The US productivity slowdown, the baby boom, and management quality

This paper examines the relationship between the entry of the baby boom into the workforce and the productivity slowdown. Lucas (Bell J Econ 9(2):508–523, 1978) shows how management quality plays a role in determining output. The baby boom’s entry into the workforce resulted in more managers from smaller, pre-baby boom cohorts. These marginal managers were necessarily of lower quality, leading to a drop in total factor productivity. As the boomers aged, this effect was reversed. A calibrated model of managers, workers, and firms suggests that the management effects of the baby boom may explain roughly 20% of the observed productivity slowdown and resurgence.     

Mothers’ ideals and experiences of raising children in inner and outer suburban Melbourne,Australia

Parents’ perceptions of their neighbourhoods are important for child health outcomes. This study compared views among mothers in inner versus outer suburbs of Melbourne, Australia using a mixed methods approach. Mothers of preschool-aged children were recruited via playgroups, mother’s groups and preschools and interviewed face-to-face regarding their local area as a good place to raise a family, with a second open-ended interview focussing on mothers’ ideals and experiences of raising children in their current location. Findings demonstrated that mothers had different ideals for, and experiences of, raising their children in their neighbourhoods. Inner suburban mothers valued a manageable work/family balance and access to public transport over the size of their homes. However, access to childcare, secondary schooling and heavy traffic were issues, with the latter two being reasons for moving from the municipality. In contrast, outer suburban mothers preferred a larger home in neighbourhoods that they perceived as low crime, over accessibility to work. Access to a car and activities for their children were also important. Findings suggest no ‘one size fits all’ in respect to what features mothers expect from a good place to raise a family, or how they experience these features. This has implications for service delivery and social planning of suburbs.     

Toward a Theory of Law in Society

Abstract

Interest group conflict, power, and values have been prominent in recent attempts to analyze law as social control. The role of fact beliefs in creating, interpreting and administering legal norms has been relatively neglected, especially in the few efforts toward theories of law in society. Both fact beliefs and value beliefs are here related to legal norms, and also to group interests, power and conflict. Law is conceived of as the formal social control of the political state, a definition that does not at all require acceptance of Austin's view of law as commands of the sovereign. The forced choice between power elite and structural-functional theories is avoided, since law operates in a wide variety of power situations. The subjective meanings of interest group actions directed toward legal norms are seen as consisting of value and fact beliefs, an approach of particular promise in analyzing law and social change.     

“As a Shepherd Divideth his Sheep from the Goats”: Does the Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale Encapsulate Separable Theistic and Civility Components?

Numerous studies suggest spirituality and subjective well-being (SWB) are positively associated. However, critics argue that popular spirituality instruments—including the Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale (DSES)—contain items that conflate religiosity/spirituality (R/S), prosociality and SWB. Advocates of the DSES retort that, despite this concern, the available evidence confirms a single underlying factor. The current paper evaluates the DSES’s development, factor structure, reliability and convergent and predictive validity using a community sample. Despite the full DSES scale’s excellent internal reliability, two related factors—theism and civility—are identified. Both scales are reliable and converge meaningfully with related R/S measures. As expected, given previous findings, the full DSES scale predicts higher SWB yet the two subscales display divergent associations. This finding offers new insights into the DSES and raises questions about the claimed belief-as-benefit effect.     

Embedded cultural values and international transaction cost advantages

Culturally embedded differences in self-interested behavior and perceptions of trust violate the universal assumption of moral hazard held by transaction cost economic theorists. A model of transaction cost advantage is derived and propositions developed using the cultural value diversity literature to test the universal assumptions of transaction cost economics.     

Gender, Race, and Perception of Environmental Health Risks

This paper reports the results of a national survey in which perceptions of environmental health risks were measured for 1275 white and 214 nonwhite persons. The results showed that white women perceived risks to be much higher than did white men, a result that is consistent with previous studies. However, this gender difference was not true of nonwhite women and men, whose perceptions of risk were quite similar. Most striking was the finding that white males tended to differ from everyone else in their attitudes and perceptions–on average, they perceived risks as much smaller and much more acceptable than did other people. These results suggest that sociopolitical factors such as power, status, alienation, and trust are strong determiners of people's perception and acceptance of risks.     

QALYs versus WTP.

Quality adjusted life years (QALYs) and willingness to pay (WTP) are alternative measures of the value of reductions in health risk that are often used in evaluating environmental, health, and safety practices. Although both methods are based on individual preferences, the underlying assumptions differ. The different bases yield systematically different conclusions about the relative value of reducing health and mortality risks to individuals that differ in age, preexisting health conditions, income, and other factors. The choice of which method to use depends on judgments about what constraints should be placed on individual preferences and what factors should be considered in aggregating preferences across people.     

A Bayesian Benefit-Risk Model Applied to the South Florida Building Code

A Bayesian compound Poisson benefit-risk model is described in this paper, and used to evaluate recent revisions to the South Florida Building Code (SFBC). The model accounts for natural variability in hurricane frequency and severity, and uncertainty in the effectiveness of the revised code. Ranges of residential growth rate, code effectiveness, construction cost increase, and planning period length are assumed, to show the ranges of cost-to-performance ratio within which the code will make sense economically. The expected cost of residential hurricane damage over 50 years for ten South Florida counties assuming continuation of previous building practices was $93 billion, equivalent to the residential damage of 5.2 Andrews. Assuming a reduction in the growth of damageable housing in South Florida from 5.5% to 2% as a result of code revision, estimated damages under the new code were $45 billion. At a per-house construction cost increase of 5%, the probability of at least recovering the estimated $40 billion cost of the specified wind-resistant construction was estimated to be 47%. Expected return on investment was estimated at $7 billion over 50 years. The expected return lies between a $44 billion loss and a $47 billion gain, when growth in damageable housing is allowed to range from 1% to 4% and construction cost increases are assumed to lie between 3% and 8%. Actual monetary return for a 5% cost increase and 2% growth in damageable housing ranges from a $20 billion loss to a $100 billion gain with 95% probability, as a result of weather variability alone. Results support SFBC revisions on solely economic grounds, a conclusion strengthened considerably in light of potentially avoided deaths and hurricane traumas. The model represents one approach to evaluating economic aspects of the sustainability of new technological measures on the basis of available information.     

Who Holds the Stakes? A Case Study of Stakeholder Identification at Two Nuclear Weapons Production Sites

Traditional risk assessments, including those involving the United States Department of Energy (USDOE), are often criticized for producing useless or noncredible management responses because they did not meaningfully involve the public. The first step to involve the public is to identify appropriate active participants (stakeholders). This study was done to understand the processes used to identify stakeholders to serve on advisory boards established at the two largest remediation sites in the United States: the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The Hanford stakeholder identification process produced an interest-based board whereas the Savannah River Site strategy produced population-based representation. The basic goals of the stakeholder advisory groups were similar. However, different processes were used to identify the participants for the groups in part because of distinctly different social and cultural conditions in the areas affected by the operations of the two facilities, and in part because of the different level of trust of the USDOE and their contractors at Hanford compared with Savannah River. The discussion analyzes their different needs and potential for successful citizen participation.