PRODUCER AND CONSUMER RESPONSES TO GREEN HOUSING LABELS

We find “green” labels increase residential property values by an average of 5%. This premium varies by label stringency and across market segments. Builders respond to the stringency of labels by strategically incorporating green features to achieve higher ratings. This strategy seems reasonable as there is no market premium for green features that lead to scores between label rating cutoff values. These results raise important questions as to how green label policies should be designed in order to foster the supply of green features. Gradations of green attributes are influential, particularly for highly rated homes. The most stringent labels have the greatest role at the high price end of the market. (JEL Q20, Q40, R31)     

TOOLS OR TOYS? THE IMPACT OF HIGH TECHNOLOGY ON SCHOLARLY PRODUCTIVITY

We examine the impact of communication technology on scholarly productivity by considering patterns of coauthored economics articles. Using articles in three major economics journals from 1970–79 and 1992–96, we find (1) sharp growth from distant coauthorships (authors not in the same metropolitan area prior to publication), as the theory predicts, and, contrary to theory, (2) lower productivity of distant than close-coauthored works and no decline in their relative disadvantage. These findings are reconciled by noting that high technology has aspects of a consumer good. The relative productivity of solo-authored articles has decreased, perhaps explaining the secular increase in coauthorship.     

Adolescents' and Mothers' Understanding of Children's Rights in the Home

Adolescents' and mothers' understanding of children's self‐determination and nurturance rights was examined in the context of the home. In individual interviews, 141 sixth, eighth, and tenth graders and their mothers responded to hypothetical vignettes in which a child story character wished to exercise a right that conflicted with parental practices. For each vignette, participants were asked to judge whether the story character should have the right in question and to provide a justification for their decision. Generally, eighth and tenth graders were more likely than their mothers to endorse requests for self‐determination and less likely than their mothers to support requests for nurturance. Mothers of tenth graders were more likely to support requests for self‐determination and less likely to favor adolescents' request for nurturance in the home than were mothers of sixth and eighth graders. In terms of reasoning, adolescents and mothers were more likely to consider the individuals' rights when discussing self‐determination situations, whereas nurturance situations elicited responses pertaining to participants' understanding of familial roles and relationships. Furthermore, mothers' reasoning about childrenà s rights reflected sensitivity to the developmental level of their children. The findings are discussed in terms of previous research on the development of children's understanding of rights and adolescent autonomy.     

A response to “the emotional consequences of physical child abuse” by Annaclare van Dalen

The author responds to the article by Annaclare van Dalen (1989), disputing her statement that there is little in the literature about the emotional consequences of child abuse. The author reviews the pertinent literature, which is abundant. The author disagrees with van Dalen's statement that the child experiences physical abuse outside the body, and with the statement that the child experiences sexual abuse as pleasurable. In addition the author disagrees with van Dalen's sharp differentiation between physical abuse and sexual abuse, and proposes that sexual abuse be regarded as a variant of physical abuse.     

Creating Stepfamilies: Integrating Children Into the Study of Union Formation

As a result of the growth in out‐of‐wedlock childbearing and union instability, adults contemplating forming a new union are often already parents. This article examines the role of children in stepfamily formation, both coresident and not, using the 2,594 respondents in the National Survey of Families and Households who were not living with a partner in 1987/1988. We consider children of the respondent and of the partner, which allows us to examine the determinants of entering a stepfamily. We found that being a coresident father dramatically increases forming a union with a woman with children. Women’s coresidential children reduce women’s odds of forming unions with men who do not have children and increase them for unions with men who do.     

Circuits of schooling: A sociological exploration of parental choice of school in social class contexts

Parental choice of school is one of the main platforms of government education policy and is the centre piece of the Parents Charter. But sociological understanding of choice and choice-making is woefully underdeveloped. This paper draws on an ESRC study of market forces in education to explore social class variations in choice of school in one specific locality. The complexity of choice-making is portrayed using data from interviews with parents and it is argued that middle-class parents are taking full advantage of ‘the market’ to sustain or re-assert their class advantages.     

Religious affiliation and the family

The process of religious affiliation is mediated by institutions such as the family, which provide a network of ties to the public sphere. Variations in the likelihood of those with no religious affiliation in high school (N=900) becoming church members by the time they reach 30 are explained in terms of a combination of individual attributes, such as educational and spatial mobility, and changes in structural location, such as the transition to marital and parental status. Panel data from the Career Development Study show that women's chances of affiliation are more affected than are men's by parents' religious homogamy, getting married, and having children.