American Consumption Patterns and the Price of Time: A Time-Series Analysis

National aggregate time series data on the components of Personal Consumption Expenditures from 1955 to 1984 were used to analyze the roles played by male and female wage rates in altering American consumption patterns. Male nonmarket time was found to be a substitute for all goods and services categories except Automobiles and Parts. Female nonmarket time was found to be a net complement of Automobiles and Parts, Furniture and Household Equipment, Other Durables, Gasoline and Oil, Electricity and Natural Gas, Other Household Operations, and Transportation Services and a net substitute for all other goods and services.     

More bang for the buck: Getting the most from accident investigations

An Incident Investigation system based on a combination of Fault Tree Analysis logic and the Deming Principles of Systems and Quality was developed during a three-year period. The system was given an excellent test in the investigation of the explosion of a tank car filled with methacrylic acid. In this case, the Event Tree constructed during the investigation was easily converted into a Fault Tree. The Fault Tree so constructed was then used to evaluate the effectiveness of proposed corrective changes to the production, loading, and analytical systems before the changes were actually implemented. By making use of these tools to guide the addition of feedback loops (“And” Gates in fault Tree terminology), the intrinsic safety of the methacrylic acid production and shipping system was greatly enhanced at a relatively low cost.     

Roadmap for interactive exploration of sustainable development opportunities: The use of simple instruments in the complex setting of bottom-up processes in rural areas

Before embarking on the development of rural areas or regions it seems necessary to answer the following key questions: what goals of the parties involved can be realized, and where, when and how? To tackle these questions we have developed a ‘roadmap’, as part of an overall sustainable development procedure for physical planning and spatial management in rural areas. The roadmap is a tool for the process manager and the people involved. It helps to find the way in the exploration of the potential social, economic and ecological benefits of developing the area or region. The purpose of using the roadmap is to alleviate doubts about the advantages of cooperating in pursuit of sustainable development. A back-casting approach is applied to create appealing visions of the future and visualize mutual opportunities worth implementing. In this article we first describe the need for this new roadmap. We then describe its use, step by step and in some detail. An example of the exploration process is described and the strengths and weaknesses of the roadmap are discussed.     

An Indirect Test of Children's Influence on Efficiencies in Parental Consumer Behavior

A statistical test is applied to explore the possibility that children can affect the efficiency with which parents consume. Parents may receive some economic benefits from children in the form of reverse integenerational transfers that occur because of a positive influence children have on family behavior. Results show that not only do children have an influence on parental consumption, but also that the influence is beneficial. In fact, not accounting for such a benefit could cause an underestimate in such measures as the rate of return to education or the benefits from such governmental programs as Head Start.