The Impacts of Remittances, Residency Status and Financial Attachment on Housing Tenure for Mexican-Heritage Americans: Inferences from a New Survey

Immigration has and will continue to alter the composition of housing demand in the United Sates. In this article, we analyze results from a new survey of Mexican-heritage households to draw some inferences about tenure choice within that group. Some measures of attachment to the United States—residency status and the amount of money sent to relatives and friends in Mexico—suggest that, among Mexican immigrants, permanence is a key determinant of homeownership in the United States. More specifically, being a citizen increased the probability of ownership, whereas being undocumented reduces the probability. Surprisingly, after controlling for residency status, length of tenure in the United States does not predict tenure status, except that those who refused to report length of tenure were more likely to have higher tenure status. Those who sent remittances home to Mexico were less likely to become homeowners.     

The Correct use of Confidence Intervals and Regression Analysis in Determining the Value of Residential Homes

This paper shows that (1) the principle of substitution has been misinterpreted in regression analysis on residential homes by the misuse of the confidence interval; (2) the proper confidence interval to judge the accuracy of the equation is the mean CI; and (3) the accuracy of the equation can be improved by applying factor analysis to the entire data set rather than a predetermined neighborhood. These results are illustrated in a sample of 571 residential sales in Northwest Arkansas during 1975. The data are divided into clusters, and a regression equation is computed for each. The results show that the mean confidence interval is the correct application of the principle of substitution. The correct decision rule to determine the superiority of the multi-equation or the single equation model compares the explained to the unexplained variation. These results should allow the appraiser to select properties that are better suited for comparison. This will improve the accuracy of the regression analysis and resulting estimates of property value.     

Factors that influence the length of industrial channels

This article is concerned with the length of channels utilized to market industrial products. Several marketing scholars have proposed that the appropriate channel structure is a function of conditions associated with the market for the product, the nature of the product itself, and characteristics of the producer and middlemen. By means of a survey of industrial product manufacturers, this study identified six characteristics of middlemen, industrial markets, and industrial customers that appear to be significant influences on the length of channels used to distribute industrial products.     

Measures used to evaluate industrial marketing activities

Given the importance of controlling marketing efforts, a study was conducted of industrial manufacturers to determine the extent of their use of various measures to evaluate different marketing activities. The predominate measures used for evaluation were sales volume with much less utilization of profitability, productivity, and expense measures.     

Excise taxes,over-shifting,cross-elasticity,and tax revenue

This article examines cross-elasticity effects in excise taxation for markets characterized by monopolistic competition and over-shifting. Extending the constant elasticity demand model to consider cross-elasticity leads to notably different results regarding tax revenue maximization. With nonzero but weak cross-elasticity effects relative to the price elasticity, we derive a higher optimal tax-price ratio compared to prior research. With strong cross-elasticity, revenue can continually be increased by raising the excise tax. Overall, the study offers government greater incentive to use excise taxes to obtain revenue.     

Economics,Ethics and Thanatology: Lessons from the Ancients

The normative presuppositions motivating rational choice decision-making based on optimizing objectives amount to a thin account of ethical economic behavior. Ancient thought offers insights that can provide a firmer basis both for personal, individual choice as well as for public policy. After a brief review of Epicurean and Stoic ethical principles, a comparison is made of modern economic and Hellenistic conceptions of rationality and rational behavior. These competing conceptions are then applied to an examination of a contemporary public policy problem, namely health care, particularly as this applies to “end-of-life” issues. The argument concludes that decision-making based on a eudaimonic conception of the good has the potential to provide us with a more efficient health care system as well as one that more satisfactorily addresses the needs of the chronically ill and dying patients who account for a highly disproportionate share of health care expenditures.     

Open interest,volume, and volatility: evidence from Taiwan futures markets

This paper examines the relationships amongst volatility, total trading volume (TVOL) and total open interest (TOI) for three Taiwan stock index futures markets as well as the role of the latter two variables in the dynamics of GARCH modeling and forecasting. From both ex-post and ex-ante perspectives, we study this issue by using the VAR model and augmented GARCH-type models, respectively. For the GARCH-type models, we employ both symmetric and asymmetric models augmented with lagged logs in TOI and/or TVOL. We find that whether addition of these two variables helps the basic GARCH models predict future volatility depends upon the sample period examined for all three sets of futures. Nonetheless, the best three models for out-of-sample volatility forecasting in the MSE sense are generally the augmented models for all sub-intervals and all three futures contracts.     

A Cross-Country Database for Sector Investment and Capital

This article presents a new database of investment and capitalin agriculture, manufacturing, and the overall economy. It covers62 industrial and developing countries for the years 1967–92.A common method is used in the calculations to facilitate comparisonsacross countries and sectors. The sensitivity of the calculationsto choices of parameters and estimation methods is tested. Collectively,the data show that as economies grow, capital stocks accumulate,but the composition of capital changes. Together and individually,capital stocks in agriculture and manufacturing constitute asmaller share of the total capital stock than they did 20 yearsago. Capital-labor ratios show that agriculture has become morecapital intensive in most countries. The composition of agriculturalcapital has changed as well; capital from investments in orchardsand livestock has declined relative to capital from fixed investmentsin machinery, irrigation, and buildings.     

Quasitransitive social preference: why some very large coalitions have very little power

Summary. If only the strict part of social preference is required to be transitive then Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives implies that there is a coalition containing all but one individual that cannot force x to be socially ranked above y for at least half of the pairs of alternatives (x,y). Received: August 29, 1996; revised version: March 24, 1997