ACCOUNTING FOR DEBASEMENTS: INDIVISIBILITY OR IMPERFECT RECOGNIZABILITY OF MONEY

The widespread prevalence of debasements in medieval Europe constitutes a puzzle under standard price theory because people voluntarily exchanged heavy coins for lighter ones; the difference being kept as seigniorage. I explore two properties of commodity monies that might make holding light coins more desirable, namely indivisibility and imperfect recognizability. If the agent trades indivisible coins, there are inefficiencies arising from over production of goods when the agent uses the heavier coin. Also, when coins are imperfectly recognizable, the heavy coin faces adverse selection. I find that under some parameters, indivisibility by itself leads to positive revenue following debasements, but in a way that eliminates co-circulation of coins. While with a sufficient degree of imperfect information, debasements can generate positive revenue and also co-circulation of coins. (JEL D82, D83, E40, E42, N10)     

The unacceptability of money as a gift

In four studies, subjects were asked whether money was an acceptable gift. In the first study, students stated that they would find it less acceptable to give their mothers a cheque than a gift token or a selected present; and that if they had to send a cheque they would spend more than twice as much on it as on the other sorts of gift. The second study confirmed these results on a larger, non-student sample of young adults, and also showed that it made no difference whether a cheque or cash was specified. In the third study, students were asked about the reasons why they would find it unacceptable to give or receive a cheque as a present. The most important reasons focused on the time and effort that ought to be spent on selecting a present, and the possibility that money sent as a gift might be used for mundane purchases. In the final study, mothers of students were asked about the kinds of presents they would find it acceptable to receive: they indicated that a cheque would be less acceptable than a selected present of a gift token, but they did not expect more to be spent on a cheque than on other gifts. Taken together, these results strongly confirm casual impressions that money is unacceptable as a gift in some contexts, implying both that the element of social exchange is crucially important in gift-giving, and that even in modern societies money is not a universally acceptable medium of exchange.     

Factors affecting the perceived value of coins

Subjects were asked to judge the relative values or assign absolute values to coins similar to the proposed new UK 20p and £1 coins along with other metal blanks, prior to the announcement of the new coins. Preliminary studies indicated that while a ‘yellow’ (gold-coloured) coin would not normally be rated higher in value than the blank 5p coin, the addition of extra thickness and an elaborate edge enhanced its apparent relative value. It was also shown that seven-sided ‘white’ (silver-coloured) coins were rated as more valuable than 12-sided or circular coins of about the same diameter. The absolute values assigned to such coins followed a similar trend to the relative values. Seven-sided white coins were assigned higher values than 12-sided white coins, and thicker yellow coins were assigned higher value characteristics and colour were examined independently. For smooth circular, milled circular and seven-sided coins, ‘red’ (cooper-coloured) coins were perceived as least valuable, and white and yellow coins were equally often assigned to intermediate and high values. For red, white and yellow coins, smooth circular coins were rated least valuable and seven-sided coins as most valuable. It appears that people assign learned ‘rules’ about features indicating value in a systematic and independent manner.     

Effects of greed and fear of being gypped in a social dilemma situation with changing pool size

The study attempts to provide information about the question whether people do not contribute to a public good because of greed or a desire to free ride or because of a fear of being gypped. Subjects, in groups of six, could take coins from or add coins to a common pool. After every trial the number of coins in the pool would be multiplied by 1.25. At the end of the experiment the number of coins in the pool would be divided equally among the subjects. False feedback was provided indicating that in some phases the size of the common pool was increasing, decreasing or remaining constant. Subjects contributed significantly less to the common pool in phases with increase of the pool than in phases with decrease or constancy of the pool. This showed that greed and not fear of being gypped was the major motivation behind not contributing to the common pool.     

What Shall We Call Ourselves? Last Names Among Lesbian,Gay, and Heterosexual Couples and Their Adopted Children

ABSTRACT

Choices of last names for both adults and children are important family decisions that are often made upon marriage or upon the birth of a child. The gendered nature of such choices among heterosexual populations is well known, but they have not been widely studied among lesbian or gay populations. We studied selection of last names among 106 adoptive families—27 headed by lesbian couples, 29 headed by gay couples, and 50 headed by heterosexual couples—all of whom had adopted children at birth or in the first weeks of life. Whether in selection of last names for adults or for children, we found that heterosexual adoptive couples were more likely than lesbian and gay adoptive couples to follow patronymic conventions. Thus, heterosexual parents and their children were most likely to have identical last names. For lesbian and gay couples, in contrast, the most common scenario was for both adults to retain last names given to them at birth and hyphenate them to create last names for their children. Parents in lesbian and gay couples offered more detailed explanations of their choices than did those in heterosexual couples. Explanations offered by heterosexual parents were most likely to refer to tradition, but those given by same-sex parents were more likely to mention egalitarian or practical considerations. Overall, we found that same-sex and other-sex couples took very different approaches to the problem of naming themselves and their children.     

