Marketing Models: The Culture of Mathematical Economics

This paper explores the culture in which academic economists work, and tries to show how an appreciation of this culture makes their work more understandable and valuable to mainstream sociology. Economists are not interested in representing reality, but in constructing models that simplify reality to isolate mechanisms that account for observed phenomena. Economists have a distinctive epistemic culture, sustained by the discourse through which they talk and think about their work. This discourse mediates the relationship between the mathematical models they devise and the economic phenomena to which they apply. This study reveals economists' culture based on in-depth interviews with academic economists and an ethnographic study of economic departments in Israel.

Culture,place and urban growth in the U.S. South

People’s connection to land is an important contributor to identity in traditional southern society. In small southern communities, to know where someone lives is to know who someone is because place assigns biography. Studies have investigated the physical and economic implications of landscape change in the South, but comparatively little research focuses on the impacts to culture of urban growth. We consider how sense of place (as an indicator of culture) may be impacted, over time, by physical and structural changes in a locale. This point of departure examines the temporal dimension of sense of place, or how place perceptions may vary as familiar places and practices are altered by landscape moderations. We review the literature on sense of place and changing Southern landscapes and also offer a conceptual framework for analyzing sense of place over the long-term.

The scoring rules in an endogenous election

Plurality rule is mostly criticized from being capable of choosing an alternative considered as worst by a strict majority. This paper considers elections in which the agenda consists of potential candidates strategically choosing whether or not to enter the election. In this context, we examine the ability of scoring rules to fulfil the Condorcet criterion. We show for the case of three potential candidates that Plurality rule is the only scoring rule that satisfies a version of the Condorcet criterion in two cases: 1) when preferences are single-peaked and, 2) when preferences are single-dipped.

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Poverty and its persistence: a comparison of natives and immigrants in Sweden

This paper analyzes poverty and its persistence in Sweden using a large panel with detailed income information obtained from tax registers. As opposed to many commonly used household panels, the features of the data utilized in this paper allow us to study native-immigrant differences in poverty. We use a hazard rate model based on multiple spells that accounts for unobserved heterogeneity and endogenous initial conditions. The empirical results suggest that there is negative duration dependence in both exit and entry hazard rates. Moreover, the transition rates are significantly affected by immigrant status, educational attainment, labor market conditions, age, and family status.

Reduced prizes and increased effort in contests

We study the general class of two-player public-policy contests and specify the asymmetry condition under which a more restrained government intervention that reduces the contestants’ prizes has the “perverse” effect of increasing their aggregate lobbying efforts.

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Path to Poverty Alleviation: Marriage or Postsecondary Education?

We examined the role of human capital in determining economic well-being and marital status of mothers with children. We analyzed 1996 data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), a nationally representative survey of 36,700 American households conducted by the Census Bureau. The results indicate that among the human capital variables postsecondary education significantly improves the economic well-being of mothers irrespective of their marital status. Also, educated mothers are more likely to be married. These findings are especially relevant as we debate the importance of marriage in poverty alleviation.

Raising the Status of the Cashier: Latina–White Interactions in an Ethnic Market

Using a Latino-owned and -operated ethnic market in southern California as an ethnographic research site, we analyze and compare the interactions between foreign-born, Latina cashiers and their Latino and White customers. We ask two main questions: what is the nature of cashier–customer interactions, and what do they tell us about the social hierarchy in which they are embedded? While most studies of service interactions find that intraracial encounters are friendlier than interracial ones, the results of this study prove otherwise. We find that the Latina cashiers are routinely friendlier, more deferential, and extend the length of the interaction with their White customers. We conclude that Latina cashiers deliberately provide better service to their White customers because they feel that the patronage of White, middle-class shoppers raises their occupational status as well as the status of their workplace.

Nonprofit Isomorphism: An Australia–United States Comparison

This paper examines the organizational structures of nonprofit organizations in Australia and the United States. Using random samples of nonprofits drawn from the two organizational populations, the analysis compares the extent of structural resemblance or isomorphism in each. It detects similar levels of isomorphism for several structural characteristics. The paper interprets this finding as reflecting expectations for nonprofit organizations that stretch worldwide.

Housing Cost Burden,Poverty Status,and Economic Hardship among Low-income Families

This study examined the relative effects of housing cost burden versus poverty thresholds to explain the economic hardship of low-income families and compared the differences in these effects among White, Black, and Hispanic families with children in the United States of America. The findings from the multivariate analyses indicate that poverty status better explains variations in economic hardship than housing cost burden status. In respect to group differences, association between poverty status and economic hardship score are different between White and Black families. The results of this study raise the issues of housing cost burden and economic hardship that the country’s low-income Black families disproportionately experience relative to their White and Hispanic counterparts.

The response of household parental investment to child endowments

The theoretical and empirical literature on parental investment focuses on whether child-specific parental investments reinforce or compensate for a child’s initial endowments. However, many parental investments, such as neighborhood quality and family size and structure, are shared wholly or in part among all children in a household. The empirical results of this paper imply that such household parental investments compensate for low endowments, as proxied by low birth weight.

