bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Reducing Prejudice
Authors: Dovidio John F. , Gaertner Samuel L.
Published: March 2003

Strategies for reducing prejudice may be directed at the traditional, intentional form of prejudice or at more subtle and perhaps less conscious contemporary forms. Whereas the traditional form of prejudice may be reduced by direct educational and attitude-change techniques, contemporary forms may require alternative strategies oriented toward the individual or involving intergroup contact. Individual-oriented techniques can involve leading people who possess contemporary prejudices to discover inconsistencies among their self-images, values, and behaviors; such inconsistencies can arouse negative emotional states (e.g., guilt), which motivate the development of more favorable attitudes. Intergroup strategies can involve structuring intergroup contact to produce more individualized perceptions of the members of the other group, foster personalized interactions between members of the different groups, or redefine group boundaries to create more inclusive, superordinate representations of the groups. Understanding the nature and bases of prejudice can thus guide, theoretically and pragmatically, interventions that can effectively reduce both traditional and contemporary forms of prejudice.
When Possibility Informs Reality
Authors: Spellman Barbara A. , Mandel David R.
Published: March 2003

People often engage in counterfactual thinking, that is, imagining alternatives to the real world and mentally playing out the consequences. Yet the counterfactuals people tend to imagine are a small subset of those that could possibly be imagined. There is some debate as to the relation between counterfactual thinking and causal beliefs. Some researchers argue that counter-factual thinking is the key to causal judgments; current research suggests, however, that the relation is rather complex. When people think about counterfactuals, they focus on ways to prevent bad or uncommon outcomes; when people think about causes, they focus on things that covary with outcomes. Counterfactual thinking may affect causality judgments by changing beliefs about the probabilities of possible alternatives to what actually happened, thereby changing beliefs as to whether a cause and effect actually covary. The way in which counterfactual thinking affects causal attributions may have practical consequences for mental health and the legal system.
The Affect System
Authors: Cacioppo John T. , Berntson Gary G.
Published: March 2003

The affect system refers to the functional components involved in appetitive and aversive information processing. We review evidence suggesting that affect is not a unitary faculty but rather is composed of a number of distinct processes. Physical limitations constrain behavioral expressions and incline behavioral predispositions toward a bipolar (good-bad, approach-withdraw) organization, but this organization appears to be the consequence of multiple operations, including the activation of positivity (appetition) and the activation of negativity (aversion), at earlier affective-processing stages. The partial segregation of positive and negative affective processing afforded evolution the opportunity to sculpt distinctive activation functions for these affective components and allows their coactivation. Coactivation, in turn, cultivates the exploration of novel environments and the pursuit of seemingly hospitable events while fostering vigilance for and rapid retreats from hostile developments.
Happy as an Extraverted Clam?
Authors: DeNeve Kristina M.
Published: March 2003

Personality characteristics, especially the traits of extraversion and neuroticism, have been proposed as the primary determinant of subjective wellbeing (SWB). Meta-analytic evidence presented here suggests that personality is indeed strongly related with SWB, and that only health is more strongly correlated with SWB. In a study of 137 personality traits that have been correlated with SWB, neuroticism was one of the strongest negative correlates of SWB. However, extraversion was not the primary factor associated with increased SWB. Rather, several personality characteristics that focus on the characteristic experience of emotions, on enhancing relationships, and on one's characteristic style of explaining the causes of life events are most intimately tied to SWB.
Sexual-Assault History and Long-Term Physical Health Problems
Authors: Golding Jacqueline M.
Published: March 2003

Having a history of sexual assault is associated with both poor general health and limitations in physical functioning, as well as with specific health problems such as chronic pelvic pain, premenstrual disturbance, other gynecologic symptoms, fibromyalgia, headache, other pain syndromes, and gastrointestinal disorders. In studies evaluating the possible role of depression in these associations, depression among sexually assaulted persons did not account for their poorer health. Although there are unanswered questions in the literature on the associations between sexual assault and health, existing findings are consistent with standard criteria for inferring causal relationships from observational data. For example, many assault-health associations are supported by multiple, independent studies, and many demonstrate dose-response relationships (i.e., more incidents of sexual assault, or more severe assaults, are associated with more adverse health outcomes).
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Adults
Authors: Faraone Stephen V.
Published: March 2003

The diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adults has been a source of controversy, with some prominent researchers questioning its very existence and others suggesting it is an urgent clinical problem. This article reviews five domains of data addressing the validity of adult ADHD: clinical correlates, family history, treatment response, laboratory studies, and long-term outcome. It then shows how the debate over adult ADHD reflects a clash of theoretical paradigms and concludes by suggesting ways in which psychological science can collect the data needed to clarify the validity of adult ADHD.
A Complex-Systems Approach to Organizations
Authors: Svyantek Daniel J. , Brown Linda L.
Published: March 2003

