Married Couples’ Time Allocation Decisions and Marital Stability

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), 1985–1992, are the data used to simultaneously examine the role of family stability to both market and household time allocation for both spouses and the role of couples’ time allocation in their probability of divorce. The study found that increases in the probabilities of divorce were only significantly correlated with decreases in wife’s housework time. It was also found by the study that increases in the husband’s market work hours and increases in the wife’s household work hours had negative effects on the probability of divorce.

The demand for social interaction

In this paper social interaction is modeled as a consumer good. A model of household production is employed to derive the demand for social interaction. The model shows that the demand for social interaction is a function of its price, the price of other goods and income. The theory is tested with data from the General Social Survey and the results show that social interaction can be explained as the consequence of utility maximizing behavior by individuals. These results are in contrast to social capital theorists who have attributed these changes to factors such as increased community heterogeneity.     

Economic theory and women's household status: The case of Japan

Economic development disadvantages wives. Conventional microeconomic theory predicts this. As household incomes rise, wives have incentives to specialize in intangible household production. This may raise total household production according to the theory of comparative advantage, but disproportionately favors husbands in distribution of the gains according to the marginal productivity theory of distribution. Wives may become better off in absolute terms but more dependent financially on their husbands and lose power within the household. Historically, Japanese gender roles became highly specialized and wives’ legal status declined, although other Meiji-era features protected wives. Policies to improve women's status should address the precise economic problem involved.     

Time Spent in Household Management: Evidence and Implications

This study investigates time spent in household management, an important “missing ingredient” in time use studies, using data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). These data indicate that adults spend an average of just over 1.5 h per week in this function. This figure likely underestimates total management time because (1) management is often done in small blocks, and hence, may be missed; and (2) the ATUS generally fails to capture secondary activities. Thus, efforts to value time spent in household management using these data will similarly produce a low valuation of the household manager role. Notably, measured management time is found to be much more equally distributed among spouses than time spent in core housework tasks.

农村青年婚姻市场层级化的社会学分析

当前农村青年婚姻市场上,以"家庭地理位置"和"家庭经济条件"为分层标准,农村男青年被划分为不同的层级。不同层级的男青年在婚姻市场上有着不同的处境:较高层级的男青年拥有较大的择偶主动权,中层的男青年也基本能够进入婚姻,较低层级的男青年择偶困难,成为大龄未婚男青年的风险较大。因此,形成不同层级的原因是性别比失衡使得农民经济上的分化在婚姻市场上凸显出来,市场经济冲击下的农民择偶观念理性化,打工潮加剧了农村婚龄人口性别比的失衡。     

From Market to State Networking: The Case of a Norwegian Voluntary Organization

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate and explain how a Norwegian voluntary, faith-based organization—the Gospel Centre of Norway (Pinsevennenes Evangeliesenter)—successfully substituted a “network” for “market” strategy vis-à-vis the public sector in order to obtain organizational legitimacy and financial security. During the first decade of its existence it obtained a unique position in its relationship with the state, as a separate item in the budget of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. The organization operates in the field of substance abuse rehabilitation, i.e., in a situation where instrumental effectiveness is difficult to assess. In such a situation ritual or other institutional criteria may replace effectiveness criteria and impression management is shown to be a successful strategy. Attention is paid to the relevant environmental conditions under which this organizational change of strategy was successful.

The politics of the Digital Single Market: culture vs. competition vs. copyright

This paper examines the implications for European music culture of the European Union’s (EU) Digital Single Market strategy. It focuses on the regulatory framework being created for the management of copyright policy, and in particular the role played by collective management organisations (CMOs or collecting societies). One of the many new opportunities created by digitalisation has been the music streaming services. These depend on consumers being able to access music wherever they are, but such a system runs counter to the management of rights on a national basis and through collecting organisations which act as monopolies within their own territories. The result has been ‘geo-blocking’. The EU has attempted to resolve this problem in a variety of ways, most recently in a Directive designed to reform the CMOs. In this paper, we document these various efforts, showing them to be motivated by a deep-seated and persisting belief in the capacity of ‘competition’ to resolve problems that, we argue, actually lie elsewhere – in copyright policy itself. The result is that the EU’s intervention fails to address its core concern and threatens the diversity of European music culture by rewarding those who are already commercially successful.     

