HEALTH AND AMENITY EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING

This study shows that climate change would probably reduce mortality in the United States by about 40,000 per year, assuming a 4.5° warmer climate—the IPCC best estimate of temperature change with a doubling of carbon dioxide. Benefits would extend to lower medical costs nationwide. Measuring willingness to pay by wage rates shows that people prefer warm climates and would be willing to give up between $30 billion and $100 billion annually for a 4.5° increase in temperatures. ( JEL Q25, J17, J31)     

THE MASS MEDIA AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE MISSING CHILDREN PROBLEM

This article traces the role of the mass media in the social construction of the "missing children issue' as a social problem. The social construction explanation of social problems offered by Blumer (1971) and Spector and Kitsuse (1977) has been criticized (cf. Best and Horiuchi 1985) for lacking a conception of extra-media influences that can affect audiences beyond the initial viewing situation. Recent work in mass communication indicates that a media logic is adapted by other institutions to amplify television imagery and themes about crime, danger, and child abuse. A case study of the origins and claims and counterclaims about the nature and extent of missing children is combined with an empirical analysis of the impact of various sources of information about the missing children issue in order to demonstrate the process by which a social problem is constructed. The impact of additional information is analyzed by administering a self-report questionnaire to 96 respondents before and after viewing a two-part documentary on the complexities of the issue. The data suggest that mass-mediated imagery and formats forge an interactive informational context for social problems by sustaining what is viewed in one's living room with imagery in bulk mail, milk cartons, and posters. It is further suggested that mass media depictions of problems such as "missing children' carry over into consonant images such as child abuse. This conceptualization is capable of encompassing other accounts of social problems (e.g., "urban legends") within claims-making activity.     

FEDERAL TRANSFER PAYMENTS IN AMERICA: VETERANS' PENSIONS AND THE RISE OF SOCIAL SECURITY

This paper examines the determinants of the adoption of the veterans' pension program and how it served as a prototype for the creation and administration of the federal welfare system in the United States. We provide statistical evidence in the form of an analysis of votes in the House of Representatives that state-based special interests which had supported the ongoing liberalization of the veterans' pension program provided significant support for the adoption of the Social Security Act of 1935. There is clear evidence the social security system was not adopted as a simple extension of state old-age pension programs.     

THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC REWARDS AS DETERMINANTS OF WORK SATISFACTION*

This study investigates the nature and sources of overall work satisfaction in several occupational groups. The effects of three types of work rewards on work satisfaction are assessed. They are: intrinsic task rewards, extrinsic social rewards and extrinsic organizational rewards. Data from 1,385 workers representing five occupational groups suggest that intrinsic rewards followed by extrinsic social rewards, are powerful determinants of satisfaction across all occupational groups. Extrinsic organizational rewards appear to emerge as an important determinant only in lower-level occupations. The implications of these findings for job redesign programs are subsequently discussed.     

THE POLITICIZATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND POLARIZATION IN THE AMERICAN PUBLIC'S VIEWS OF GLOBAL WARMING, 2001–2010

We examine political polarization over climate change within the American public by analyzing data from 10 nationally representative Gallup Polls between 2001 and 2010. We find that liberals and Democrats are more likely to report beliefs consistent with the scientific consensus and express personal concern about global warming than are conservatives and Republicans. Further, the effects of educational attainment and self‐reported understanding on global warming beliefs and concern are positive for liberals and Democrats, but are weaker or negative for conservatives and Republicans. Last, significant ideological and partisan polarization has occurred on the issue of climate change over the past decade.     

ADAM SMITH'S CONCEPT OF SELF-COMMAND AS A SOLUTION TO DYNAMIC INCONSISTENCY AND THE COMMITMENT PROBLEM

How is rationality related to morality and the emotions? In response to Hume, Smith argues that sympathy is about the attenuation, rather than the escalation, of original emotions because sympathy involves judgment. Sympathy means that the spectator understands an emotion felt by the principal by placing him or herself in the principal’s shoes. Such understanding would not take place unless the principal’s emotion is proper in that the principal has attenuated the pitch of the emotion via self‐command, that is, via rational choice. Smith’s notion of sympathy solves the commitment problem: agents command their emotions, which include the temptation to cheat their future selves and others, in order to receive approval. (JEL B12, D01, D64)     

THE PROBLEM OF THE SIBLING AS THE REFERRING PERSON*

This paper is the first concerning observations gathered at our Center during studies of the treatment of families with a chronically psychotic member.' It draws the attention of family therapists to a danger not uncommon in such cases, one that arises when the person referring his family of origin is a sibling of the index patient and, in many ways, the most “competent” and prestigious family member. The theoretical part of the paper and the clinical example that follows are intended to demonstrate how this pitfall can be turned into a springboard for therapeutic success.     

ADOLESCENTS AS A SOURCE OF SOCIAL CONTROL: THE UTILITY OF ADOLESCENT SOCIAL CAPITAL FOR REDUCING VIOLENT DELINQUENCY

Parental social capital has emerged as an important social control component of adolescent delinquency. However, for severe forms of delinquency, such as violence, adolescent social capital is as likely a source of social control as adult social capital. This study uses the first two waves of the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to show that parental social capital has little effect on violence once parental and family characteristics are controlled. However, both neighborhood and school adolescent social capital reduce adolescents' violent behavior in spite of strong controls of peer fighting, prior violent offending, and neighborhood-level variables.     

