Who Enjoys the Fruits of Growth? Impact of Governments and Markets on Living Standards in Germany,The Netherlands and the U.S.A., 1987–1996

The 1980s and 1990s have been decades of quitegood economic growth in North America and muchof Western Europe. But how have the fruits ofgrowth been shared? This paper reviews changingincome distributions in the U.S., Germany and theNetherlands. These three countries may be takenas exemplars and leading economic performers in``the three worlds of welfare capitalism''(Esping-Andersen, 1990). The U.S. is a liberalwelfare-capitalist state, Germany a corporatiststate, and the Netherlands (less clearly) asocial democratic welfare-capitalist state. Thepaper focuses particularly on income changes inthe bottom, middle and top quintiles and takesa ten year period into account.Previous analyses have shown that labor andmarket income dispersion are increasing, withincreased returns to human capital. Thepotential impact of government through thetax-transfer system has been largely ignored.All three governments redistribute income fromthe rich to the poor. However, the paper showsthat only the Dutch government hasredistributed sufficiently to ensure that thebottom quintile has gained along with others.In Germany and the U.S. the poorest quintile wasconsiderably worse off in absolute terms at theend of the decade.than the beginning. TheGerman government somewhat counteracted thetrend towards greater income dispersion byredistributing to the poorest quintile, so theloss of market income was partly compensated. In the U.S. the impact of government on thepoorest quintile stayed about the same, so thisgroup ended up with about the same decrease indisposable income as market income.The U.S., Germany and the Netherlands are theonly three countries for which ten or moreconsecutive years of panel data are available.The data come from the PSID-GSOEP EquivalentFile 1980-97 and from a comparable fileconstructed from the Dutch SEP data.

     

Assessment of physical activity in older people with and without cognitive impairment

The purpose of this study was to validate a new interview-administered physical activity questionnaire (Assessment of Physical Activity in Frail Older People; APAFOP) in older people with and without cognitive impairment. The authors assessed feasibility, validity, and test-retest reliability in 168 people (n = 78 with, n = 88 without cognitive impairment). Concurrent validity was assessed against an inertia-based motion sensor and an established questionnaire. Sensitivity to change was tested in an ongoing study in patients with mild to moderate dementia (n = 81). Assessment of physical activity by the APAFOP and the motion sensor correlated well in the total sample (TS; p = .705), as well as in the subsamples with cognitive impairment (CI; p = .585) and without CI (p = .787). Excellent feasibility with an acceptance rate of 100%, test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficients ranging from .973 (TS) to .975 (CI) to .966 (no CI), and sensitivity to change (effect sizes: 0.35-1.47) were found in both subsamples.     

Enhancing strength and postocclusive calf blood flow in older people with training with blood-flow restriction

The response of calf-muscle strength, resting blood flow, and postocclusive blood flow (PObf) were investigated after 4 wk of low-load resistance training (LLRT) with and without blood-flow restriction in a matched-leg design. Ten untrained older individuals age 62-73 yr performed unilateral plantar-flexion LLRT at 25% 1-repetition maximum (1RM). One limb was trained with normal blood flow and the other had blood flow restricted using a pressure cuff above the knee. 1RM, isometric maximal voluntary contraction, and isokinetic strength at 0.52 rad/s increased (p < .05) more after LLRT with blood-flow restriction than with normal blood flow. Peak PObf increased (p < .05) after LLRT with blood-flow restriction, compared with no change after LLRT with normal blood flow. These results suggest that 4 wk of LLRT with blood-flow restriction may be beneficial to older individuals to improve strength and blood-flow parameters.     

Preferred drug resistance strategies of urban American Indian youth of the southwest

This study explored the drug resistance strategies that urban American Indian adolescents consider the best and worst ways to respond to offers of alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana. Focus group data were collected from 11 female and 9 male American Indian adolescents attending urban middle schools in the southwest. The youth were presented with hypothetical substance offer scenarios and alternative ways of responding, based on real-life narratives of similar youth. They were asked to choose a preferred strategy, one that would work every time, and a rejected strategy, one they would never use. Using eco-developmental theory, patterns in the preferred and rejected strategies were analyzed to identify culturally specific and socially competent ways of resisting substance offers. The youth preferred strategies that included passive, non-verbal strategies like pretending to use the substance, as well as assertive strategies like destroying the substance. The strategies they rejected were mostly socially non-competent ones like accepting the substance or responding angrily. Patterns of preferred and rejected strategies varied depending on whether the offer came from a family member or non-relative. These patterns have suggestive implications for designing more effective prevention programs for the growing yet underserved urban American Indian youth population.     

