DIAGNOSTICS FOR REDESIGNING SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES: MEASURING WORK IN THE CURRENT POPULATION SURVEY

Between 1986 and 1993, a program of questionnaire design andcognitive research was conducted by the Census Bureau and Bureauof Labor Statistics, to improve labor force measurements inthe Current Population Survey (CPS). As part of the researchprogram, diagnostic measures for systematically testing andevaluating alternative questionnaire versions were developedand applied. This article reports results of applying two methods,special follow-up probes and hypothetical vignettes, to themeasurement of "work" in the CPS. These measures provided bothdirect and indirect information about problems of respondentcomprehension and reporting errors. In this article, we analyzeresults using these diagnostic measures to evaluate the effectof questionnaire revisions on reporting of work activities,and we assess the consistency and usefulness of the informationprovided by alternative diagnostic measures for pretesting andselecting questions.     

Considering clustering measures: Third ties,means, and triplets

Measures that estimate the clustering coefficients of ego and overall social networks are important to social network studies. Existing measures differ in how they define and estimate triplet clustering with implications for how network theoretic properties are reflected. In this paper, we propose a novel definition of triplet clustering for weighted and undirected social networks that explicitly considers the relative strength of the tie connecting the two alters of the ego in the triplet. We argue that our proposed definition better reflects theorized effects of the important third tie in the social network literature. We also develop new methods for estimating triplet, local and global clustering. Three different types of mathematical means, i.e. arithmetic, geometric, and quadratic, are used to reflect alternative theoretical assumptions concerning the marginal effect of tie substitution.     

Measuring inequality of opportunity with imperfect data: the case of Turkey

The measurement of inequality of opportunity has hitherto not been attempted in a number of countries because of data limitations. This paper proposes two alternative approaches to circumventing the missing data problems in countries where a demographic and health survey (DHS) and an ancillary household expenditure survey are available. One method relies only on the DHS, and constructs a wealth index as a measure of economic advantage. The alternative method imputes consumption from the ancillary survey into the DHS. In both cases, we compute a lower bound estimator of the share of (ex-ante) inequality of opportunity in total inequality. Parametric and non-parametric estimates are calculated for each method, and the parametric approach is shown to yield preferable lower-bound measures. In an application to the sample of ever-married women aged 30–49 in Turkey, inequality of opportunity accounts for at least 26% (31%) of overall inequality in imputed consumption (the wealth index).     

Examining the impact of alternative power measures on individual time use in American and Danish couple households

We exploit time diary data for couple households in Denmark and the United States to examine the impact alternative measures of intrahousehold bargaining power have upon different measures of individual time use. Power measures have traditionally been based on current earnings, but earnings are determined by past/present time use decisions and hence potentially endogenous. More powerful individuals have been hypothesized to spend less time on housework, however, housework time also depends upon relative preferences for home produced goods and relative productivity in home production. Gendered notions of time use and censored earnings and time data also pose problems. We propose examining leisure time and exploring alternative measures of power less prone to endogeneity bias in order to address these theoretical and empirical concerns. Our results indicate that leisure time is more consistently and significantly associated with ‘power’ than housework time and that education share performs quite well as a measure of power. These results are particularly strong on non-work days and in the United States.     

A PARTIAL INDEPENDENCE ITEM RESPONSE MODEL FOR SURVEYS WITH FILTER QUESTIONS

In many surveys, responses to earlier questions determine whether later questions are asked. The probability of an affirmative response to a given item is therefore nonzero only if the participant responded affirmatively to some set of logically prior items, known as "filter items." In such surveys, the usual conditional independence assumption of standard item response models fails. A weaker "partial independence" assumption may hold, however, if an individual's responses to different items are independent conditional on the item parameters, the individual's latent trait, and the participant's affirmative responses to each of a set of filter items. In this paper, we propose an item response model for such "partially independent" item response data. We model such item response patterns as a function of a person-specific latent trait and a set of item parameters. Our model can be seen as a generalized hybrid of a discrete-time hazard model and a Rasch model. The proposed procedure yields estimates of (1) person-specific, interval-scale measures of a latent trait (or traits), along with person-specific standard errors of measurement; (2) conditional and marginal item severities for each item in a protocol; (3) person-specific conditional and marginal probabilities of an affirmative response to each item in a protocol; and (4) item information and total survey information. In addition, we show here how to investigate and test alternative conceptions of the dimensionality of the latent trait(s) being measured. Finally, we compare our procedure with a simpler alternative approach to summarizing data of this type.     