The physical sciences have developed new theories of nonlinear behavior of complex systems. Defining characteristics of complex systems include (a) being composed of many variables that interact strongly to determine system behavior, (b) sensitivity to initial conditions, and (c) stability across time. Two complex-system concepts, phase spaces and attractors, provide insight into the evolution of system behavior and make prediction of future behavior possible. It is proposed that complex-systems research has application to the study of organizations and social behavior. Organizational attractors exist and seem to be both sensitive to initial conditions and stable. The discussion of concepts from complex systems, and their application to organizations, provides insight into how organizational research should be conducted. If organizations are assumed to exhibit nonlinear behavior, more historical, longitudinal, and qualitative research methods should be used to provide context-specific descriptions of organizational behavior.
Will They Do It Again?
Authors: Hanson R. Karl
Published: March 2003

This article reviews the empirical research on the prediction of reoffending among sexual offenders. The major predictors of sexual-offense recidivism are factors related to sexual deviance (e.g., deviant sexual preferences, previous sex crimes) and, to a lesser extent, criminal lifestyle (e.g., antisocial personality disorder, total number of prior offenses). The factors that predict general recidivism among sex offenders are the same as the factors that predict general recidivism among nonsexual criminals (e.g., juvenile delinquency, prior violent offenses). Given that there are special predictors of sexual recidivism, evaluators should consider separately the risk for sexual and non-sexual recidivism.
Giftedness
Authors: Winner Ellen
Published: March 2003

Gifted children, those with unusually high ability in one or more domains, not only develop more rapidly than typical children, but also appear to be qualitatively different. They have an intense drive to master, require little explicit tuition, and, if intellectually gifted, often pose deep philosophical questions. Although some psychologists have tried to account for the achievements of gifted individuals solely in terms of drive or “deliberate practice,” no evidence allows us to rule out innate differences in talent. Profiles of gifted individuals are often uneven: Extremely high ability in one area can coexist with ordinary or even subnormal ability in another area. Scientific investigation of the gifted reveals the importance of drive and hard work in achievement of any kind, and the lack of necessary correlation among abilities in different areas.
Pride and Prejudice
Authors: Solomon Sheldon , Greenberg Jeff , Pyszczynski Tom
Published: March 2003

Terror management theory posits that awareness of mortality engenders a potential for paralyzing terror, which is assuaged by cultural worldviews: humanly created, shared beliefs that provide individuals with the sense they are valuable members of an enduring, meaningful universe (self-esteem), and hence are qualified for safety and continuance beyond death. Thus, self-esteem serves the fundamental psychological function of buffering anxiety. In support of this view, studies have shown that bolstering self-esteem reduces anxiety and that reminders of mortality intensify striving for self-esteem; this research suggests that self-esteem is critical for psychological equanimity. Cultural worldviews serve the fundamental psychological function of providing the basis for death transcendence. To the extent this is true, reminders of mortality should stimulate bolstering of one's worldview. More than 80 studies have supported this idea, most commonly by demonstrating that making death momentarily salient increases liking for people who support one's worldview and hostility toward those with alternative worldviews. This work helps explain human beings' dreadful history of intergroup prejudice and violence: The mere existence of people with different beliefs threatens our primary basis of psychological security; we therefore respond by derogation, assimilation efforts, or annihilation.
Mindful Learning
Authors: Langer Ellen J.
Published: March 2003

Mindfulness, achieved without meditation, is discussed with particular reference to learning. Being mindful is the simple act of drawing novel distinctions. It leads us to greater sensitivity to context and perspective, and ultimately to greater control over our lives. When we engage in mindful learning, we avoid forming mind-sets that unnecessarily limit us. Many of our beliefs about learning are mind-sets that have been mindlessly accepted to be true. Consideration is given to some of the consequences that result from a mindful reconsideration of these myths of learning.
Citizens' Sense of Justice and the Legal System
Authors: Darley John M.
Published: March 2003

When an actor commits a wrong action, citizens have perceptions of the kind of responsibility the actor incurs, the degree to which the act was mitigated or justified, and the appropriate punishment for the actor. The legislatively mandated law of criminal courts, statutes, and criminal codes deals with the same issues. Experimental evidence shows that there are important discrepancies between the principles that people and legal codes use to assign responsibility. That is, the moral retributive-justice principles that people use are sometimes in conflict with the directions in which modern code drafters are taking criminal law. These discrepancies may cause citizens to feel alienated from authority, and to reduce their voluntary compliance with legal codes.
Heat and Violence
Authors: Anderson Craig A.
Published: March 2003

