A SCALE IN SEARCH OF A CONSTRUCT: COMMENTS ON GAVIN AND WAMBOLDT

The article examines some issues raised in Gavin and Wamboldt's (1992) recent study on the Family-of-Origin Scale (FOS) (Hovestadt, Anderson, Piercy, Cochran, & Fine, 1985). The discussion centers on unresolved concerns regarding the validity and utility of the FOS and on unsubstantiated and potentially misleading claims made in the Gavin and Wamboldt article. A case is made for conceptual and methodological precision in the study of family phenomena.     

A response to “the emotional consequences of physical child abuse” by Annaclare van Dalen

The author responds to the article by Annaclare van Dalen (1989), disputing her statement that there is little in the literature about the emotional consequences of child abuse. The author reviews the pertinent literature, which is abundant. The author disagrees with van Dalen's statement that the child experiences physical abuse outside the body, and with the statement that the child experiences sexual abuse as pleasurable. In addition the author disagrees with van Dalen's sharp differentiation between physical abuse and sexual abuse, and proposes that sexual abuse be regarded as a variant of physical abuse.     

What to Do at Low Doses: A Bounding Approach for Economic Analysis

To quantify the health benefits of environmental policies, economists generally require estimates of the reduced probability of illness or death. For policies that reduce exposure to carcinogenic substances, these estimates traditionally have been obtained through the linear extrapolation of experimental dose-response data to low-exposure scenarios as described in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment (1986). In response to evolving scientific knowledge, EPA proposed revisions to the guidelines in 1996. Under the proposed revisions, dose-response relationships would not be estimated for carcinogens thought to exhibit nonlinear modes of action. Such a change in cancer-risk assessment methods and outputs will likely have serious consequences for how benefit-cost analyses of policies aimed at reducing cancer risks are conducted. Any tendency for reduced quantification of effects in environmental risk assessments, such as those contemplated in the revisions to EPA's cancer-risk assessment guidelines, impedes the ability of economic analysts to respond to increasing calls for benefit-cost analysis. This article examines the implications for benefit-cost analysis of carcinogenic exposures of the proposed changes to the 1986 Guidelines and proposes an approach for bounding dose-response relationships when no biologically based models are available. In spite of the more limited quantitative information provided in a carcinogen risk assessment under the proposed revisions to the guidelines, we argue that reasonable bounds on dose-response relationships can be estimated for low-level exposures to nonlinear carcinogens. This approach yields estimates of reduced illness for use in a benefit-cost analysis while incorporating evidence of nonlinearities in the dose-response relationship. As an illustration, the bounding approach is applied to the case of chloroform exposure.     

Male Adolescents: Sexual Victimization and Subsequent Sexual Abuse

Veneziano, Veneziano and LeGrand (2000) found support for the victim to victimizer hypothesis of sexual aggression with 74 sexually abusive youth. This project, a further step in examining this theory (Burton, 2000, Burton, Miller, & Shill, 2002) builds on their ideas with data from 179 adolescent sexual abusers, and supports their findings. In an examination of relationships, gender, modus operandi, and acts, the sexually abused youth were likely to repeat what was done to them. This project also offers a further analysis of how victimization accounts for a significant portion of the variance in perpetration by these youth. Implications for research and practice are offered.     

Benchmark Analysis: Shopping with Proper Confidence

We discuss the issue of using benchmark doses for quantifying (excess) risk associated with exposure to environmental hazards. The paradigm of low-dose risk estimation in dose-response modeling is used as the primary application scenario. Emphasis is placed on making simultaneous inferences on benchmark doses when data are in the form of proportions, although the concepts translate easily to other forms of outcome data.     

Sweatshops and third world living standards: Are the jobs worth the sweat?

Many studies have shown that multinational firms pay more than domestic firms in Third World countries. Economists who criticize sweatshops have responded that multinational firms’ wage data do not address whether sweatshop jobs are above average because many of these jobs are with domestic subcontractors. We compare apparel industry wages and the wages of individual firms accused of being sweatshops to measures of the standard of living in Third World economies. We find that most sweatshop jobs provide their workers an above average standard of living. The authors thank Jeffery Hummel, Charles Murray, Larry Pratt, and Edward Stringham for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Financial support from the American Institute for Economic Research is gratefully acknowledged. The usual disclaimer applies.     

A LOTTO SYSTEMS PROBLEM

A Lotto Systems bet allows the player to nominate n numbers from which (s)he believes the winning six numbers will be drawn, and to bet on all combinations of six of these n numbers. Assume that the winning six numbers come from the nominated n. How many combinations must be entered to guarantee that one combination will include at least five of the winning six numbers? The problem is generalized in this paper, and the method of simulated annealing is used to find solutions for various situations. The case where two supplementary numbers are drawn after the initial six winning numbers is also considered.