Why do Households Concentrate Their Wealth in Housing?

An apparent paradox in household wealth accumulation in the United States is the relatively small holding of financial assets and the large holding of housing wealth. To explain the high concentration of household wealth in housing, this paper estimates the marginal propensity to consume from housing and from financial assets. A higher marginal propensity to consume from housing rather than from financial assets would lead households to concentrate their wealth in real estate. For aggregate U.S. quarterly data from 1952:1 to 2002:2, the marginal propensity to consume from housing is higher than that from financial wealth. These conditions provide a rationale for the concentration of household assets in housing.

The definitions are legion ::academic views and practice perspectives on violence against children

oth research and child protection practice are still far away from having uniform definitions of violence against children. The different disciplines involved in the sectors of national child protection systems rely on separate discourses and terms; definitions are sometimes rather general or implicit, and operationalizations of important elements are rare. The various terms in use – child maltreatment, child abuse and neglect, child endangerment, children at risk, children in need, etc. – speak of the variety, not only of concepts, but also of practices. With respect to the latter, definitional issues are also issues of the scope and thresholds of intervention. This chapter provides an overview of major terms and definitional approaches to violence against children and identifies eminent differences between them. Findings from several studies on the Swiss child protection system, including the first multi-sectorial national survey on agency responses to child maltreatment, illustrate how professionals use definitions and the consequences of having multiple definitional concepts for documenting reported cases. We conclude by advocating for a consensus-based interdisciplinary process of developing shared definitions of violence against children

Franchising in Residential Brokerage

This paper explores the profitability of real estate franchises. The database for the study consists of observations from the National Association of Realtors©' 2001 survey of real estate brokerage firms. Franchises are found to generate additional revenue for franchisees. However, net margins defined as the difference between revenues received and expenses paid (including franchise royalties) are lower for firms with franchises. The findings indicate that franchisors appear to extract the excess rents from the franchisee.

Technology and Real Estate Brokerage Firm Financial Performance

This study investigates the impact of Internet usage on the financial performance of residential real estate brokerage firms using a database of over 1,700 observations. Factor loadings and a factor score for Internet usage are developed. The results show that Internet use is positively related to revenue and net income, and negatively related to net margin. In a second stage analysis, Internet use is found to be positively associated with franchise affiliation, affiliation with a referral /relocation network and firm size, while negatively related to firm age, single-office firms and location in the West and South (relative to the Northeast).

Artefacts, skulls and written sources: the social ranking of a Celtic family buried at Münsingen-Rain

An examination of the skeletons from the well-known La Tène cemetery of Münsingen-Rain shows that they represent members of a high ranking group, and that they were closely related. These new findings prompt the authors to examine the written documents that refer to nobility in the Roman and Celtic worl

Insights from translation process research in the workplace

Translation process research is moving out of controlled settings, such as classrooms and laboratories, into the reality of professional workplaces. Some of the inherent challenges can be partly addressed with multi-method approaches, but ecologically valid investigations of practice demand flexibility from both researchers and practitioners. We argue that the insights gained from such ventures into the wild are well worth the additional effort and can inform translation studies as well as other areas of applied linguistics and neighbouring disciplines. These insights can and should feed back into training and professional development

Fossil flowers from the early Palaeocene of Patagonia, Argentina, with affinity to Schizomerieae (Cunoniaceae)

Background and Aims: Early Palaeocene (Danian) plant fossils from Patagonia provide information on the recovery from the end-Cretaceous extinction and Cenozoic floristic change in South America. Actinomorphic flowers with eight to ten perianth parts are described and evaluated in a phylogenetic framework. The goal of this study is to determine the identity of these fossil flowers and to discuss their evolutionary, palaeoecological and biogeographical significance. Methods: More than 100 fossilized flowers were collected from three localities in the Danian Salamanca and Peñas Coloradas Formations in southern Chubut. They were prepared, photographed and compared with similar extant and fossil flowers using published literature and herbarium specimens. Phylogenetic analysis was performed using morphological and molecular data. Key results: The fossil flowers share some but not all the synapomorphies that characterize the Schizomerieae, a tribe within Cunoniaceae. These features include the shallow floral cup, variable number of perianth parts arranged in two whorls, laciniate petals, anthers with a connective extension, and a superior ovary with free styles. The number of perianth parts is doubled and the in situ pollen is tricolporate, with a surface more like that of other Cunoniaceae outside Schizomerieae, such as Davidsonia or Weinmannia. Conclusions: An extinct genus of crown-group Cunoniaceae is recognized and placed along the stem lineage leading to Schizomerieae. Extant relatives are typical of tropical to southern-temperate rainforests, and these fossils likely indicate a similarly warm and wet temperate palaeoclimate. The oldest reliable occurrences of the family are fossil pollen and wood from the Upper Cretaceous of the Antarctica and Argentina, whereas in Australia the family first occurs in upper Palaeocene deposits. This discovery demonstrates that the family survived the Cretaceous-Palaeogene boundary event in Patagonia and that diversification of extant lineages in the family was under way by the earliest Cenozoic.Fil: Jud, Nathan A.. Cornell University; Estados UnidosFil: Gandolfo, Maria Alejandra. Cornell University; Estados UnidosFil: Iglesias, Ari. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Centro Regional Universidad Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente; ArgentinaFil: Wilf, Peter. State University of Pennsylvania; Estados Unido

