Traditional concerns about concentration in product markets have centered on the social loss associated with the mispricing that occurs when market power is exercised. This paper focuses on a ...potentially greater loss from market power-a reduction in cost efficiency brought about by the lack of market discipline in concentrated markets. We employ data from the commercial banking industry, which produces very homogeneous products in multiple markets with differing degrees of market concentration. We find the estimated efficiency cost of concentration to be several times larger than the social loss from mispricing as traditionally measured by the welfare triangle.
Using the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), we analyze how educational aspirations are formed and maintained from eighth to twelfth grades among a single cohort of youth. ...Guided by research in the status-attainment literature, which focuses on how aspirations are shaped, and the blocked-opportunities framework, which considers the structural obstacles that bound or level aspirations, we find that the relative shares of minority youth who have high educational aspirations are high from eighth to twelfth grades. However, ethnic groups differ in the extent to which high educational aspirations are maintained such that black and Hispanic youth have less stable aspirations. Our results suggest that family socioeconomic status (SES) not only contributes to ambitious aspirations in eighth grade but, more important, to the maintenance of high aspirations throughout the high school years. Because black and Hispanic students are less likely to maintain their high aspirations throughout high school, owing to their lower family SES background, we argue that their early aspirations are less concrete than those of white and especially Asian students. Focus-group discussions with adolescents support quantitative findings that, compared to whites and Asians, black and Hispanic youth are relatively uninformed about college, thus dampening their odds of reaching their educational goals.
Longitudinal causal models of growth in math and English constructs (school grades, standardized tests, academic self-concept, affect and coursework selection) were based on three waves of data from ...the large (N = 24,599), nationally representative National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988. Math and English self-concepts had significant path coefficients leading to subsequent school grades, coursework selection, and standardized test scores. Unlike previous studies that did not consider math and English constructs in the same model, we found these relations to be very domain specific (e. g., there were significant positive paths from math self-concept to subsequent math outcomes but not to subsequent English outcomes). Girls had higher scores for all English constructs and math school grades, but they had lower math self-concepts. Whereas similar studies conducted over the past 20 years found diminishing gender differences, these data show relative gains for girls in achievement and coursework selection for both mathematics and English. Path coefficients relating prior math and English constructs to subsequent outcomes, however, were similar for boys and girls. Hence, the extreme domain specificity of relations between prior self-concept and subsequent outcomes was similar for boys and girls.
Cualquiera pudo pensar que el fin de la guerra fría marcaría más certezas que debilidades. Sin embargo, esta obra nos permite reflexionar sobre sus consecuencias: la desaparición de bloques y con ...ello el cierto equilibrio que éstos imponían al sistema internacional o interestatal. Bajo este marco, cada país está atenido a sus propias capacidades y fuerzas y la acción internacional no se definirá más por un frío cálculo racional, sea económico o de otro tipo, sino que estará definida (por lo menos parcialmente) en términos ideológicos y éticos. ¿En qué contexto se define, entonces, la política exterior de nuestro país?
A variety of evidence suggests that students in the United States change schools frequently. But there has been relatively little research that examines the educational consequences of student ...mobility. This study examined the incidence of student mobility between the eighth and twelfth grades and its effect on high school completion using the National Eductional Longitudinal Survey third follow-up data. Three models were tested on two groups of students. ... The models were developed from a conceptual framework based on theories ... that suggest school mobility may represent a less severe form of educational disengagement similar to dropping out. The results generally support this idea. That is, measures of social and academic engagement, such as low grades, misbehavior, and high absenteeism, predicted both whether students changed schools or dropped out. The results further indicate that, controlling for other predictors, students who made even one nonpromotional school change between the eighth and twelfth grades were twice as likely to not complete high school as students who did not change schools. Together, the findings suggest that student mobility is both a symptom of disengagement and an important risk factor for high school dropout. ( DIPF/orig.)
Contemporary Taiwan is the most comprehensive and up-to-date study of the dynamic island republic available. Drawing on a broad range of documentary sources and on-site research, many of the world's ...leading specialists on Taiwanese affairs provide in-depth and expert analysis. This unique volume covers many aspects of Taiwan on the eve of the twenty-first century: the transition to and institutionalization of democracy; the domestic economy and foreign trade; social and cultural developments; science and technology; the environment; foreign relations and international status; relations with China; the history of the Republic of China; and Taiwan's modernization in comparative perspective.
