Preferences for Juries Over Judges Across Racial and Ethnic Groups*

Objective. The objective of this article is to explore whether a preference for juries rather than judges to decide legal cases varies across racial and ethnic groups. We hypothesized that minorities (African Americans, Hispanics), who generally express less trust in the legal system, may also express less trust in juries than non‐Hispanic whites. Method. A representative sample of 1,465 residents of Texas were surveyed and asked whether they would prefer a jury or a judge to be the decisionmaker in four hypothetical circumstances. Analyses control for a number of possible factors that might also predict views of the jury besides race and ethnicity. Results. Consistent with expectations, non‐Hispanic whites favored juries over judges, particularly if they imagined themselves as a defendant in a criminal trial. By comparison, African Americans and some Hispanics showed a weaker preference for a jury over a judge. African Americans had markedly lower support for the civil jury, but jury support was higher among minorities with prior jury service. Among Hispanics, respondents who took the survey in Spanish typically preferred a judge to make legal decisions. Conclusions. Faith in the jury as a more trustworthy decision‐making body is weakest among those groups that have a history of discriminatory treatment in the legal system and who are less acculturated on other measures, such as language dominance.     

The Roles of Race,Class, and Residential Preferences in the Neighborhood Racial Composition of Middle‐Class Blacks and Whites*

Objective. This analysis extends the residential attainment literature by examining the neighborhood racial composition of middle‐class blacks and whites while controlling for residential preferences. Methods. Using the Multi‐City Study of Urban Inequality and 1990 Census data, the spatial assimilation and place stratification theories of locational attainment are tested. Results. As in previous research, support is shown for both theories; for blacks, stronger human capital characteristics translate into neighborhoods that are less racially segregated. However, even when middle‐class blacks prefer to live in integrated neighborhoods, on average, they live in neighborhoods that are about 60 percent black and 30 percent white, while middle‐class whites who prefer to live in integrated neighborhoods reside in neighborhoods that, on average, are 10 percent black and 85 percent white. Conclusions. Although incorporating residential preferences into models that predict neighborhood racial composition proves important, the relative inability of middle‐class blacks to implement their preferences indicates powerful social forces that maintain “American apartheid.”     

The Media Environment and Media Consumption in Contemporary Russian Society

Russia is experiencing the "mediatization" of society as electronic communication technologies penetrate everyday life. This has contradictory effects since it increases the means of manipulation of and access to information at the same time that people can expand and personalize their use of media. The functioning of technical innovations in Russia is determined by social factors, by the relations of power established in society, by social and individual resources, and by the level of culture and education.     

十八世纪以降江南居民的住房消费

普通居民的住房消费是一个在以往研究中关注不够的领域,本文主要对清代至民国时期江南农村和市镇居民的住房消费——从住房的建筑材质、建筑样式和结构、室内外环境、卫生状况、室内陈设等方面作了梳理和探讨,并对十八世纪以来江南居民,特别是农民人均住房的数量和面积、家具的数量、以及年均住房消费的开支水平作了尝试性的估计.     

农民工的城市定居意愿研究——基于七省（区）调查数据的实证分析

|本文以2007年7省区的调查数据为基础,对农民工的城市定居意愿及其因素进行实证分析。研究发现,农民工既表现出对城市定居的向往,又呈现出一种矛盾和模糊性的心理状态。相对于人力资本而言,家庭因素、社会支持因素对农民工城市定居意愿的影响更加明显。农民工的定居决策主要受市场性、文化心理性和制度性三类因素的影响,其中,市场性因素正在成为显在的主因,制度性因素的作用已经有所下降,但市场因素的根源仍然来自于制度性因素。     

Preferences over consumption and status

Experimental evidence suggests that individual consumption has not only personal value but also enters the social part of the utility. Existing models of social preferences make ad hoc parametric assumptions about the nature of this duality. This creates a problem of experimental identification of preferences since without such assumptions it is impossible to distinguish whether consumption or social concerns are driving the behavior. Given observed choice, the Axiomatic model of preferences in this article makes it possible to unambiguously determine personal and social utility without any assumptions about their relationship. The unique separation can be achieved only if the individual choices in different subgroups of other people are available. Preferences over consumption and status are used as an example to demonstrate how the utility is constructed. The model shows what kind of information about choice is needed to empirically determine the nature of social preferences without making restrictive assumptions. This can help to estimate whether personal consumption or social value is more important in economic decisions.     