The heat hypothesis states that hot temperatures can increase aggressive motives and behaviors. Although alternative explanations occasionally account for some portion of the observed increases in aggression when temperatures are high, none are sufficient to account for most such heat effects. Hot temperatures increase aggression by directly increasing feelings of hostility and indirectly increasing aggressive thoughts. Results show that global warming trends may well increase violent-crime rates. Better climate controls in many institutional settings (e.g., prisons, schools, the workplace) may reduce aggression-related problems in those settings.
Talent Development as a Multidimensional, Multiplicative, and Dynamic Process
Authors: Simonton Dean Keith
Published: March 2003

Recent empirical research has challenged the common belief in the existence of talent, suggesting that exceptional performance is entirely the product of nurture rather than nature. However, this research has been based on a simple conception of what talent entails. Rather than involving a unidimensional, additive, and static genetic process, talent may instead emerge from a multidimensional, multiplicative, and dynamic process. This latter possibility is described in a two-part model that combines multidimensional and multiplicative inheritance with dynamic development. The first part of the model handles domain specificity, profile heterogeneity, the distribution of individual differences, familial heritability, and domain complexity. The second part explicates early-versus late-bloomers, early signs of talent, talent loss, and shifts in the domain of talent. The resulting model has crucial implications for how best to gauge the impact of nature in the development of talent.
Massage Therapy Facilitates Weight Gain in Preterm Infants
Authors: Field Tiffany
Published: March 2003

Studies from several labs have documented a 31 to 47% greater weight gain in preterm new-borns receiving massage therapy (three 15-min sessions for 5–10 days) compared with standard medical treatment. Although the underlying mechanism for this relationship between massage therapy and weight gain has not yet been established, possibilities that have been explored in studies with both humans and rats include (a) increased protein synthesis, (b) increased vagal activity that releases food-absorption hormones like insulin and enhances gastric motility, and (c) decreased cortisol levels leading to increased oxytocin. In addition, functional magnetic resonance imaging studies are being conducted to assess the effects of touch therapy on brain development. Further behavioral, physiological, and genetic research is needed to understand these effects of massage therapy on growth and development.
Learning: Association or Computation? Introduction to a Special Section
Authors: Leslie Alan M.
Published: March 2003

The fundamental nature of learning is a central problem in psychology. Traditionally, psychologists have assumed that learning must involve the formation of associations. Early last century, the pioneering work of Pavlov on conditioned learning in animals seemed to put this assumption beyond doubt. More recently, many psychologists came to believe that a different kind of process must underlie complex learning, such as language learning in humans, and that this process must be described as computational rather than associative. Whether complex human learning is associative or computational continues to be a subject of intense research. The articles in this Special Section turn this debate on its head by asking whether simple animal learning is associative or computational. Surprisingly, the question is still very much open, and excitingly, it appears quite tractable.
Linking Parents' Work Stress to Children's and Adolescents' Psychological Adjustment
Authors: Crouter Ann C. , Bumpus Matthew F.
Published: March 2003

Recent research indicates that parental work stress has implications for the quality of family interaction and, in turn, children's and adolescents' adjustment. Studies in two distinct genres are reviewed: investigations relying on global reports of work demands, family dynamics, and child and adolescent adjustment and studies focusing on within-person comparisons of family interaction on days characterized by high and low work stress. The effects of parental work stress on children's and adolescents' adjustment appear to be indirect. Work stress is linked to parents' feelings of overload and strain, which in turn predict lower parent-child acceptance and higher conflict, processes that in turn are related to less positive adjustment of children and adolescents. In the face of high work stress, withdrawing from family involvement may be adaptive in the short run but ultimately problematic. The strength of these associations depends on parents' personality qualities, parents' coping styles, and work and family circumstances.
Forgiveness: Who Does It and How Do They Do It?
Authors: McCullough Michael E.
Published: March 2003

Forgiveness is a suite of prosocial motivational changes that occurs after a person has incurred a transgression. People who are inclined to forgive their transgressors tend to be more agreeable, more emotionally stable, and, some research suggests, more spiritually or religiously inclined than people who do not tend to forgive their transgressors. Several psychological processes appear to foster or inhibit forgiveness. These processes include empathy for the transgressor, generous attributions and appraisals regarding the transgression and transgressor, and rumination about the transgression. Interpreting these findings in light of modern trait theory would help to create a more unified understanding of how personality might influence forgiveness.
Friendship Quality and Social Development
Authors: Berndt Thomas J.
Published: March 2003

