ASSET MANAGEMENT,ALLOCATION OF TIME,AND RETURNS TO SAVING*

The paper entertains the proposition that individuals' time performs a productive role in generating nonwage income through the management of nonhuman capital assets. The asset management hypothesis is used to develop a life cycle model of consumptive and productive decisions. The model allows for variations in gross rates of return both across persons at a point in time and for any one person over his life cycle. The behavioral implications developed show that differences across consumption units in their time allocations and in their borrowing, saving, and asset holding decisions may be the result of differences in opportunities rather than “tastes.”     

PORTFOLIO CHOICE AND RISK ATTITUDES: AN EXPERIMENT

Using financial incentives, we study how portfolio choice (how much to invest in a risky asset) depends on three well-known behavioral phenomena: ambiguity aversion, the illusion of control, and myopic loss aversion. We find evidence that these phenomena are present and test how the level of investment is affected by these motivations; at the same time, we investigate whether participants are willing to explicitly pay a small sum of money to indulge preferences for less ambiguity, more control, or more frequent feedback/opportunities to choose the investment level. First, the observed preference for "control" did not affect investment behavior and in fact disappeared when participants were asked to actually pay to gain more control. Second, while people were indeed willing to pay for less ambiguity, the level of ambiguity did not influence investment levels. Finally, participants were willing to pay to have more frequent feedback opportunities to change their portfolio, even though prior research has shown that people invest less in risky assets (and earn less) in this case . ( JEL B49, C91, D81, G11, G19)     

Ways of Forgetting: Israel and the Obliterated Memory of the Palestinian Nakba

This study analyses national ways of forgetting. Following the eminent British Anthropologists Mary Douglas, I relate here to "forgetting" as "selective remembering, misremembering and disremembering" ( Douglas 2007 : 13). The case study offered here is that of the Israeli-Jewish forgetting of the uprooting of the Palestinians in the war of 1948. This paper discusses three facets of the collective forgetting: In the first subchapter I analyze the foundations of the Israeli regime of forgetting and discern three mechanisms of removing from memory of selected events: narrative forgetting: the formation and dissemination of an historical narrative; physical forgetting: the destruction of physical remains; and symbolic forgetting: the creation of a new symbolic geography of new places and street names. In the second subchapter , I look at the tenacious ambiguity that lies in the regime of forgetting, as it does not completely erase all the traces of the past. And finally, in the third subchapter , I discuss the growth of subversive memory and counter-memory that at least indicates the option of a future revision of the Israeli regime of forgetting.     

Ideology and Reality: Representation and Participation in Local Service Management Evaluating the Case of the Israeli Community Service Centre--Matnas

Correspondence to Dr Uri Yanay Paul Baerwald School of Social Work The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, 91905 Israel Summary Recent trends in social policy and administration encouragecitizen representation. This is based on the ideological assumptionthat representation yields participation and citizen participationultimately secures the interests of the poor and less visiblegroups in the community. In the Israeli network of CommunityService Centres (Matnas) citizen involvement was establishedby selecting or inviting residents to represent the communityalongside other delegates forming a local Board. Research findings indicate that the resulting ‘representativeparticipation’, operated contrary to expectations. Thelay local representatives who were presumed to represent thedisadvantaged of the community reported them as last priority,whereas the professionals representing various organizationson the Mamas Boards claimed to represent them as first priority.Meeting attendance records of the different representatives(a measure of participation) support this finding.     

The Colonization Perspective in Israeli Sociology: Internal and External Comparisons

Abstract Though the characterization of Zionism as a colonial project is probably as old as the Zionist movement, as a specific scholarly sociological perspective in Israeli academia it was formulated only lately, in the wake of the Six Day War of 1967 This article outlines the contours of this new perspective, its theoretical assumptions and its political implications. It examines the historical circumstances which propelled its emergence, and than discerns two distinct sub-trends in it: Weberian and Marxist Throughout are explored three distinct comparative issues: a comparison of the colonization perspective to other perspectives in Israeli sociology especially the 'dualist perspective': a comparison of the case of Israel with other colonization cases. such as the U.S.A.: and a comparison of the two sub-trends in the perspective itself to each other.