What's in a name? An exploration of the significance of personal naming of ‘mixed’ children for parents from different racial,ethnic and faith backgrounds

This article is concerned with how and why parent couples from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds choose their children's personal names? The limited literature on the topic of names often focuses on outcomes, using birth name registration data sets, rather than process. In particular, we consider the extent to which the personal names that ‘mixed’ couples give their children represent an individualised taste, or reflect a form of collective affiliation to family, race, ethnicity or faith. We place this discussion in the context of debates about the racial and faith affiliation of ‘mixed’ people, positing various forms of ‘pro’ or ‘post’ collective identity. We draw on in‐depth interview data to show that, in the case of ‘mixed’ couple parents, while most wanted names for their children that they liked, they also wanted names that symbolised their children's heritages. This could involve parents in complicated practices concerning who was involved in naming the children and what those names were. We conclude that, for a full understanding of naming practices and the extent to which these are individualised or affiliative it is important to address process, and that the processes we have identified for ‘mixed’ parents reveal the persistence of collective identity associated with race, ethnicity and faith alongside elements of individualised taste and transcendence, as well as some gendered features.     

A new index of perceived inflation: Assumptions, method, and application to Germany

After the introduction of Euro notes and coins in January 2002, throughout the Economic and Monetary Union member countries a substantial discrepancy was evident between inflation as measured by the official consumer price indices (CPI) and that perceived by the general public. The starting point of this paper is the German case. First, the public controversy in Germany after the Euro changeover is sketched. Then conventional approaches to perceived inflation are reviewed including the many studies published by the German Federal Statistical Office as well as the perceived inflation balance generated within the EU Consumer Survey. In the main part of the paper, a novel approach to measuring perceived inflation is developed, the Index of Perceived Inflation (IPI). First, the hypotheses underlying this index are presented. Then, the IPI is derived. In the forth section the IPI is applied to the German data. The IPI time series for Germany from 1996 through 2005 shows a particularly high perceived inflation around the introduction of Euro notes and coins. In the fifth section the hypotheses of inflation perception underlying the IPI are critically reviewed. The paper closes with a conclusion on the insights gained through computation of the IPI.     

Privatize your name: Symbolic work in a post-Soviet linguistic market

This paper analyzes the new names given to Russian private businesses that have appeared after the collapse of the Soviet State in 1991. By naming new private ventures their owners members of the new business class attempt to privatize public space not only legally but also symbolically and linguistically. They strive to construct their particular new version of social reality, to represent it as positive and meaningful, and to impose themselves publicly as legitimate authors, owners, and masters of this new reality. This paper proceeds on several distinct levels of analysis. First, it analyzes a number of discourses, representing various subcultures and periods of Soviet and Russian history, from which new business names draw their complex meanings. Second, it considers concrete linguistic and semiotic techniques that are employed by the new names in this process. Third, it examines the cultural and social implications of this process of nomination for post-Soviet developments in the Russian society.     

Naming Regulations and Indigenous Rights in Argentina

In Argentina, parents must register their children at the Civil Registry to receive a national identification card, choosing their child's name from a list maintained by provincial Civil Registry offices. This process regulates all citizens, but it is particularly onerous for indigenous parents who wish to give their child an indigenous name. In tracing the letter and practice of the law and responses to the law, I argue that the regulation of names is a political process with racial and gender assumptions built into it. These assumptions translate into exclusionary implications for membership in national identity. For indigenous people in Argentina, this is particularly problematic, as they are already largely invisible to the national body. Although indigenous people are challenging aspects of the law they are not challenging the very premise of the law—that the state has the right to control their access to citizenship through a law regulating children's names. Finally, the successes of indigenous parents in using an indigenous name has the unintended consequence of turning indigenous names into cultural commodities, thus diminishing the validity of indigenous political critiques of the law.     

Turning a Blind Eye? Punishment of Friends and Unfamiliar Peers After Observed Exclusion in Adolescence

In order to decrease the occurrence of social exclusion in adolescence, we need to better understand how adolescents perceive and behave toward peers involved in exclusion. We examined the role of friendships in treatment of perpetrators and victims of social exclusion. Eighty‐nine participants (aged 9–16) observed exclusion of an unfamiliar peer (victim) by their best friend and another unfamiliar peer. Subsequently, participants could give up valuable coins to altruistically punish or help peers. Results showed that participants altruistically compensated victims and punished unfamiliar excluders, but refrained from punishing their friends. Our findings show that friendship with excluders modulates altruistic punishment of peers and provide mechanistic insight into how friendships may influence treatment of peers involved in social exclusion during adolescence.     

Expanding Vocal Requesting Repertoires via Relational Responding in Adults with Severe Developmental Disabilities

The purpose of this project was to demonstrate untrained vocal requests in three adults with severe developmental disabilities. Specifically, we evaluated whether a history of reinforced relational responding would give rise to untrained vocal requests for novel items. Participants were first taught to request preferred items using their category names. They were then taught conditional discriminations between pictures of preferred items that were categorically related. Finally, participants were tested for their abilities to request items that had not been originally presented during request training, using their category names. All participants demonstrated untrained requests, and for some participants, changes in the mand repertoire were accompanied by changes in the tact repertoire. Some participants also showed generalization of skills across settings.     

