appear on average to have changed their leadership criteria evaluations only slightly: they appreciated staffing and managing by example more than their colleagues did previously in the soft market conditions of 1997. The empirical data were checked for company size and management level. According to three-way variance analysis the different time period (soft or hard market conditions) and company size seem to have affected three leadership criteria: insurance managers in big companies in 2002 seemed to rate organizing, delegating and mutual trust more highly than their colleagues did five years earlier. The study suggests hypothetically that in a soft market period (buyer's market) managers employ a more relationship-oriented leadership style and correspondingly adapt their leadership style to a more task-oriented approach in a hard market phase (seller's market).     

The Heterogeneous Effect of the Passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act on Stock Returns

I analyze how stock prices reacted to the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) of 1970. Previous studies focus on accounting measures or actual OSHA violations, and my work complements the literature by examining how shareholders expected OSHA to affect firm profitability. Returns fell around the OSH bill’s release to the House floor and its eventual passage, and average market value dropped by $1.5 million over the 3 days surrounding House Rules Committee release. Durable manufacturing and mining industries were hardest hit in OSH passage, losing $2.6 million and $5.7 million in average market value, respectively. I also find that larger firms with poorer working conditions sustained more negative returns, and market power, not union density, explains variation in expected profitability. Furthermore, future penalties appear unrelated to shareholder expectations about compliance costs.

Safety Nets and Scaffolds: Parental Support in the Transition to Adulthood

Using longitudinal data from the Youth Development Study (analytic sample N = 712), we investigate how age, adult role acquisition and attainments, family resources, parent-child relationship quality, school attendance, and life events influence support received from parents in young adulthood. Parental assistance was found to be less forthcoming for those who had made greater progress on the road to adulthood, signified by socioeconomic attainment and union formation. The quality of mother-child and father-child relationships affected parental support in different ways, positively for mothers, negatively for fathers. School enrollment, negative life events, and employment problems were associated with a greater likelihood of receiving support. The findings suggest that parents act as "scaffolding" and "safety nets" to aid their children's successful transition to adulthood.     

Virtue and the material culture of the nineteenth century: the debate over the mass marketplace in France in the aftermath of the 1848 revolution

This article treats the intellectual problem of revolution, agency, and the advent of liberal democracy from the standpoint of mid-nineteenth century France in the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions. After a discussion of the theoretical and historiographical problem??in particular the relevance for this period in history of science studies??the article discusses the views of former Saint-Simonian and political economist, Michel Chevalier, eventually turning to the debate over the free market of goods and labor between the early French socialist Louis Blanc and Chevalier in Chevalier??s new role of liberal free trade activist who trumpeted the ideology of the mass marketplace. Chevalier??s engagement of the social question turned on a distinctively moral, ideological, and, ultimately, technocratic defense of the free market??this free market utopianism became both starker and more ideologically refined as a result of Chevalier??s engagement with Blanc, especially in regard to worker-education. Both referred to the new mass marketplace of cheap, retail goods created by the rapid advance of mass transport, modern logistics, as le bon marché. French political economists went so far as to invoke a new way of life: la vie a bon marché (literally, ??life on the cheap??). This notion of work and life was opposed by Blanc on the grounds of fraternal social solidarity. Finally, and potently, the moral virtues of the free market were conceived by Chevalier as a direct answer to social revolution, a means for affording social stability.     

Discrimination and Well‐Being: Perceptions of Refugees in Western Australia

This paper reports the apparent paradox of high levels of discrimination experienced by humanitarian migrants to Australia, in the labor market and everyday life, yet simultaneous reporting of positive well‐being. How can people feel discriminated against, yet still be relatively satisfied with life? The study draws on quantitative and qualitative data from a study of 150 refugees from the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East, and Africa. Possible reasons for the level of well‐being are explored, including “relative deprivation theory,” as well as various resiliency and mitigating factors, including personal and social supports. The notion of eudaimonic well‐being – whereby experiences of difficulty produce positive well‐being – is also applied to the findings. The negative experiences and perceptions appear to map onto low‐level dissatisfaction or disgruntlement, and specifically directed or contained disappointment, rather than serious dissatisfaction with life generally, orientation to Australia, or negative subjective well‐being.     

Assessing quality in mental health care. The United Kingdom experience

Quality assessment in mental health services is undergoing change in the United Kingdom following the introduction of market reforms. Traditionally, service quality was monitored by professional practitioners with reference to user satisfaction. This became formalized, and the two main forms of quality assurance currently used are outlined. However, the government is concerned that this may be inadequate for the monitoring of quality standards, specified in contracts between service purchasers and providers, and that existing systems provide an insufficient indication of service outcome. As a consequence, the government financed the development of a new set of health outcome scales. The importance of these scales are discussed.     

Work–life balance/imbalance: the dominance of the middle class and the neglect of the working class

The paper was stimulated by the relative absence of the working class from work–life debates. The common conclusion from work–life studies is that work–life imbalance is largely a middle‐class problem. It is argued here that this classed assertion is a direct outcome of a particular and narrow interpretation of work–life imbalance in which time is seen to be the major cause of difficulty. Labour market time, and too much of it, dominates the conceptualization of work–life and its measurement too. This heavy focus on too much labour market time has rendered largely invisible from dominant work–life discourses the types of imbalance that are more likely to impact the working class. The paper's analysis of large UK data‐sets demonstrates a reduction in hours worked by working‐class men, more part‐time employment in working‐class occupations, and a substantial growth in levels of reported financial insecurity amongst the working classes after the 2008–9 recession. It shows too that economic‐based work–life imbalance is associated with lower levels of life satisfaction than is temporal imbalance. The paper concludes that the dominant conceptualization of work–life disregards the major work–life challenge experienced by the working class: economic precarity. The work–life balance debate needs to more fully incorporate economic‐based work–life imbalance if it is to better represent class inequalities.     

Mincer's Overtaking Point and the Life Cycle Earnings Distribution

In 1958 Jacob Mincer pioneered an important approach to understand earnings distribution. In the years since Mincer's seminal work, he as well as his students and colleagues extended the original human capital model, reaching important conclusions about a whole array of observations pertaining to human well-being. This line of research explained why education enhances earnings; why earnings rise at a diminishing rate throughout one's life; why earnings growth is smaller for those anticipating intermittent labor force participation; why men earn more than women; why Whites earn more than Blacks; why occupational distributions differ by gender; why geographic and job mobility predominate among the young; why unemployment is lower among the skilled; and why numerous other labor market phenomena occur. This paper surveys the answers to these and other questions based on research emanating from Mincer's original discovery. In addition, this paper provides new empirical evidence regarding Mincer's concept of the overtaking age–a topic not currently well-explored in the literature. In this latter vein, the paper shows that Mincer's original finding of a U-shaped (log) variance of earnings over the life cycle is upheld in recent data, both for the United States as well as at least seven other countries.     

Sexual Orientation,Unemployment and Participation: Are Gays Less Employable than Straights?

This paper is the first attempt to assess, in a unified econometric framework, the existence and the magnitude of both the sexual orientation participation gap and the sexual orientation unemployment gap. Having identified male same-sex couples using the Employment Survey, we use a bivariate probit selection model where the labor supply and the employment equation are jointly estimated for the French labor market. The results show that both participation and employment probabilities are significantly lower for gay employees compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Further investigations indicate that young gay workers, particularly, are more exposed to the unemployment risk than older ones. The beginning of a professional career and the subsequent entry to the labor market appear to be difficult steps to overcome for gay workers who spend more time than their heterosexual counterparts to find the good job.