Persisting Differences or Adaptation to German Fertility Patterns? First and Second Birth Behavior of the 1.5 and Second Generation Turkish Migrants in Germany

In this study, we use data of the German Mikrozensus to explore first and second birth behavior of migrants’ descendants. Whereas prior waves of the Mikrozensus only included respondents’ citizenship, in the survey years 2005 and 2009 also parental citizenship has been surveyed. This allows us to identify respondents’ migrant backgrounds, even if they have German citizenship. We distinguish those who migrated as children (1.5 generation) from those who were born to Turkish parents in Germany (second generation migrants). We compare both migrant generations to German non-migrants. Using discrete-time hazard models, our results show that 1.5 generation migrants have the highest probability of having a first and second birth, while German non-migrants have the lowest birth probabilities. The second generation lies in-between. This pattern also persists after taking the educational attainment of respondents into consideration. However, there seems to be an adaptation of highly educated second generation Turkish migrants to non-migrant Germans: we find no significant differences in the probability of having a first birth in the two groups. For second births, we do not find this pattern which might be related to the young age structure in the sample of second generation migrants.     

Optimum mixture designs in a restricted region

In a mixture experiment, the response depends on the proportions of the mixing components. Canonical models of different degrees and also other models have been suggested to represent the mean response. Optimum designs for estimation of the parameters of the models have been investigated by different authors. In most cases, the optimum design includes the vertex points of the simplex as support points of the design, which are not mixture combinations in the true non-trivial sense. In this paper, optimum designs have been obtained when the experimental region is an ellipsoidal subspace of the entire factor space which does not cover the vertex points of the simplex.     

Direct Payments and Social Work Practice: The Significance of 'Street-Level Bureaucracy' in Determining Eligibility

Sponsored both by governments intent upon fiscal restraint anduser movements keen to extend choice and control, ‘cash-for-care’schemes are replacing direct services across mature welfarestates. Recent legislation on direct payments, which has enactedthe UK version of cash-for-care, has attracted considerableresearch interest in the UK. Previous studies point to a numberof tensions for social workers in the implementation processwhich give rise, in turn, to considerable uncertainty, evenhostility, on the part of front line staff. This article, whichdiscusses the findings of a study of assessment and care managementpractice in one English council, seeks to make sense of socialworkers’ approach to the allocation of direct paymentsby reference to Lipsky’s (1980) theory of ‘street-levelbureaucracy’. The author concludes that despite ten yearsof managerialism, in the course of which professional practicehas been routinized and regulated, Lipsky’s work is stilluseful in analysing front line behaviour around direct payments.     

Eliciting decision weights by adapting de Finetti’s betting-odds method to prospect theory

This paper extends de Finetti’s betting-odds method for assessing subjective beliefs to ambiguous events. Thus, a tractable manner for measuring decision weights under ambiguity is obtained. De Finetti’s method is so transparent that decision makers can evaluate the relevant tradeoffs in complex situations. The resulting data can easily be analyzed, using nonparametric techniques. Our extension is implemented in an experiment on predicting next-day’s performance of the Dow Jones and Nikkei stock indexes, where we test the existence and nature of rank dependence, finding usual patterns. We also find violations of rank dependence.

On Myopic Stability Concepts for Hedonic Games

We present a unified look at myopic stability concepts for hedonic games, and discuss the status of the existence problems of stable coalition structures. In particular, we show that contractual strictly core stable coalition structures always exist, and present a sufficient condition for the existence of contractually Nash stable coalition structures on the class of separable games. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (D. Dimitrov)“by “D. Dimitrov gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.     

Whom should we believe? Aggregation of heterogeneous beliefs

We examine the collective risk attitude of a group with heterogeneous beliefs. We prove that the wealth-dependent probability distribution used by the representative agent is biased in favor of the beliefs of the more risk tolerant consumers. Moreover, increasing disagreement on the state probability raises the state probability of the representative agent. It implies that when most disagreements are concentrated in the tails of the distribution, the perceived collective risk is magnified. This can help to solve the equity premium puzzle. We show that the trade volume and the equity premium are positively correlated.

Environmental disasters as risk regulation catalysts? The role of Bhopal,Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez,Love Canal,and Three Mile Island in shaping U.S. environmental law

Unexpected events such as environmental catastrophes capture wide public attention. Soon after five major shocks—Three Mile Island, Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill—Congress voted on new risk regulation. This paper conducts an event study to test whether individual congressional representatives were “shocked” by these environmental disasters into increasing their probability of voting in favor of risk legislation. On average, representatives were less likely to vote in favor of bills tied to these five events. Significant heterogeneity in representatives’ responses to these shocks is documented. Liberal Northeast representatives were most likely to increase their pro-environment voting in the aftermath of these shocks.