上海商业地产市场容量及合理规模研究

当前,随着社会经济的持续发展,商业地产拥有无限商机。结合上海商业地产的发展及上海经济发展水平,通过定量和定性分析相结合的方法,研究上海商业地产发展现状,特别是上海商业地产整体规模现状;以上海经济人口承载力为基础,运用预测模型测算上海商业地产的市场容量,以推算最佳规模,结合商业地产市场规模发展现状分析判断其规模的合理性,为上海商业地产持续有序发展提供客观科学的决策依据。     

A household production model of demand for childcare and meals: theory and evidence from the Philippines

Becker/Mincer theory of home production was the first to systematically incorporate time in economic models, and the theory generated much empirical research in a wide variety of areas. However, the direct applications of Becker/Mincer home production theory in empirical research are scarce because of the innate immeasurability of commodities. In this paper, I recover unobservable commodities from the cost functions under certain assumptions about production technologies. Then, using the Philippine Bukidnon panel study of rural households, I test for the core of the Becker model: negative substitution effects between a time-intensive and a goods-intensive commodity arising from wage increases. The estimates of the structural form as well as the reduced form relative demand between childcare, which represents a time-intensive commodity, and meal consumption, which represents a goods-intensive commodity, support the major predictions of the model.

Transactions with God: Market,Moralities and Agency in the Worship of the Goddess of the Treasury in Northern Vietnam

This article explores the complex moral choices of those who have negotiated the encounter between marketisation and distinctive religious traditions within and beyond Asia. I focus on the dramatic rise in the worship of the Goddess of the Treasury in northern Vietnam since the onset of marketisation. She is believed to possess a special power: to grant those who borrow a sum from her symbolic treasury the same amount as real profit and actual wealth through earthly business activities. I show that the Goddess's rise does not reflect the universalising effects of marketisation, but instead how Vietnamese religious ideas of faithfulness and sincerity continue to inform worshippers’ choices as active moral agents. Rather than robotic doers of market principles or passive followers of ‘superstitious’ beliefs in rejection of market changes, worshippers are creative actors who innovatively employ traditional moralities in novel ways to meet their present-day quest for economic prosperity.     

The Factors Influencing Saving in a Matched Savings Program: Goals,Knowledge of Payment Instruments,and Other Behavior

This paper explores the saving behavior of the group of low-income households that have participated in the Australian Saver Plus matched savings program. The paper finds that a dynamic panel model represents a good technique for modeling the savings account balances of such participants. We find that, even after controlling for the unobservable individual response to the program incentive, the saving goal and education/financial literacy variables play a positive role in encouraging saving behavior. More importantly however, we find that programs such as Saver Plus are able to modify the saving behavior of individuals to the point where their prior behavior and their inherent attitude towards saving no longer play a significant role.

The Financial Assimilation of an Immigrant Group: Evidence on the Use of Checking and Savings Accounts and Currency Exchanges

This article examines the determinants of financial market participation for a particular group of immigrants: Hmong refugees in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. Our findings indicate that controlling for income and education, Hmong immigrants are less likely to have savings accounts and credit cards and are more likely to use currency exchanges, compared to randomly selected non-Hmong households living in the same neighborhoods. However, these effects are mitigated by time spent in the US. Financial assimilation appears to take 15–20 years. These findings expand our understanding of immigrant assimilation and highlight some of the complexities associated with the process of assimilation.

Unpacking the terms of engagement with local food at the Farmers’ Market: Insights from Ontario

Amidst much discussion of the values and venues of local food, the Farmers’ Market (FM) has emerged as an important, but somewhat uncertain, site of engagement for producers, consumers and local food ‘champions’. Despite the evident certainty of various operational rules, the FM should be seen as a complex and ambiguous space where (contingent) notions of local, quality, authenticity and legitimacy find expression in communications and transactions around food. This paper seeks to extend current reflections on the nature of the contemporary FM and its relationship to the tenets of local food. An empirical analysis involving sellers, shoppers and managers at 15 markets in the Province of Ontario, Canada sought to understand how participants ‘read’ the market as an operating space and subsequently construct the terms of (their) engagement. Findings suggest that Ontario FM customers wish to support farmers and farming via their food-related spending and express attachments to a wide range of alleged benefits pertaining to local food. Yet these values are also malleable in their meaning and amenable to trade-off against other considerations—particularly where social capital is concerned. The notion of ‘local’ emerges as being widely valued but also highly interpretive in its meaning and variable in its absolute importance. The paper concludes with some reflection on the degree to which the findings support, challenge or modify current normative beliefs about local food at the FM.     

Valuing housework time from willingness to spend time and money for environmental quality improvements

We develop a new approach to assessing the value of home production time based on willingness to spend time and money to obtain environmental improvements. When peoples’ choice is constrained by time as well as money, measures of willingness to pay can be defined with respect to either numeraire. In a model that explicitly allows for multiple shadow values of time, we show that the willingness to pay time and money measures are linked through the value of saving time. With survey information on peoples’ willingness to spend additional time on housework activities, as well as pay money, to obtain environmental quality improvements, joint estimation within a utility-consistent structure produces estimates of both willingness to pay and the value of saving housework time. From the value of saving housework time, the marginal value of housework time can be readily identified. When applied to Korean households’ valuation of water quality improvements in the Man Kyoung River, we find that the value of housework time is 70–80% of the market wage.

