Infant Mortality Decline and Its Socioeconomic Correlates in New Zealand, 1873–1940

The popular view of New Zealand during the first half of the twentieth century is one of a healthy country with exceptionally low infant mortality rates. This article reviews the non-Māori ‘health transition’ and its determinants from a socioeconomic perspective and draws comparisons with Australia. Regional health inequalities are analysed through the lens of infant mortality. Socioeconomic correlates with infant mortality are investigated empirically. Panel regression estimates suggest that during the 1874–1919 period, improvements in real wages corresponded with falling infant deaths and thus better health outcomes, while increased housing density created unfavourable conditions for infant survival chances.     

Design as a social process: A complex systems perspective

Design is increasingly perceived as a social process, but despite a wide exposition of the concepts of cooperation or collaboration, a coherent account of the important dimensions of design as a social multi-agent process is still missing. It is argued that a generic, abstract concept is required to be able to capture the social distributed character of design, without making a-priori assumptions about the kinds of interdependencies that exist among agents (in terms of goals, knowledge or roles), or about their dispositions towards cooperation or conflict. The paper suggests that the most appropriate concept for this purpose is the concept of coordination. A model of coordination as a distributed learning control is thus presented as a vehicle for focussing on the important dimensions and qualities of coordination. Motivated by this discussion, the paper subsequently delves further into the issue of sociality by considering the question of the micro-macro link extensively discussed in sociology. In particular, the paper shows how coordination can offer a resolution of the question in the context of design, and discusses the effects of such an approach for our understanding of the relationship between complexity and design.     

Failed Bank Resolution and the Collateral Crunch: The Advantages of Adopting Transferable Puts

Current methods of failed bank resolution are unnecessarily expensive for taxpayers and impose substantial costs on borrowers at failed banks. This situation is the result of distorted incentives imbedded in the standard contract between the government and acquirers of failed banks, which result in more loan foreclosures than if the loan were held by a well-capitalized bank. This paper proposes a modification to the standard contract in the form of a transferable put, which would introduce market-based incentives to the disposition of failed bank assets.     

Reverse Mortgages and the Liquidity of Housing Wealth

Housing wealth constitutes most of the non-pension wealth of the elderly population. This study analyzes the potential of reverse mortgages to increase the income and liquid wealth of the elderly by identifying households with relatively high levels of housing equity. Because this article looks at the whole distribution of elderly households and considers debt as well as income, it finds a larger potential market for reverse mortgages than previous studies.
Calculations from the 1990 Survey of Income and Program Participation and Census population estimates show that over six million homeowners in the United States could increase their effective monthly income by at least 20% by using a reverse mortgage. Of these, more than 1.3 million have no children. Furthermore, a reverse mortgage would allow over 1.4 million poor elderly persons to raise their incomes above the poverty line.     

What we know about anticonsumption: An attempt to nail jelly to the wall

Despite burgeoning academic interest in anticonsumption, a lack of definitional clarity and overlapping constructs beleaguer the pertinent literature, preventing research in the field from reaching its full potential. This paper aims to strengthen the foundations for advancing knowledge in this fragmented field by (a) undertaking a thorough systematic review of literature; (b) charting the scope of anticonsumption literature based on network analysis and attempting to delineate overlapping areas; (c) providing an integrated framework of anticonsumption research, including antecedents, moderators, and consequences; and (d) suggesting a set of specific research propositions that will enable the field to move forward. Toward these aims, we analyzed 120 anticonsumption papers revealed in the literature review, identifying a number of important anticonsumption-related topics that warrant further investigation. Moreover, we suggest a research framework which reveals antecedents, causal sequences, and consequences of anticonsumption. Finally, a research agenda based on this integrated framework indicates promising areas for future research.     

Revisiting faultline conceptualization: measuring faultline strength and distance

The purpose of this research is to develop a conceptually and methodologically sound measure of group faultlines (demographic alignment of members along multiple attributes within a group). This measure takes into account the concept of faultline strength (the extent of a demographic alignment across members within a group) and, thus far neglected in past work, the concept of faultline distance. This faultline distance measure reflects how far apart the emerging subgroups are on demographic characteristics. This new, more elaborate conceptualization of faultlines is validated by presenting a number of hypothetical examples that demonstrate the distinct properties of faultline measures. We also validate our measures by empirically examining the relationships between faultline strength and distance, and active, or perceived, faultlines.     

Injury-related absenteeism and job satisfaction: insights from Greek and UK data

Most of the literature on absenteeism suggest that absence from work is a complex issue influenced by multiple causes, both of personal and of organizational nature. Job satisfaction has also been identified as one of the factors affecting an employee's motivation to work attendance. There is no universal agreement concerning the relationship between absenteeism and job satisfaction. Some research have found no correlation between these two variables, whereas other studies indicate a weak relationship between these two variables. It has also been suggested that absence and job satisfaction might be more strongly related under some conditions, for instance in the case of blue-collar workers. There is a lack of attention in the literature, however, to injury-related absenteeism, which is a particular type of absenteeism. This paper attempts to fill this gap and examines the effect of job satisfaction on injury-related absenteeism by using Greek and UK data. The empirical results suggest that there is a negative relationship between injury-related absenteeism and job satisfaction. The paper also discusses possible policy measures towards reducing injury-related absenteeism.     

Economic determinants of fertility in Belarus

This study examines the determinants of births in Belarus in 1996–2007 by using detailed micro‐data from the Belarusian Household Budget Surveys (BHBS). The existing literature offers several explanations of the recent trends in fertility in Belarus and in other former Soviet Union countries. It is often argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the concomitant economic instability reduced fertility in the 1990s, while economic growth and stabilization were responsible for its recovery since 2005. We evaluate these and other hypotheses by looking at the determinants of the first, second and third births, separately for women aged below 30 years of age and above 30 years of age. We provide evidence on the presence and the relative importance of the economic determinants, including income and wages, economic uncertainty, maternity and child‐care benefits. Our findings could inform demographic policies in Belarus and in other transitional countries.     

Person–place congruency in the Internet Banking context

This study proposes and empirically validates a model that incorporates the interaction effects of consumer's shopping orientation (utilitarian/recreational) and attitudes towards the online store atmospheric qualities (information related cues, navigation cues, aesthetic cues) on online shopping behavior. The use of an underutilized technique for detecting interaction effects unveils the superiority of interaction effects over direct effects in explaining online shopping behavior. Results reveal significant interaction effects during the information search stage but not during the purchase stage. Furthermore, the interaction effects were significant only for utilitarian shoppers but not for the recreational ones. The results signify the distinctive nature of online shopping compared to the offline one, and the need for retailers to distinguish online and offline store atmosphere management.