Fossil moonseeds from the Paleogene of West Gondwana (Patagonia, Argentina)

Premise of the Study: The fossil record is critical for testing biogeographic hypotheses. Menispermaceae (moonseeds) are a widespread family with a rich fossil record and alternative hypotheses related to their origin and diversification. The family is well-represented in Cenozoic deposits of the northern hemisphere, but the record in the southern hemisphere is sparse. Filling in the southern record of moonseeds will improve our ability to evaluate alternative biogeographic hypotheses. Methods: Fossils were collected from the Salamanca (early Paleocene, Danian) and the Huitrera (early Eocene, Ypresian) formations in Chubut Province, Argentina. We photographed them using light microscopy, epifluorescence, and scanning electron microscopy and compared the fossils with similar extant and fossil Menispermaceae using herbarium specimens and published literature. Key Results: We describe fossil leaves and endocarps attributed to Menispermaceae from Argentinean Patagonia. The leaves are identified to the family, and the endocarps are further identified to the tribe Cissampelideae. The Salamancan endocarp is assigned to the extant genus Stephania. These fossils significantly expand the known range of Menispermaceae in South America, and they include the oldest (ca. 64 Ma) unequivocal evidence of the family worldwide. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the importance of West Gondwana in the evolution of Menispermaceae during the Paleogene. Currently, the fossil record does not discern between a Laurasian or Gondwanan origin; however, it does demonstrate that Menispermaceae grew well outside the tropics by the early Paleocene. The endocarps’ affinity with Cissampelideae suggests that diversification of the family was well underway by the earliest Paleocene.Fil: Jud, Nathan A.. Cornell University; Estados UnidosFil: Iglesias, Ari. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Centro Regional Universidad Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente; ArgentinaFil: Wilf, Peter. State University of Pennsylvania; Estados UnidosFil: Gandolfo, Maria Alejandra. Cornell University; Estados Unido

Intensity-based Choroidal Registration Using Regularized Block Matching

Detecting and monitoring changes in the human choroid play a crucial role in treating ocular diseases such as myopia. However, reliable segmentation of optical coherence tomography (OCT) images at the choroid-sclera interface (CSI) is notoriously difficult due to poor contrast, signal loss and OCT artefacts. In this paper we present blockwise registration of successive scans to improve stability also during complete loss of the CSI-signal. First, we formulated the problem as minimization of a regularized energy functional. Then, we tested our automated method for piecewise Intensity-based Choroidal rigid Registration using regularized block matching (ICR) on 20 OCT 3D-volume scan-rescan data set pairs. Finally, we used these data set pairs to determine the precision of our method, while the accuracy was determined by comparing our results with those using manually annotated scans

Evaluating assessment tools in child protection : a conceptual framework of internal and ecological requirements

Despite substantial evidence on the higher predictive validity of empirically-derived instruments compared to clinical judgement, the controversy on the best direction in child protection assessment is far from over. We introduce a conceptual framework that may help explain why this controversy continues. The framework distinguishes between internal and ecological requirements of assessment tools. First, existing frameworks have primarily focused on internal requirements that refer to the psychometric qualities of a tool, which are theoretically independent of the organisational context. For these internal requirements, we suggest a distinction between three types of validity: construct validity, predictive validity, and indicative validity. Second, the degree of fit with the ecological requirements determines how well the tool works in a specific organisation: for example, whether a tool makes sense to practitioners, whether they readily adopt or tacitly adapt it, or how well it fits with the objectives of the organisation and the goals of individual workers. We define four such requirements: adequacy, organisational suitability, practicality, and utility. The framework is illustrated with data from an ethnographic study in Switzerland. The framework leads to questions that may guide managers and frontline workers in developing, implementing, and evaluating standardised risk assessment in child protection