Nursing home admissions and long-stay conversions among persons with and without serious mental illness

The appropriateness of nursing homes for individuals with serious mental illness remains a controversial issue in long-term care policy more than a decade since the landmark U.S. Supreme Court Olmstead decision in 1999 , which affirmed the rights of persons with disabilities to live in their communities. Using national nursing home Minimum Data Set assessments from 2005, the authors compared the demographic, clinical, and functional characteristics of persons with and without serious mental illness newly admitted to nursing homes. They found that newly admitted people with serious mental illness were younger and more likely to become long-stay residents than those admitted with other conditions, despite a higher proportion of residents with serious mental illness, including the elderly, classified as low-care status. The most substantial and clinically significant difference for rates of low-care status 90 days after initial admission are for persons younger than 65 with serious mental illness versus those younger than 65 without serious mental illness (33% vs. 8.5%, or 3.9 times greater). There is a notable difference in low-care status between persons aged 65 and older with serious mental illness and those aged 65 and older without serious mental illness (14% vs. 6.6%, or 2.1 times greater). These results suggest that a substantial number of adults with serious mental illness residing in nursing homes may have the functional capacity to live in less restrictive environments.     

The quest for residential normalcy by older adults: Relocation but one pathway

This paper constructs a holistic emotion-based theoretical model identifying various pathways by which older adults can occupy residential environments that are congruent with their needs and goals. The model equates this individual-environment fittingness or “residential normalcy” with older persons having favorable or positive emotion-based residential experiences that have relevance to them. Older persons are theorized as being in their residential comfort zones when they experience overall pleasurable, hassle-free, and memorable feelings about where they live; and in their residential mastery zones when they occupy places in which they feel overall competent and in control. When older persons are out of either (or both) of these experiential zones, they are expected to initiate accommodative and/or assimilative forms of coping to achieve residential normalcy. The former are mind strategies by which they change their residential goals or assessments, mollify their negative emotional experiences, or engage in denial behaviors; the latter are action strategies, by which they change their activities or modify their residential settings. Moving to a new address is the most studied and prominent assimilative coping strategy, but also the one that requires the most strenuous adaptive efforts. The model theorizes that older persons move only under certain conditions.     

Modeling Reputation as a Time‐Series: Evaluating the Risk of Purchase Decisions on eBay*

Reputation systems based on buyer feedback play an important role in today's online markets. In this article, we provide a rigorous methodology to establish a relationship between a seller's feedback history and risk of default. We validate this method against eBay's reputation system, using a dataset of terminated users (Not‐A‐Registered‐User or NARU) and the feedback left for them by buyers. By treating feedback rating data as a function of time, we characterize the tendency of change in seller feedback ratings in order to predict the behavior of a seller. We find that NARU sellers have significantly more negative feedback in their final weeks. Applying functional principal component analysis and classification tree methods, we find that when projecting the feedback data to an appropriate space, NARU and non‐NARU sellers can be distinguished at better than 92% accuracy. We use this to provide a quantitative mechanism for evaluating the risk of trading with a seller who has less than perfect feedback, and offer advice on how much a buyer should offer to pay, given an asking price on a commodity item and a seller's feedback history.     

Optimal Per‐Use Rentals and Sales of Durable Products and Their Distinct Roles in Price Discrimination

We consider a setting in which consumers experience distinct instances of need for a durable product at random intervals. Each instance of need is associated with a random utility and the consumers are differentiated according to the frequency with which they experience such instances of need. We use our model of consumer utility to characterize the firm's optimal strategy of whether to sell, rent, or do a combination of both in terms of the transaction costs and consumers' usage characteristics. We find that the two modes of operation serve different roles in allowing the firm to price discriminate. While sales allow the firm to discriminate among consumers of different usage frequencies, rentals allow it to discriminate according to consumers' realized valuations. Consequently, even when transaction costs are negligible, it is often optimal for the firm to simultaneously rent and sell its product. In addition, we find that although sales and rentals are substitutes and that the offering of sales weakly increases rental prices, it is possible that the introduction of rentals to a pure selling operation can either increase or decrease the optimal sales prices.     

Steuerfreiheit von Gewinnen aus der Ver?u?erung von Kapitalgesellschaftsanteilen durch nat��rliche Personen?

Subject of this article is the question for the taxation of capital gains of holdings in corporations, in which tax effects are reduced. Thereby tax effects are explicated under realistic uncertainty. Under realistic uncertainty tax effects are possible in case of taxation of capital gains, but not mandatory. Furthermore the analysis shows that for capital gains from concealed reserves each form of taxation will entail tax effects. This also applies to tax exemption. In the case of capital gains from profit reserves in the applicable corporate income tax system, tax exemption of capital gains from profit reserves and immediate write-off of profit reserves itself evoke tax effects. In the current corporate tax system only the distribution induced write-down of a shareholding to going concern value reduces tax effects. Nevertheless, this only applies to personal corporations, for public corporations tax effects have to be accepted. Beyond the valid tax system, tax effects must also be expected in a tax system, in which the corporate tax is integrated in the income tax and in which capital gains from profit reserves are tax-exempt. In comparison, the Dual Income Tax as proposed by the German Council of Economic Experts is a better solution for the problem of tax effects caused by the tax exemption of capital gains.