Perceived inflation: The role of product accessibility and attitudes towards inflation

Little is known about the psychological mechanisms underlying judgments of perceived inflation as empirical evidence is sparse. In two studies, we investigated two factors that are expected to play a significant role in global judgments of perceived inflation: product accessibility and attitudes towards inflation. In Study 1 (N = 253), primed participants retrieved five products whose prices had increased (or decreased) in the past year before expressing a judgment of past inflation (versus non-primed participants with no retrieval task). In Study 2 (N = 101) participants were merely exposed to a series of products, and asked to estimate their frequency of purchase, before judging past inflation. In one condition, the prices of the majority of products had actually increased in the last year, while in another condition they had decreased. In both studies, attitudes towards inflation were also measured. Product priming consistently affected inflation judgments in the direction of an assimilation effect. Also, more negative attitudes towards inflation were associated with higher judgments of perceived inflation. Path analysis confirmed that both product accessibility and attitudes are potential bases for judgments of perceived inflation. These findings suggest that multiple psychological influences may underlie global judgments of perceived inflation.     

The Good,the Bad,and the Ugly: Dimensions of Success and Failure in Research Collaboration

Failure is a common experience in society, and analyses of failure have been important for developing social theory. This article analyzes how chemical scientists experience failure in both credited and uncredited research collaborations. Credited work produces the outputs that are evaluated by administrators and analyzed by social scientists. Thus, “credit” is closely tied with visibility in science. But chemical scientists often engage in uncredited collaboration as well. Uncredited collaborations are not opportunities to receive formal credit for one’s work, but chemical scientists still engage in uncredited work in order to meet the metrics by which they are evaluated. Analyzing 106 interviews with chemical scientists, this article builds a framework for understanding success in collaboration. The two dimensions of this framework that shape experience of success and failure are (1) whether a collaboration produced outputs and (2) whether expectations are met. Collaborative expectations often go unmet, but these disappointments rarely undermine collaborations from producing credited outputs. Novice scientists often have positive experiences in uncredited collaboration despite not receiving credit for their work. Success and failure are experienced differently in credited and uncredited collaboration. Institutional pressures often create circumstances for failure in collaborations while also keeping scientists invested in unsuccessful collaborations.     

The mentally ill student on campus: theory and practice

Traditional biases about the nature of mental illness and the mission of the academic environment have frequently shaped college policy and practice affecting mentally ill, suicidal, or chemically addicted students. Too often, removal of the student from campus has been seen as appropriate, therapeutically and educationally. The assumption that separating seriously disturbed students from the classroom is in the students' best interests is challenged by models of cognitive and emotional functioning that recognize the multifaceted nature of each. Such models affirm the salience of the student identity for the troubled student's sense of self and therapeutic prognosis. Creating an environment responsive to and supportive of the student in distress may also lead to significant educational benefits to the institution as a whole. Higher education has an opportunity to create work and study environments that meet broadly conceived ethical and educational goals. Experience with the Skidmore College-Four Winds Hospital program demonstrates that few additional resources are needed to implement such policy and practice.     

The Production of Difference and Maintenance of Inequality: The Place of Young Goan Men in a Post‐Crisis UK Labour Market

This article examines the ways in which young migrant men are constructed as potential employees in a British town where service sector employment, often on a casual or precarious basis, dominates the bottom end of the labour market. Low‐wage jobs in many British towns are now constructed as feminized, low waged and demanding personal skills of empathy and servility. In this context, young men, and especially young men of colour, including recent in‐migrants, are at a disadvantage, constructed by employers, agencies, co‐workers and customers as less eligible workers than ‘locals’. We use the experiences of young men from Goa as a lens though which to trace the ways in which expectations and experiences when looking for employment produce a hierarchical division of labour in precarious jobs at the bottom end of the service sector.     

Institutional Conditions of Economic Globalization: Effects of Antitrust and Merger Laws on the Global Integration of the Acquisition Market1

A central insight from institutional theory about markets is that they cannot operate without governing rules to guide interactions among actors. Because most of these rules are made and enforced within national borders, international economic transactions are said to suffer from an “institutional abyss,” the lack of institutional arrangements for economic exchanges. Scholars have found that the abyss can be filled by two factors: network connectedness, such as inter-governmental organizations, and intercountry economic agreements, such as the World Trade Organization or free trade. This article proposes a third factor: the global diffusion of governmental regulations. When countries adopt highly standardized regulations on a particular transaction, it provides legal familiarity for foreigners and reduces procedural uncertainty surrounding how the transaction should be executed. Using fixed-effects models on longitudinal data, I show that the adoption of antitrust and merger laws increases the volume of cross-border mergers—the transaction the laws are meant to regulate. This result stands in direct opposition to financial scholars’ predictions that antitrust and merger laws will reduce cross-border mergers because the laws are meant to restrain, not liberate, the transaction. This article theorizes how the diffusion of regulations, not the elimination of regulations, can facilitate global market integration.