Long‐Term Trends in Life Expectancy and Active Life Expectancy in the United States

Changes in life expectancy and in active life expectancy may have effects on the fiscal integrity of both the Social Security and Medicare programs. Analysis of the fiscal stability of these programs shows that the most serious problem may be the growth of Medicare expenditures projected to surpass, in about 2024, Social Security costs. This is aggravated by the associated rapid growth of the Medicaid program. To understand how the growth of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security might be correlated we present estimates of changes in life expectancy and active life expectancy from 1935 to 1999 and then project those values to 2080. How the correlation of life expectancy and active life expectancy changes over time, and by age, may provide insights into how increased health care expenditures, if effective in changing health in the elderly, could modify the age structure of the labor force and the availability of human capital.     

The use of information technology in a strike

Conclusion Exhausted by almost eight months of striking, the CEP members urged their union officers to take a radical proposal to the Herald: forget the seniority clause, which the company had maintained was the main stumbling block. Many union members believed that the Herald and Conrad Black didn’t care about seniority and had picked it as an issue in full confidence that it was the one item no union would drop. But since nothing else was working, despite evidence the Herald was suffering severe circulation and corporate-image losses, it was time to call the employer’s bluff. The company seemed to be taken by surprice at the CEP’s abandoning of the cherished principle when union and compeny representatives met in front of an official of the Alberta government. But within a few days, Gaynor was saying publicly there were other issues in the way, not just seniority. Despite the innovative use of electronic communications during the strike, there was no hope of obtaining a settlement if the Herald wasn’t forced to negotiate with the union. The provincial government, however, failed to enforce provisions of its weak labor laws that required “bargaining in good faith.”     

Welfare reform and the family cap: Rhetoric versus reality

Among welfare reform s many targets are welfare mothers who have additional children while receiving welfare benefits. To deter women from having children while on welfare, twenty-two states have implemented family caps, which deny additional benefits for children born while their mother is on welfare. The cap imposes a severe hardship on welfare mothers by reducing already meager welfare budgets at a time–after the birth of a child-when families are at their most vulnerable. It also represents the latest in a long line of governmental policies that have attempted to control the child-bearing choices of poor women. This article examines this history and reviews the decades of research that have disproved the relationship between welfare and out-of-wedlock births.     

A Contested Identity: An Exploration of the Competing Social and Political Discourse Concerning the Identification and Positioning of Young People of Inter-Racial Parentage

The development of racial and ethnic identity of minority ethnicchildren and young people in contemporary multi-racial Westernsociety remains an important academic concern. More recently,a relatively new debate about the identity and ‘correct’labelling of children of inter-racial relationships has beenbrewing in British academic literature. Nowhere is this morevociferous and intense than in the field of social work. Thispaper identifies two competing perspectives vying for positionin this ideological and political battle. It is argued thatwhilst overall consensus may not be possible or even desirable,it is important to explore these ideological positions as theyplay a key role in influencing social work policy and practice.     

Factors affecting the perceived value of coins

Subjects were asked to judge the relative values or assign absolute values to coins similar to the proposed new UK 20p and £1 coins along with other metal blanks, prior to the announcement of the new coins. Preliminary studies indicated that while a ‘yellow’ (gold-coloured) coin would not normally be rated higher in value than the blank 5p coin, the addition of extra thickness and an elaborate edge enhanced its apparent relative value. It was also shown that seven-sided ‘white’ (silver-coloured) coins were rated as more valuable than 12-sided or circular coins of about the same diameter. The absolute values assigned to such coins followed a similar trend to the relative values. Seven-sided white coins were assigned higher values than 12-sided white coins, and thicker yellow coins were assigned higher value characteristics and colour were examined independently. For smooth circular, milled circular and seven-sided coins, ‘red’ (cooper-coloured) coins were perceived as least valuable, and white and yellow coins were equally often assigned to intermediate and high values. For red, white and yellow coins, smooth circular coins were rated least valuable and seven-sided coins as most valuable. It appears that people assign learned ‘rules’ about features indicating value in a systematic and independent manner.     

The effect of ‘experience’ on information preferences

A decision-maker's experience is thought to affect how he/she chooses the information that support his/her selection among alternatives. Unfortunately, results from empirical studies designed to demonstrate this hypothesis are not in agreement about the existence and/or extent of the relationship. Since one possible explanation for conflicting in results is variability in the operationalization of the variable ‘experience’, this study was designed to determine if it matters whether one chooses a macro view of experience (in which the focus is on a decision-maker's overall experience) or a micro view of experience (in which the focus is on specific experience with the decision under consideration). Additional insights regarding problems in operationalizing ‘experience’ were generated as a result of these analyses to provide a basis for further research in this area.     

A Note on the Composition of Verbal Response Forms

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - This note is about composition—the process by which fragments of verbal behavior are combined in novel verbal forms. The note begins by discussing recent...     

Should the Model for Risk‐Informed Regulation be Game Theory Rather than Decision Theory?

Risk analysts frequently view the regulation of risks as being largely a matter of decision theory. According to this view, risk analysis methods provide information on the likelihood and severity of various possible outcomes; this information should then be assessed using a decision‐theoretic approach (such as cost/benefit analysis) to determine whether the risks are acceptable, and whether additional regulation is warranted. However, this view ignores the fact that in many industries (particularly industries that are technologically sophisticated and employ specialized risk and safety experts), risk analyses may be done by regulated firms, not by the regulator. Moreover, those firms may have more knowledge about the levels of safety at their own facilities than the regulator does. This creates a situation in which the regulated firm has both the opportunity—and often also the motive—to provide inaccurate (in particular, favorably biased) risk information to the regulator, and hence the regulator has reason to doubt the accuracy of the risk information provided by regulated parties. Researchers have argued that decision theory is capable of dealing with many such strategic interactions as well as game theory can. This is especially true in two‐player, two‐stage games in which the follower has a unique best strategy in response to the leader's strategy, as appears to be the case in the situation analyzed in this article. However, even in such cases, we agree with Cox that game‐theoretic methods and concepts can still be useful. In particular, the tools of mechanism design, and especially the revelation principle, can simplify the analysis of such games because the revelation principle provides rigorous assurance that it is sufficient to analyze only games in which licensees truthfully report their risk levels, making the problem more manageable. Without that, it would generally be necessary to consider much more complicated forms of strategic behavior (including deception), to identify optimal regulatory strategies. Therefore, we believe that the types of regulatory interactions analyzed in this article are better modeled using game theory rather than decision theory. In particular, the goals of this article are to review the relevant literature in game theory and regulatory economics (to stimulate interest in this area among risk analysts), and to present illustrative results showing how the application of game theory can provide useful insights into the theory and practice of risk‐informed regulation.