Child support enforcement for teenage fathers: Problems and prospects

The NLSY data indicate that about 7.3 percent of teenage males become fathers and that very few of these fathers live with their children. Father absence and the concurrent increase in female-headed households are closely associated with the impoverishment of children. Most absent teen fathers never come into contact with the child support enforcement program, and the extent to which they financially support their children informally is not well understood. While the income of absent teen fathers is low in the teen years, it increases over time, as does the potential for collecting child support. Nevertheless, men who were absent teen fathers earn less in early adulthood than men who deferred parenting until age twenty or later and teen fathers who lived with their children. Early establishment of paternity and greater standardization in the treatment of adolescent fathers by the child support enforcement program are recommended. Further, the substantial and persistent income deficit experienced by adolescent fathers who live apart from their children raises an interesting dilemma. While children may benefit financially and psychosocially from living with two parents, the lower income of men who were absent teenage fathers may make them poor marital prospects. This raises doubts about the recent recommendations of some scholars that we should bring back the shotgun wedding.

Are Corn Trend Yields Increasing at a Faster Rate?

Agricultural Finance, Demand and Price Analysis, Financial Economics, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

THE COST OF FORWARD CONTRACTING

The cost of forward contracting corn is estimated with weekly pre-harvest forward bases for seven regions of Illinois from 1975 to 2002. Given the panel structure of the forward basis dataset, we extend Townsend and Brorsen's univariate unit root model for forward bases to a panel unit root model. With the time series of forward bases modeled as unit root processes, the cost of forward contracting is estimated. The empirical results from the estimation show that the cost of forward contracting corn is about 1¢/bushel, one hundred days before the harvest, for all regions in Illinois as a whole. The results also indicates that the cost could vary across regions and that the cost of forward contracting could be substantially higher than that of futures hedging, especially at the beginning of the pre-harvest period.Marketing,

The Pricing Performance of Market Advisory Services in Corn and Soybeans Over 1995-2003: A Non-Technical Summary

The purpose of this research report is to summarize the pricing performance of professional market advisory services for the 1995-2003 corn and soybean crops. First, advisory programs in corn do not consistently beat market benchmarks, but tend to consistently beat the farmer benchmark. Second, advisory programs in soybeans exhibit just the opposite pattern, consistently beating the market benchmarks but not the farmer benchmark. Third, in terms of 50/50 revenue, advisory programs show marginal consistency in beating both the market benchmarks and the farmer benchmark. So, the results provide mixed performance evidence with respect to both the market benchmarks and the farmer benchmark.Agricultural Finance,

The Pricing Performance of Market Advisory Services in Corn and Soybeans over 1995-2003

The purpose of this research report is to evaluate the pricing performance of market advisory services for the 1995-2003 corn and soybean crops. Four basic indicators of performance are applied to advisory program prices and revenues over 1995-2003. Test results provide little evidence that advisory programs as a group outperform market benchmarks, particularly after considering risk. The evidence is somewhat more positive with respect to the farmer benchmark, even after taking risk into account. For example, the average advisory return relative to the farmer benchmark is $7 per acre with only a negligible increase in risk. While this return is small it nonetheless represents a non-trivial increase in net farm income per acre for grain farms in Illinois. Test results also suggest that it is difficult to usefully predict the year-to-year pricing performance of advisory programs based on past pricing performance. However, there is some evidence that performance is more predictable over longer time horizons, particularly at the extremes of performance rankings.Marketing,

Crystal structure of the catalytic fragment of murine poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-2.

Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1 (PARP-1) has become an important pharmacological target in the treatment of cancer due to its cellular role as a 'DNA-strand break sensor', which leads in part to resistance to some existing chemo- and radiological treatments. Inhibitors have now been developed which prevent PARP-1 from synthesizing poly(ADP-ribose) in response to DNA-breaks and potentiate the cytotoxicity of DNA damaging agents. However, with the recent discoveries of PARP-2, which has a similar DNA-damage dependent catalytic activity, and additional members containing the 'PARP catalytic' signature, the isoform selectivity and resultant pharmacological effects of existing inhibitors are brought into question. We present here the crystal structure of the catalytic fragment of murine PARP-2, at 2.8 A resolution, and compare this to the catalytic fragment of PARP-1, with an emphasis on providing a possible framework for rational drug design in order to develop future isoform-specific inhibitors

1998 PRICING PERFORMANCE OF MARKET ADVISORY SERVICES FOR CORN AND SOYBEANS

The purpose of this research report is to present an evaluation of advisory service pricing performance in 1998 for corn and soybeans. Specifically, the average price received by a subscriber to an advisory service is calculated for corn and soybean crops harvested in 1998. The average net advisory price across all 23 corn programs is $2.17 per bushel - seven cents below the market benchmark price. The net advisory prices for corn range from a minimum of$1.93 per bushel to a maximum of $2.51 per bushel. The average net advisory price across all 22 soybean programs is$5.82 per bushel - four cents less than the market benchmark. The net advisory prices for soybeans range from a minimum of $5.11 per bushel to a maximum of$6.58 per bushel.Marketing,

DO AGRICULTURAL MARKET ADVISORY SERVICES BEAT THE MARKET? EVIDENCE FROM THE WHEAT MARKET OVER 1995-1998

The purpose of this report is to address two basic performance questions for market advisory services in wheat: 1) Do market advisory services, on average, outperform an appropriate market benchmark? and 2) Do market advisory services exhibit persistence in their performance from year-to-year? Data on wheat net price received for advisory services, as reported by the AgMAS Project, are available for the 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1998 crop years. Not only do market advisory programs in wheat consistently fail to "beat the market," their performance is significantly worse than the market. On average, market advisory service performance is about $14 per acre below benchmark revenue, an economically non-trivial amount by any reasonable standard. The predictability results provide little evidence that future advisory service pricing performance can be predicted from past performance.Marketing,

THE 1995 THROUGH 1998 PRICING PERFORMANCE OF MARKET ADVISORY SERVICES FOR WHEAT

The purpose of this research report is to present an evaluation of advisory service pricing performance from 1995 through 1998 for wheat. The average net advisory price across all 24 wheat programs in 1995 is $3.79 per bushel,$0.18 above the market benchmark price. The range in 1995 is $3.01 to$4.71 per bushel. The average net advisory service price for 23 wheat programs in 1996 is $3.82 per bushel,$0.13 below the market benchmark. The range in 1996 is $2.74 to$4.94 per bushel. The average net advisory price for all 20 wheat programs in 1997 is $2.64 per bushel,$0.58 below the market benchmark. The range in 1997 is $1.34 to$3.90 per bushel. Finally, the average net advisory price across all 21 services in 1998 is $2.36 per bushel,$0.54 below the market benchmark. The range in 1998 is $1.34 to$3.33 per bushel.Marketing,