"Launched into Eternity:" Sympathetic Interaction as a Response to Public Executions in Canada West, 1847–1869

In this article, ideas central to Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments as well as those of Benthamite reformers are shown to have informed legislative reports and statutes enacted during a period of legal and penal reform in Upper Canada/Canada West. Using newspaper reports, this article discusses the relationship of these themes to narratives of public executions. In the context of an increasingly democratic state in Canada West, sympathetic interaction between the condemned and the community appeared as the foundation of moral lessons to be drawn from the experience of public hangings.     

Sex and the Statehouse: The Effects of Gender on Legislative Roll‐Call Voting*

Objective. This analysis examines whether differences exist between women and men state legislators in their roll‐call voting behavior involving matters of economic and regulatory policy. Methods. Using interest group rating scores, I examine the voting behavior of representatives in the lower houses of 28 states in legislative sessions from 1995 to 2000. By controlling for a host of variables related to legislators (political party, years of service, etc.) and their districts (average income, level of education, urbanization, etc.), I am able to isolate the independent effect of gender on roll‐call voting. Results. The findings demonstrate that among Democratic legislators women are less conservative than men, but among Republican lawmakers women are slightly more conservative than men. Additional analyses show that many factors that influence legislative voting by women and men are similar; however, political party has a more prominent effect among women. Conclusion. Although factors such as political party and some constituency characteristics exert a much stronger influence than gender, women and men legislators differ in their roll‐call voting even when controls for a wide assortment of individual‐ and district‐level conditions are taken into account.     

Third-generation prospect theory

We present a new theory of decision under uncertainty: third-generation prospect theory (PT³). This retains the predictive power of previous versions of prospect theory, but extends that theory by allowing reference points to be uncertain while decision weights are specified in a rank-dependent way. We show that PT³ preferences respect a state-conditional form of stochastic dominance. The theory predicts the observed tendency for willingness-to-accept valuations of lotteries to be greater than willingness-to-pay valuations. When PT³ is made operational by using simple functional forms with parameter values derived from existing experimental evidence, it predicts observed patterns of the preference reversal phenomenon.

The distribution of mortality in the United States: the effects of income (inequality), social capital, and race

This article examines how absolute and relative income levels, social capital, and racial/ethnic composition interact to explain variation in age-adjusted mortality rates across the 48 contiguous U.S. states. Our data showed that social capital had a powerful, negative effect on age-adjusted mortality rates--higher social capital states had lower age-adjusted mortality rates. After controlling for other variables, median income moderately related to mortality, but unexpectedly three measures of inequality did not. Finally, states' percent African American positively related to mortality, though indirectly and mediated entirely by social capital. In contrast, the strong negative effect of percent Hispanic/Latino on mortality was partially suppressed by its negative association with social capital. Our understanding of the substantial impact of social conditions on mortality can help inform public policies and actions that may foster healthier and longer lives.     

PRICING,PRODUCTION, AND PERSISTENCE

Though built with increasingly precise microfoundations, modern optimizing sticky price models have displayed a chronic inability to generate large and persistent real responses to monetary shocks, as recently stressed by Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan (2000). We trace this lack of persistence to a standard view of the cyclical behavior of real marginal cost built into current sticky price macro models. Using a fully articulated general equilibrium model, we develop an alternative perspective on real marginal cost that leads to substantial persistence. Based on an important role for materials input, variable capacity utilization, and labor adjustment on the extensive margin, this alternative view also makes the sticky price model display volatility and comovement of factor inputs and factor prices more closely in line with conventional wisdom about business cycles and various empirical studies of the dynamic effects of monetary shocks. (JEL: E31 E32)     

Three explanations of marital status differences in suicide rates: social integration, marital status integration, and the culture of suicide

Our first goal is to link empirical measures of three theoretical explanations of marital status differences to the variation in male and female standardized suicide difference coefficients SSDCs in 12 developed countries, circa 1960. We include predictors of Durkheim's social integration hypothesis, Gibbs and Martin's concept of marital status integration, and norms on suicide acceptability. All three are significantly related to variation in male and female SSDCs. The second goal is to examine how our empirical indicators impact age-specific differences in the male minus female SSDC--differences that vary by age in all 12 of our study populations. The strongest predictor of these differences is the male minus female difference in the percent married.