The Impact of the Employment of the Wife on the Achievement of Home Ownership

A logistic regression analysis is used to assess the impact of the wife's income, wage rate, and hours worked on changing from rental tenure to home ownership among a subsample of husband-wife house-holds from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Age of the wife, education of the wife, family size, and residence in the Northeast are significant predictors of change in tenure status between 1979 and 1983; of the wife's employment variables tested, only the number of hours worked (a proxy for labor force commitment) is a significant predictor of the probability of changing from rental tenure to home ownership.     

In or out? explaining state shares of the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement

In 1998, 46 states were involved in a Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) with the tobacco industry. The other four states settled on their own. Our goal is to answer a counter factual question: how would these four states have fared had they been included in the MSA? We use data from Viscusi (2002 Viscusi WK (2002) Smoke‐Filled Rooms Chicago University of Chicago Press  [Google Scholar]) to explain settlement shares for states participating in the 1998 tobacco MSA, and to predict settlement shares for the four nonparticipating states. We find that two nonparticipating states (Minnesota and Mississippi) may have fared substantially worse had they been included in the MSA.     

AN EXPERIMENT WITH ULTIMATUM BARGAINING IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT*

We present experimental results on the ultimatum bargaining game which support an evolutionary explanation of subjects’ behaviour in the game. In these experiments subjects interacted with each other and also with virtual players, i.e. computer programs with pre‐specified strategies. Some of these virtual players were designed to play the equitable allocation, while others exhibited behaviour closer to the subgame‐perfect equilibrium, in which the proposer's share is much larger than that of the responder. We have observed significant differences in the behaviour of real subjects depending on the type of “mutants” (virtual players) that were present in their environment.     

Leaving Welfare: Independence or Continued Vulnerability?

Data from two semi‐structured interviews gathered approximately six months apart from seven women who were receiving cash welfare benefits at the time of the first interview and were not receiving benefits at the second interview were used to analyze the experiences of leaving welfare. Emergent themes about the post‐welfare experience are: (1) the low wages and lack of advancement opportunities in jobs, (2) confusion related to program administration, (3) the continued reliance on income support programs and kin, and (4) the banking of cash benefits under the five‐year time limit as a new safety net.     

Secondary household production of food: the influence of home meal preparation on food expenditures and reported adequacy

A path model was tested to ascertain the relationships between certain socio-economic and demographic variables, the percentage of household meals prepared and eaten at home (secondary household production), food expenditures, and the household's reported adequacy of food consumed. Significant positive predictors of secondary household production of food were the age of the head and household size. Negative predictors were education of the head, income of the head(s) and number of hours worked by the household head(s). By far the most important predictor was the number of hours worked. The strongest predictor of food expenditures was household size. Other positive predictors were income of the head(s), number of household heads and the degree of urbanization. Negatively affecting food expenditures was secondary household production of food, indicating the ‘saving’ effect of preparing meals at home. The household's reported adequacy of their food was predicted by the positive effect of education of the head, age of the head, tenure, hours worked by the head(s) and number of household heads. Although the number of hours the heads are employed decreased the percentage of meals prepared at home, and the percentage of meals at home negatively affected expenditures, the number of employment hours had no effect on food expenditures.     

FOOD MARKETING —WHY THE DEARTH OF CONTROVERSY?

Evaluation of performance in food marketing requires an examination of governmental and judicial agencies as well as a thorough delving of industrial secrets. A preliminary evaluation of performance suggests failure due to insufficient feedback of information to allow for adequate system anointer and control. Publications based on powers of search, subpoena, and seizure also suggest a history of inadequate performance and the weakness or absence of control variables. Since no ideal market institutions are known, and since we have reason to believe market performance is less than perfect, any absence of economic debate and controversy would signets the profession was relinquishing the field of market policy formulation to an economically unsophisticated judiciary and the aroused, if uninformed, housewives.     

Constraints,Domain Conditions,and Well-Being: Evidence from Poland during the Transformation

The relationships among the recent changes in socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the household, domain conditions (objective well-being), and the household members' assessment of their situation (subjective well-being) are assessed with data from 600 households in the province of Lublin, Poland. Four domains are included in the measures of recent change, domain conditions, and well-being: housing, household equipment, food consumption, and transportation. As expected, domain conditions are a function of household constraints; well-being is a function of domain conditions and recent change. Rural residents have significantly poorer domain conditions than urban residents, but report significantly higher levels of well-being.     

Managerial Behavior of Young Families in Pursuit of Single-Family Home Ownership

The managerial behavior of young families in the pursuit of home ownership was explored with a sample of 1267 households from northwestern lowa. Young owners had higher incomes and higher monthly housing expenses than young nonowners, but the percentage of income devoted to housing did not differ between young owners and young nonowners. Young owners did not have a higher number of full-time workers per household than young nonowners. Young owners had higher persons-per-room ratios and had compromised neighborhood accessibility standards, but not housing quality standards. The findings indicate that a high level of monetary resources was a key factor in enabling young families to own a single-family detached dwelling, for there were few important compromises in housing space and quality.