Parental background,educational attainments and returns to schooling and to marriage: the case of Israel

This paper investigates the effect of family background attainments and on returns to own and wife's schooling, for Jewish males Israel. Three dimensions of paternal background are referred to: father's education, the prestige of the father's occupation, and whether the father is of a western origin (an advantage in the western-oriented Israeli society). For each of these types of segmentation it is found that both the level of and the returns to own and wife's schooling (after some years of marriage) are higher for those coming from a more favourable background.

These empirical findings are consistent with an investment in schooling model in which differences in demand (productivity of own and wife's schooling) vary more than differences in supply of investment funds.     

Irma Adelman: A Pioneer in the Expansion of Economics

Major innovations and extensions require that economists change their focus. This entails the destruction of some of their human capital. Even though this is a process of creative destruction, typical of progress in industry, the process is somewhat painful and therefore is not undertaken lightly. Typically, most of the enthusiasm for our work on social and political aspects of economic growth was expressed by people either at the very top of our profession, who had human capital to burn, or by new entrants into the profession, who, as yet, had no human capital to lose. And, most of the resistance to our work came from the middle of the profession, who either could not afford to lose any human capital or could not be bothered to engage in the relearning effort required to absorb it. The initial reactions to our work exemplified this dualism. . . . Many graduate students came to Berkeley from all over the world in order to study under me. I then discouraged them from writing dissertations in the interdisciplinary tradition, fearing the potential damage to their careers.     

Women's Labor Force Participation and Status Exchange in Intermarriage: A Model and Evidence for Hawaii1

Women's labor force participation, ethnic status and interracial marriage are examined in this paper to test Grossbard-Shechtman's marriage market theory. Perceived racial and ethnic group status is found to be an important attribute in marriage market exchange that combines marriage and working outside the home. Caucasian women, who have a higher perceived ethnic status, tend not to work when they marry men of a lower perceived ethnic status, while the opposite is found of women who have a lower perceived group status and who marry into a higher-status group. This is especially of women with low education, while highly educated women are less affected by compensating differentials at marriage as related to ethnic status of the couple. Ethnic groups that have a recent immigration history also have a different pattern of intermarriage and women's labor force participation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The New Home Economics at Colombia and Chicago

When Jacob Mincer and Gary Becker started the New Home Economics (NHE) at Columbia University in the early 1960s, they expanded on the field of family and consumption economics that Hazel Kirk and Margaret Reid began in the early 1920s. This paper studies forty years of household economics, the decisions that household members make regarding any allocation of resources. These decisions may regard consumption, labor supply, transportation, fertility, or health. A review of the history of the NHE shows that Jacob Mincer's original contribution tends to be underestimated. This paper also argues that the growth of the NHE benefited from the concentration of talent at Columbia, organizational support, the diversity of a student body that included many talented women, the ideological commitments that students, many of them married, had for the study of home production, a departmental policy de-emphasizing gender-related politics, and relatively high levels of civility.     

A real-world,multi-site,observational study of infusion time and treatment satisfaction with rheumatoid arthritis patients treated with intravenous golimumab or infliximab

Objectives: To assess real-world infusion times for golimumab (GLM-IV) and infliximab (IFX) for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients and factors associated with treatment satisfaction.

Methods: An observational study assessed infusion time including: clinic visit duration, RA medication preparation and infusion time, and infusion process time. Satisfaction was assessed by a modified Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire for Medication (patient) and study-specific questionnaires (patient and clinic personnel). Comparative statistical testing for patient data utilized analysis of variance for continuous measures, and Fisher’s exact or Chi-square test for categorical measures. Multivariate analysis was performed for the primary time endpoints and patient satisfaction.

Results: One hundred and fifty patients were enrolled from six US sites (72 GLM-IV, 78 IFX). The majority of patients were female (80.0%) and Caucasian (88.7%). GLM-IV required fewer vials per infusion (3.7) compared to IFX (4.9; p?=?.0001). Clinic visit duration (minutes) was shorter for GLM-IV (65.1) compared to IFX (153.1; p?<?.0001), as was total infusion time for RA medication (32.8 GLM-IV, 119.5 IFX; p?<?.0001) and infusion process times (45.8 GLM-IV, 134.1 IFX; p?<?.0001). Patients treated with GLM-IV reported higher satisfaction ratings with infusion time (p?<?.0001) and total visit time (p?=?.0003). Clinic personnel reported higher satisfaction with GLM-IV than IFX specific to medication preparation time, ease of mixing RA medication, frequency of patients requiring pre-medication, and infusion time.

Limitations: Findings may not be representative of care delivery for all RA infusion practices or RA patients.

Conclusions: Shorter overall clinic visit duration, infusion process, and RA medication infusion times were observed for GLM-IV compared to IFX. A shorter duration in infusion time was associated with higher patient and clinic personnel satisfaction ratings.     

Pretrial negotiations under optimism

We develop a tractable and versatile model of pretrial negotiation in which the negotiating parties are optimistic about the judge's decision and anticipate the possible arrival of public information about the case prior to the trial date. The parties will settle immediately upon the arrival of information. However, they may also agree to settle prior to an arrival. We derive the settlement dynamics prior to an arrival: negotiations result in either immediate agreement, a weak deadline effect—settling at a particular date before the deadline, a strong deadline effect—settling at the deadline, or impasse, depending on the level of optimism. Our findings match stylized facts.     

The state of North American free trade

In 1989, a Free Trade Agreement was signed between the United States and Canada. This past June, at a meeting between the presidents of the United States and Mexico, agreement was reached to begin negotiations toward a similar agreement between their countries. Could this be the impetus for a trilateral agreement among the three countries and, perhaps, even creation of a North American Common Market?