Who Enjoys the Fruits of Growth? Impact of Governments and Markets on Living Standards in Germany,The Netherlands and the U.S.A., 1987–1996

The 1980s and 1990s have been decades of quitegood economic growth in North America and muchof Western Europe. But how have the fruits ofgrowth been shared? This paper reviews changingincome distributions in the U.S., Germany and theNetherlands. These three countries may be takenas exemplars and leading economic performers in``the three worlds of welfare capitalism''(Esping-Andersen, 1990). The U.S. is a liberalwelfare-capitalist state, Germany a corporatiststate, and the Netherlands (less clearly) asocial democratic welfare-capitalist state. Thepaper focuses particularly on income changes inthe bottom, middle and top quintiles and takesa ten year period into account.Previous analyses have shown that labor andmarket income dispersion are increasing, withincreased returns to human capital. Thepotential impact of government through thetax-transfer system has been largely ignored.All three governments redistribute income fromthe rich to the poor. However, the paper showsthat only the Dutch government hasredistributed sufficiently to ensure that thebottom quintile has gained along with others.In Germany and the U.S. the poorest quintile wasconsiderably worse off in absolute terms at theend of the decade.than the beginning. TheGerman government somewhat counteracted thetrend towards greater income dispersion byredistributing to the poorest quintile, so theloss of market income was partly compensated. In the U.S. the impact of government on thepoorest quintile stayed about the same, so thisgroup ended up with about the same decrease indisposable income as market income.The U.S., Germany and the Netherlands are theonly three countries for which ten or moreconsecutive years of panel data are available.The data come from the PSID-GSOEP EquivalentFile 1980-97 and from a comparable fileconstructed from the Dutch SEP data.

     

Strategy versus sincerity in mean voting

This paper focuses on the mean vote procedure for choosing the quantity of a public good, a social choice rule that selects the mean of the quantities voted for. The available theoretical models of mean voting give rise to conflicting predictions about the extent of the strategic bias that might arise in the individual vote. An experiment has been run in order to assess whether the participants disclose their (induced) preferences in voting or whether they strategically manipulate their vote, and in the latter case, which variables impact upon the likelihood of strategic bias and to what extent.     

Toward an Animal Model of Gambling: Delay Discounting and the Allure of Unpredictable Outcomes

Laboratory investigations of gambling are sometimes criticized as lacking ecological validity because the stakes wagered by human subjects are not real or no real monetary losses are experienced. These problems may be partially addressed by studying gambling in laboratory animals. Toward this end, data are summarized which demonstrate that laboratory animals will work substantially harder and prefer to work under gambling-like schedules of reinforcement in which the number of responses per win is unpredictable. These findings are consistent with a delay discounting model of gambling which holds that rewards obtained following unpredictable delays are more valuable than rewards obtained following predictable delays. According to the delay discounting model, individuals that discount delayed rewards at a high rate (like pathological gamblers) perceive unpredictably delayed rewards to be of substantially greater value than predictable rewards. The reviewed findings and empirical model support the utility of studying animal behavior as an ecologically valid first-approximation of human gambling.     

In their Own Right: Translating the Policy of Carer Assessment into Practice

Successive legislation has underscored the importance of assessmentsthat are sensitive to the needs of carers and take into accounttheir ability and willingness to continue caring. This papersynthesizes qualitative and quantitative findings from a continuingprogramme of carer-related research that began in 1993 and hascontinued in parallel with legislative changes. It considersthe process and characteristics of carer assessment from theperspectives of carers for individuals with a range of healthand social care needs, and practitioners. This paper exploresthe assessment of carer need over time and highlights the considerableand enduring gap between policy and practice. It considers practitioners’reluctance to offer separate carer assessments, identifies confusionrelating to the interpretation of eligibility criteria and documentsthe limited contribution of health service staff. The need foran evidence-based framework for good practice, that distinguishesbetween carer needs, service provision and carer outcomes, ishighlighted. The paper concludes by identifying key changesthat are necessary to promote future good practice, such asstaff training and information strategies and the need for practitionersto engage with carers as partners in the care process.     

Music: an exception to Creole exceptionalism? Cape Verdean national identity and creativity post-independence

This article focuses on the interrelationship between the Cape Verdean Creole (CVC) language and music as it has developed over time in literature, composition and performance experience. The written record demonstrates that, over time, a blend of scholar-practitioners, trained academics who often engaged in both the study and composition of lyrics and music, blurred the lines of the oral and written hierarchy in CVC, ultimately co-fashioning the relationship between language and music as essential to identity alongside the many existing creative practitioners working exclusively in the oral realm. Since independence, too, a major intellectual project of Cape Verdean writers has been to celebrate the work of practitioners in a scholarly fashion. Simultaneously, many practitioners have worked to reclaim and reinvigorate traditional music genres. This has contributed immensely to both the understanding and creative expression of Cape Verdean national identity, or caboverdianidade. This article also takes on an ethnographic inquiry into the creative process and aesthetic preferences that bring together CVC and Cape Verdean music. It becomes clear that CVC is widely considered by Cape Verdean songwriters to be the best language for composition and performance on a number of grounds – sonic, aesthetic, linguistic and sociopolitical reasons among them.     

Process Tracing Analysis of Hurricane Information Displays

To study people's processing of hurricane forecast advisories, we conducted a computer‐based experiment that examined 11 research questions about the information seeking patterns of students assuming the role of a county emergency manager in a sequence of six hurricane forecast advisories for each of four different hurricanes. The results show that participants considered a variety of different sources of information—textual, graphic, and numeric—when tracking hurricanes. Click counts and click durations generally gave the same results but there were some significant differences. Moreover, participants’ information search strategies became more efficient over forecast advisories and with increased experience tracking the four hurricanes. These changes in the search patterns from the first to the fourth hurricane suggest that the presentation of abstract principles in a training manual was not sufficient for them to learn how to track hurricanes efficiently but they were able to significantly improve their search efficiency with a modest amount (roughly an hour) of practice. Overall, these data indicate that information search patterns are complex and deserve greater attention in studies of dynamic decision tasks.     

Educating collaborative planners: strengthening evidence for the learning potential of multi-stakeholder regional learning environments

Abstract

Planning education needs effective learning environments that support students’ boundary crossing competence development. The multi-stakeholder regional learning environment (RLE) is, by its typical design, hypothesized to foster boundary crossing. This quasi-experimental mixed method pre- and post-test study affirms the effectiveness of the RLE for stimulating competence development, and specifically shows the added value of three typical ‘boundary crossing’ RLE design characteristics, i.e. working in multidisciplinary student groups, working intensively with multiple stakeholders, and a high coaching intensity. Results strengthen previous findings, and contribute to the debate in planning education on an evidence-based pedagogical fundament for commonly used authentic learning environments.