Japanese and American Identities: Values and Their Transmission in the Family

In this paper, we are studying social identities within a cross-national framework as they are reflected in values regarding social institutions. We compare value items to infer similarities and differences between Japan and the US, but more importantly we analyze value configurations, using factor analysis, as an expression of underlying cultural expectations. We also argue that the way values are transmitted further defines the distinctive cultural basis of social identities. Using a unique data set, The Generations Survey , we propose to contribute theoretically and methodologically to understanding the role of culture in postmodern societies. Our research, based on identical national surveys collected in 1995, provides a systematic way to compare values in two countries. The research builds on and specifies existing ethnographic case studies and in-depth interviews around a variety of themes that shape social identities such as the link between family and work expectations, the role of ethical values in business, the importance of national identification, and the meaning of community involvement. The paper concludes by suggesting that despite homogenizing trends and surface similarities, cultural distinctiveness persists in the ways values cluster and is transmitted in the family, shaping the social identities of Japanese and US respondents.     

A class of symmetric bivariate uniform distributions

A class of symmetric bivariate uniform distributions is proposed for use in statistical modeling. The distributions may be constructed to be absolutely continuous with correlations as close to±1 as desired. Expressions for the correlations, regressions and copulas are found. An extension to three dimensions is proposed.     

Useful relationship between the log-survival function and truncated moments,with applications

We present a new characterization technique extracted from a well known idea in statistical inference. We use the partial derivative of the logarithm of the survival function in connection with truncated moments to characterize several probability distributions. Our methods introduce a unified technique to obtain several well known results in a unified way.     

Institutional Constraints and Deforestation: An Application to Mexico

Following North (1990), this article hypothesizes that effective rural institutions may impose additional costs on tropical deforestation through agricultural conversion. This allows a formal agricultural household analysis of institutional constraints on deforestation and therefore a method of empirically testing whether there is any significant difference in the actual level of forest land conversion under institutional constraints compared to the level of conversion under pure open access. A dynamic panel analysis for agricultural planted area in Mexico at state level and over the 1960–85 period confirms that institutional constraints on land clearing affected deforestation during the pre-NAFTA era.     

EXAMINING THE WAGE DIFFERENTIAL FOR MARRIED AND COHABITING MEN

Wage analyses indicate that married and cohabiting men earn more than do single, noncohabiting men. This article examines the nature of these wage differentials using data from the National Survey of Families and Households. Results indicate that the marital and cohabitation differentials are quite distinct. The higher wage observed for cohabiting men is driven primarily by selection and is eliminated by first differencing, but the higher wage observed for married men (and perhaps long-term cohabiters) arises largely because of differential wage growth. Wages appear to rise more rapidly following marriage.     

An Interview with Joyce Edward: Exemplary Clinician, Advocate, and Scholar

Over the years, noteworthy social workers have been interviewed for the Clinical Social Work Journal. This article features an interview with Joyce Edward who is recognized for her many extraordinary contributions to clinical social work. Joyce has co-written or co-edited three exceptional books for the social work clinician, she has been an esteemed teacher and a vocal activist for quality mental health care. In this interview Joyce reflects on family influences, her work as a social caseworker, the psychoanalytic luminaries with whom she trained, her concerns about the clinical education of today's social work students, and finally, her perspective on managed mental health care.     

TOOLS OR TOYS? THE IMPACT OF HIGH TECHNOLOGY ON SCHOLARLY PRODUCTIVITY

We examine the impact of communication technology on scholarly productivity by considering patterns of coauthored economics articles. Using articles in three major economics journals from 1970–79 and 1992–96, we find (1) sharp growth from distant coauthorships (authors not in the same metropolitan area prior to publication), as the theory predicts, and, contrary to theory, (2) lower productivity of distant than close-coauthored works and no decline in their relative disadvantage. These findings are reconciled by noting that high technology has aspects of a consumer good. The relative productivity of solo-authored articles has decreased, perhaps explaining the secular increase in coauthorship.