A high-quality friendship is characterized by high levels of prosocial behavior, intimacy, and other positive features, and low levels of conflicts, rivalry, and other negative features. Friendship quality has been assumed to have direct effects on many aspects of children's social development, including their self-esteem and social adjustment. Recent research suggests, however, that friendship quality affects primarily children's success in the social world of peers. Friendship quality could also have indirect effects, by magnifying or diminishing the influence of friends on each other's attitudes and behaviors. Having high-quality friendships may lessen children's tendencies to imitate the behavior of shy and withdrawn friends, but little evidence supports the hypothesis that high-quality friendships magnify friends’ influence.
Why Young Men Drive Dangerously: Implications for Injury Prevention
Authors: Nell Victor
Published: March 2003

Why is risk consistently underestimated, and why do young men in particular take exceptionally high risks and think of themselves as invulnerable? Two explanatory paths are proposed. The first is that risk taking in young males has been shaped by evolutionary forces to provide a fitness value. The second pathway is through myth and the other narrative forms that affirm the ego's immortality and invulnerability. Because of its evolutionary base, risk taking is emotionally driven: Emotions are preverbal and irrational, which means that persuasive prevention cannot be more than weakly successful. Three prevention challenges emerge from this analysis: to determine what it is that young drivers fear, to attach affectively experienced fears to defined driving behaviors, and to devise injury-prevention programs that acknowledge that young males’ risk taking is not “stupid,” but driven by adaptive needs that are as significant to today's young adults as they were to our distant ancestors.
Accepting Threatening Information: Self–Affirmation and the Reduction of Defensive Biases
Authors: Sherman David K. , Cohen Geoffrey L.
Published: March 2003

Why do people resist evidence that challenges the validity of long–held beliefs? And why do they persist in maladaptive behavior even when persuasive information or personal experience recommends change? We argue that such defensive tendencies are driven, in large part, by a fundamental motivation to protect the perceived worth and integrity of the self. Studies of social–political debate, health–risk assessment, and responses to team victory or defeat have shown that people respond to information in a less defensive and more open–minded manner when their self–worth is buttressed by an affirmation of an alternative source of identity. Self–affirmed individuals are more likely to accept information that they would otherwise view as threatening, and subsequently to change their beliefs and even their behavior in a desirable fashion. Defensive biases have an adaptive function for maintaining self–worth, but maladaptive consequences for promoting change and reducing social conflict.
What We Know Now About Bias and Intergroup Conflict, the Problem of the Century
Authors: Fiske Susan T.
Published: March 2003

After nearly a century's study, what do psychologists now know about intergroup bias and conflict? Most people reveal unconscious, subtle biases, which are relatively automatic, cool, indirect, ambiguous, and ambivalent. Subtle biases underlie ordinary discrimination: comfort with one's own in–group, plus exclusion and avoidance of out–groups. Such biases result from internal conflict between cultural ideals and cultural biases. A small minority of people, extremists, do harbor blatant biases that are more conscious, hot, direct, and unambiguous. Blatant biases underlie aggression, including hate crimes. Such biases result from perceived intergroup conflict over economics and values, in a world perceived to be hierarchical and dangerous. Reduction of both subtle and blatant bias results from education, economic opportunity, and constructive intergroup contact.
Situation Awareness and Workload in Aviation
Authors: Wickens Christopher D.
Published: March 2003

A pilot faces special challenges imposed by the need to control a multivariate lagged system in a heterogeneous multitask environment. The time lags between critical variables require prediction in an uncertain world. The interrelated concepts of situation awareness and workload are central to aviation psychology. Three components of situation awareness are spatial awareness, system awareness, and task awareness. Each of these components has real–world implications, spatial awareness for instrument displays, system awareness for keeping the operator informed about actions that have been taken by automated systems, and task awareness for attention and task management. Task management is directly related to mental workload, as the competing demands of tasks for attention exceed the operator's limited resources.
The Emerging Field of Adolescent Romantic Relationships
Authors: Furman Wyndol
Published: March 2003

Romantic relationships are central in adolescents' lives. They have the potential to affect development positively, but also place adolescents at risk for problems. Romantic experiences change substantially over the course of adolescence; the peer context plays a critical role as heterosexual adolescents initially interact with the other sex in a group context, then begin group dating, and finally have dyadic romantic relationships. Adolescents' expectations and experiences in romantic relationships are related to their relationships with their peers as well as their parents. Although research on adolescents' romantic relationships has blossomed in the past decade, further work is needed to identify the causes and consequences of romantic experiences, examine the diversity of romantic experiences, and integrate the field with work on sexuality and adult romantic relationships.
Is Laughter the Best Medicine? Humor, Laughter, and Physical Health
Authors: Martin Rod A.
Published: March 2003

