A CLEAR AND PRESENT MINORITY: HETEROGENEITY IN THE SOURCE OF ENDOWMENTS AND THE PROVISION OF PUBLIC GOODS

We conduct public goods experiments in which participant groups are heterogeneous in regards to the source of their endowments. We find that this dimension of heterogeneity significantly reduces contributions to the public good, yielding strong support for the Nash prediction of minimal contributions. These minimal contributions arise in environments in which there exists a clear minority in terms of source of endowments. We discuss these results in light of current research on the influence of heterogeneous populations on public goods provision and redistributive policies. (JEL C9, D63, H4, J15)     

Sport and the Basques: Constructed and Contested Identities, 1876–1936

This article explores relationships between sport and the construction and expression of collective identities in the Basque Country of northern Spain. It focuses on the period between the restoration to the Bourbon monarchy in 1876 and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War sixty years later, which was transitional in economic, social and political terms, with pockets of rapid industrialization and the rise of Basque nationalism. It identifies three kinds of relevant sporting cultures: the traditional, local and popular; the adaptive traditional which embraced the new worlds of commercialised leisure; and the imported codified sports, whether elite or commercial, from lawn tennis to football. A key conclusion is that, here as perhaps elsewhere, the new sporting cultures did more to divide the Basques than to unite them.     

Toward a Dialogical Perspective on Agency

The aim of this article is to motivate and outline a dialogical perspective on agency that accommodates centrifugal and centripetal tendencies in current cultural theories of agency. To complement approaches that assume a high degree of integration and clarity, we emphasise the diversity of agency as it is experienced in the open-ended dialogical relationship with a particular other. While these former approaches to agency provide us with the means to examine the influence of social processes such as division of labour and reproduction of community, they tend to underplay the importance of agency as it is embodied and experienced in the lives of particular people. To reflect on this aspect of agency, we will draw extensively on Bakhtin's work, which crosses boundaries between philosophy, psychology and literary criticism, and which is concerned to understand what is personal in activity. In terms of agency, his work draws our attention to the sense of responsibility and potentiality that imbues our dialogues with particular others, the aesthetics and ethics involved in dialoguing with the other, and the sense of dilemmatic choice and intonation that is involved in our dialogue with the other.     

The Beginnings of English Imperialism

Abstract This article looks at a critical stage in the forcible anglicisation of Ireland. Scotland and Wales, and argues that the set of cultural images which provided the moral energy for English imperialism first emerged in the twelfth century, i.e. about four centuries earlier than is commonly supposed. By early twelfth century profound economic, social, military and cultural developments had so transformed England as to mean that the English and Celtic worlds were now sufficiently far apart for the differences between them to be visible to contemporaries, notably to William of Malmesbury, the first to articulate this 'significant otherness' in terms of the classical contrast between civilisation and barbarism.     

The Next-Birthday Method of Respondent Selection

Four procedures for selecting telephone survey respondents withina household unit—Troldahl-Carter, male/female alternation,next-birthday, and no-selection methods—were comparedin a small-sample survey. The data indicate that the next birthdaymethod is a relatively efficient procedure for selecting a samplethat is representative of all household members.     

A System for Monitoring Social Work Activity with the Frail Elderly

Summary This paper describes the development of a recording system foruse by social workers in the long term care of elderly peopleat home. The system can be used by individual staff to plottheir caseload activities and by management in considering problemsof resource deployment. The system consists of Assessment Document,Periodic Case Reviews, a Monitoring Chart and Costing information.The analysis of a cohort of cases in the early phase of theircare are discussed and the possible range of uses for such arecording system considered.     

DEADWEIGHT LOSSES AND THE SAVING RESPONSE TO A DEFICIT

Several recent empirical studies have challenged the conventional wisdom that deficits cause a higher interest rate. Many economists are, however, critical of the seemingly implied theoretical justification—that every individual fully recognizes the size of the deficit and the extent to which it increases future tax liabilities. This paper demonstrates that far weaker information assumptions are needed to obtain an aggregate savings response equal to the deficit: a reallocation of deadweight losses causes Ricardians to save more than their share of the deficit to keep consumption unaffected, allowing for a substantial fraction of Keynesians who save less than their share.     

OPTIMAL PRICES AND ANIMAL CONSUMERS IN CONGESTED MARKETS

We argue that congestion, when it affects the consumption of a commodity, ought to be measured by the product of the number of trips made to a seller and consumption per visit. When intensity of consumption is measured this way, uniform entry fees, the most common way of pricing congested goods, become nonoptimal. A strict user charge can be Pareto efficient. If a uniform entry fee is practiced, we present a model along with experimental data from diverse species subject groups that show consumers reduce visits and consume more per visit; this behavior may intensify the congestion problem.     

MORAL HAZARD, ASSET SPECIFICITY, IMPLICIT BONDING, AND COMPENSATION: THE CASE OF FRANCHISING

In franchising, many of the elements of moral hazard models merge. Issues of two-sided moral hazard, bonding, and asset specificity all play a role. We extend the literature by considering how asset specificity creates an implicit bond and affects incentive pay. This approach implies that if one party posts a larger bond, this improves their incentives and allows enhancement of the other party's incentives through a larger residual income claim. Our empirical work supports this approach. For example, reductions in the specificity of the franchisee's investment due to leasing lowers the royalty rate and raises the franchise fee. (JEL L14, 533)     

The Side Effects of Intervention?

Summary Are families worrying too much about ordinary, everyday difficultiesor are we trying too hard to help, resulting in a kind of systemsoverdose? Through the use of two case examples, the authorsexplore these questions, concluding that social work and otheragencies might be in danger of over-reacting, thereby addingto a family's difficulties. Strategies for change at the familylevel and within the welfare network are discussed.