Comparison of Mexican-American and Anglo-American Attitudes Toward Money

This study compared attitudes toward money of Mexican- and Anglo-American consumers. Based on the Hispanic/Mexican-American literature, hypotheses were generated for four dimensions of a money attitude scale (MAS) developed by Yamauchi and Templer (1982). Mexican-Americans were found to have lower scores on a Retention/Time dimension that reflects willingness to delay spending money to achieve gratification. Contrary to previous studies, Mexican-Americans were found to have lower scores on a Quality dimension, calling into question an assumption found in much of the literature that Hispanic consumers prefer high prestige goods/services. Hypotheses pertaining to Power/Prestige and Distrust/Anxiety dimensions were also not confirmed suggesting further reservations about Hispanic consumer characterizations found in the consumer behavior literature.     

HARD OR SOFT? INSTITUTIONAL REFORMS AND INFRASTRUCTURE SPENDING AS DETERMINANTS OF FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN CHINA*

We examine whether hard infrastructure in the form of more highways and railroads or soft infrastructure in the form of more transparent institutions and deeper reforms lead to more foreign direct investment (FDI). We use data on FDI from the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwanese and Korea to various regions of China from 1990 to 2002. We control for the standard determinants of FDI—regional market sizes, wage rates, human capital and tax policies. Then we add indices of hard and soft infrastructures. We found that empirically soft infrastructure consistently outperforms hard infrastructure as a determinant of FDI.     

WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR AIR QUALITY: THE CASE OF OUTDOOR EXERCISE

This study uses a contingent valuation (CV) survey to establish a sample of outdoor exercisers' willingness to pay (WTP) for ambient air quality improvements in East Baton Rouge parish, Louisiana. Estimated annual median and mean WTP values are £95 and £191, respectively, per person per year for assurance that ozone levels would not become "unhealthful" on any day. The survey informed respondents that in the prior year the local community experienced 14 days on which ozone levels exceeded federal standards. The study makes the strong assumptions that respondents believed they were "buying" 14 more healthy days and that WTP per day "bought" is constant. Given these assumptions, one can scale this WTP response to represent annual medians and means of approximately £7 and £14 per person per day, respectively. An econometric procedure for generalizing the community's annual WTP to avoid the 14 unhealthful days yields estimates ranging from £3.21 and £5.36 per person per healthy day, or between £12.4 and £20.6 million per year. The unit day estimates are comparable to CV and household production finction estimates of WTP in the Los Angeles basin, suggesting their usefulness for benefits transfer .