This article examines research evidence for the popular idea that humor and laughter have beneficial effects on physical health. Potential theoretical mechanisms for such effects are discussed first. Empirical evidence for beneficial effects of humor and laughter on immunity, pain tolerance, blood pressure, longevity, and illness symptoms is then summarized. Overall, the evidence for health benefits of humor and laughter is less conclusive than commonly believed. Future research in this area needs to be more theoretically driven and methodologically rigorous.
Ritual and interpretation: the early medieval case
Authors: Buc Philippe
Published: March 2003

In dealing with early medieval ‘rituals’ (whatever this category may mean), historians have to take into account that they were written about, staged, and participated in by members of a culture that was steeped in interpretation, and especially by the exegetical dialectic between letter and spirit. The consequences for narrative techniques, and therefore for our approach to the sources depicting ‘rituals’ are plural. The narratives can heighten or de‐emphasize the ‘ritualness’ of an event, as well as heighten or hide conflict (or consensus) within the ritual event, regardless of what actually happened. Rituals in texts, therefore, should seldom be taken at face value. Such techniques suggest that often enough the textual rendition (or even imagination) of a solemnity had more political impact than its performance.
The implications of athlete freedom to contract: lessons from North America
Authors: Sanderson Allen R. , Siegfried John J.
Published: March 2003

The 1995 Bosman judgement by the European Court of Justice granted professional athletes in Europe inter‐country freedom to contract and eased foreign‐player restrictions. Based on two decades of free‐agency experience in North America, we expect to see salaries of European players rise substantially, top players earn more while marginal players earn less, and players absorb more of their training costs. Ticket prices and competitive balance will be unaffected. Clubs and leagues will be likely to attempt to control player costs by instituting schemes such as payroll caps and increased revenue sharing.
Implications of the Bosman ruling for football transfer markets
Authors: Simmons Robert
Published: March 2003

This paper seeks to assess the implications of the 1995 Judgement of the European Court of Justice on the case of Jean‐Marc Bosman for the operation of football transfer markets. Although it is inevitable that many more out‐of‐contract footballers will be able to move between dubs without payment of transfer fees to the selling club, it is argued that there remains a role for transfer markets in professional football, with compensation to selling clubs for training, development and replacement of players.
Australia's retirement income system
Authors: Knox David
Published: March 2003

This paper reviews the current reforms to Australia's retirement income structure which now incorporates a means‐tested age pension, a compulsory retirement enefit system which is fully unded in the private sector and a voluntary savings scheme. This approach has been widely discussed in he international scene and some consider it to epresent an ideal structure. However, a number of fundamental problems remain and these are discussed.
Market intervention in a backward economy: railway subsidy in Brazil, 1854‐1913
Authors: Summerhill William R.
Published: March 2003

abstract
Rationing crime: the political economy of criminal statistics since the 1850s
Authors: Taylor Howard
Published: March 2003

abstract
The business and the politics of decolonization: the British experience in the twentieth century
Authors: White Nicholas J.
Published: March 2003

In synthesizing recent studies of the relationships between British businesses and British governments during decolonization, the article takes issue with the ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ paradigm. Imperial business and imperial government did not represent a cohesive elite; private and public agencies were frequently divided on key tenets of decolonization strategy; and, more often than not, it was broader macroeconomic and geostrategic factors rather than the agendas of particular business interests, that informed imperial policy.
Causes of repressed inflation in the Soviet consumer market, 1965–1989: retail price subsidies, the siphoning effect, and the budget deficit
Authors: Kim Byung‐Yeon
Published: March 2003

This article uses material which has recently been made available from Russian archives to analyse the causes of repressed inflation in the Soviet consumer market. It finds that retail price subsidies, which increased as a proportion of state budget expenditure from 4 per cent in 1965 to 20 per cent in the late 1980s, intensified consumer market disequilibrium. The provision of these subsidies had negative effects on the market by maintaining the purchasing power of households for consumer goods and by increasing the budget deficit. The unauthorized purchase of consumer goods by enterprises tended to increase during these years also.
Regime shift and fast recovery on the periphery: New Zealand in the 1930s
Authors: Greasley David , Oxley Les
Published: March 2003

New Zealand's recovery from the Great Depression was unusually fast and promoted by a new monetary regime that disassociated the Dominion's banking system from that of Australia, and broke the conventional parity between the New Zealand pound and sterling. The new regime destroyed deflationary sentiments, redistributed income to farmers, and sharply reduced real interest rates. Collectively, these forces promoted recovery. The consequences for New Zealand's real GDP are gauged by assessing how money, velocity, and prices would have behaved without a regime change. The new monetary regime raised real GDP per caput by one–third by 1938.
Learning Organisations, Lifelong Learning and the Mystery of the Vanishing Employers
Authors: Keep Ewart
Published: March 2003

