Life cycle welfare: evidence and conjecture

At a point in time subjective well-being is positively related to income; over the life course subjective well-being is constant despite substantial growth in income. This paradox is explained by new evidence on consumption aspirations. At a point in time aspirations vary fairly little by income level; over the life cycle, aspirations increase about in proportion to income. These shifts in aspirations also affect assessments of past and future well-being in such a way that the choices underlying behavior (based on what psychologists call “decision utility”) turn out not to have their expected welfare effects (experienced utility). Of the two influences shaping consumption aspirations – comparisons with others and with one’s past experience – the former appears more salient early in the life cycle and the latter, later on.     

Life satisfaction in China and consumption and income inequalities

This research uses nationally representative data to study how economic resources and inequalities are associated with life satisfaction of Chinese residents. We construct economic resource and inequality measures from expenditure rather than from income, after confirming that expenditure inequality is a better measure in the Chinese context. We find that economic inequalities in general are negatively associated with life satisfaction, and that this association is larger for inequalities in the lower half of the distribution than those in the upper half of the distribution. We further explore the mechanisms under which inequality can be associated with life satisfaction, and find that aspiration is potentially one important channel.     

Life cycle of families in an urban community

This study is based on a sample of 1203 families in the city of Sholapur, conducted in 1955 using a cross-section analytical method based on income and family size, in relation to age of head of household. The nature of the life cycle is representational rather than statisitical. Nearly half the household heads were between ages 26-40; 10% were 15-25; and 40% were over 40. The average family size increased steadily and continuously from 3.9 members when the head was under 20, to 6.6 when the head was 55. The number of dependents at this age increased from 2.7 to 4.6. The average number of earners increased from 1.3 to 2. After age 55 the average family size declined from 6.6 to 5.4 for the 56-60 age group. Until the age of 40 the head of the family is usually the only earner. The son at age 20 begins to earn. At 55 the head may retire, but another son may take his place as an earner. The proportions of families with income below Rs. 500 decreased continuously from about 42%, when the family head was under 20; to 15% when he was between 26-40; rose to 25% between ages 46-50; and declined to 12% at ages 56-60. The proportion rose again to 32% over age 60. The proportion of families below Rs. 1000 decreased from 89% in the 0-20 age group to 41% in the 51-55 group, after which it rose to 64% in the over 60 group. The median income of the family increased continously from Rs. 591 when the head was under 20, and increased to the highest level of Rs. 1275 between ages 51-55.     

The bidirectional relationship between gambling and addictive substances

This study aims to analyse the co-occurrence of gambling activity and the consumption of addictive substances, such as tobacco, alcohol and drugs. By using a sample of 709 gamblers in Sardinia (Italy), a multivariate probit approach is proposed since it allows simultaneous study of the extent of correlation between the consumption of different substances.

Our findings document that, on the one hand, betting more money leads to an increase in the propensity to consume tobacco in the middle of the game, and, on the other hand, the simultaneous co-occurrence of smoking, alcohol and drugs drives up the probability of getting more involved in gambling activity. Knowing the positive reinforcing effects of addictive substances is the first step towards implementing the most effective prevention and treatment modalities for problem/pathological gamblers.     

Public good and private good valuation for waiting time reduction: a laboratory study

In a laboratory experiment, subjects were endowed with money and waiting time. Preferences for waiting time reduction were elicited with salient rewards both as a private good and as a public good. The allocations of the public good that were theoretically predicted by the Nash equilibrium and the Lindahl equilibrium, respectively, were computed from the individual private good valuations and compared with the subjects?? actual contributions. We found a significant positive correlation between private good valuations in terms of willingness-to-pay and public good valuations in terms of voluntary contributions. Group contributions to public waiting time reduction significantly exceeded the non-cooperative prediction and were close to the socially optimal level. However, for a majority of subjects, the Lindahl equilibrium was not able to predict the observed contributions.     

Is collective bargaining a collective good?

This study argues that legislation imposes on collective bargaining an artificial collective goods characteristic as a legal property, which should be distinguished from collective goods in the economic sense. The law creates an artificial freerider problem. Congressional intent was to require compulsory unionism to the extent that all workers would be required to share in the expenses incurred by the union in the negotiation and administration of collective bargaining agreements. Recent court decisions have attempted to define the obligation of employees, employers, and labor unions in terms of this legislative intent.     

