Passing it on: The inheritance of summer houses and cultural identity

As part of an ongoing study of extended kinship with a focus specifically on the non-fungible inherited property of a summer house, interviews were conducted with 60 respondents, second to fourth generation heirs to typically modest summer cottages in New England. While not all of Protestant stock, all come to embrace a cultural identity of inner-worldly asceticism as explicated in Weber’sProtestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, if they are to use the house at all. Such summer houses require disciplined work on the part of their heirs, both to maintain the property and to conserve it “for the glory of God” rather than capitalize on it by selling it off to developers. Sacralized by its heirs, the summer house becomes the focus of their ongoing relations with each other, across and between the generations. The study suggests that the perpetuation of the Protestant Ethic may not require an “iron cage”: instead, the sharing of material property contributes to warm relations among extended kin (currently ignored by sociological analysis of families) as well as to their collective and individual sense of cultural identity. She has edited and contributed to three books on the sociology of the arts and culture (most recently,Paying the Piper: Causes and Consequences of Art Patronage [University of Illinois Press, 1993]). This paper was originally presented at the 1995 Meetings of the American Sociological Association in Washington, D.C.     

Making don't knows make sense: Bourdieu, phenomenology and opinion polls

Despite Bourdieu's huge contribution in sociologically operationalizing some of the principles contained in Husserlian phenomenology, this paper argues that by drawing more from this source his criticisms of opinion polls can be extended theoretically and methodologically. In particular, by being aware of the transitions from doxa or ‘dispositional opinion’ to reflective opinion, Husserlian phenomenology gives a theoretical basis which we can draw on to make concrete methodological elaborations, such as in the use of ‘identification bid’ questions, of Bourdieu's account of the drawbacks of opinion polls.     

Familles of confidence bands for the survival function under the general random censorship model and the Koziol-Green model

Familles of asymptotic 100(1 – α)% level confidence bands for the survival function under the general random right-censorship (GRC) model and the proportional-hazards model of random right-censorship, also known as the Koziol-Green (KG) model, are developed. The family of bands under the GRC model is based on the well-known product-limit estimator (PLE), and this family is rich in that it contains as special cases the bands of Hall and Wellner (1980) and Gillespie and Fisher (1979), and more generally, the GF-type and HW-type bands of Csörg? and Horváth (1986), as well as new bands not previously studied. The familles of bands under the KG model are based on the maximum-likelihood estimator of F under this particular model. We compare the PLE-based bands and the MLE-based bands under the KG model. This enables us to study the loss in efficiency of the former bands when used in a setting where they are not optimal. The notion of asymptotic relative width efficiency (ARWE), defined to be the limiting ratio of the sample sizes needed by the bands to achieve the same asymptotic widths, is employed to compare two bands. Through this efficiency measure it is shown that if the censoring parameter β is known, then the PLE-based bands are highly inefficient relative to the MLE-based bands when β is large. When β is not known, the MLE-based bands are asymptotically conservative. Despite their conservatism, they still dominate the PLE-based bands when β is not too small or equivalently when the degree of censoring is not too light. We also compare the various PLE-based bands under the GRC model. The resulting information is valuable for evaluating competing PLE-based bands. We illustrate the confidence bands by utilizing the well-known Channing House data.     

Increasing effectiveness of modeling

Modeling is the essence of the operations research study. Yet with the exception of rare instances does the model of the study realize its full potential benefits in the business world. In this treatise an attempt is made to familiarize the business world with the types of models that exist including their operational and functional attributes. In order to increase the model and or study effectiveness the essential elements in performance are expounded to illustrate the comprehensiveness required. In conclusion, the recognition that modeling is not a utopia and that many pitfalls exist is explored with recommendations made to diminish or eliminate the negative impact of these shortcomings.     

Managing the Risk of Uncertain Threshold Responses: Comparison of Robust, Optimum, and Precautionary Approaches

Many commentators have suggested the need for new decision analysis approaches to better manage systems with deeply uncertain, poorly characterized risks. Most notably, policy challenges such as abrupt climate change involve potential nonlinear or threshold responses where both the triggering level and subsequent system response are poorly understood. This study uses a simple computer simulation model to compare several alternative frameworks for decision making under uncertainty -- optimal expected utility, the precautionary principle, and three different approaches to robust decision making -- for addressing the challenge of adding pollution to a lake without triggering unwanted and potentially irreversible eutrophication. The three robust decision approaches -- trading some optimal performance for less sensitivity to assumptions, satisficing over a wide range of futures, and keeping options open -- are found to identify similar strategies as the most robust choice. This study also suggests that these robust decision approaches offer a quantitative, decision analytic framework that captures the spirit of the precautionary principle while addressing some of its shortcomings. Finally, this study finds that robust strategies may be preferable to optimum strategies when the uncertainty is sufficiently deep and the set of alternative policy options is sufficiently rich.     

Did tax incentives play any part in increased giving?

Since 2000, increased taxation incentives along with other measures have been used by the government to encourage philanthropy in Australia. Since the new incentives were introduced, claimed gift tax deductions have increased. However, generally, donors are not aware of the new tax incentives for giving and in any case they report that their motivation for giving is not primarily, if at all, to obtain tax incentives. This article examines this paradox and seeks some possible explanations.