AN EVOLUTIONARY EXPLANATION FOR ROTTEN KIDS

We explore how natural selection acts upon genes for cooperation, altruism and selfishness in an prisoner's dilemma played by family members. A key parameter determining behavior is that parents and children have different expectations of future offspring. Examining asexual and sexually reproducing populations we show that which strategy of cooperation and defection proves be stable depends on the relative reproduction potential of the players and what proportion of the population is young. "Rotten kids" with altruistic parents can be a stable outcome where reproductive success is the goal, and natural selection may lead individuals to care about their unborn progeny. (JEL D10, H31)     

AN ECONOMETRIC MODEL OF THE DEMAND FOR CHILD CARE

Child care denotes any arrangement used by a working parent for care of a child, including self-care. This paper is concerned with the factors that influence the demand for market modes of child care by two parent families with working mothers. An econometric model is specified that relates the demand for child care to price, income, and other economic variables. Because of the discrete nature of the child care decision, the multinomial logit probability model is used to analyze the data. The empirical results suggest that the demand for child care is sensitive to both prices and income.     

RISK TAKING FOR ONESELF AND OTHERS: A STRUCTURAL MODEL APPROACH

Economic theory makes no predictions about social factors affecting decisions under risk. We examine situations in which a decision maker decides for herself and another person under conditions of payoff equality, and compare them to individual decisions. By estimating a structural model, we find that responsibility leaves utility curvature unaffected, but accentuates the subjective distortion of very small and very large probabilities for both gains and losses. We also find that responsibility reduces loss aversion, but that these results only obtain under some specific definitions of the latter. These results serve to generalize and reconcile some of the still largely contradictory findings in the literature. They also have implications for financial agency, which we discuss.     

AN INCOME-SATIATION MODEL OF EFFICIENCY WAGES

Efficiency wages are wages that exceed a worker's reservation wage. A standard explanation for such wages is "bonding": high wages increase the cost of being discharged for misbehavior and so help ensure worker honesty. A neglected alternative is "satiation": by decreasing the worker's marginal utility of income, the high wage decreases the benefit from misbehavior. Satiation, unlike bonding, applies even in a one-period model, but it relies on the misbehavior having a monetary benefit and on at least part of the punishment being nonmonetary.     

MULTI-LEVEL VULNERABILITY OF ADOLESCENT MARRIAGES: AN ECO-SYSTEM MODEL FOR CLINICAL ASSESSMENT AND INTERVENTION

This paper utilizes the Transitionally Unintegrated-Externally Open family system type derived from Wertheim (1973,1975) to address the multiple factors that may enhance or reduce the vulnerability of the adolescent marriage. Facilitating and constraining factors on the development of marital system autonomy and competence are identified at the individual, marital, familial and extra-familial levels. Guidelines for clinical assessment and intervention are presented.     

AN ALTERNATIVE TO MANAGED CARE: A GUILD MODEL FOR THE INDEPENDENT PRACTICE OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

As health care is reconfigured by HMOs and managed care organizations, family therapists often have to decide whether or not to cooperate with the new power structures and their ways of doing things. The chief concern of many therapists is the ehtical bind created when the managed care orgranization demands breaches of confidentiality or makes decisions about the course of treatment that may not, in the therapist's opinion, be in the best interest of the family. Associations of independent, nonmanaged care psychotherapists are springing up in response to these dilemmas. This paper describes the philosophical evolution and organizational development of one such association.     

AN EXPLORATORY MODEL OF THE SIZE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME

Through a specific model, this paper explores a promising general framework for unified modelling of the size distribution of income and wealth. The specific model includes physical and human capital accumulation, factoral and size distribution effects, redistributive taxation, economic growth, and other distribution-related mechanisms. The main conclusion is that the general framework can accommodate a wide range of distributional phenomena and still remain analytically tractable. Specifically, the framework allows closed form analytic solution for the first two moments (mean vector and variance-covariance matrix) of the joint distribution over individuals of income, wealth, and other variables.     

