AN EMPIRICAL TEST OF RESPONDENT-DRIVEN SAMPLING: POINT ESTIMATES, VARIANCE, DEGREE MEASURES, AND OUT-OF-EQUILIBRIUM DATA

This paper, which is the first large-scale application of respondent-driven sampling (RDS) to nonhidden populations, tests three factors related to RDS estimation against institutional data using two WebRDS samples of university undergraduates. First, two methods of calculating RDS point estimates are compared. RDS estimates calculated using both methods coincide closely, but variance estimation, especially for small groups, is problematic for both methods. In one method, the bootstrap algorithm used to generate confidence intervals is found to underestimate variance. In the other method, where analytical variance estimation is possible, confidence intervals tend to overestimate variance. Second, RDS estimates are found to be robust against varying measures of individual degree. Results suggest the standard degree measure currently employed in most RDS studies is among the best-performing degree measures. Finally, RDS is found to be robust against the inclusion of out-of-equilibrium data. The results show that valid point estimates can be generated with RDS analysis using real data, but that further research is needed to improve variance estimation techniques.     

POINT SHAVING IN COLLEGE BASKETBALL: A CAUTIONARY TALE FOR FORENSIC ECONOMICS

Point shaving is the practice by favored teams of attempting to win by less than the point spread to yield profits for gamblers who bet on the underdog. Consistent with point shaving, strong favorites are anomalously likely to win by less than the spread. To distinguish between innocent and criminal explanations, we (1) exploit information in line movements and (2) isolate games without betting lines to identify games where point shaving is implausible and document similar patterns. The data are better explained by strategic efforts to maximize the probability of winning. These findings highlight the importance of methodology design. ( JEL L83, K42)     

MEASURING PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR THE NEW CHRISTIAN RIGHT: THE PERILS OF POINT ESTIMATION

It has been reported that 30% of American adults support the"sociomoral platform of the Moral Majority" (Simpson, 1983).We lodge several criticisms of this estimate and/or the wayit has subsequently been interpreted, involving the treatmentof "don't know" responses, the selection of response categorycutting points, the passage of time, the effects of questionwording, and substance. We derive a much different estimateof public support for the Moral Majority platform in the sameyear, but our more basic conclusion is simply that public opinionon this issue, as on most complex issues, cannot be fairly reflectedby a single number.     

THE FERTILITY AND LANGUAGE CHARACTERISTICS OF MEXICAN-AMERICAN AND NON-HISPANIC HUSBANDS AND WIVES

In this article cultural and socioeconomic explanations of the effects of language characteristics on the fertility of Mexican-American and non-Hispanic white couples are considered. The impact of husbands' as well of wives' characteristics are estimated on the fertility of a sample drawn from 1980 U.S. census data, using a dynamic model for fertility. The pattern of effects presented is consistent with a cultural explanation that includes the relevence of pronatalist values to the higher fertility of Spanish-speaking Mexican Americans. The greater detail provided by this method also results in the identification of a subset of English-speaking Mexican-American couples who appear to be using a very low fertility strategy and a subset of non-Hispanic whites whose higher fertility is also tied to language characteristics.     

OUTSIDE OWNERSHIP AND WORKERS' EARNINGS AND TENURE

Increasing aggregate concentration in the economy has increased attention to the issues surrounding the outside ownership of enterprises. Outside ownership entails both industrial diversification and various forms of conglomerate ownership and represents an important new direction for studies of economic sociology and labor market segmentation. The article shows that the influence of four measures of outside ownership on worker's earnings and tenure is largely, though not universally, negative. Outside ownership tends to suppress earnings otherwise accruing to workers in companies with high levels of unionization, rapid growth, and high profits. Workers' tenure is influenced negatively by some types of outside ownership but positively by others. Tenure is reduced in subsidiary firms and in industries predominately owned by other industries due to reduced union influence on job tenure in these settings. Average tenure is increased in companies that are spread across several industries. These findings provide little support for dual labor market theories and other economic theories that argue that workers benefit from the market power of their employing organizations. Instead, the findings provide support for theories that stress the dangers to workers' fates arising from the increasing dominance of financial management in economic decision making.     

REPRESENTATIVE TRUST AND RECIPROCITY: PREVALENCE AND DETERMINANTS

This paper provides evidence about the determinants of trust and reciprocal inclinations, that is, a tendency for people to respond in kind to hostile or kind actions, in a representative setting. We investigate the prevalence of reciprocity in the population, the correlation between trust and positive and negative reciprocal inclinations within person, the individual determinants of reciprocity, and the relationship with psychological measures of personality. We find that most people state reciprocal inclinations, in particular in terms of positive reciprocity, as well as substantial heterogeneity in the degree of trust and reciprocity. Trust and positive reciprocity are only weakly correlated, while trust and negative reciprocity exhibit a negative correlation. In terms of determinants, being female and increasing age are associated with stronger positive and weaker negative reciprocal tendencies. Taller people are more positively reciprocal, but height has no impact on negative reciprocity. Psychological traits also affect trust and reciprocity. ( JEL D63, J3, J6)     

KNOWLEDGE AND POWER, BODY AND SELF:

Symbolic interactionists have widely established the tenet that the self is formed in interaction with others. Despite this great contribution, this perspective has tended to sidestep discussions of the relationship between the body and the self and to overlook systems of power and the ways in which they impact upon the self and the body. The more recent contributions of postmodernists and critical theorists have focused on knowledge as a system of power. An examination of a sample of transgendered persons, individuals who endeavor to present alternatively gendered selves within a social system that proclaims males to be men and females to be women, provides a unique opportunity to analyze the ways in which knowledge systems affect gender identity and the embodied self. While individuals are not able to fully escape the dictates of the binary system of knowledge about sex and gender, they are capable of devising alternative ways of "doing" gender that more closely adhere to an internalized sense of self. In the end, individuals neither passively enact nor completely escape the dictates of the binary system of gender knowledge.     

