Leisure Time in Modern Societies: A New Source of Boredom and Stress?

The increase in leisure time over the last century is well documented. We know much less, however, about the quality of the use of leisure time. Quite divergent predictions exist in this regard: Some authors have argued that the new, extensive free time will lead to new forms of time pressure and stress; others have foreseen an expansion of boredom. This is the first paper that systematically investigates the quality of leisure time in 36 countries around the world. It uses the 2007 ISSP-survey “Leisure Time and Sport”. We investigate stress and boredom during leisure time by making use of four general theories about international and intercultural differences. The theories relate to the level of socio-economic development, religious–cultural systems, types of welfare states, and to the emergence of specific “time regimes”. In addition, we control for the effect of relevant individual level variables. At the macro level, significant differences emerge concerning the level of development, the dominant religion, and the extent of welfare benefits. The most interesting finding, however, was that a typology of leisure time regimes is the most suited to explain the considerable differences between the 36 countries compared. Implications of this finding for time policy and further research are discussed in the concluding section.     

Social security reforms and early retirement

Many reform proposals of the social security systems in various OECD economies suggest to scale down the non-actuarial parts of the pension systems. These reforms have a flavor of increased efficiency at the costs of welfare losses for low-income individuals. Assessing the economic effects, we investigate five different reform proposals by means of a numerical overlapping generations model for the Norwegian economy. The model features an endogenous retirement age and heterogeneous individuals within generations. It turns out that the various reforms, which scale down the public non-actuarial pension system, lead to increases in the retirement age and steady-state welfare gains for all income classes. Received: 7 December 2000/Accepted: 29 January 2002 All correspondence to ?ystein Th?gersen. Financial support from the Research Council of Norway (The Economic Research Program on Taxation) is gratefully acknowledged. We are indebted to Lans Bovenberg, John Ermisch, Erling Steigum and two referees for valuable comments and useful discussion. Responsible editor: John F. Ermisch.     

Partner + Children = Happiness? The Effects of Partnerships and Fertility on Well‐Being

Economic and rational‐choice theories suggest that individuals form unions or have children because these decisions increase their subjective well‐being or “happiness.” We investigate this relation using within‐MZ (identical) twin pair estimates to control for unobserved factors, such as optimistic preferences, that may simultaneously affect happiness, partnerships, and fertility. Our findings, based on Danish twins aged 25–45 and 50–70 years old, include the following. (1) Currently being in a partnership has large positive effects on happiness. (2) A first child substantially increases well‐being, in analyses without controls for partnerships, and males enjoy an almost 75 percent larger happiness gain from a first‐born son than from a first‐born daughter; however, only females enjoy a happiness gain from the first‐born child with controls for partnerships. (3) Additional children beyond the first child have a negative effect on subjective well‐being for females, while there is no effect for males. (4) Ever having had children does not significantly affect the subjective well‐being of males or females aged 50–70 years.     

Premium differentiation in the Unemployment Insurance system and the demand for labor

We simulate the effect of the introduction of premium differentiation (experience rating) in the Dutch Unemployment Insurance system on the demand for labor for a variety of sectors in the Dutch economy. For the simulations we use the Bentolila and Bertola (1990) framework as a point of departure. In the simulations, the introduction of experience rating is modeled as expenditure neutral: in the absence of premium differentiation the cost of financing UI is modeled as a wage tax (independent of the number of workers fired by the firm), whereas in the presence of experience rating this cost is attributed to firing cost (affected by the firing action). Thus, the introduction of experience rating results in a shift from wage cost to firing cost. Following the political debate on the issue in the Netherlands, we assume that the introduction of experience rating does neither lead to a change in tax rates paid by workers nor to a change in eligibility rules or replacement rates of benefit claimants. Specific attention is paid to the distinction between young and old workers . In the model, labor adjustment costs (hiring and firing costs) are linear. The model allows for uncertainty in the business cycle.All correspondence to Hans Bloemen. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno     

A characterisation of logistics networks for product recovery

Recovery of used products is receiving much attention recently due to growing environmental concern. Efficient implementation requires appropriate logistics structures to be set up for the arising goods flow from users to producers. We investigate the design of such logistics networks. As a basis for our analysis we review recent case studies on logistics network design for product recovery in different industries. We identify general characteristics of product recovery networks and compare them with traditional logistics structures. Moreover, we derive a classification scheme for different types of recovery networks.     

批判恩斯特·布洛赫的"马克思主义"乌托邦

乌托邦社会的物质产品最大化必然要无限制地掠夺自然资源和能源,然而资源是有限的,对能源的无尽开采又会产生无法消除的污染.这些都会加速人类和地球的毁灭,因而恩斯特·布洛赫武的乌托邦是不可能的.与布洛赫勾勒的"积极闲暇的人间天堂"相反,人类自古就已达到了人性可能达到的高度,人性从来都是具有两面性的.     

Dynamic predicting by landmarking as an alternative for multi-state modeling: an application to acute lymphoid leukemia data

This paper considers the problem of obtaining a dynamic prediction for 5-year failure free survival after bone marrow transplantation in ALL patients using data from the EBMT, the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation. The paper compares the new landmark methodology as developed by the first author and the established multi-state modeling as described in a recent Tutorial in Biostatistics in Statistics in Medicine by the second author and colleagues. As expected the two approaches give similar results. The landmark methodology does not need complex modeling and leads to easy prediction rules. On the other hand, it does not give the insight in the biological processes as obtained for the multi-state model.     

Output-Flexibilität in der Dienstleistungsproduktion

Zusammenfassung  Den Ausgangspunkt der überlegungen bildet die Interpretation von Dienstleistungen als Probleml?sungen, die eine M?glichkeit zur formalen Analyse der Output-Flexibilit?t er?ffnet. Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden in einer eigenschaftsorientierten Betrachtung zun?chst die Komponenten der Output-Flexibilit?t identifiziert, um dann darauf aufbauend ein Kalkül zur Gestaltung der Output-Flexibilit?t von Dienstleistungsunternehmungen abzuleiten.

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Summary  Output flexibility enables the service provider to cope with both uncertainties in demand and the external production factor. This paper aims at formulating a calculus for the design of output flexibility based on production theory. The interpretation of services as specific problem solutions serves as a basis for a feature-oriented modelling of service production.

Die Autoren danken zwei anonymen Gutachtern für wertvolle Verbesserungsvorschl?ge.