A MODEL OF OPTIMAL PLANT SIZE WITH AN APPLICATION TO THE DEMAND FOR COGNITIVE ACHIEVEMENT AND FOR SCHOOL SIZE

A model of optimal plant size is developed which predicts that 1) plants experience increasing returns to in-plants inputs, 2) the relative price of plant output is greater in rural areas than in urban areas, and 3) plants are larger in urban areas than in rural areas. The model's predictions appear to be consistent with behavior in a number of consumer services (e. g., grocery, movie, and library services). These predictions are more rigorously tested and are strongly supported when demand functions for cognitive achievement and for school size are estimated. These regressions also lend support to the quality-quantity model of fertility.     

AN EMPIRICAL MODEL OF PRICE AND OUTPUT BEHAVIOR

This paper proposes a model of short-run price and output behavior and undertakes an initial empirical investigation of the model with data from the manufacturing sector of the U.S. Economy. The model provides a relatively precise specification of the various factors that influence prices and output, and joint maximum likelihood techniques are used to estimate the parameters of the model. The empirical results support the proposition that demand-oriented forces primarily influence output while cost-push forces primarily influence prices and indicate that real interest rates affect both prices and output.     

EQUILIBRIUM STRUCTURE IN AN ECONOMIC MODEL OF CONFLICT

Four different types of equilibrium are possible within a two-player model of society where only armed self-enforcement of property rights is possible. The main underlying parameters are the total resource endowment and the initial distribution of this endowment between the players. The parameter space is partitioned into regions in which the respective types of equilibrium occur The equilibrium types involve positive arms expenditure by, respectively, neither player the richer player, and both players; the latter case involves a sub-type in which the poorer player's entire endowment is expended on arms. (JEL D30, D72, D74)     

AN EMPIRICAL TEST OF THE MEDIAN VOTER MODEL

This paper uses data at the school district level for 257 Michigan school districts to estimate the Bowen equilibrium level of expenditures in each district. The estimation uses a theoretical model of millage referenda that is developed in the paper. Then, the estimated Bowen equilibrium level of expenditures in each district is compared with the actual level. In the average district, the actual level of expenditures is less than 3 percent away from the estimated Bowen equilibrium. This evidence strongly suggests that, for educational expenditures at least, the theoretical median voter model provides a good explanation of empirical reality.     

AN INTERACTIVE MODEL OF INFORMAL ADULT CARE AND EMPLOYMENT

This study examines a multifactorial model of caregiving strain and accommodations, utilizing a sample of 1,146 employed caregivers. Based on a theoretically derived resource and demand model of caregiving outcomes, stepwise multiple regression equations were utilized to assess the contribution of selected caregiver background characteristics, family and work demands, and resources. Demanding aspects of caregiving and work responsibilities were found to contribute the most to caregiving strain and to work and family accommodations. Caregiver health status, job control and co-worker support also contributed significantly to the regression models. These findings underscore that demands at home and at work both contribute to work–family strain, suggesting that interventions are not apt to be effective in reducing the stress on employed caregivers unless they directly reduce the growing time pressures and energy demands experienced by today's workers and family members.

Cette étude analyse le degré de surmenage des auxiliaires de vie en utilisant un échantillon de 1.146 professionnels en activité. Basé sur un modèle conceptuel d'offre et de demande pour ce type de service, une série d’équations régressives par étape a été utilisée afin d’évaluer la prestation de l’échantillon analysé sur la base de ses caractéristiques sociaux démographiques, des charges familiales et professionnelles et des conditions de ressources. L’étude a prouvé que les caractéristiques contraignantes de ce type de profession ainsi que les responsabilités qui s'y rattachent contribuaient les plus au surmenage des auxiliaires de vie; cela ainsi que les aménagements nécessaires entre vie de famille et astreintes professionnelles. L’état de santé, le degré d'autonomie ainsi que le soutien potentiel des collègues de l'auxiliaire de vie ont également une incidence significative sur le modèle régressif. Ces conclusions soulignent que les contraintes domestiques associées à celles du travail contribuent conjointement au surmenage tant dans le cadre familial que professionnel, suggérant que des interventions ne sont pas en mesure de réduire ce surmenage chez les auxiliaire de vie en activité, excepté si elles agissent directement en diminuant le stress lié aux contraintes de temps croissantes et aux exigences en énergie rencontrés par les auxiliaires de vie et leurs familles de nos jours.     