Last month saw the publication of the National Skills Task force's final report. The report outlined shortcomings in the UK's vocational education and training (VET) performance. It advocated a number of measures to boost the supply of skilled and educated labour. This follows numerous pronouncements from the present and previous administrations in similar vein. Terms like ‘the learning society’ and ‘the learning organisation’ have become common currency. The ESRC Research Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance is investigating the complex issues involving skills and economic performance. Directed by Ken Mayhew and based at the Universities of Oxford and Warwick, one strand of its research is to investigate the possibility that an important source of the UK's VET failings is the lack of demand for skills by employers, and that this at least as important as shortcomings on the supply side. This article by Ewart Keep expands on this theme.
Foreign Capital and the Informal Sector: Comments on Chandra and Khan
Authors: Gupta Manash Ranjan
Published: March 2003

The first model of Chandra and Khan (1993) has been extended in the following directions: (1) migration equilibrium condition has been generalized; (2) capital market distortion has been introduced; (3) land as an agricultural input has been considered. It appears that the Brecher–Alejandro (1977) proposition may lose its validity in some special cases.
Empirical Tests of Efficiency Wage Models
Authors: Huang Tzu‐Ling , Hallam Arnems , Orazem Peter F. , Paterno Eizabeth M.
Published: March 2003

Two‐digit manufacturing industry‐level production functions are used to test efficiency wage propositions. Conclusive tests require functional forms which allow differences in elasticities of substitution between observable human capital, wage premia and other inputs. Results demonstrate that unexplained industry wage premia and higher unemployment rates raise productivity. Wage premia and the human capital wage component cannot be aggregated into a single human capital index. Nevertheless, 88% of the productivity effect associated with industry wages can be tied to observable human capital in the industry, with only 12% associated with the wage premium.
Changes in the Distribution of Housing Wealth in Great Britain, 1985‐91
Authors: Henley Andrew
Published: March 2003

The second half of the 1980s was a particularly turbulent time for the British housing market, during which time sizeable real capital gains accrued to owner‐occupiers, particularly those who were already owner‐occupiers at the start of this period. The paper constructs housing wealth estimates disaggregated by household from the 1985 GHS and 1991 BHPS Wave 1 in order to explain the distributional consequences of the housing market experience. The paper finds that there has been a modest increase in housing wealth inequality, but one that is more pronounced for gross housing wealth compared with equity. This growth has been offset by the growth in owner‐occupation and the benefits of the council house right‐to‐buy scheme.
Collective Bargaining and the Interindustry Wage Structure: International Evidence
Authors: Kahn Lawrence M.
Published: March 2003

This paper studies collective bargaining and industry wage levels using microdata and quantile regression techniques for the United States, Britain, West Germany, Austria, Sweden and Norway for the 1980s. The United States has higher industry wage differentials and union wage effects than other countries, with particularly large impacts at the bottom of the distribution. European wage structures are more compressed at the bottom for both nonunion and union workers relative to the United States, with larger differences for nonunion workers. These findings suggest more coordination, contract extension and spillover to nonunion workers, and more binding industry wage floors outside the United States.
Utilities versus Rights to Publicly Provided Goods: Arguments and Evidence from Health Care Rationing
Authors: Anand Paul , Wailoo Allan
Published: March 2003

This paper challenges the QALY maximizing approach to rationing health care on the grounds of the consequentialist (and sometimes approximately utilitarian) moral framework on which it is based. An alternative methodological approach is suggested and, in addition to consequences, four normative determinants of health care entitlements are identified: rights, public opinion, social contracts and community values. Survey evidence is presented which shows support for these alternative frameworks and a rejection of consequentialism. The paper suggests that a (if not the ) major challenge facing the designers of rationing guidelines is that of pluralism, i.e. the need to integrate considerations from a set of frameworks.
Industrial Concentration and Market Integration in the European Union
Authors: Lyons Bruce , Matraves Catherine , Moffatt Peter
Published: March 2003

Unlike previous cross‐section studies which test predictions from the theory of industrial structure, we do not make an ex ante assumption about the geographical market at which competition takes place. We develop an econometric technique that endogenously determines whether the EU or member state is the appropriate market level for each industry, while also estimating a structural model of concentration and market size. Another novelty is that we use European national as well as aggregate EU data. Strong support is found for the importance of endogenous fixed costs in the theory of market structure.
Poverty Traps and Human Capital Accumulation
Authors: Ceroni Carlotta Berti
Published: March 2003

