Deposit Insurance,Institutions, and Bank Interest Rates

Many recent institutional reforms of the financial system have relied on the introduction of an explicit scheme of deposit insurance. This instrument aims at two main targets, contributing to systemic stability and protecting depositors. However, it may also affect the interest rate spread in the banking system, which can be viewed as an indicator of either inefficiency or market power in this financial segment. This paper provides an empirical investigation of the effect of deposit insurance and other institutional and economic variables on bank interest rates across countries. We find that deposit insurance increases the lending–deposit spread in banking. The main effect seems to arise not from the deposit side though, but from an increase in the lending rate. We interpret this result as evidence of the presence of moral hazard problems related to this instrument. We also find that higher quality of institutions is associated with lower spreads, thus contributing to eroding sources of market power in the banking sector.     

UNDERSTANDING THE DECISION TO PARTICIPATE IN A SURVEY

The lack of full participation in sample surveys threatens theinferential value of the survey method. We review a set of conceptualdevelopments and experimental findings that appear to be informativeabout causes of survey participation; offer an integration ofthat work with findings from the more traditional statisticaland survey methodological literature on nonresponse; and, giventhe theoretical structure, deduce potentially promising pathsof research toward the understanding of survey participation.     

MEASURING LEVELS OF PARTY IDENTIFICATION DOES QUESTION ORDER MATTER?

This article examines whether asking the vote question beforeparty identification alters the strength of partisanship andits relationship to vote choice. It employs the 1992 BritishElection Survey, which included a random split half-sample experiment,and the 1992–93 American Election Study Panel, where thequestion order for party identification and the vote were changed.The results show that altering the question ordering had verylittle effect in Britain and no significant effect in the UnitedStates. These results are consistent with the notion that partyidentification is one of the more enduring and stable componentsof mass political behavior in both presidential and parliamentarysystems.     

Differences in preferred level of arousal in two sub-groups of problem gamblers: A preliminary report

Twelve problem poker machine players and thirteen horse race gamblers (20 males and 5 females; age range 28–69) completed a series of questionnaires which assessed levels of anxiety, their preferred state of arousal and their motivations to gamble. As predicted, problem poker machine gamblers were found to be more anxious and reported avoiding arousal more frequently than the horse race gamblers. Alternately, problem horse race gamblers were found to prefer heightened levels of arousal and appeared to gamble to achieve these optimal levels of arousal. However, there was no difference between the groups on proneness to boredom. The present results provide evidence which is consistent with the Reversal theory and its application to the field of problem gambling.     

Estimation of noncentrality parameters

We propose some estimators of noncentrality parameters which improve upon usual unbiased estimators under quadratic loss. The distributions we consider are the noncentral chi-square and the noncentral F. However, we give more general results for the family of elliptically contoured distributions and propose a robust dominating estimator.     

Women's Changing Attitudes Toward Divorce, 1974–2002: Evidence for an Educational Crossover

This article examines trends in divorce attitudes of young adult women in the United States by educational attainment from 1974 to 2002. Women with 4‐year college degrees, who previously had the most permissive attitudes toward divorce, have become more restrictive in their attitudes toward divorce than high school graduates and women with some college education, whereas women with no high school diplomas have increasingly permissive attitudes toward divorce. We examine this educational crossover in divorce attitudes in the context of variables correlated with women's educational attainment, including family attitudes and religion, income and occupational prestige, and family structure. We conclude that the educational crossover in divorce attitudes is associated most strongly with work and family structure variables.