Labor force participation and family formation: A study of working mothers

Drawing upon a sample of 638 mothers aged 18 to 40, with at least some marital work experience, significant associations were found between the extent, kind, and timing of employment and a series of family formation variables. Generally lower fertility, longer first birth intervals, and earlier use of birth control were associated with the longest work durations, the highest status jobs, and work before the birth of the first child. The data failed, however, to differentiate desired family size.     

Chapter 11’s invisible men

Chapter 11 can be thought of as a Ring of Gyges, protecting corporate executives from past or prospective misdeeds and missteps. The Manville Case is an example.     

THE METRICS OF STYLE: ADAM SMITH TEACHES EFFICIENT RHETORIC

Does style matter for economic writing? Several stylistic characteristics of ninety-seven AEA presidential addresses, including word length, sentence length and percent of sentences in the passive voice, were computed and used to explain citations to these economists' work. Avoidance of the passive is an old stylistic norm given by Adam Smith. Word length and sentence length serve as modern stylistic norms. Only the percent passive matters to explain citations. Perhaps not coincidentally, while writing clarity in our data set has declined over time when measured by the new norm, it has improved when measured by the old norm.     

THE RECOVERY OF MASADA: A STUDY IN COLLECTIVE MEMORY*

The battle of Masada in 73 A. D. was one of the least significant and least successful events in ancient Jewish history. Our concern is to understand why, after almost two thousand years of obscurity, this event was suddenly remembered and commemorated by Palestinian Jews. Precipitating the 1927 recovery of Masada was the appearance of a very popular poem which used the ancient battle as an allegory of the Jewish settlers' struggle. By restoring this poem to its social context, and by analyzing both in terms of George Herbert Mead's theory of symbolically reconstructed pasts, this article explains the modern appeal of Masada, then brings it to bear on our general knowledge of collective memory.     

Setting Up a Rural Private Practice*

This irreverent, somewhat breezy paper describes the experience of the author in establishing a private practice in an unusual setting and offers some observations for others. Editor.