COSTLY INTERMEDIATION AND CONSUMPTION SMOOTHING

This paper studies quantitatively how intermediation costs affect household consumption loans and welfare. Agents face uninsurable idiosyncratic shocks to labor productivity in a production economy with costly financial intermediation and a borrowing limit. Reducing intermediation costs has two effects: (1) For a given decrease in the interest rate on borrowing, agents' ability to smooth consumption over time improves. (2) The demand for loans increases, which increases the interest rate. The net welfare gain of reducing intermediation costs from 3.927% (U.S. level) to 1% is about 1.14% of equivalent consumption in the baseline economy for an endogenous interest rate and 1.90% for an exogenous interest rate. The gains are distributed unevenly: households at the bottom wealth decile improve welfare by 3.96% and 5.86% of equivalent consumption, while those at the top decile have welfare gains of 0.35% and 0.2%, respectively. Sufficiently high intermediation costs eliminate borrowing and hence the welfare gain of reducing costs is not substantial. The welfare analysis includes transitional dynamics between steady states. (JEL D91, E60, G38)     

Research Note: Education and Training in Genetics in Social Work Programmes Across the United Kingdom

Correspondence to Rachel Iredale, Welsh Institute for Health and Social Care, University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd CF37 1DL. E-mail: riredale{at}glam.ac.uk Summary Genetics is an issue which has only recently come on to theagenda, but it is one that will rapidly assume great significanceas the twenty-first century approaches. This article describesa survey of social work course directors in the UK, undertakento assess their opinions of the likely impact of the new geneticson future social work practice. The results provide baselinedata on education and training on genetics in social work programmesin the UK. Only a small proportion of colleges in the UK currentlyteach genetics, partly because of full curricula, and partlybecause genetics is not perceived to be relevant to contemporarysocial work practice. Other attitudes of social work coursedirectors to the new genetics are also described.     

The Utilization and Training of Volunteers in a Psychiatric Setting

Summary The Volunteer Case Aide Program, which was begun in 1963 atthe Boston State Hospital, Boston, Mass. U.S.A., is ongoingand developing new facets of volunteer intervention in a psychiatricsetting. It is the first program of its kind in the Commonwealthof Massachusetts to utilize the talents of mature communityvolunteers to work in a direct personal, one-to-one relationshipwith the mentally ill and/or emotionally disturbed. The fouroriginal purposes of the program have been carried out. Thecommunity has been brought into closer co-operation with thehospital, and community resources have been utilized in helpingpatients move out of the hospital. Through the creative useof volunteers and part-time psychiatric social workers, theprogram has moved toward diminution of the manpower shortagein the mental health field. The efforts of hundreds of volunteercase aides have contributed to relieving the chronicity of manypatients, and have assisted them to move into community placements. The Associate Leader Training Program, through its weekly trainingmeetings, gives the Associate Leader the responsibility of supervisingnovice case aides. The trained Associate Leader, an experiencedvolunteer, teaches the beginning case aide to understand hisown role with the patient, to relate effectively with the patientand to learn about the hospital operations, treatment modalitiesand pertinent psychiatric and social theories. New volunteergroups under the Associate Leaders' guidance, have proven tobe effective instruments for the expanded teaching and serviceaspects of the Case Aide Program. Given the numerical limitationsof a professional social work staff and with the added resourcesof Associate Leaders, the Program has been able to help manymore patients     

Power at work: reflections on the research process

Reflecting on a research project on workplace learning amongst low-grade staff in the public sector, this paper identifies a number of key issues arising from the research process. The theme which runs throughout the paper is a concern with the nature of power, both in the workplace and in the research process. The research itself focused on a relatively powerless section of the workforce. The process of securing access contributed to the research team's understanding of power relations in the work place and to consideration of the nature of the relationship between the researcher and the researched. The paper identifies a range of sources of power and concludes that researchers must use an understanding of the research process as a part of the findings, not merely a route to findings.     

On the Contingent Valuation of Safety and the Safety of Contingent Valuation: Part 1-Caveat Investigator

This article reports the results of two studies aimed at testing and refining a procedure for estimating willingness-to-pay based monetary values of safety using the contingent valuation method. In spite of the fact that respondents were given the opportunity to discuss various safety issues and key concepts in focus group meetings held in advance of individual interviews, and were also given ample opportunity to revise their responses in the light of the overall pattern of these responses, the results show clear evidence of extensive and persistent insensitivity to the scale and scope of the safety improvements that were specified in the contingent valuation questions, as well as vulnerability to framing effects. This clearly casts serious doubt on the reliability and validity of willingness-to-pay based monetary values of safety estimated using conventional contingent valuation procedures.     

Marriage in Literature

Summary The surface which marriages customarily present to the worldis often misleading. Indeed, one of the central paradoxes inthis most intimate of relationships is that although almosteverybody has some personal and immediate experience of it,and although there is a vast array of social research that haslooked at marriage from the outside, we do not in fact knowmuch—other than from our personal experience—aboutmarriage from the inside. As Mount (1982), in a review of theexperience of marriage and the family in history, comments: It is the essence of marriage that it is private and apart fromthe rest of society. Its ‘selfishness’ or ‘exclusiveness’is not its undertone but its heart and soul (p. 188).     

An Approach to the Management of the Assessment of Practice Placements

Correspondence to Annie Hudson. Lecturer in Social Work. Faculty of Economic and Social Studies, University of Manchester. Manchester M13 9PL Summary This article addresses some of the issues and problems inherentin the assessment of practice placements. and discusses theefforts of one course to devise a method of managing the assessmentprocess. It begins with an identification and brief discussionof those problems, then moves on to review the development ofthe method and describe the system as it currently operates.The second part of the article discusses the need for continuingattention to both the design of the system and its implicationsfor the roles of those most involved, with particular emphasison the role of the tutor. The article concludes by posing somequestions raised therein which have relevance for current debatesabout the future of social work training.