Do the Health Benefits of Marriage Depend on the Likelihood of Marriage?

Marriage promotion initiatives presume substantial health benefits of marriage. Current literature, however, has provided inconsistent results on whether these benefits would be shared by people unlikely to marry. We investigate whether the physical and mental health benefits of marriage depend on the likelihood of marriage. Whereas prior studies have compared health benefits of marriage across a single predictor of marriage chances, we define the likelihood of marriage as a composite of demographic, economic, and health characteristics. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we find that married adults are only modestly healthier than unmarried adults in both physical and mental dimensions. People with a higher likelihood of marriage generally do not reap greater health benefits from marriage than their counterparts. The only exception is that continuous marriage is more strongly associated with improved mental health among men who are more likely to be married.     

Foundation ownership and shareholder value: an event study

Review of Managerial Science - Some of the largest listed firms in Western and Northern Europe are partly owned by foundations. So far, little research exists about the shareholder value effects of...     

PRIMING THE CHARITABLE PUMP: AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF TWO‐STAGE RAFFLES

We experimentally study two‐stage self‐financing raffles in which participants can buy tickets in two stages. In all raffles, one half of the proceeds are donated to a local charity and the raffle winner wins the other half. The mechanisms differ by what happens to the tickets purchased in the first stage. In the complete draw down two‐stage raffle, the first stage tickets are eliminated from the active pool of tickets, while in the no draw down raffle they remain in the active pool. We find that both two‐stage raffles initially perform better than the standard one‐stage 50–50 raffle. Over time, the aggregate contribution level in the complete draw down raffle declines and approaches that of the one‐stage raffle, while in the no draw down raffle contributions are stable and remain higher than those in the other two mechanisms. In both two‐stage raffles, we observe a positive correlation between the proceeds of the first stage and the number of tickets bought in the second stage. Our results are at odds with a standard warm glow model of giving, and also cannot be explained by the joy of winning or learning about bidders' types. (JEL C72, C92, D64)     

THE OPTIMAL ALLOCATION OF PRIZES IN TOURNAMENTS OF HETEROGENEOUS AGENTS

Tournaments are widely used in organizations, explicitly or implicitly, to reward the best‐performing employees, for example, by promotion or bonuses, and/or to penalize the worst‐performing employees, for example, by demotion, withholding bonuses, or unfavorable job assignments. These incentive schemes can be interpreted as various prize allocations based on the employees' relative performance. While the optimal prize allocation in tournaments of symmetric agents is relatively well understood, little is known about the impact of the allocation of prizes on the effectiveness of tournament incentive schemes for heterogeneous agents. We show that while multiple prize allocation rules are equivalent when agents are symmetric in their ability, the equivalence is broken in the presence of heterogeneity. Under a wide range of conditions, loser‐prize tournaments, that is, tournaments that award a low prize to relatively few bottom performers, are optimal for the firm. The reason is that low‐ability agents are discouraged less in such tournaments, as compared to winner‐prize tournaments awarding a high prize to few top performers, and hence can be compensated less to meet their participation constraints. (JEL M52, J33, J24)     

Africa and ICT: A Chance for Breakthrough?

This article reviews the current situation of ICTs in Africa and assesses the degree of proliferation of new technologies around the continent. Particular attention is paid to exploring the problem of the digital divide and specifying the key factors that impede the spread of ICT progress on the continent. There are several realistic ways in which African nations may benefit from ICT, including immediate and tangible results in medicine, education and economic development. The authors set forth a number of recommendations on bridging the infrastructure and knowledge gap. They also evaluate the efficiency of regional initiatives and international assistance programmes to Africa for enhancing the ICT sector and study the phenomenon of cultural imperialism in this respect. In conclusion, the authors speculate on the future of ICT in Africa and on the continent's ability to bridge the development gap with the help of new technologies.     

Conflicting Holocaust narratives in Moldovan nationalist historical discourse

The effort to build a patriotic, usable past for Moldova has led important Moldovan post‐Soviet historians of the pan‐Romanian school to de‐emphasize and rationalize the Holocaust for fear of it staining a national myth grounded in Romanian victimization narratives. Much of this strategy has been focused on the Jewish connection to Soviet communism in interwar greater Romania, which supposedly undermined the Romanian state and thereby warranted a public outcry against the Jews. The construction and use of this interwar “mismemory” has been mimicked by post‐Soviet historians in recent years, whereby greater social, political and economic problems are glossed over in preference for a specifically threatening Jewish anti‐Romanianism. One’s position on this historical debate is seemingly important enough to influence one’s national credentials in the public forum.     

Health care proxies: whom do young old adults choose and why?

Dying persons are encouraged to name as durable power of attorney for health care (DPAHC) someone who will thus be empowered to make end-of-life treatment decisions for them in the event that they become incapacitated. We use data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study to investigate whether and whom older adults designate as their DPAHC. DPAHC appointments are affected by recent hospitalizations, personal beliefs (including religion, fear of death, and the belief that doctors rather than patients should control health care decisions), and personal experience with the recent painful death of a loved one. The selections of DPAHC designees are generally consistent with the hierarchical compensatory model: Married persons overwhelmingly name their spouses, while unmarried parents appoint their children. Women are more likely than men to rely on children. Parents of one or two children tend to bypass their children for another relative. Unmarried, childless persons show considerable heterogeneity in their choices. We discuss implications of these findings for health care policy and practice.     

Continuation Commitment: Family’s Commitment to Continue the Family Business

This study investigates what influences families’ commitment to continue a family business, or continuation commitment. We hypothesize that top executives’ cultural capital, family members’ satisfaction with the firms past performance and their aspirations regarding its future performance, as well as the level of family involvement in the family business represent key factors underlying continuation commitment. In addition, we suggest the interaction effects among the identified factors that affect a family’s commitment will be higher in the founder generation compared to successive generations of family owners. Analysis of a dataset of 2,168 family firms from a nationwide survey provided support for most hypotheses.     

Divergent Pathways to Assimilation? Local Marriage Markets and Intermarriage Among U.S. Hispanics

The growing diversity of the U.S. population raises questions about integration among America's fastest growing minority population—Hispanics. The canonical view is that intermarriage with the native‐born White population represents a pathway to assimilation that varies over geographic space in response to uneven marital opportunities. Using data on past‐year marriage from the 2009–2014 American Community Survey, the authors demonstrate high rates of intermarriage among Hispanics. The analyses identify whether Hispanics marry coethnics, non‐co‐ethnic Hispanics, non‐Hispanic Whites, non‐Hispanic Blacks, or other minorities. The authors highlight variation by race, nativity, and socioeconomic status and reveal that Hispanics living in new immigrant destinations are more likely to intermarry than those living in traditional Hispanic gateways. Indeed, the higher out‐marriage in new destinations disappears when the demographic context of reception is taken into account. The analysis underscores that patterns of marital assimilation among Hispanics are neither monolithic nor expressed uniformly across geographic space.