A Reappraisal of the Border Effect on Relative Price Volatility

Engel and Rogers (1996) find that crossing the US-Canada border can considerably raise relative price volatility and that exchange rate fluctuations explain about one-third of the volatility increase. In re-evaluating the border effect, this study shows that cross-country heterogeneity in price volatility can lead to significant bias in measuring the border effect unless proper adjustment is made to correct it. The analysis explores the implication of symmetric sampling for border effect estimation. Moreover, using a direct decomposition method, two conditions governing the strength of the border effect are identified. In particular, the more dissimilar the price shocks are across countries, the greater the border effect will be. Decomposition estimates also suggest that exchange rate fluctuations actually account for a large majority of the border effect.price volatility, exchange rate volatility, national border, distance, dissimilar shocks

Between the Gift and the Market: The Economy of Regard..

'The great transformation' from customary exchange to impersonal markets is incomplete. Reciprocal exchange pervades modern societies. it takes the form of 'gifts,' reciprocated without certainty. Reciprocity is driven by the pursuit of 'regard'. Money is avoided in regard exchanges, because it is impersonal. Instead, regard signals are embodied in goods, in services, or in time (attention). The personalization of gifts authenticates the signal. Reciprocal exchange persists in family formation, in intergenerational transfers, in labor markets, in agriculture, the professions, in marketing, entrepreneurship, and also in corruption and crime. Reciprocal exchange is constrained by the time and psychic energy, but is likely to persist as a preferred source of regard.

The time benefits of young adult home stayers in France and Italy: a new perspective on the transition to adulthood?

This article analyses how two co-residing generations contribute to the housework workload in Italy and France during the early 2000s. It studies the intergenerational exchange of time between young adults and their parents by indirectly comparing the level of domestic comfort enjoyed by young people in the two closely neighbouring countries. A focus on the reasons for staying in the parental home provides an explanation for the tendency of young Italian adults to prolong their stay in the family nest. The results of time-use surveys suggest that young Italians (especially young men) may benefit more than their French counterparts in co-residing with their parents. Beyond the compositional or structural effects, they perform fewer domestic tasks than their French counterparts, a result that is related to different cultural practices

Southern African Journal of Gerontology, volume 2, number 1, April 1993

The second number of SAJG again presents knowledge on ageing and the aged which can be useful in the development of better practices and the formulation of better policies in southern African countries. A focus of the articles in this number is on housing and living arrangements. Nyanguru and Peil writing on Zimbabwe give a finely detailed description of the housing situation of the elderly population using survey material. They draw on comparisons with other developing contexts to place the Zimbabwean housing situation in perspective. At the outset, the authors note that the impact of disability on the elderly is directly related to the nature and quality of housing. In conclusion to their overview of urban and rural housing circumstances. they recommend a more appropriate housing policy for the elderly which makes provision for home maintenance and home-help services to assist the elderly to stay in their homes. Moller re-analyses data collected for South Africa's baseline study of the elderly to explore the possible benefits for South Africa's elderly when they live with adult children. Her comparative case studies are based on the assumption that black elders might prefer to live with sons as traditional custom dictates and whites would usually choose to live independently according to Western custom. Chen systematically explores the question of which children co-reside with elderly parents in Taiwan using a large national database and sophisticated multivariate analyses. He also raises the question whether filial piety is on the decline when children no longer co-reside with their parents. The last article in this issue picks up a subject relating to quality of life-a topic introduced in an article in the first issue of SAJG. Authors Gillespie and Louw wish to re-open the debate on activity and quality of life. They pose the provocative question: Does a decline in activity in the elderly really dampen morale? Preliminary results from the pilot study undertaken by the authors reported in the article yielded inconclusive results. However the pilot study involved only a small sample and is presented to make the point and whet our appetite for further research and debate. In support of Gillespie and Louw's call to re-open the debate on the activity question we contribute further South African evidence which allows for various interpretation

City as lens: (re)imagining youth in Glasgow and Hong Kong

In recent years, a paradox has emerged in the study of youth. On the one hand, in the context of the processes of globalization, neoliberalism and precarity, the patterning of leisure and work for young people is becoming increasingly convergent across time and space. On the other hand, it is clear that young people’s habits and dispositions remain deeply tied to local places, with global processes filtered and refracted through specific cultural contexts. Against this backdrop, drawing on an Economic and Social Research Council/Research Grants Council (ESRC/RGC)-funded study of contemporary youth in Glasgow and Hong Kong, this article seeks to explore the role of the city as a mediating lens between global forces and local impacts. Utilizing both historical and contemporary data, the article argues that despite parallels in the impact of global forces on the structure of everyday life and work, young people’s leisure habits remain rooted in the fates and fortunes of their respective cities

