Electronic Play,Study, Communication,and Adolescent Achievement, 2003–2008

Adolescents’ time spent messaging, exploring websites, and studying on the computer increased between 2003 and 2008. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement, this study examines how such changes have influenced individual achievement and behavior from childhood to adolescence. Greater communications and Internet web time proved detrimental to vocabulary and reading whereas the increased use of computer games was associated with increased reading and problem‐solving scores, particularly for girls and minority children. Increased use of the computer for studying was associated with increased test scores for girls, but not boys. The consequences are more benign than many feared. Groups that have traditionally used the computer less (girls, minority children) appear to benefit from greater use.     

Implications of behavioural economics for financial literacy and public policy

This paper summarizes and highlights different methodological approaches to behavioural economics in the context of the conventional economic wisdom and the implications of these different methodological approaches for financial literacy, related institutional change, and public policy. Conventional economics predicts no substantive improvement from improvements to financial literacy. The errors and biases approach to behavioural economics suggests limited improvements to decision making from financial education as errors and biases are largely hardwired in the brain. Government and expert intervention affecting individual choice behaviour is recommended. The evidence suggests that the bounded rationality approach to behavioural economics, with its focus on smart decision makers and the importance institutional and environment constraints on decision making, is the most promising lense through which to analyse financial decision making. From this perspective, financial decision making can be improved by providing decision makers with better quality information presented in a non-complex fashion, an institutional environment conducive to good decisions, an incentive structure that internalize externalities involved in financial decision making, and financial education that will facilitate making the best use of the information at hand within a specific decision-making environment.     

Historic Preservation and Elementary Student Extracurricular Community Service

Elementary students survey buildings in an extracurricular community service project to learn social studies and historic preservation. From these experiences students formed values and dispositions by engaging in a constructivist process of creating knowledge by examining their community. They gathered data, transformed it into information, and shared it with the larger community. Because students learned what community means in reality, not just reading about it, they had a different understanding of how they related to the place they called home. Examining these types of questions helped elementary students have significant experiences that helped them to connect community members with the importance of place. The built environment is the context for historic structures. Student engagement with the social studies curriculum allowed them to create investigations with architecture to broaden their understanding of their world.     

“Gone to work to America”: Irish step-migration through south Wales in the 1860s and 1870s

Why did the Irish-born population of Wales decline so sharply in the decade 1861–1870? This paper argues that during the 1850s and 1860s, large numbers of Irish men and women travelled to south Wales in order to finance emigration to the USA. Using the US Federal Census, this paper shows how Irish step-migration through Wales led principally to the Pennsylvania coalfields. This type of migration is termed the Knight’s-move: a sideways move from agriculture into heavy industry, in order to advance forward across the Atlantic. The Knight’s-move challenges previous assumptions about immigration into the south Wales coalfield during the nineteenth century.     

Bargaining over waiting time in ultimatum game experiments

While preference-based explanations play an increasing role in economics and sociology, the accurate measurement of social preferences deserves more attention. Most laboratory experiments measure social preferences by studying the division of “a cake that nobody had to bake” (Güth and Kliemt, 2003). This article reports results of the first ultimatum game experiment with bargaining over waiting time. The experiment was created to avoid effects of windfall gains. In contrast to donated money, time is not endowed by the experimenter and implies a natural loss to subjects. This allows for a better measurement of the inherent conflict in the ultimatum game. We implemented three anonymity conditions; one baseline condition, one condition with anonymity among subjects and one double-blind condition in which the experimenter did not know the division of waiting time. While we expected to observe less other-regarding behavior in ultimatum game bargaining over time, our experimental results rather confirm previous ultimatum game experiments, in which people bargained over money. The modal offer was half of the waiting time and only one offer was rejected. Interestingly, anonymity did not change the results significantly. In conclusion, our experiment confirms other-regarding behavior in the ultimatum game.     

Between Neo-liberalism and Neo-indigenismo: Reconstructing National Identity in Mexico

Heightened integration with the US coupled with the rise of an indigenous movement have challenged and strained long-held images regarding the US and the indigenous within Mexico. As a result, Mexico finds itself facing the difficult task of re-evaluating and reconstructing its national identity. This paper explores the traditional images of the US and the Indian shaping national identity in Mexico and the challenges posed today by neo-liberalism and neo-indigenismo. It sets out a range of current issues, explores the linkages and contradictions, and examines the state of national reform. Fundamentally, the paper strives to raise important theoretical questions and hence set the stage for further research into these issues.