INSTITUTIONAL DETERMINISM AND THE RISE OF THE WESTERN WORLD

We tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.     

THE DEVELOPMENT AND DECLINE OF MEDIEVAL VOTING INSTITUTIONS: A COMPARISON OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE

This paper argues that in the middle ages voting institutions emerged as mechanisms that allowed rulers to cooperate with subjects on mutually profitable projects. In spite of their utility, many of these voting institutions eventually declined. We test the model on the English parliament and the French estates general. The historical evidence strongly supports our view that these institutions declined in France, but not in England, due to increases in the heterogeneity of voters' interests and the insecurity of French rulers, since these factors made cooperation between French rulers and their subjects more difficult.     

THE GLOBAL VORTEX: SOCIAL WELFARE IN A NETWORKED WORLD

This paper examines the impact of economic globalization on the organization and delivery of social welfare services. Sennett's analysis of the modern networked organization is linked to psychodynamic theory in relation to the loss of ‘containment’ resulting from the demise of the post‐war welfare bureaucracies. This changing environment has generated an anxiety‐ridden and risk‐obsessed society that features surveillance, control and the gradual diminution of civil liberties. The impact of these changes on the ethics of professional social welfare practice has been profound. It is argued that public moral debate in the context of pluralist ethics is required not only for upholding a relational based social welfare practice, but also for preserving an open and compassionate democratic society. The paper concludes with a set of questions that provides a framework whereby practitioners can assess the extent to which different practice organizations support relational practice. This typology can be a tool to enable practitioners to exercise moral agency when making career choices in today's fluid organizational world.     

DEMOCRATIC POLITICS AND THE LONG MARCH ON GLOBAL WARMING: Comments on McCright and Dunlap

The political impasse over global warming legislation stems from obstacles in the mass media arena, public awareness, electoral politics as well as governmental policy. Advocates of global warming policy have to be simultaneously successful in all four major public arenas to prevail. This article provides an overview of the obstacles in each public arena in the United States highlighting the broader context in which McCright and Dunlap's analysis of polarized public opinion operates. Global warming advocates have had their greatest success in the media arena but are checked by the rise of a conservative counter‐campaign as well as media reporting norms, which have contributed to polarized public opinion and limited salience of the issue. Global warming never ranks in the top issue list to which electoral candidates attend, giving it little priority in national electoral contests. Although the House of Representatives passed the Waxman‐Markey Bill in 2009, the bill died in the Senate and will not resurface until the Democratic margin is again large enough to overcome opposition vetoes. At the same time, major legislation has often incubated on the margins of these public arenas for significant time until a political crisis removes the normal obstacles to such major “watershed” legislation. For global warming, the long march through American public arenas appears to have begun.     

FROM SOCIAL PROBLEM TO PERSONAL ISSUE: THE LANGUAGE OF LIFESTYLE

In this paper the way in which the concept of lifestyle has been mobilized in the debate over healthcare in the last decade is analysed. Has the USA become a more compassionate nation as former President George Bush urged? Or have neo-conservative and right-wing groups continued to impede the democratization of well-being? And, in the absence of full democratization through public provision, how have private sector health and fitness industries capitalized upon the lifestyle concept in the marketing of their wares? These questions are addressed as they pertain to the United States in the time immediately prior to and during the Clinton period.     

THE RELATIVE STICKINESS OF WAGES AND PRICES

While many modern business cycle theories posit the existence of nominal wage and/or output price stickiness, their relative importance remains an unsettled issue. Using a structural VAR model, this paper exploits evidence on the behavior of real wages to assess the relative importance of these two sources of stickiness. The empirical results suggest that a positive shock to aggregate demand causes a significant temporary fall in real wages. This is taken as evidence that sticky wages have played a more important role than sticky prices in transmitting aggregate demand shocks to real economic activity in the post-war U.S. (JEL E32)     

FIELD EDUCATION AS THE SIGNATURE PEDAGOGY OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

In its EPAS, CSWE (2008) identifies field education as the signature pedagogy (Shulman, 2005b) of social work education. This article analyzes the field education– signature pedagogy fit. It finds congruence in selected organizational arrangements that are pervasive and routine, and disparities with respect to expectations about public student performance, peer accountability, the view of adaptive anxiety, and accountable talk. This article asserts that practicum effectiveness could be enhanced by a broader application of Shulman's criteria through a greater emphasis on group structures for learning/teaching in the field.     

THE VALUE OF CONSUMER CHOICE AND THE DECLINE IN HMO ENROLLMENTS

Health insurance contracts may restrict consumers' choice of medical provider (e.g., hospital) in order to minimize moral hazard inefficiencies. In this article, I assess the economic value of this strategy by comparing the estimated “option value” that consumers assign to provider choice to the negotiated discounts that insurers can achieve by negotiating with a restricted set of providers (i.e., volume discounts). Using a panel of federal employees' health plan choices from 1999 to 2003, I show that the practice of selective contracting (SC) with a limited set of hospitals reduced health maintenance organization (HMO) plans' expected utility by $62–$118, on average, for a standard reduction in the provider choice set. I also conduct simulations which show that by 2003 health plans using SC were theoretically unable to achieve sufficiently large volume discounts from hospital providers to fully compensate for the associated utility losses. My results help to explain the flight from HMO enrollments that occurred in the early 2000s. (JEL I10, I11, L15, D83, D12)