ANTITRUST POLICY AND MERGERS: THE WEALTH EFFECT OF SUPREME COURT DECISIONS

Many believe that antitrust policy has had a dramatic impact on merger strategies in the United States. For this to be true, enforcement of antitrust laws must affect a wide range of firms, not just those firms whose mergers are contested. This study tests whether or not firms engaged in uncontested mergers are affected by antitrust enforcement, as signalled by Supreme Court decisions. Using event study methodology, we find that antitrust policy against mergers was binding during the 1960s and 1970s as it ulowered the value of targets in ucontested ongoing mergers.     

THE SUPPLY OF CHILDREN'S TIME TO DISABLED ELDERLY PARENTS

This study develops and tests a model of supply of children's time to disabled elderly parents, using data from the National Long-Term Care Survey. The model, which assumes strategic behavior among relatives, offers predictions about effects of changes in the price of paid personal care, parent's wealth, kid's wage rates, public in-kind subsidies of personal care, and parent's relative bargaining power on care provided by children. Although several statistically significant relationships are obtained, the evidence does not generally indicate that children's provision of care to parents is guided by a strategic bequest motive.     

EFFECTS OF INTERVIEWER GENDER, INTERVIEWER CHOICE, AND ITEM WORDING ON RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS CONCERNING SEXUAL BEHAVIOR

We examined factors influencing responses to questions on sexualbehavior among adult respondents 18–49 years old (unweightedN = 2,030) obtained through a random-digit dialing survey. Basedon self-disclosure and perceived control the ory, we hypothesizedthat giving people a choice in selecting the gender of theirinterviewer rather than being assigned an inter viewer, andusing questions that are "supportive" of what may be perceivedof as nonnormative behavior (enhanced items), would increasedata quality relative to, respectively, matched-or opposite-genderinterviewer conditions and standard worded items. The enhanceditems facilitated responding to a number of sensitive topics.However, the effects of item wording on item response are oftenmediated by interviewer conditions. The "choice" results suggestthat giving respondents greater control decreases question threat.However, the overall findings argue for matching respondentsand interviewers on gender over opposite-gender interviewersor allowing respondents to select their interviewer's gender.Wording and interviewer manipulations reduced the discrepanciesbetween men's and women's self-reports of sexual behavior, butthey did not eliminate them, and in some cases they had no effect.The present findings suggest that males tend to be influencedby variations in item wording, interviewer gender, and respondentcontrol across a somewhat wider range of sexual topics. In general,the findings recommend matching respondents and interviewerson gender and the use of more supportive wording in sexual behaviorquestions. However, for assessment of some topics (e.g., sexualviolence) in particular segments of the population (e.g., men),other procedures, such as increasing respondent control, maybe a better choice. Overall, the data support the view thatin terms of preferred procedures, not all sexual topics arecreated equal.     

Between inequality and difference: the creole world in the twenty‐first century

A major theme in contemporary social theory is the questioning and destabilization of boundaries – self/other, culture/nature and gender being the most obvious areas. Not least for this reason, creole identities, ostensibly premised on openness and mixing, deserve renewed attention. Although the term creolization, as borrowed from linguistics, is sometimes used in a broad comparative sense, the creole world refers to the outcome of a particular historical experience, namely that of displacement, slavery, emancipation and its aftermath reverberating into the present. Key terms are uprootedness, cultural mixing and creole languages existing in diglossic situations with metropolitan ones. Creole intellectuals in the Caribbean have celebrated the cultural creativity characteristic of these societies but have been criticized for ignoring class, racism and gender issues. By embracing the egalitarianism and openness of creoledom, they have become vulnerable to criticism of being handmaidens of neoliberalism or neocolonialism. Controversies over creole identity are related to fundamental questions in anthropology. Drawing on material mainly from the Indian Ocean region, in this article I attempt to create a dialogue between debates over creole identity and theoretical questions raised in social and cultural theory concerning the relationship between cultural difference and social inequality.     

HEALTH AND AMENITY EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING

This study shows that climate change would probably reduce mortality in the United States by about 40,000 per year, assuming a 4.5° warmer climate—the IPCC best estimate of temperature change with a doubling of carbon dioxide. Benefits would extend to lower medical costs nationwide. Measuring willingness to pay by wage rates shows that people prefer warm climates and would be willing to give up between $30 billion and $100 billion annually for a 4.5° increase in temperatures. ( JEL Q25, J17, J31)     

The Cost of Hope

Summary A conversation with a woman, recently widowed, living in a poorblack community of London, reveals the difficulty in merelysurviving that she, her family and families like her own presentlyare experiencing. Her concers are with housing, schools, healthcare for herself and her children, ageing when one lives inpoverty, and perhaps most significantly, her gradual loss ofhope that anything can be done to improve her circumstances.The study reported has been done on one single family; it isnot a composite of several families, although clearly, the lifeof this one woman is most representative of families livingwhere she lives.     

A Bedroom for Sheila Cooperton

Summary A series of interviews with a young West Indian girl livingin London reveals the profound effect of housing conditions,and the architecture of poverty generally, on the psychologicaldevelopment of the adolescent. In the reported interviews, whichhave been reconstructed, one begins to appreciate how not havingsomething as simple as one's own bedroom may influence a child'sfeelings about sexuality, sex role distinctions, family, intimacyand the emergence of her very identity. Most significantly,perhaps, is the fact that the child herself (her name has beenchanged) recognizes the relationship between environmental deprivationand the substance of conscious and unconscious materials.