Like Mother, Like Daughter: Intergenerational Transmission of DK Response Rates

Attitude expression (and its opposite, DK response rate) isan important personal and political characteristic which isrelated to an individual's psychological and demographic traits.It is also transmitted from parent to child. In fact, it istransmitted to a greater degree than other political attitudesexamined here, with the exception of partisanship. Owing tothe fact that males show higher levels of attitude expression,and because this tendency is reinforced by cultural norms, thetransmission process for attitude expression is conditionedby the sex of child and of parent. Compared with the father'simpact, mothers are particularly influential in transmittingattitude expression to daughters. While fathers have a somewhatstronger effect on sons than do mothers, the difference is substantiallysmaller.     

BLUE CROSS-BLUE SHIELD ADMINISTRATION COSTS: A STUDY OF NON-PROFIT HEALTH INSURERS*

The administrative costs of Blue Cross and Blue Shield are examined in this paper. The main finding is that the Blues appear to enjoy substantial managerial slack. This striking conclusion is based upon some rather circumstantial evidence. First, no economies of scale are found which is not true of the commercial insurers. Second, the variance in costs is much smaller for those costs associated with Medicare administration than for the Blues own business. Finally, despite the cost advantages of the merged organizational form, this is not the more prevalent form.     

COMPENSATING WAGE DIFFERENTIALS FOR MANDATORY OVERTIME?

This paper examines the extent to which individuals who are employed by firms that require mandatory overtime receive a compensating wage differential for this "distasteful" working condition. While the empirical results indicate that the average worker does not receive a positive differential for this working condition, the results do indicate that unionized workers and (perhaps) newly hired workers receive a positive differential. The paper then develops a framework to determine if any observed compensating differential is, in fact, fully compensating. The application of this framework to the mandatory overtime issue reveals that the fully compensating differential would be relatively small. The methodology developed in this paper should prove useful in a variety of other contexts.     

PRICE LEVEL UNCERTAINTY, SAVING, AND LABOR SUPPLY

This paper derives the implications, for individual saving and labor supply, of increased uncertainty about the future price level. The framework for the analysis is a two-period model in which saving and labor supply are alternative sources of both present disutility and future income. The individual is assumed to make simultaneously his saving and labor supply decisions prior to the resolution of the uncertainty about the future price level. We find that, under theoretically plausible and empirically relevant assumptions about attitudes toward risk, an increase in future price level uncertainty increases individual saving and labor supply. These results imply that, for the economy as a whole, increased uncertainty about the future price level increases output and employment, while decreasing the real rate of interest, the present price level, and economic welfare.