Housing affordability among elderly female heads of household in nonmetropolitan areas

This study investigates the extent and nature of housing affordability for elderly nonmetropolitan female heads of household using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The results indicate that over one-third of elderly nonmetropolitan female heads of household experience housing poverty and that those who rent, who have fair to poor health, and who are minorities are particularly vulnerable. Housing affordability, measured by the concept of housing poverty, identifies households struggling to meet basic needs while the conventional 25% of income for housing expenditures ratio identifies a larger population. The findings suggest the need for multifaceted public policies to address the problem of housing poverty. Her research interests include housing affordability, housing and community vitality, and decision making. She received her Ph.D. from Purdue University. Sooyoun Park is in the same department as a Project Assistant on a USDA-funded research project entitled “Housing Affordability in Rural Areas,” which is a joint project between Nebraska and Wisconsin. Her research interests focus on housing management behavior in relation to housing expenditure burden. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.     

An exploratory study of gambling cross addictions

A growing body of empirical and theoretical research has concentrated on the overlaps and commonalities among chemical and non-chemical (behavioural) addictions. Pathological gambling has perhaps been the most widely researched behavioural addiction and some of this research has concerned the co-existing links between pathological gambling and alcohol/drug addiction in both the gambling substance abuser and the substance abusing gambler (i.e. cross addiction). This study was of an exploratory nature and attempted to gather information and data regarding gambling cross addictions in the UK. To achieve this, 456 letters were sent to all drug and alcohol helping agencies in England requesting such information. This yielded 210 returns (46% response rate). Results indicated that gambling cross addictions occur in both adults and adolescents and were almost exclusively a male condition. However, it must be noted only just over half of the responding agencies had encountered gambling cross addiction and reasons for this are speculated. Results also indicated the existence of various cross addicted subgroups including an adolescent subgroup who were addicted to fruit machines and abused solvents. Future research ideas are also discussed.A more detailed version of this paper is available from the author on request.     

The Independence of Aptitudes,Interests, and Career Beliefs

The importance of client beliefs in career counseling depends on their ability to add unique information about the client over and above that contributed by aptitudes and interests. The Career Beliefs Inventory was administered to 200 Australian students in grade 10 together with measures of Holland's RIASEC interest themes and scholastic aptitudes. The correlations between scales from the three domains showed clearly that beliefs made a contribution distinct from that provided by aptitudes and interests. Even though the results may reflect possible sampling or method variance, career beliefs in this sample added unique information to that traditionally used in career counseling.     

A theory of policy differentiation in single issue electoral politics

Voter preferences are characterized by a parameter s (say, income) distributed on a set S according to a probability measure F. There is a single issue (say, a tax rate) whose level, b, is to be politically decided. There are two parties, each of which is a perfect agent of some constituency of voters, voters with a given value of s. An equilibrium of the electoral game is a pair of policies, b ₁ and b ₂, proposed by the two parties, such that b _i maximizes the expected utility of the voters whom party i represents, given the policy proposed by the opposition. Under reasonable assumptions, the unique electoral equilibrium consists in both parties proposing the favorite policy of the median voter. What theory can explain why, historically, we observe electoral equilibria where the ‘right’ and ‘left’ parties propose different policies? Uncertainty concerning the distribution of voters is introduced. Let {F(t)} _{t ε T} be a class of probability measures on S; all voters and parties share a common prior that the distribution of t is described by a probability measure H on T. If H has finite support, there is in general no electoral equilibrium. However, if H is continuous, then electoral equilibrium generally exists, and in equilibrium the parties propose different policies. Convergence of equilibrium to median voter politics is proved as uncertainty about the distribution of voter traits becomes small.     

Is the GNP fractionally integrated?

The suitability of autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average (ARFIMA) processes for the modeling of US aggregate output is examined. We consider the two most widely used methods for the estimation of the fractionally differencing parameter and discuss the empirical results obtained by applying these methods to the quarterly post-war real GNP as well as to the quarterly post-war real GNP per capita. Contrary to previous findings, we conclude that evidence for a fractional degree of integration is poor.     

The validity of survey responses on abortion: Evidence from Estonia

This paper presents results of a validation survey of abortion conducted in Tallinn, Estonia in April and May 1992. The sample was drawn from patient records in a maternity hospital. Women who had an abortion in that hospital in 1991 were asked about recent abortions as part of a survey about women’s health. More than 80% of the respondents reported having a recent abortion. Some respondents misreported their abortion as a miscarriage. Moreover, some variation in reporting was associated with respondents’ characteristics. Ethnic Estonians were less likely to report their abortion than were Russians, women over age 40 were less likely to report the abortion than younger women, and women who had the abortion late in the first trimester were less likely to report that abortion. There was some evidence that unmarried women were less likely than married women to report their abortion, and that women who had borne three or more children were less likely to report their abortion than women who had borne fewer children. These differences probably stem from the extent to which pregnancy or abortion is considered stigmatizing for women in different situations.     

Sampling Returns for Realized Variance Calculations: Tick Time or Transaction Time?

This article introduces a new model for transaction prices in the presence of market microstructure noise in order to study the properties of the price process on two different time scales, namely, transaction time where prices are sampled with every transaction and tick time where prices are sampled with every price change. Both sampling schemes have been used in the literature on realized variance, but a formal investigation into their properties has been lacking. Our empirical and theoretical results indicate that the return dynamics in transaction time are very different from those in tick time and the choice of sampling scheme can therefore have an important impact on the properties of realized variance. For RV we find that tick time sampling is superior to transaction time sampling in terms of mean-squared-error, especially when the level of noise, number of ticks, or the arrival frequency of efficient price moves is low. Importantly, we show that while the microstructure noise may appear close to IID in transaction time, in tick time it is highly dependent. As a result, bias correction procedures that rely on the noise being independent, can fail in tick time and are better implemented in transaction time.