Because women typically serve as primary care providers for their children, female labor force participation behavior is likely to be affected significantly by the costs associated with replacing ...maternal care with nonmaternal care. While some evidence of this phenomenon exists in the economics literature, discrepancies across studies make it difficult to provide conclusive evidence of the employment effects of these child care costs. This paper uses an improved SIPP survey design to present new evidence regarding the degree to which child care prices impede mothers' employment behavior, with additional evidence of the difference in these elasticities across marital status, empirical technique, and equation specification. This permits linking this paper to the existing evidence, drawing the conclusion that child care prices impede mothers' employment behavior significantly, with single mothers exhibiting less responsiveness in their labor force participation behavior to child care price changes than married mothers. Generally, these results support the basic finding of Ribar (1992), reject the smaller price of care elasticities found by Averett et al. (1997), Blau and Robins (1988), Connelly (1992), and Tolin (1992), but replicate the lower elasticities found in these papers by changing equation specifications. Also, significant sensitivity in the price elasticity is revealed, particularly with respect to changes in equation specification.
The goal of this study was to provide population-based estimates of the prevalence of depressive symptoms among primiparous US adolescent mothers.
Data from the live-birth component of the 1988 ...National Maternal and Infant Health Survey were analyzed.
The prevalence of depressive symptoms varied by age and race, from 14% among White adult mothers to 48% among Black mothers 15 to 17 years old. After control for income and marital status, the increased prevalence of depressive symptoms associated with adolescent motherhood was greatly diminished (for 15- to 17-year-old Black women and 18- to 19-year-old White women) or eliminated (for 18- to 19-year-old Black women and 15- to 17-year-old White women).
Adolescent mothers experience high rates of depressive symptoms relative to adult mothers, and mental health and other interventions that alleviate the exacerbating influence of poverty and unmarried status are warranted.
In 1994 the Zapatista rebellion brought international attention to the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Neil Harvey combines ten years of field work in Chiapas with extensive historical and ...political research to provide a comprehensive history of conflict in this region and a nuanced analysis of this rural uprising against federal bureaucracy and landed elites. Beginning with an exploration of the history of ethnic and class conflict in Chiapas since the Conquest, Harvey moves specifically to trace the development of peasant and indigenous organizations in Chiapas since the early 1970s. He compares the struggles for agrarian rights of three grassroots movements facing hostility from both local elites and federal bureaucrats. His examination of the complexities of political change in Chiapas includes the impact of neoliberal economic policies, the origins of the Zapatista army of National Liberation (EZLN), and the political impact of the rebellion itself. Engaging with current theoretical debates on the role and significance of social movements in Mexico and Latin America, Harvey focuses on the primacy of political struggle and on the importance of these movements in the construction and meaning of citizenship. While suggesting that the Zapatista revolution has heightened awareness among the people of Chiapas of such democratic issues as ethnicity, gender, and land distribution, he concludes with an analysis of the obstacles to peace in the region today. This unprecedented study of the Zapatista rebellion will provoke discussion among students and scholars of contemporary Mexico, political science, Latin American studies, history, sociology, and anthropology.
LMC 1988 #1 was a moderately fast, CO, dust-forming classical nova. It was observed extensively in many different wavelength regions during its early evolution. The UV, optical and infrared light ...curves of LMC 1988 #1 are very similar to those of the Galactic Nova V1668 Cyg 1978. As in V1668 Cyg, LMC 1988 #1 showed the presence of an optically thin dust shell ∼ 55 d after visual maximum which lasted for about two months. We successfully fit the UV and optical spectra of LMC 1988 #1 taken within the first two months of its outburst (when the atmosphere was still optically thick) with synthetic spectra computed using phoenix nova model atmospheres. The synthetic spectra reproduce most of the features seen in the observations and provide V-band magnitudes consistent with the observed light curve. From the synthetic spectral fits to the observed data, we find that the bolometric luminosity was approximately constant at (3.0 ± 0.3) × 1038 erg s−1 (assuming a distance of 53 kpc to the LMC) during the first 45 d after visual maximum. The fits are improved by increasing the CNO abundances to ∼ 10 times their solar values, implying that the ejecta were enriched in CNO elements.
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