How to cut a pizza fairly: Fair division with decreasing marginal evaluations

Existential and constructive solutions to the classic problems of fair division are known for individuals with constant marginal evaluations. By considering nonatomic concave capacities instead of nonatomic probability measures, we extend some of these results to the case of individuals with decreasing marginal evaluations. Received: 12 June 2001/Accepted: 23 May 2002 An earlier version of this paper, Caltech Social Science Working Paper # 1126, was titled “How to cut a cake healthily”. We wish to thank Maristella Botticini, Erio Castagnoli, Marco Dall'Aglio, Paolo Ghirardato, Luigi Montrucchio, Marco Scarsini, Marciano Siniscalchi, as well as Maurice Salles (the Editor), an Associate Editor, and four anonymous Referees for helpful suggestions. The financial support of MIUR, CNR, and Università Bocconi is gratefully acknowledged. Part of this research was done while the first author was visiting Boston University and the California Institute of Technology, which he thanks for their hospitality.     

Shirking on the Court: Testing for the Incentive Effects of Guaranteed Pay

Prior work on long-term contracts and the incentive to shirk has focused almost exclusively on Major League Baseball. The current inquiry is the first to examine shirking in the National Basketball Association. We employed two different measures of player productivity. When the NBA's measure is used, we find evidence consistent with allegations of shirking behavior. But when productivity is measured in a fashion more consistent with economists' definition of marginal product, the evidence of shirking evaporates. (JEL J41, J44, L83 )     

Prevalence Estimates of Adolescent Gambling: A Comparison of the SOGS-RA, DSM-IV-J, and the GA 20 Questions

Concerns over the rising prevalence of adolescent gambling problems have become more commonplace. A recent meta analysis of studies examining adolescent prevalence rates by Shaffer and Hall (1996) has suggested that between 77–83% of adolescents are engaging in some form of gambling behavior with between 9.9% and 14.2% of youth remaining at risk for a serious gambling problem. Their results further suggest that between 4.4% and 7.4% of adolescents exhibit serious adverse gambling related problems and/or pathological gambling behavior. Comparisons of studies are often difficult due to the use of alternative measures, differing classification schemes, and nomenclature. The present study examined the gambling behaviors of 980 adolescents who were administered three screening measures used with adolescents; the SOGS-RA, DSM-IV-J, and the GA 20 Questions. The DSM-IV-J was found to be the most conservative measure identifying 3.4% of the population as problem/pathological gamblers while the SOGS-GA identified 5.3% and the GA 20 Questions identified 6% of youth as experiencing serious gambling problems. The degree of concordance amongst the measures, gender differences, and classification systems are discussed.     

Die Low-Cost-Hypothese

The Low-Cost-Hypothesis (LCH) postulates that the effect of attitudes on behavior varies with the costs at stake in the situation. The effect is deemed to be higher in low-cost-situations, compared to high-cost-situations. We argue that a closer look at the literature reveals two distinct versions of the LCH, which have not been disentangled so far. We reconstruct both versions ?C the ??simple?? and the ??specific?? version of the LCH ?C and discuss their theoretical foundations and empirical implications. The ??simple?? version can be derived from a simple expected utility model. In this model, attitudes and (tangible) behavioral costs exert independent effects on the net utility of the action alternatives. A conditional effect of the attitudes that depends on the behavioral costs only exists with respect to the probability of choosing an action alternative. However, this dependence of marginal effects on the actor??s initial level of utility or probability holds for any independent variable or utility argument. A second, ??specific?? version of the LCH postulates a variable-specific interaction effect between attitudes and costs. We point to the problems of previous approaches to deriving such a specific hypothesis and identify dual-process-theories as an alternative theoretical foundation that allows understanding the limited scope conditions of the specific LCH. The article carries important conclusions for empirical applications and tests of the LCH in diverse fields of sociological research and, more generally, for the decision-theoretic analysis of social action.     

Price Discrimination with Differentiated Products: Definition and Identification

There is no widely accepted definition of price discrimination with differentiated products. Either absolute price-cost differences or percentage price-cost markups are used as benchmarks for comparison. I show that the two criteria are qualitatively different: One may indicate price discrimination when the other does not. Moreover, anything other than marginal cost pricing will be identified as price discrimination by at least one of the two. I propose choosing a criterion based on the cost of arbitrage in the market under examination. Because this is often difficult to determine, it is advisable to always report results with both measures.     

Child-Oriented Family Therapy Outcome Research: Comparisons Between Brief Family Therapy and an Alternative Treatment

This paper is concerned with outcome research in child-oriented family therapy. Nine investigations comparing brief family therapy with an alternative treatment were critically reviewed. All of the studies were vulnerable to criticisms on design and methodological grounds. Problem areas included: specification of therapeutic techniques, confounding of therapeutic variables, equivalence of therapist factors, measurement of outcome, adequacy of measures and appropriate use of control groups. All studies concluded that childhood problems could be treated successfully with brief family therapy techniques. However, in the light of the design problems listed above, these conclusions should be treated tentatively.     