Intergenerational Ties in Context: Grandparents Caring for Grandchildren in China

Guided by theories and empirical research on intergenerational relationships, we examine the phenomenon of grandparents caring for grandchildren in contemporary China. Using a longitudinal dataset (China Health and Nutrition Survey), the authors document a high level of structural and functional solidarity in grandparent-grandchildren relationships. Intergenerational solidarity is indicated by a high rate of coresidence between grandchildren and grandparents, a sizable number of skipped-generation households (no parent present), extensive childcare involvement by non-coresidential grandparents, and a large amount of care provided by coresidential grandparents. Multivariate analysis further suggests that grandparents’ childcare load is adaptive to familial needs, as reflected by the characteristics of the household, household members and work activities of the mothers

Home Bias, Transactions Costs, and Prospects for the Euro: A More Detailed Analysis

This paper brings together the literature on determination of home bias in equity holdings and the portfolio balance model of exchange rates to consider whether the dollar might be affected by a change in transactions costs that alters international portfolio allocations. Our empirical findings lend support to the view that transactions costs have a significant influence on US portfolio holdings, even after accounting for float market share. In addition, new survey evidence on the equity holdings of European firms indicates home bias for European investors, and points to a reduction in the magnitude of this home bias since 1997.portfolio choice, equity flows, exchange rates

Bequests as a Means of Payment

Although recent research suggests that intergenerational transfers play an important role in aggregate capital accumulation, our understanding of bequest motives remains incomplete. We develop a simple model of"exchange-motivated" bequests, in which a testator influences the decisions ofhis beneficiaries by holding wealth in bequeathable forms and by conditioning the division of bequests on the beneficiaries' actions. The model generates falsifiable empirical predictions which are inconsistent with other theories of intergenerational transfers. We present econometric and other evidence which strongly suggests that bequests are often used as a means of payment for services rendered by beneficiaries.

Changes in the Living Arrangements of Elderly People in Greece: 1974-1999

During the period 1974-1999 the percentage of elderly living with their children in Greece reduced from 55 per cent to about 32 per cent. In this paper we examine determinants of the decrease in intergenerational co-residence among Greek elderly people and their adult children and its implications for economic well-being. We find that the main factor that has contributed to the change in the living arrangements has been the increase in the pension incomes. Although income was the most important force driving the increase in the independent living among the elderly Greeks throughout the period under examination its contribution to the change reduced significantly during the 1990s. As the importance of incomes in accounting for changes in co-residence rates among the elderly reduces over time so the contribution of the unobserved year effect rises. This finding points to the role of changing preferences in determining intergenerational co-residence. Despite the substantial decrease in intergenerational co-residence we find that the family in Greece still plays a very significant role in protecting the poor elderly people.elderly, intergenerational living arrangements, Greece, poverty

The 'lost child' as figure of trauma and recovery in early post-war cinema: Fred Zinnemann's The Search (1948) and Natan Gross's Unzere Kinder (1948)

The article examines the figure of the ‘lost child’ in feature films of the immediate post-war period. The figure’s enormous symbolic value as innocent victim and future generation, granted the ‘lost child’ a key position in post-war discourse, including films which tried to grapple with the moral and physical destruction of the continent after 1945. National film industries, particularly of the perpetrator nation, employed the ‘lost child’ for genre stories in which the post-war chaos is being mastered and a new, masculine national self is re-built. However, films made by victim groups outside a national context rely on the ‘lost child’ to broach the destruction of their identity by war and persecution. Analysing two films, Fred Zinnemann’s The Search (1948) and Nata Gross’s Unzere Kinder (1948), I argue that they use the child figure to deal with traumatization and make it part of the reconstruction of communal intergenerational relations. This does not result in stories of masculine mastery but in narratives that incorporate moments of trauma process emerging around destroyed mother-child relations. The films, encoding traumatization in film language, develop a rich cinematic language along questions of identity and form a first instance of posttraumatic cinema