In this paper I show that persistent inequality in the distribution of human capital and a negative relation between initial inequality and steady‐state aggregate output may follow from the fact that the poor require relatively higher returns to increase expenditure on education. Moreover, I show that poverty traps emerging in models where individual transitions do not depend on aggregate dynamics, though not robust to the introduction of idiosyncratic uncertainty, may still be relevant observationally, if idiosyncratic shocks occur with low probability. In this context, I also analyse the implications of introducing a public education system.
Wars and Markets: How Bond Values Reflect the Second World War
Authors: Frey Bruno , Kucher Marcel
Published: March 2003

Historical events are reflected in asset prices. Based on a unique data‐set, we analyse government bond prices of Germany and Austria traded on the Swiss bourse during the Second World War. Some war events generally considered crucial are clearly reflected in government bond prices; this holds, in particular, for the official outbreak of the war and the loss and gain of national sovereignty. Other events to which historians attach great importance are not reflected in bond prices, most prominently Germany’s capitulation in 1945. The analysis of financial markets provides a fruitful method for evaluating the importance contemporaries attached to historical events.
Auditing with Signals
Authors: Macho–Stadler Inés , Pérez–Castrillo J. David
Published: March 2003

This paper is a first step in analysing the use of statistical information about taxpayers’ incomes by tax audit authorities. In a very simple model, we consider the design of the audit strategy when the tax authority can commit to it and has free access to a signal correlated with the taxpayer’s true income. We discuss the optimal enforcement policy and compare it with the optimal one when only self–reported income is considered. Our main result postulates that the well–known regressive bias of revenue–maximizing audit rules may be reversed into a progressive one when signals are used.
Intrafamiliar Consumption and Saving under Altruism and Wealth Considerations
Authors: Wirl Franz , Feichtinger Gustav
Published: March 2003

This paper introduces a non–cooperative and dynamic framework of intrafamiliar decisions where the partners obtain utility from own consumption, account for the partner’s benefit from consumption (‘altruism’), and appreciate wealth. Stationary wealth (and thus stationary consumption) decreases with respect to altruism under cooperation, but increases in the subgame–perfect equilibrium in (linear) Markov–perfect strategies. Moreover, non–cooperation reduces savings and altruism mitigates this effect. However, altruism is an imperfect substitute for commitment, and of course for cooperation, because open–loop strategies, although independent of altruism, result in greater wealth.
On the Pervasiveness of Home Market Effects
Authors: Head Keith , Mayer Thierry , Ries John
Published: March 2003

Paul Krugman’s model of trade predicts that the country with the relatively large number of consumers is the net exporter and hosts a disproportionate share of firms in the increasing returns sector. He terms these results ‘home market effects’. This paper analyses three additional models featuring increasing returns, firm mobility, and trade costs to assess the robustness of home market effects to alternative modelling assumptions. We find strikingly similar results for two of the models that relax assumptions about the nature of demand, competition and trade costs. However, a model that links varieties to nations rather than firms can generate opposite results.
Twenty‐five Years after Kramer: An Assessment of Economic Retrospective Voting based upon Improved Estimates of Income and Unemployment
Authors: Kiewiet D. R. , Udell M.
Published: March 2003

Several studies in economics have derived estimates of economic activity in the years prior to World War II that differ significantly from official statistics. In this paper we examine the possibility that the impact of economic retrospective voting upon congressional election outcomes has been at least partially obscured by shortcomings in the official data series. To that end we re‐estimate various specifications of the basic Kramer model with these revised measures of income and unemployment. Although the effect of changes in real per capita income does not depend much upon which particular income series we used, the observed impact of unemployment doubles in size when the new estimates of historical unemployment rates made by Romer (1986b) and by Darby (1976) are used. Although the evidence is less than definitive, the results of our analyses also lend credence to the proposition that economic conditions have a greater impact upon congressional voting in on‐year elections than in off years, and that the incumbent party is bound to suffer a midterm penalty.
Does Distributional Skewness Lead to Redistribution? Evidence from the United States
Authors: Rodrigìuez F. C.
Published: March 2003

This paper presents time‐series, cross‐section, and historical evidence from the United States to test whether distributional skewness leads to the adoption of redistributive policies. On all accounts the theory performs poorly: we fail to find evidence either of a long‐run stable relationship or of short‐run causation between distributional skewness and redistribution in the time‐series data; the cross‐section data uncover no correlation between skewness and welfare spending or support of the Democratic Party; and analysis of the historical evidence shows that key changes in redistributive institutions in the United States were not preceded by increases in distributional skewness.
Aid, Taxation and Development in Sub‐Saharan Africa
Authors: Adam C. S. , O’Connell S. A.
Published: March 2003