Absolute and Relative Time-Consistent Revealed Preferences

We introduce an Absolute (Relative) Time-consistent Axiom of Revealed Preference which characterizes the consistency of a choice function with the property of absolute (relative) time-consistency and impatience. The axiom requires that the absolute (relative) time-consistent and impatient closure of the revealed preference relation does not conflict with the strict revealed preference relation.     

Racial and ethnic stereotypes in professional wrestling

Wrestling burst into the mainstream of television entertainment and sports in recent years. A distinctive feature is the obstrusive use of racial and ethnic stereotypes. Synthesizing insights from cultural anthropology, phenomenological sociology, and Marxist theory, the psychoanalytic tradition, this article proposes a theoretical explanation of why the stereotypes are so marketable.     

居住分异与社会距离

通过对一个新建社区的形成过程和居住现状的考察,分析了国内"居住分异"的社会分化现象。通过数据分析发现,居住分异以后,群体分化程度被强化了,它使居民之间的社会距离扩大、疏离感增强。这种状况不利于社会团结与和谐社会的建设。我国正处在城市化高速发展的进程中,如果没有明确的政策干预,任由房地产市场按照这样的情况发展下去,居住分异与社会距离问题会变得更加严重。     

Editors' Introduction: Elicitation of Preferences

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty -     

Comparative Risk Sensitivity with Reference-Dependent Preferences

Experimental evidence suggests that individuals are risk averse over gains and risk seeking over losses (i.e., they have S-shaped utility functions in an expected utility setting) and that they are loss averse. Furthermore, the evidence leads to a single definition of S-shaped utility, but it has led to several alternative specifications of loss aversion. This paper characterizes the relations more S-shaped than and more loss averse than for a utility function, and in so doing arrives at a new definition of loss aversion based on average instead of marginal utility.     

Racial Differences in Family Burden

This article examines the clinical implications for social work practice of the differential impact of caregiving strain according to race. Data for this report is drawn from a study of 810 patients in a community-based geriatric assessment center. Although this research found no essential difference, based on race, in the experience of family burden as a social problem, there was a difference within the interaction of race and the care for an elderly person with Alzheimer's disease. The authors suggest a classification scheme of specific interventions for different caregiving groups and subgroups, based on both race and relationship; these selected variables can provide more insight into possible vulnerable caregiving conditions.     

Dynamically Consistent Preferences with Quadratic Beliefs

This article characterizes a family of preference relations over uncertain prospects that (a) are dynamically consistent in the Machina sense and, moreover, for which the updated preferences are also members of this family and (b) can simultaneously accommodate Ellsberg- and Allais-type paradoxes.Replacing the "mixture independence" axiom by "mixture symmetry" proposed by Chew, Epstein, and Segal (1991) for decision making under objective risk, and requiring that for some partition of the state space the agent perceives ambiguity and so prefers a randomization over outcomes across that partition (proper uncertainty aversion), preferences can be represented by a (proper) quadratic functional. This representation may be further refined to allow a separation between the quantification of beliefs and risk preferences that is closed under dynamically consistent updating.     

Expected Utility Consistent Extensions of Preferences

We consider the problem of extending a (complete) order over a set to its power set. The extension axioms we consider generate orderings over sets according to their expected utilities induced by some assignment of utilities over alternatives and probability distributions over sets. The model we propose gives a general and unified exposition of expected utility consistent extensions whilst it allows to emphasize various subtleties, the effects of which seem to be underestimated – particularly in the literature on strategy-proof social choice correspondences.