COMPARATIVE WELL-BEING OF CHILDREN AND ELDERLY

This paper compares the economic well-being of children and the elderly to each other in the United States and across six industrialized countries. Using the Luxembourg Income Study database, we find that U.S. children–whose economic status is measured by their family income–are generally worse off than U.S. elderly in terms of both poverty and adjusted mean income. Moreover, U.S. children are worse off in terms of higher poverty rates than are the children in any of the other countries studied. The paper presents a variety of explanations for these differences.     

Exploring factors influencing addictive buying behaviour in the U.S.A.

This study proposes two models of addictive buying behaviour. The first model assumes that childhood experiences of parental discord influence depression and low self-esteem which, in turn, increase addictive buying behaviour in adulthood. The data were obtained from questionnaires completed by 149 subjects (college students, Chicago residents, and members of Debtors Anonymous). Testing the first model indicates that parental discord is indeed positively related to depression and addictive buying, and that depression is related negatively to self-esteem and positively to addictive buying. The second model indicates that addictive buying is positively related to depression and low self-esteem.     

Advantageous Comparison and Rationalization of Earnings Management

This paper proposes that psychological factors can change managers' beliefs about earnings management when they choose to engage in it. I show that, under certain circumstances, engaging in a small amount of earnings management alters a manager's beliefs about the appropriateness of the act, which may increase the likelihood of further earnings management. Specifically, I predict and find in two experiments that participants who initially choose to manage earnings are motivated to rationalize their behavior. Participants who are exposed to an egregious example of earnings management (commonly the focus of enforcement actions and press reports) have the opportunity to rationalize their behavior through a mechanism called “advantageous comparison,” where participants compare their behavior against the egregious example and conclude that what they did was relatively innocuous and appropriate. My analysis also indicates that presenting participants with an example of earnings management that is similar to the initial decision they made mitigates advantageous comparison. These results have implications for academics interested in how earnings management, and perhaps fraud, can accrete over time and for regulators and practitioners who are interested in preventing it.     

Poverty among the elderly in late Victorian England1

Despite rapid increases in manual workers' wages, poverty rates among the elderly remained high in late Victorian England, although they varied significantly across Poor Law Unions. This paper begins by examining the ability of workers to provide for their old age. A data set is constructed, consisting of all English Poor Law Unions in 1891–2, and regression equations are estimated in order to explain variations across unions in pauperism rates. This is followed by the testing of several conjectures made by contemporaries, and repeated by historians, regarding the deterrent effect of workhouse relief, the effects of wages and of the industrial character of Poor Law Unions on pauperism rates, and regional differences in workers' reliance on the poor law. The paper then examines the implications of these results for the debate over national old age pensions in the decades before the adoption of the Old Age Pension Act.     

A CLIOMETRIC REVOLUTION IN THE ECONOMIC HISTORY OF KOREA: A CRITICAL REVIEW

Cliometric approaches to the economic history of Korea have emerged as a distinctive trend from the mid‐1990s. They have quickly made profound changes to our understanding of Korea's economic history from 1700 to 1945. The most remarkable include identifying the long‐term decline of agricultural productivity from around 1800, the subsequent upswing in economic development from the late nineteenth century, and the continuing growth during the Japanese colonial era, 1910–45. We survey primarily the Korean language literature that reports the achievements of this cliometric movement and speculate about the future research agenda.     

国际会议选址因素重要性的感知差异分析——以北京为例

北京建设国际会展之都是实现建设世界城市的重要组成部分,因此,研究国际会议选址因素及举办方对其的感知差异对北京具有实践意义。文章通过文献综述及访谈,基于会议组织方角度,总结了北京作为国际会议目的地的23个选址因素,并对会议组织方进行了调查问卷,从时间和举办主体两个维度分析了选址因素重要性的感知差异。文章指出,北京建设会展之都应当重视软实力的提升,加强会议场地的服务质量、会展专业人才、城市形象和目的地营销等方面的建设。     

Regions and time in the European fertility transition: problems in the Princeton Project’s statistical methodology1

Much empirical social‐science research, including work in economic and demographic history, has relied on the analysis of published information on administrative districts. One famous example of this type of research, the Princeton Project on the Decline of Fertility in Europe (EFP), was carried out at Princeton University’s Office of Population Research in the 1960s and 1970s. This project aimed to characterize the decline of fertility that took place in Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The project’s summary statements argued that social and economic forces played little role in bringing about the fertility transition. A central feature of the EFP argument is a series of statistical exercises which purport to show that changes in economic and social conditions exerted little influence on fertility. Two recent articles on Germany for this period have used similar data and methods to draw different conclusions. We show that the difference reflects problems in the Princeton project’s statistical methods. Those problems affect, potentially, virtually all quantitative research of this type. Our findings suggest cautious re‐thinking of conclusions based on this type of evidence, starting with the EFP.     

Product Market Competition and Human Resource Practices in the Retail Food Sector

In the wake of Wal‐Mart and other mass merchandisers’ entry into food retailing, the nature of competition in the industry has changed radically. Using longitudinal data on workers and firms to construct measures of compensation and churning for traditional food retailers, this paper examines how these measures change in response to mass merchandiser entry. While there is considerable heterogeneity across retail food establishments, human resource practices are persistent even in the face of new external competition.     

OIL PRICE VOLATILITY AND U.S. MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCE

This study uses a model with explicit energy sector linkages to estimate the macroeconomic impacts of the 1986 collapse in energy prices. The model combines features of neoclassical macroeconomics to estimate final demand spending and of general equilibrium analysis to estimate substitution possibilities. The model allows price and wage rigidities yet permits interfuel and input substitutions. The simulation results suggest three conclusions. First, the most significant macroeconomic impact of the 1986 oil price reduction is the sharp drop in inflation. Second, output and employment gains are relatively small due to the sharp drop in energy sector output. Finally, the estimated gain in real output due to lower energy prices is close to the output loss resulting from the trade deficit increase during 1986. This may be one reason why no substantial increase in economic growth occurred following the 1986 collapse in energy prices.