Environmental context in family resource management

Fundamental differences are described here between the environmental context of management within the private sphere of home and family, and management within the public sphere of government, political and business institutions. We articulate how management differs in the two spheres because of the unique rules and structural principles that govern each sphere, and because of the distinctive ends pursued in each sphere.     

SOFT MONEY AND CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

We analyze special interest influence on policy when political contributions are capped but the regulation contains soft‐money loopholes. The politician chooses between two policy options. We define special interest influence as the probability the politician chooses the policy he would not have chosen in the absence of contributions. Any binding cap reduces special interest influence but the effect may be nonmonotonic. A ban on contributions can result in greater special interest influence than a binding but nonzero cap. The results may also have implications for the policy response to the 2010 Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United v. FEC.     

A Problem Ignored: Dilution and Negation of Consumer Information by Antifactual Content

Current conceptions of consumer information do not consider types that may dilute or detract from facts available to consumers about products and services. The article discusses the nature and incidence of such antifactual content, identifies research and public policy that ignores the content but could benefit from recognizing it, and describes a role for the content in conceptualizing and better assessing consumer information, in order to provide researchers, regulators, advertisers, and consumers with more accurate evaluations.     

Interaction of Law and Ethics in Matters of Advertisers' Responsibility for Protecting Consumers

There are basic dilemmas involving the interaction of advertising regulation and advertising ethics, and their relation to social responsibility in the field. Analysis contributes to understanding them, and hopefully to resolution as well.     

Inflation Dynamics in the U.S.: Global but Not Local Mean Reversion

A stylized fact of U.S. inflation dynamics is one of extreme persistence and possible unit root behavior. If so, the implications for macroeconomics and monetary policy are somewhat unpalatable. Our econometric analysis proposes a parsimonious univariate representation of the inflation process for the last 60 years, the nonlinear exponential smooth autoregressive. The empirical results confirm a number of the key features such as global stationarity, local unit root behavior, and lower persistence in the post-1983 period than in the pre-1983 period. We compare the forecasting ability of our model with that of competing univariate models and find that the nonlinear model outperforms the linear autoregressive model in the pre-1983 period and the random walk in the post-1983 period at short horizons.     

Home food production,meaning, and family cohesion/adaptability

Empirical relationship between concepts from two important bodies of family literature are examined: home production from resource management, and cohesion and adaptability from literature on family relationships. Applying an input – output–throughput family systems perspective, indirect association of resource and demand variables and direct association of home food production variables were examined with respect to family cohesion and adaptability. Multivariant correlations of home food production frequency with family cohesion and family adaptability were statistically significant and positive. This positive relationship was further strengthened among respondents who reported home food production activity as being meaningful to their family.     

Reasonable Consumer or Ignorant Consumer? How The FTC Decides

This article examines the alternatives which have been available to the Federal Trade Commission in deciding what members of the consuming public it is committed to protecting. The choice has been between the “reasonable man standard,” under which it protects only those who act reasonably in the marketplace and not those who act foolishly, and the “ignorant man standard,” under which it protects all consumers without regard for the reasonableness or foolishness of their behavior. A third possibility is a standard lying between these two, under which the Commission protects consumers acting foolishly provided such actions are committed not by stray individuals but by substantial segments of the population.     

How Risky Are U.S. Corporate Assets?

We use market data on corporate bonds and equities to measure the value of U.S. corporate assets and their payouts to investors. In contrast to equity dividends, total corporate payouts are highly volatile, turn negative when corporations raise capital, and are acyclical. At the same time, corporate asset returns are similar to returns on equity, and both are exposed to fluctuations in economic growth. To reconcile this evidence, we argue that acyclical but volatile net repurchases mask the exposure of total payouts' cash components to economic growth risks. We develop an asset pricing framework to quantitatively illustrate this economic channel.