Imagining a Life

ABSTRACT

Born in Ohio in 1876 to wealthy parents, Natalie Clifford Barney is today better known for the freedom of her lesbian life-style than for her writing. Nevertheless, she was a serious writer, and consciously engaged in writing from a specifically lesbian point of view. With her lover Renée Vivien, she attempted to revive the cult of Sappho, and thus to revitalize a lost lesbian literary tradition. Through her weekly salon, Barney encouraged women writers, serving as a mentor and muse, and often as a lover. She enjoyed enduring friendships with many well-known women and men of letters, such as Gertrude Stein, Remy de Gourmont, Colette, and Dolly Wilde. Fictional characters based on Barney appear in novels by Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Liane de Pougy, Djuna Barnes, and Radclyffe Hall. Barney's own writing consists of one novel (The One Who Is Legion, an eccentric meditation on gender and personality); a few collections of plays, poetry, and “portraits” of women; several volumes of memoirs; and two major volumes of “pensées,” or aphorisms, in which she comments on society, politics, and sexuality using a variety of urbane personae. Natalie Barney's work deserves more recognition than it has received, and her life still can serve as a model of self-creation uninhibitied by social strictures.     

Developing a game plan for good sportsmanship

It is widely believed in the United States that competition is beneficial for youngsters. However, the media are full of examples of players, fans, and coaches whose behavior veers out of control. There have been well-documented examples of youth in livestock competitions illegally medicating show animals to make them appear calmer, officials biasing their rulings toward a team that will take the most fans to a playoff game, and team rivalries that have become so caustic as to be dangerous for competitors and fans. A university extension and its partners created a program called "Great Fans. Great Sports." in order to teach the kinds of behaviors we wish to instill among all who are involved in competitions. It requires entire communities to develop and implement plans for enhancing sportsmanship in music, debate, drama, 4-H, and other arenas, as well as sports. The goal is to make good sportsmanship not the exception but the norm. The authors provide anecdotal evidence that "Great Fans. Great Sports." is having a positive impact on the attitudes and behaviors of competitors, fans, and communities.     

Migration as a consumption activity

"While a generalized utility maximization approach to migration decisionmaking is not innovative, the principal extensions of this paper involve the search for an instrument capable of measuring changes in utility levels consistent with all preferences (i.e., with all forms of utility functions), requiring only data on observed behaviour. Our approach is to construct a Location-Specific Utility Index (LSUI), whose component variables serve as proxies for the arguments in [U.S.] households' utility functions.... The testable hypothesis is formulated as follows: Assuming constant household preferences and expansion of the household's feasible set over time, the household's utility level is greater following the migration decision.... The results are compared with the households' migration decisions. The empirical evidence shows that migration may reasonably be modelled as a consumption activity by households to maximize utility." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

Axiomatizations of public good indices with a priori unions

We provide axiomatizations for six variants of the Public Good Index (PGI) for games with a priori unions. Two such coalitional PGIs have been introduced and alternatively axiomatized in Alonso-Meijide et al. (Working paper 18, 2008b). They assign power in two steps. In the first step, power is distributed between unions according to the PGI of the quotient game. In a second step, the Solidarity PGI splits power equally among union members while the Owen Extended PGI takes into account so-called essential parts. The other four coalitional PGIs have been introduced in Holler and Nohn (Homo Oeconomicus 26, 2009). The first variant elaborates the original idea of Holler (Political Studies 30:262–271, 1982) that the coalitional value is a public good and only minimal winning coalitions of the quotient game are relevant. The remaining three variants also use the two-step distribution where, however, on the member stage they take into account the possibilities of players to threaten their partners through leaving their union.     

Living a Life of Longevity

ON May 8,1998,Wang Aiying ofDexing City,Jiangxi Provincecelebrated her 100th birthday.Atthe party she dressed up in a silvery-white silk outfit and red silk vest with ared flower inserted in her hair.Shelooked healthy and energetic. Chen Bangying of Hongba Village     

Rent-seeking for a public good with additive contributions

We analyze rent-seeking for a public good with two groups, where the provision of a public good is decided in the all-pay contest where “the winner takes all”. We assume that the valuation of the public good varies across groups, but is the same for all members within a group. Free-riding in such situation was predicted by Baik et al. (J Public Econ 82(3):415–429, 2001). We describe a continuum of equilibria where all players make contributions. There is room for substantial payoff asymmetry, which ranges from equal payoffs to all group members to a zero payoff for the player who makes a contribution and positive payoffs for free-riders. The results generalize for the case where the prize has both a private and a public component.