Risk Compensation or Risk Reduction? Seatbelts,State Laws,and Traffic Fatalities*

Objective. The risk compensation hypothesis suggests that drivers enjoying greater safety will drive more recklessly and thereby impose greater risks on nonoccupants. We provide a test of the risk compensation hypothesis in the context of state seatbelt laws and belt use rates. Methods. Fixed‐effects models with policy and demographic variables are estimated using annual state data from 1985 to 2002 to test the effect of seatbelt laws and seatbelt use rates on logged fatality rates for occupants, pedestrians, motorcyclists, and all nonoccupants in separate models. Results. Contrary to the risk compensation hypothesis, the results indicate that both occupants and nonoccupants enjoy greater safety due to state mandatory use laws and increased safety belt use rates. Conclusion. Overall, seatbelt laws and the higher belt use these laws induce do not increase nonoccupant risk exposure. If anything, these laws and the accompanying increase in belt use result in safer driving behavior.     

Intersensory Redundancy Enhances Memory in Bobwhite Quail Embryos

Information presented concurrently and redundantly to 2 or more senses (intersensory redundancy) has been shown to recruit attention and promote perceptual learning of amodal stimulus properties in animal embryos and human infants. This study examined whether the facilitative effect of intersensory redundancy also extends to the domain of memory. We assessed bobwhite quail chicks' ability to remember and prefer an individual maternal call presented either unimodally or redundantly and synchronously with patterned light during the period prior to hatching. Embryos provided with unimodal auditory exposure failed to prefer the familiar call over a novel maternal call postnatally at 48 hr and 72 hr following exposure. In contrast, embryos provided with redundant, synchronous audiovisual stimulation significantly preferred the familiar call at 48 hr following exposure, but not at 72 hr. A second experiment provided chicks with a single 10‐min refamiliarization with the familiar call at either 48 hr or 72 hr following hatching. Chicks given only unimodal auditory exposure prior to hatching did not appear to benefit from this brief postnatal refamiliarization, showing no preference for the familiar call at either 72 or 96 hr. Chicks that received redundant audiovisual stimulation prenatally showed a significant preference for the familiar call (following the brief reexpo sure 24 hr earlier) at both 72 and 96 hr of age. These results are the first to demonstrate that redundantly specified information is remembered longer and reactivated more easily than the same information presented unimodally. These findings provide further evidence of the salience of intersensory redundancy in guiding selective attention and perceptual learning during early development.     

Automobile prices and protection: The U.S.-Japan trade restraint

We examine the effects of the U.S.-Japan trade restraint on automobile prices and quality upgrading, for both Japanese imports and American small cars. From April 1981 to April 1984 the suggested retail price of all Japanese models increased by 15.8 percent, or 5.3 percent per year. We find that nearly the entire amount of this rise can be explained by the upgrading of individual models. This upgrading may benefit consumers who would purchase a luxury import in any case, but harms those who desire the basic imports. In addition to upgrading, we conclude that a second cost of the trade restraint has been to prevent the yen depreciation from being passed onto American consumers, in terms of lower imported auto prices. For U.S. small cars we find a 9.1 percent rise in the suggested retail price, or 3 percent per year, with a fraction of this amount due to model upgrading. If the yen depreciation had led to lower import prices without the trade restraint, then we expect that U.S. auto prices would have been lower, too.     

NATURAL HEALTH DISCOURSES AND THE THERAPEUTIC PRODUCTION OF CONSUMER RESISTANCE

Social critics of the natural health movement charge that it indoctrinates consumers in a therapeutic consumerist ideology. This "dominated consumer" thesis ignores that socially situated individuals must negotiate a plethora of institutionally specific power structures aiming to classify and govern their identities. Accordingly, resistance toward specific institutional constructions of identity can be produced through marketplace ideologies. I explore this understudied ideological effect by analyzing the narratives of women who are using natural health alternatives to resist their ascribed medico-administrative identities. Natural health's therapeutic ideology enables these women to contest the degenerative implications of their medical diagnoses and, conversely, to reconstruct their chronic illnesses as an opportunity for discovering their inner regenerative potential and expanding their spiritual horizons. This analysis has implications for prior studies suggesting that resistance toward the technocratic and bureaucratic aspects of conventional medicine exemplifies a Foucauldian "care of the self." I argue that a postmodern adaptation of Foucauldian theory is needed to address the complex interrelationships among the care of the self, medical consumerism, and the therapeutic ideology of the natural health marketplace.     

Dementia Problem Behavior and the Production of Informal Caregiving Services

Informal caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer's disease spend a considerable amount of time providing care. In this paper, we use Grossman's health production and Becker's time allocation models to develop a model of informal care provision to elderly dementia patients. In our model, time inputs produce caregiving services, which provides utility to the caregiver, but reduces leisure. We assume that time is less productive of services on the margin as the disease progresses. In this framework, an increase in patients' disease severity does not necessarily increase informal caregiver time input. The cost of formal care establishes a reservation price for informal caregiving. When the costs of informal caregiving rise above this reservation level, the patient is institutionalized. We test empirically the effect of deterioration in the patients' condition, proxied by both disease severity and dementia problem behavior, on informal caregiving time. We find that dementia-related problem behaviors and functional limitations significantly increase inputs of informal caregiving time. Patients' problem behavior exerts a modifying effect on functional limitations, and patients' comorbidities have no effect on informal caregiving time.     

On the Evolution of Competitive Balance: The Impact of an Increasing Global Search

The Coase theorem maintains that where free-market precepts exist, the allocation of property rights does not impact the distribution of resources. An application to Major League Baseball suggests that institutions such as free agency and the reverse-order amateur draft would not impact player distributions and therefore would not impact competitive balance. The present study finds that the distribution of wins is generally consistent with the precepts of the Coase theorem and therefore suggests a course for those who wish to alter the level of competitive balance: Major League Baseball should increase its focus on expanding the size of its labor pool. (JEL O15 , L83 , C22 )     

私人妨害原则与相邻权、地役权

文章剖析了英美物权法上“使用权”的概念 ,并解释了财产权就像“权利集束”这个常用比喻 ,并对美国普通法上财产法中的有关相邻方之间土地纠纷的法规进行了比较分析 ,其中特别比较了普通法上的私人妨害原则和中国物权法草案第 9章所规定的相邻权的概念 ,并将普通法体系中的各种私人土地使用协议和地役权与中国物权法草案第 16章的内容进行了对比。     

Expectations, Capital Gains, and Income

A theoretical framework for the measurement of income under uncertainty is developed that addresses some long-standing controversies about the treatment of capital gains. The consequences for economic analysis and policy making are potentially serious, because the treatment of capital gains can significantly affect some major macroeconomic aggregates, including national income and savings, balance of payments deficits, government deficits, and depreciation. (JEL O47 , P44 , Q32 )