Financial Attitudes and Responsible Spending Behavior of Emerging Adults: Does Geographic Location Matter?

The current study examined the role of geographic location on financial achievement attitudes, financial power attitudes, and responsible spending behaviors of emerging adults from a family financial socialization model perspective. Using data from the Emerging Adult Financial Capability Study (EAFCS), the sample consisted of emerging adult college students (N?=?2847) from three unique regions in the United States as well as students from Portugal. Hierarchical linear regression and ANOVA models were used to examine the patterns of similarities and differences among regions according to the family financial socialization model. Results suggest that financial achievement attitudes, financial power attitudes, and responsible spending behaviors differ across locations. Results also revealed that greater financial achievement attitudes and power attitudes were associated with fewer responsible spending behaviors. Results did not indicate that geographic location moderated the link between financial achievement attitudes or power attitudes and spending behaviors. The results suggest that financial education be adapted and conducted in a way that targets particular financial attitudes specific to each distinct region.     

Notes on Monetary Institutions in State and Class Formation Processes

Charles Tilly emphasizes that state formation is a contingent and violent process: states develop as they extract resources, including currency, from a population. Neochartalist approaches to money challenge what I call the extractivist view of state formation because they see currencies as public institutions established by governments, not a resource to be seized from a population. At the same time, neochartalists rarely address how state institutions capable of establishing monetary institutions emerge. In this article, I propose a framework to analyze the entangled development of the institutions of money and state. I then showcase its usefulness by revisiting a series of crowd actions and militarized responses in eighteenth-century Massachusetts and Pennsylvania today known as Shays’ Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion, focusing on the initially ad hoc and then routinized funding mechanism that enabled emerging state actors to deploy armed groups. In closing, I argue that despite the violence involved in the emergence of the institutions of state and money, citizens and inhabitants can begin to imagine democratic ways of institutionalizing money today.     

Empirical Estimates of the NAIRU

Abstract. Empirical studies have found that the non‐accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) has been fluctuating in OECD countries around a constant mean of several percentage points over the past decades. This mean is calculated from the constant terms carried over from the wage and price growth equations. In this paper it is shown that a high proportion of the constant term is a statistical artefact and suggests a new method which yields approximately unbiased estimates of the time‐invariant NAIRU. Using data for OECD countries it is shown that the constant‐term correction lowers the unadjusted time‐invariant NAIRU by approximately half.     

Working For God? Evidence From A Change In Financing Of Nonprofit Health Care Providers In Uganda3

What motivates religious nonprofit health care providers? This paper uses a change in financing of nonprofit health care providers in Uganda to test two theories of organizational behavior. We show that financial aid leads to more laboratory testing, lower user charges, and increased utilization. These findings are consistent with the view that religious nonprofit providers are intrinsically motivated to serve (poor) people and that these preferences matter quantitatively. (JEL: L31, I11 O15)     

Gambling Motives in a Representative Swedish Sample of Risk Gamblers

Motives for gambling have been shown to be associated with gambling involvement, and hence important in the understanding of the etiology of problem gambling. The aim of this study was to describe differences in gambling motives in different subgroups of lifetime risk gamblers, categorized by: age, gender, alcohol- and drug habits and type of game preferred, when considering the level of risk gambling. A random Swedish sample (n = 19,530) was screened for risk gambling, using the Lie/Bet questionnaire. The study sample (n = 257) consisted of the respondents screening positive on Lie/Bet and completing a postal questionnaire about gambling and motives for gambling (measured with the NODS-PERC and the RGQ respectively). When considering the level of risk gambling, motives for gambling were not associated with gender, whereas younger persons gambled for the challenge more often than did older participants. Card/Casino and Sport gamblers played to a greater extent for social and challenge reasons then did Lotto/Bingo-gamblers. EGM-gamblers played more for coping reasons than did Lotto/Bingo gamblers. However, this association turned non-significant when considering the level of risk gambling. Moderate risk gamblers played for the challenge and coping reasons to a greater extent than low risk gamblers motives for gambling differ across subgroups of preferred game and between gamblers with low and moderate risk. The level of risk gambling is intertwined with motives for gambling and should be considered when examining gambling reasons.     

“Basically it's the Usual Whole Teen Girl Thing”: Stage‐of‐Life Categories on a Children and Young People's Helpline

This article explores the practices of membership categorization in the interactions of clients and counselors on a national Australian helpline (Kids Helpline [KHL]) for children and young persons. Our focus is on membership categories drawn from three membership category devices (MCDs): stage‐of‐life (SOL), age, and family. Analysis draws on data across different contact modalities—email and web‐counseling sessions—to examine how category‐generated features are relevantly occasioned, attended to, and managed by the parties in the course of interaction. This shows clients' use of MCDs in presenting their trouble and building a relevant case for their grievance. By examining counselors' subsequent receipts of the clients' complaints, we are able to trace some of the cultural knowledge that the clients' categorizations make relevant to the counselors. Moreover, the analysis demonstrates how the inherent flexibility of MCDs allows counselors to exploit these same categorial resources and to re‐specify the clients' trouble in a more positive fashion to accomplish counseling work. In explicating how taken‐for‐granted notions of the lifespan as well as of family relations are mobilized by participants in KHL's sessions, the findings contribute to previous studies of social interaction in counseling, and to research on social identity and categorization more broadly.     

Loss/Gain Framing,Dose, and Reactance: A Message Experiment

Whether a loss or gain frame has a persuasive advantage in communicating health risks is a matter of ongoing debate. Findings reported in the literature are mixed, suggesting that framing effects are likely complex and may be influenced by a combination of factors. This study examined reactance as a mediator and dose as a moderator of loss/gain framing effects. Adults (N = 1,039) read framed messages about the health consequences of physical (in)activity in varying message doses (i.e., number of framed statements). Compared to loss frames, gain frames generated more threat to freedom and reactance. Dosage exerted significant influence at the extremes; the one‐dose messages invoked less intentions to exercise compared to the four‐dose messages. Planned contrasts revealed significant frame × dose interactions. Notably, the one‐dose gain‐framed messages triggered significantly more freedom threat and less intentions to engage in physical activity—a situation that changed when the information was loss‐framed or when the dosage was increased.