Coining societies: an inter-functional comparative analysis of the Euro

The present analysis of the Euro looks for the marks that function systems make on what we commonly take for the European money. Clearly distinguishing between coins and currency, the Euro coins and banknotes are not taken for economic tokens per se but for storage devices that contain both economic and noneconomic information. A systemic analysis of the function system references on these storage devices shows that the economy has left fewer marks on the Euro than politics, art, and the mass media systems have. We, hence, argue that “the Euro” “is” not just money with a political second mission but rather can be understood as an indicator of the relative relevance that specific function systems do or do not have for the European societies and the European society.     

Alphabet Economics: The link between names and reputation

In economics, most coauthored papers have all coauthors in alphabetical order. It is sometimes argued that this conveys advantages to people whose names start with letters that come early in the alphabet. This paper examines whether the alphabetical ranking of names affects someone's reputation. Overall, we find that faculty members with earlier last name initials are more likely to get employment at high standard research departments. Furthermore, we show that the relationship between alphabetical placement and academic success remains significant if we use as an alternative measure of reputation the number of people showing an interest in the papers of a particular academic. This paper also investigates whether the reported alphabetical effect creates differential incentives for coauthoring. It is found that the reputational advantage of first-authorship motivates people to manipulate their names so as to obtain a more beneficial alphabetical position within the majority of articles.     

Seeing What One Sees: Perception,Emotion, and Activity

In this article, it is demonstrated (a) how seeing is organized in the spatiotemporal arrangement of bodies and conduct within which the participants display and manage their orientations to the ongoing activity, and (b) how seeing and emotion are mutually constituted in the precise coordination of conduct and how they, can constitute resources for organizing the ongoing activity. The view advanced in this article sharply contradicts the traditional conception of visual perception, according to which the verb "see" names a discrete process, event, or state hidden under the individual's skin. Seeing is rather an organizational feature of an embodied, visible activity.     

Stay away from fair coins: A Condorcet jury theorem

 This paper formulates a Condorcet Jury Theorem and emphasizes the necessity of the condition of boundedness away from one-half or staying away from fair coins. Received: 4 March 1996/Accepted: 3 June 1996     

Giving to Friends,Classmates, and Strangers in Adolescence

This study examined how perspective taking and sensitivity to social rewards predict giving to friends, classmates, and strangers in adolescence. Five hundred and twenty adolescents aged 12–17 years completed questionnaires on perspective taking and social rewards and played three Dictator Games in which they divided coins between themselves and a friend, classmate, and stranger. We found that, irrespective of age, adolescents donated most to a friend, less to their classmate, and least to a stranger, and females donated more than males. Individual differences in perspective taking and social reward sensitivity moderated how much adolescents donated, especially to strangers. These findings suggest that perspective taking and sensitivity to social rewards influence giving behavior in adolescence, especially to unknown others.     

The effects of listener and speaker training on emergent relations in children with autism

The current study assessed the use of standard conditional discrimination (i.e., listener) and textual/tact (i.e., speaker) training in the establishment of equivalence classes containing dictated names, tacts/textual responses, pictures and printed words. Four children (ages 5 to 7 years) diagnosed with autism were taught to select pictures and printed words in the presence of their dictated names, and to emit the tact or textual response corresponding to a presented picture or printed word. Both speaker and listener training resulted in the formation of stimulus classes for 3 of 4 participants.     

A Fungus by Any Other Name: Slovene Mycological Loan Translations

One aspect of the generally acknowledged historical influence of German on Slovene is extensive lexical borrowing. The natural world represents a semantic field in which substantial borrowing occurred, and previous studies have demonstrated that analysis of plant names of foreign origin can shed light on the otherwise obscured meanings of these names in Slovene. One sub-field of the natural world that has received relatively little linguistic attention is mycology; specifically, the names of individual species of fungus. Because of the popularity of mushrooms in the cuisine and folklore of all Slavic nations, investigations in this area have particular cultural significance. A multi-language comparison of designations for various fungus in Slavic and geographically adjacent languages makes it possible to identify which names are likely the result of loan translation and which names are likely the result of chance similarity due to salient features of the fungus. This analysis identifies not only a robust number of Slovene names that are likely of foreign origin, but also sets of names limited to a sprachbund of German and German-adjacent Slavic languages. In addition to uniquely German-Slovene pairs of fungal names, this article also identifies German-Slovene/croatian and German-Slovene/croatian-West Slavic correspondences.     

When practice and policy collide: Child welfare workers' perceptions of investigation processes

This qualitative study examines variability in practices surrounding Child Protective Services (CPS) investigations regarding the allegations of child maltreatment. Working under the auspices of a community-research collaboration with Department of Human Services officials, university researchers conducted a series of focus groups with CPS caseworkers in a state that was under court-ordered consent decree to improve child welfare investigations. Focus groups with caseworkers sought to better understand caseworkers' common investigative practices and their perceptions of best practices in conducting child welfare investigations. Two main areas were noted for improvement: (1) the need for ongoing training of CPS workers, particularly at the stage of initial intake of the allegations of maltreatment, and cross-training of police and hospital staff who regularly work with CPS, and (2) implementation of an improved risk assessment tool. These recommendations are discussed in detail.