Equity, Efficiency, Uncertainty, and the Mitigation of Global Climate Change

Policies to mitigate potential damages from global climate change impose costs on the current generation to provide benefits to future generations. This article examines how comparisons among three stylized policies-business-as-usual, mitigation of climate change, and compensation for climate damages-depend on social preferences with respect to risk and intertemporal equity. Also examined is the opportunity-cost criterion, which asserts that mitigation should not be chosen if its net present value is smaller than that of business-as-usual. Analysis reveals that the discount factor used to evaluate whether mitigation satisfies this criterion depends on preferences regarding risk and intertemporal inequality of consumption, and on the risk of the compensation policy. Risk aversion favors mitigation over business-as-usual. If society is neutral to inequality, risk aversion disfavors compensation, but if society is inequality averse, the effect of risk aversion on preferences between compensation and business-as-usual is ambiguous. Inequality aversion tends to favor business-as-usual over both alternative policies provided that, roughly speaking, the anticipated future improvements in welfare exceed the anticipated climate damages.     

Can Adequate Child Support Be Legislated? Responses to Guidelines and Enforcement

This article explores the relationship between noncustodial parents' willingness to pay child support, state child support guidelines and enforcement efforts, and child support awards and subsequent compliance. Our game theoretic model, which distinguishes cases of asymmetric information from cases of symmetric information, demonstrates that guidelines and increased enforcement can increase payments when awards are court-ordered but may not increase payments and could even reduce child expenditures when some payment would otherwise have occurred voluntarily. Our analyses of awards to divorced or separated mothers from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are consistent with the model.     

An emotion-based model of risk perception and stigma susceptibility: cognitive appraisals of emotion, affective reactivity, worldviews, and risk perceptions in the generation of technological stigma.

A study (N=198) was conducted to examine hypotheses derived from an emotion-based model of stigma responses to radiation sources. A model of stigma susceptibility is proposed in which affective reactions and cognitive worldviews activate predispositions to appraise and experience events in systematic ways that result in the generation of negative emotion, risk perceptions, and stigma responses. Results of structural equation modeling supported the hypotheses. Radiation sources that scored higher on a measure of stigma were included in the analyses (i.e., nuclear power plants, radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, radiation from nuclear weapons testing). Individual differences in negative reactivity and worldviews were associated with the strength of emotional appraisals that were associated, in turn, with negative emotion toward stigmatized radiation sources. As hypothesized, the model fit better with perceived risk as a function of negative emotion rather than vice versa. Finally, a measure of stigma was associated with negative emotion and, to a lesser extent, with risk perceptions. Risk communication about stigmatized objects may benefit from a more complete understanding of how affective and emotional reactions are constructed and the routes through which they affect responses and behaviors.     

Multi-media campaign exposure effects on knowledge and use of condoms for STI and HIV/AIDS prevention in Uganda

This study examined the influences of behavior change communication (BCC) campaigns on knowledge and use of condoms for prevention of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections in target areas of Uganda. Data were drawn from the 1997 and 1999 Delivery of Improved Services for Health (DISH) evaluation surveys, which collected information from representative samples of women and men of reproductive age in the districts served by the DISH project. Logistic regressions were used to assess the associations between BCC exposure and condom knowledge and use, controlling for individuals' background characteristics. Results indicated that BCC exposure was strongly associated with higher condom knowledge: women and men who reported being exposed to messages in the mass media were at least twice as likely as those with no exposure to know of condoms as a mean to avoid HIV/AIDS. A dose–response effect was observed, suggesting that campaigns using multiple media channels may be most effective in improving sexual health knowledge. At the same time, certain gender differences of the influences on condom use were found, with the channel and content of messages seemingly more important in terms of instilling safer sex practices. While there was some evidence of bias of self-report, exploratory analysis of the indirect effects of communications campaigns suggested that impacts may be compounded as overall awareness is increased at the community level eventually leading to behavior change among individuals.     

Review Essay: After the Wizard,What?

Qualitative Sociology -     

Estimating age-specific survival rates of tawny owls--recaptures versus recoveries

We compared estimates of annual survival rates of tawny owls ( Strix aluco ) ringed in southern Finland from several different sampling methods: recoveries of birds ringed as young; recaptures of birds ringed as young; recoveries of birds ringed as adults as well as young; combined recoveries and recaptures of birds ringed as young, and combined recoveries and recaptures of birds ringed as adults and young. From 1979 to 1998, 18 040 young owls were ringed, of which 983 were recaptured as breeders in subsequent years during this period, and 1764 were recovered dead at various locations. In addition, 1751 owls were ringed as adults, of which 612 were later recaptured and 199 were recovered dead. First-year survival rates estimated using only recoveries of birds ringed as young averaged 48%, while apparent survival rates estimated using only recaptures from birds ringed as young averaged 10-13%. Use of combined recapture-recovery models, or supplementary information from recoveries of birds ringed as adults, produced survival estimates of 30-37%. Survival estimates from young-recoveries-only models were biased high, because of violation of the assumption of constant recovery rates with age: birds dying in their first-year were one-third less likely to be found and reported than older birds. In contrast, recaptures-only models confounded emigration with mortality. Despite these differences in mean values, annual fluctuations in estimated first-year survival rates were similar with all models. Estimates of adult survival rates were similar with all models, while those for second-year birds were similar for all models except recaptures-only. These results highlight the potential biases associated with analysing either recaptures or recoveries alone of birds ringed as young, and the benefits of using combined data.     

Consistent voting systems with a continuum of voters

Voting problems with a continuum of voters and finitely many alternatives are considered. Since the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem persists in this model, we relax the non-manipulability requirement as follows: are there social choice functions (SCFs) such that for every profile of preferences there exists a strong Nash equilibrium resulting in the alternative assigned by the SCF? Such SCFs are called exactly and strongly consistent. The paper extends the work of Peleg (Econometrica 46:153–161, 1978a) and others. Specifically, a class of anonymous SCFs with the required property is characterized through blocking coefficients of alternatives and through associated effectivity functions.