A CHANGE POINT ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF "ENVIRONMENTAL FEDERALISM" ON AGGREGATE AIR QUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES: 1940–98

During President Reagan's administration, environmental policy making was substantially shifted from the federal level to the state and local levels. We use techniques in Bai (1997a, 1997b) to determine change points in the trends of three important air pollution series. We find that the beneficial trends in the emission series began with federal legislation and were not due to the Reagan devolution. However, second-round change point tests indicate that the beneficial trends in the emissions series that began with federal legislation continued unabated following the Reagan devolution. (JEL Q20 , C50 )     

LEAD EXPOSURE AND BEHAVIOR: EFFECTS ON ANTISOCIAL AND RISKY BEHAVIOR AMONG CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

It is well known that exposure to lead has numerous adverse effects on behavior and development. Using data on two cohorts of children from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), this paper investigates the effect of early childhood lead exposure on behavior problems from childhood through early adulthood. I find large negative consequences of early childhood lead exposure, in the form of an unfolding series of adverse behavioral outcomes: behavior problems as a child, pregnancy and aggression as a teen, and criminal behavior as a young adult. At the levels of lead that were the norm in United States until the late 1980s, estimated elasticities of these behaviors with respect to lead range between 0.1 and 1.0. (JEL I18, J13, K49, Q53, Q58)     

SPECULATIVE INTENSITY AND SPOT AND FUTURES PRICE VARIABILITY

This paper develops a simultaneous stochastic rational-expectations model of futures- and spot-price determination. Using the model, we find that increases in what we term speculative intensity increase spot-price variability arising from storage-cost shocks, but decrease spot-price variability arising from demand shocks. In contrast, increases in speculative intensity unambiguously decrease futures-price variability, regardless of the underlying source of disturbances. We are able to develop these comparative-static results because the model has a unique equilibrium.     

ADVANCED STANDING AND BRIDGE COURSES: STRUCTURES AND ISSUES

This study explores the issue of advanced standing in MSW programs in light of the new Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS). Advanced standing structures of MSW programs were studied using a purposive sample consisting of 203 MSW program directors with a response rate of 28% (N=58). The results indicate that slightly more than 15% of programs do not provide advanced standing to incoming students, that slightly more than 63% require a bridge course, and that bridge courses are most often used to increase the academic readiness of students. The study's findings are used to frame a discussion of the significant issues raised by the introduction of a common set of competencies for BSW and MSW students in the new EPAS.     

TIME PREFERENCE AND THE DISTRIBUTIONS OF WEALTH AND INCOME

This paper examines the connection between time preference heterogeneity and economic inequality in a deterministic environment. Specifically, we extend the standard neoclassical growth model to allow for (1) heterogeneity in consumers' discount rates, (2) direct preferences for wealth, and (3) human capital formation. The second feature prevents the wealth distribution from collapsing into a degenerate distribution. The third feature generates a strong positive correlation between earnings and capital income across consumers. A calibrated version of the model is able to generate patterns of wealth and income inequality that are very similar to those observed in the United States. (JEL D31, E21, O15)     

DECEPTION AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: THEORY AND LABORATORY EVIDENCE

We model two‐candidate elections in which (1) voters are uncertain about candidates' attributes; and (2) candidates can inform voters of their attributes by sending advertisements. We compare between political campaigns with truthful advertising and campaigns in which there is a small chance of deceptive advertising. Our model predicts that voters should vote in‐line with an advertisement's information. We test our model's predictions using laboratory elections. We find, in the presence of even a small probability that an advertisement is deceptive, voters become substantially more likely to elect a “low‐quality” candidate. We discuss implications of this for existing models of voting decisions. (JEL C92, D72, D82)     

PRODUCT BUNDLING AND INCENTIVES FOR MERGERS AND STRATEGIC ALLIANCES

This paper analyzes firms' choice of a merger or a strategic alliance in bundling their products with other complementary products. Tying two products of unequal value makes them equally valuable as they become inseparable for purchase. Consequently, firms can charge a higher price for the bundled products than before. If foreclosure is not the main purpose of bundling, firms would prefer strategic alliances to mergers because mergers only intensify competition by internalizing the complementarities of two products. In equilibrium, bundling occurs only through strategic alliances. (JEL L4, L11, L13, L23)     

ABORTION AND CRIME: UNWANTED CHILDREN AND OUT-OF-WEDLOCK BIRTHS

Legalizing abortion can either increase or decrease investments in children's human capital. This article finds that abortion increases the number of out-of-wedlock births. Using data that more directly links the criminal with age when the crime was committed, not age when arrested, and fixing the assumption in previous research that no abortions took place prior to the Roe v. Wade decision in the 45 states affected by that decision, we find consistent significant evidence that legalizing abortions increased murders by over 7%. Linear estimates indicate that legalization increased total annual victimization costs by at least $3.2 billion. ( JEL K42, K14, J24)     

TAXONOMY AND THE EFFECTS OF FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICY

This paper reviews the development of monetarist theory and the circumstances under which emphasis shifted to "fiscalism," discusses Bent Hansen's view that the controversy is largely a sham dispute, and suggests two types of research needed to assess, historically and theoretically, the relative practical importance of the two approaches to reduction or elimination of economic instability.