Economic Status of Older Asians in the United States

Data from the 5-percent Census 2000 Public Use Microdata were utilized to examine the economic status of six Asian-only groups in the United States aged 65 and older. Japanese Americans’ economic status emulated that of older Whites; whereas, older Korean and Vietnamese economic status more closely resembled that of older Blacks. Regression results indicated that education, household size, and duration of immigration were significantly and positively related to household income for most of the Asian-only groups, supporting the theory that human capital, structural barriers, and acculturation all play a role in determination of household income for older Asian Americans.

Changing Meanings of Authority in Contemporary Rural India

The article explores political meanings in the context of recent economic and political changes in a village in south India. Cultural constructions of political relations emerged in conversations between the author and village informants in Andhra Pradesh. Informants perceived decline in the power and authority of former village lords and talked about the establishment of authority in the new setting. In processes of democratization which had taken place, showing and receiving honor and respect continued as political and social preoccupations. However, deserving honor and respect has become less a statement about political superiority and domination and more about individual moral qualities.

The inverse plurality rule—an axiomatization

Under the ‘inverse plurality rule’, voters specify only their least preferred alternative. Our first result establishes that this rule is the only scoring rule that satisfies the minimal veto condition (MV). We then prove that the inverse plurality rule is characterized by MV and the four well known conditions that characterize scoring rules; namely, Anonymity (A), Neutrality (N), Reinforcement (RE) and Continuity (CO). Our new characterization result is related to the characterizations of approval voting and of the widely used plurality rule. We finally show how the axiomatization of the inverse plurality rule can be extended to the axiomatization of elementary scoring rules (vote for t-alternatives scoring rules). We are indebted to two anonymous referees for their most useful comments.

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What is child care? Lessons from time-use surveys of major English-speaking countries

This paper examines the definition and measurement of time devoted to child care in the diary-based surveys administered by the United States, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain. Detailed analysis of the relationship between measures of care activity and supervisory care in the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) illustrate the larger conceptual issues at stake.

Religion and Trends in Euthanasia Attitudes among U.S. Adults, 1977–2004

Though many studies address the role of religion in predicting social attitudes over time, none has examined this relationship specifically for euthanasia. Using a large, nationally representative data source, this study seeks to address this void. Our findings indicate that considerable differences exist among religious denominations regarding the legalization of euthanasia. Specifically, we note a liberalizing trend for all included denominations. We also demonstrate substantial differences in the rates of liberalization, particularly in comparison to conservative Protestants. We conclude with an assessment of our findings relative to previous studies on religion and public opinion.

The Impact of Age and Health on Vehicle Choices among Elders

We examine older Americans’ choice of vehicle types and the impact of age and health status on this choice. Using the 1998 and 2000 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the 2001 HRS Consumption and Activities Mail Survey (CAMS), we estimate a multinomial logit model of older Americans’ choice of vehicle types. We find that both age and health status influence the type of vehicle purchased or leased. Compared to Americans aged 50–59, those aged 70 or older prefer passenger cars to trucks and sport utility vehicles (SUVs). We also find that elders with health problems are more likely to prefer SUVs to passenger cars than those without health problems.

Efficient nonanthropocentric nature protection

This paper analyzes nature protection by a social planner under different ‘utilitarian’ social welfare functions. For that purpose we construct an integrated model of the economy and the ecosystem with explicit consideration of nonhuman species and with competition between human and nonhuman species for land and prey biomass. We characterize and compare the efficient allocations when social welfare is anthropocentric (only consumers have positive welfare weights), when social welfare is biocentric (only nonhuman species have positive welfare weights) and when social welfare is nonanthropocentric (all species have positive welfare weights). Not surprisingly, biocentric social welfare calls for suspending all economic activities. It is more important, however, that both anthropocentrism and nonanthropocentrism make the case for nature protection through different channels, though. Our analysis suggests that one may dispense with the concept of nonanthropocentric social welfare provided that in the anthropocentric framework the consumers' intrinsic valuation of nature is properly accounted for.

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Exploring the Racial Identities of Black Immigrants in the United States

This study draws upon immigrant incorporation theories to investigate whether native origin trumps skin color in shaping the racial identities of black migrants. Using survey data from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, six groups of black migrants are compared across two racial identity dimensions: racial group identification and racial group consciousness. The results demonstrate that while black migrants, with the exception of Puerto Ricans, develop a shared racial group identity with native-born blacks over time, the meaning they attach to being black in America varies by native origin.

Altruistic and Vicarious Fear of Crime: Fear for Others and Gendered Social Roles

Fear for others as distinct from personal fear is an understudied phenomenon. Relying on qualitative data, this paper explores gender differences in fear for others and identifies differences linked to social roles. For men, a paternal protector role characterized fears expressed mostly for their wives. For women, a maternal caretaker role characterized fears expressed for their children, elderly parents, and siblings. This paper offers a new way to conceptualize fear for others based on making distinctions between the object of fear and active or nonactive responses: kinship-based altruistic fear, kinship-based vicarious fear, general altruistic fear, and general vicarious fear.