AN EQUILIBRIUM POLITICO-ECONOMIC MODEL

A politico-economic model is developed in which rationally formed forecasts are available to all traders. Systematic government policy is neutral, but a large majority of the electorate, those who adopt rationally formed forecasts but do not know the model, hold the government responsible for the economy's performance. Real and political shocks generate novel feedback effects due to anticipated regime changes. These feedback effects may amplify or dampen the initial shocks; this depends on whether the government follows a high or low monetary growth rate rule and whether inflation or unemployment is the main concern of the electorate.     

ON THE SOCIAL DIMENSION OF TIME AND RISK PREFERENCES: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

When explaining risk taking, intertemporal allocation, and distributing behavior, economists rely on risk, time, and other-regarding preferences but offer no guidance on how these three crucial aspects are interrelated. We report on an experiment exploring such interrelation. For this sake, we compare evaluations of several prospects, each of which allocates certain or risky and immediate or delayed payoffs to the actor and to another participant. We find that individuals are self-oriented as to social allocation of risk and delay and other-regarding with respect to expected payoffs . ( JEL C91, D63, D81)     

THE STRUCTURE OF FAMILY PARADIGMS: AN ANALYTICAL MODEL OF FAMILY VARIATION

The theory of family paradigms provides an integrative framework for under-standing and systematizing the diverse ways that families organize and make sense of family life. Using formal methods of analysis based on logical and geometrical arguments, the priecise implications of models of family types can be investigated and compared. The paradigmatic framework can thus be refined and extended to form a more rigorous theoretical grounding for family typologies is explored and a miltidimensional model is derived the geometry of which is equivalent to, but more succinctly captures, the underlying structure of uariation in family para-digms. In Part II, the resulting model is interpredtd and explored in terms of implications for family theory, theory construction, and family therapy. Clarifying the basic dimensions of the paradigmatic framework also permits more precise exploration of interrelationships among related models of family types, which can be understood as reduced models derivable from the complete geometry of the paradigmatic framework.     

AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF THE DEMAND FOR ABORTIONS

This study uses an economic model of fertility control to estimate the demand for abortions. The results show that the fundamental law of demand holds for abortions, with the price elasticity of demand equal to –.81. Abortions are a normal good with an income elasticity of demand equal to .79. The demand for abortions is also positively related to the labor force participation of women and to being unmarried. Catholic religion, education and the poverty status of women were found to have no statistically significant impact on the demand for abortions.     

PORTFOLIO CHOICE AND RISK ATTITUDES: AN EXPERIMENT

Using financial incentives, we study how portfolio choice (how much to invest in a risky asset) depends on three well-known behavioral phenomena: ambiguity aversion, the illusion of control, and myopic loss aversion. We find evidence that these phenomena are present and test how the level of investment is affected by these motivations; at the same time, we investigate whether participants are willing to explicitly pay a small sum of money to indulge preferences for less ambiguity, more control, or more frequent feedback/opportunities to choose the investment level. First, the observed preference for "control" did not affect investment behavior and in fact disappeared when participants were asked to actually pay to gain more control. Second, while people were indeed willing to pay for less ambiguity, the level of ambiguity did not influence investment levels. Finally, participants were willing to pay to have more frequent feedback opportunities to change their portfolio, even though prior research has shown that people invest less in risky assets (and earn less) in this case . ( JEL B49, C91, D81, G11, G19)     

THE GRAVITY MODEL: AN ILLUSTRATION OF STRUCTURAL ESTIMATION AS CALIBRATION

Dawkins, Srinivasan, and Whalley (“Calibration,”Handbook of Econometrics, 2001) propose that estimation is calibration. We illustrate their point by examining a leading econometric application in the study of international and interregional trade by Anderson and van Wincoop (“Gravity with Gravitas: A Solution to the Border Puzzle,”American Economic Review, 2003). We replicate the econometric process and show it to be a calibration of a general equilibrium model. Our approach offers unique insights into structural estimation, and we highlight the importance of traditional calibration considerations when one uses econometric techniques to calibrate a model for comparative policy analysis. (JEL F10, C13, C60)