Awareness of low self-control: Theory and evidence from a homeless shelter

Survey measures of self-control provide a potential low-cost alternative to incentivized elicitation. However, asking respondents to introspect on their self-control problems may instead measure their awareness of them, especially in populations with low self-control. We illustrate this with the Ameriks, Caplin, Leahy, and Tyler (2007) survey, which captures self-control problems through the deviation between self-reported ideal and predicted behavior (Expected Deviation, ED). Previous empirical evidence from high income or highly educated populations correlates larger ED with worse outcomes. We theoretically show that the reverse will be true in settings where awareness can play a large role: when self-control is low and costly commitment devices are available. We empirically show that, for residents of a homeless shelter, ED is positively correlated to savings in shelter lockboxes, a costly commitment device. This correlation is stronger for those likely to experience more self-control problems: individuals with past addiction problems.     

AN ESTIMATE OF THE RENT GENERATED BY A PREMIUM COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYER

The National Collegiate Athletic Association limits the payments athletes can receive for their services. Colleges are effectively monosony employers so players will not be paid their marginal revenue product. Therefore, colleges capture an economic rent from players. This paper measures these rents by estimating the marginal revenue product of a top college football player. The empirical results suggest that a premium college player generates over $500,000 in annual revenues for his team.     

Consumption theory with reference dependent utility

This paper presents a closed form consumption function for an individual when his utility depends both on his own current and previous consumption and on the consumption by his relevant others. Given this model, I argue that we can introduce an alternative definition of marginal propensity to consume (MPC) in addition to the traditional definition. This alternative definition can be called the individual’s total MPC, which I show is smaller than the traditional MPC.     

Recreation Demand Choices and Revealed Values of Leisure Time

An approach to jointly estimating an endogenous marginal value of time function and a recreation budget share equation is developed. The specification requirements for the marginal value of time function, to ensure consistency with the maintained hypothesis of two binding constraints on choice, are articulated. The estimating model consistent with these requirements that nests several conventional treatments of the marginal value of time is highly significant. The general endogenous marginal value of time model outperforms other approaches and shows a more complex relationship between the marginal value of time and the individual's wage than has been used in previous work. (JEL J22 , Q26 )     

On the power of poverty orderings

This paper investigates the possibility of increasing the ordering power of additively separable poverty measures beyond the condition of second degree stochastic dominance by considering third degree stochastic dominance. For a fixed poverty line, the ordering power can be significantly enhanced by using the third degree criterion. For a range of poverty lines, the marginal power of the third degree criterion over the second degree depends critically upon the lower bound of the range; if the lower bound poverty line is arbitrarily close to zero, the two criteria coincide. The implications of a strong version of the transfer sensitivity axiom are also considered. Received: 20 November 1995/Accepted: 16 February 1998     

Tax rates and economic growth in the OECD countries

This article proposes refined econometric estimates of effective marginal income tax rates for 23 OECD countries from 1951 to 1990. Panel regressions find such measures negatively correlated with economic growth. These results are consistent with endogenous growth theories and opposite to those of most empirical literature, which relies on measures of effective average tax rates. The negative correlation is also robust to consideration of other growth determinants.     

Reference distributions and inequality measurement

We investigate a general problem of comparing pairs of distributions which includes approaches to inequality measurement, the evaluation of “unfair” income inequality, evaluation of inequality relative to norm incomes, and goodness of fit. We show how to represent the generic problem simply using (1) a class of divergence measures derived from a parsimonious set of axioms and (2) alternative types of “reference distributions.” The problems of appropriate statistical implementation are discussed and empirical illustrations of the technique are provided using a variety of reference distributions.     

SIGNAL EXTRACTION AND RATIONAL INATTENTION

In this paper we examine the implications of two theories of informational frictions, signal extraction (SE) and rational inattention (RI), for optimal decisions and economic dynamics within the linear‐quadratic‐Gaussian (LQG) setting. We first show that if the variance of the noise and channel capacity (or marginal information cost) is fixed exogenously in the SE and RI problems, respectively, the two environments lead to different policy and equilibrium asset pricing implications. Second, we find that if the signal‐to‐noise ratio and capacity in the SE and RI problems are fixed, respectively, the two theories generate the same policy implications in the univariate case, but different policy implications in the multivariate case. We also show that our results do not depend on the presence of correlation between fundamental and noise shocks. We then discuss the applications to macroeconomic models of permanent income and price‐setting. (JEL C61, D81, E21)     

An investigation of cognitive style and alcohol/work-related problems among Naval personnel.

This study examines the relationship between cognitive style (i.e., information, normative, and diffuse orientation, and commitment) and alcohol/work-related problems. A random sample of Naval personnel (n = 2000) with less than two years of service toward their first enlistment was sent a questionnaire to assess cognitive style [1] and alcohol/work-related problems. A total of 899 respondents (45.0%) returned their questionnaires. Findings support prevention strategies that incorporate problem-solving, decision-making, and coping strategies, particularly among participants who employ diffuse problem-solving/coping strategies (lack of exploration and commitment, avoidance of problems). Correlations between cognitive style and alcohol/work-related problems are theoretically compatible. Diffuse orientation scores are positively related to both alcohol- and work-related problems, while norm and information orientation scores are negatively related to both measures. Collectively, cognitive style measures explain 11.4 percent of the variability in alcohol-related problems, and 14.0 percent of the variability in work-related problems.