Preach what you practice? donating behaviour of parents and their offspring

Using data drawn from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we explore the relationship between the donating behaviour of parents and that of their children aged less than 18. Furthermore, we exploit information relating to whether or not parents encourage their children to donate to charity in order to unveil information related to the intergenerational transmission of philanthropic behaviour. Our findings suggest that whether a child donates to charity is influenced by positive effects from whether the parent donates to charity as well as from whether the parent talks to their child about donating to charity. In addition, whether the parent donates to charity has an indirect influence via its positive effect on the probability that the parent talks to the child about donating to charity. Further, we find that the influence of whether the parent donates to charity on the probability that the child donates to charity is particularly heightened in terms of both magnitude and statistical significance in the context of parental donations to religious causes

The existence and persistence of household financial hardship

We investigate the existence and persistence of financial hardship at the household level using data from the British Household Panel Survey. Our modelling strategy makes three important contributions to the existing literature on household finances. Firstly, we model nine different types of household financial problems within a joint framework, allowing for correlation in the random effects across the nine equations. Secondly, we develop a dynamic framework in order to model the persistence of financial problems over time by extending our multi-equation framework to allow the presence or otherwise of different types of financial problems in the previous time period to influence the probability that the household currently experiences such problems. Our third contribution relates to the possibility that experiencing financial problems may be correlated with sample attrition. We model missing observations in the panel in order to allow for such attrition. Our findings reveal interesting variations in the determinants of experiencing different types of financial problems including demographic and regional differences. Our findings also highlight persistence in experiencing financial problems over time as well as the role that saving on a regular basis in previous time periods can play in mitigating current financial problems

Debt and Risk Preference: A Household Level Analysis

We explore the relationship between risk preference and the level of unsecured debt at the household level within the context of a two period theoretical framework, which predicts that debt is a function of risk aversion. We test the predictions of our theoretical framework for a sample of households drawn from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the U.S. Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). Using a sequence of questions from the 1996 PSID and the 1989 to 2004 SCF, we construct measures of risk preference allowing us to explore the implications of interpersonal differences in risk preference for the accumulation of unsecured debt at the household level. Our empirical findings, which accord with our theoretical priors, suggest that risk preference is an important determinant of the level of unsecured debt acquired at the household level with risk aversion serving to reduce the level of unsecured debt accumulated by households

Confined isothermal and combusting flows behind axisymmetric baffles

Imperial Users onl

Rayleigh scattering temperature measurements in a swirl stabilized burner

Rayleigh scattering temperature measurements were obtained in a turbulent reactive swirling coaxial jet discharged from a swirl-stabilized burner along the jet-flame centerline. They are reported up to 10 fuel nozzle diameters downstream of the burner exit at a Reynolds number of 29000. The effect of swirl numbers (S=0.3, 0.58, 1.07) on the temperature fields, the power spectral density of temperature fluctuations and on the probability density functions of the temperature fluctuations was determined

Experimental Assessment of ‘subgrid’ scale Probability Density Function Models for Large Eddy Simulation

Filtered density functions (FDFs) of mixture fraction are quantified by analyzing experimental data obtained from two-dimensional planar laser-induced fluorescence scalar measurements in the isothermal swirling flow of a combustor operating at a Reynolds number of 28,662 for three different swirl numbers (0.3, 0.58 and 1.07). Two-dimensional filtering using a box filter was performed on the measured scalar to obtain the filtered variables used for presumed FDF for Large Eddy Simulations (LES). A dependant variable from the measured scalar, which was a pre-computed temperature, was integrated over the experimentally obtained FDF as well as over the presumed beta or top-hat FDFs and a relative error in temperature prediction was calculated. The experimentally measured FDFs depended on swirl numbers and axial and radial positions in the flow. The FDFs were unimodal in the regions of low variance and bimodal in the regions of high variance. The influence of the filter spatial dimension on the measured FDF was evaluated and consequences for subgrid modeling for LES discussed

NICMOS Observations of Low-Redshift Quasar Host Galaxies

We have obtained Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer images of 16 radio quiet quasars observed as part of a project to investigate the ``luminosity/host-mass limit.'' The limit results were presented in McLeod, Rieke, & Storrie-Lombardi (1999). In this paper, we present the images themselves, along with 1- and 2-dimensional analyses of the host galaxy properties. We find that our model-independent 1D technique is reliable for use on ground-based data at low redshifts; that many radio-quiet quasars live in deVaucouleurs-law hosts, although some of the techniques used to determine host type are questionable; that complex structure is found in many of the hosts, but that there are some hosts that are very smooth and symmetric; and that the nuclei radiate at ~2-20% of the Eddington rate based on the assumption that all galaxies have central black holes with a constant mass fraction of 0.6%. Despite targeting hard-to-resolve hosts, we have failed to find any that imply super-Eddington accretion rates.Comment: To appear in ApJ, 28 pages including degraded figures. Download the paper with full-resolutio figures from http://www.astro.wellesley.edu/kmcleod/mm.p