External aid donors have gradually shifted from a benign view of the African state to one that presumes a conflict of interest between the state and its own private sector. What are the implications of this diagnosis for the design of aid programs? We develop a model that locates slow growth in the overly narrow interests of a political elite. We study the impact of aid on policy choice and private investment and the role of conditionality in securing the gains from aid. The results capture key features of the current diagnosis while underscoring the need for more sophisticated treatments of domestic political institutions, institutional change, and donor motivations.
Repeated Elections with Asymmetric Information
Authors: Duggan John
Published: March 2003

An infinite sequence of elections with no term limits is modelled. In each period a challenger with privately known preferences is randomly drawn from the electorate to run against the incumbent, and the winner chooses a policy outcome in a one‐dimensional issue space. One theorem is that there exists an equilibrium in which the median voter is decisive: an incumbent wins re‐election if and only if his most recent policy choice gives the median voter a payoff at least as high as he would expect from a challenger. The equilibrium is symmetric, stationary, and the behavior of voters is consistent with both retrospective and prospective voting. A second theorem is that, in fact, it is the only equilibrium possessing the latter four conditions — decisiveness of the median voter is implied by them.
Campaign Contributions and Agricultural Subsidies
Authors: Lopez Rigoberto A.
Published: March 2003

This article examines the influence of campaign contributions on agricultural subsidies. Empirical results revealed that rent‐seeking works, i.e. contributions, influence agricultural subsidies in the manner they best serve contributors' economic interests. Eliminating campaign contributions would significantly decrease agricultural subsidies, hurt farm groups, benefit consumers and taxpayers, and increase social welfare by approximately $5.5 billion. Although contributions are not the only determinants of agricultural subsidies, investment returns to farm PAC contributors are quite high ($1 in contributions brings about $2,000 in policy transfers). In fact, the results are in sharp contrast to the “truthful contributions” assumption of the Grossman–Helpman model.
The ratification of ILO conventions: A hazard rate analysis
Authors: Boockmann Bernhard
Published: March 2003

There are over 180 ILO conventions in many areas of labour law, industrial relations and social security, but they are not ratified universally: for the conventions adopted between 1975 and 1995, the cumulative probability of ratification is about 13 percent 10 years after their adoption. In this paper, the ratification decision is understood as a transition between two states. Using duration analysis, we identify circumstances which are favourable to this transition. For industrialized countries, the ratification of ILO conventions is shown to depend on internal political factors such as government preferences or the power of left‐wing parties in parliament. For developing countries, economic costs of ratification have a significant impact. There is no evidence for external pressure in favour of ratification. Among industrialized member states, there is a clear downward trend in estimated ratification probabilities over the last two decades.
Private Investment and Political Institutions
Authors: Stasavage David
Published: March 2003

Recent research has demonstrated a negative link between macroeconomic and political uncertainty and levels of private investment across countries. This raises the question whether certain types of government institutions might help reduce this uncertainty. North and Weingast (1989) propose that political institutions characterized by checks and balances can have beneficial effects on investment by allowing governments to credibly commit not to engage in ex post opportunism with respect to investors. In this paper I develop and test a modified version of their hypothesis, suggesting that checks and balances, on average, improve possibilities for commitment, but that they are not a necessary condition for doing so. Results of heteroskedastic regression and quantile regression estimates strongly support this proposition.
From federalism, Chinese style to privatization, Chinese style
Authors: Cao Yuanzheng , Qian Yingyi , Weingast Barry R.
Published: March 2003

In 1995, China began a profound reform of its state‐owned enterprises. We first describe and characterize this progress in two areas: privatization of small state‐owned enterprises at the county level and mass lay‐offs of excess state workers at the city level. Local governments have initiated these reforms, which are proceeding in economically and politically sensible ways. We then argue that privatization, Chinese style, rests on an adequate economic and political foundation ‐ federalism, Chinese style. We suggest a range of incentives that propel local governments toward state‐owned enterprise reform, including their harder budget constraints and increased competition from the non‐state sector. In this sense, federalism, Chinese style, has induced privatization, Chinese style.

JEL classification: H7, L30, P3.
Economic openness and technical efficiency: A case study of Chinese manufacturing industries
Authors: Sun Haishun , Hone Phillip , Doucouliago Hristos
Published: March 2003

This paper presents a study of the technical efficiency of industries in a transitional economy: China. Using data for 28 manufacturing industries across 29 provinces and the Data Envelopment Analysis approach, the technical efficiency of each industry is measured and compared across regions and provinces. The determinants of differential technical efficiency performance are analysed, with a particular focus on the impact of trade orientation and foreign investment. Trade openness is found generally to have a positive effect on technical efficiency.