THOUGHTS ON BUILDING AN ACADEMIC CAREER

We have many routes to success in agricultural economics: extension education, resident teaching, advising, research, and public service. In selecting problems to study we must be sensitive to needs of all our clientele. Several production economics concepts are relevant to allocating our own efforts. Noticing, recognizing, and experiencing surprise aid scientific discovery. We need to use heuristics, intuition, deduction, and induction, though consideration of science's ideal and real types shows that all these mental processes are fallible. We need special theories that have broad application. Replication deserves high priority. A few thoughts on the manuscript review process are presented.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly

The academic year 2004–2005 marks the 50th anniversary of the Merrill- Palmer Quarterly: A Journal of Developmental Psychology. This occasion provides an opportunity to celebrate the journal’s heritage, its long history of scholarly contributions to the human developmental sciences, and its current and future mission as a purveyor of scientific discoveries. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to announce this important milestone and to provide an overview of some of the journal’s history, including the confluence of events, persons, institutional forces, and publication trends that brought about its creation and contributed to its longevity. The purview of this historical treatise is divided into four principal epochs: (1) the era preceding the inception of the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly; (2) the establishment of the Merrill-Palmer Institute and founding of the Quarterly; (3) the 1950s through the 1990s, when the Merrill- Palmer Quarterly became a repository for scientific research; and (4) the postmillennial Quarterly

Commentaries in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of Merrill-Palmer Quarterly: An Introduction to the July 2004 and October 2004 Issues

This occasion in the journal’s history provides a vantage point from which to appraise the scientific endeavors that have generated the contents of the Quarterly and its sister publications over the last half-century. To capitalize on this opportunity, two issues of this year’s Quarterly (i.e., July and October 2004) contain commentaries written by senior investigators whose research programs and accomplishments span many years within this epoch. Included in the content of these commentaries are historical analyses of pivotal accomplishments within various subdisciplines, appraisals of the contemporary status of specific areas of investigation, and visions of the future of scientific inquiry in the human developmental sciences

Parental Influence on Career Development Among College Students

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between students\u27 perceptions of parental influence on their college and career choices and their emotional independence from parents. The relationship between satisfaction with career/major choice (as demonstrated by vocational commitment) and parental influence was also examined. In addition, relationships between emotional independence from parents and commitment to a career field were explored. To meet the research objectives, four research questions were addressed. First, is the Perceived Parental Influence scale, developed for this study, a reliable and valid scale? Second, is there a significant relationship between students\u27 perceptions of parental influence on career development and their emotional independence from parents? Third, is there a significant correlation between students\u27 perceptions of parental influence and their vocational commitment? Fourth, is there a significant correlation between students\u27 vocational commitment and their emotional independence? It was hypothesized that there would be an inverse relationship between students\u27 perceptions of parental influence on career development and their emotional independence from parents. Further, it was postulated that there would be a direct relationship between students\u27 perceptions of parental influence on career development and their vocational commitment. Finally, it was hypothesized that there would be a direct relationship between students\u27 vocational commitment and their emotional independence from parents. Two subscales from the Iowa Student Development Inventories, which functionalize Chickering and Reisser\u27s theory of student development, were used to assess students\u27 emotional independence from parents and vocational commitment. In addition, perceived parental influence on career choice was measured using an inventory developed expressly for this purpose. Data were collected using Internet-based survey forms and a CGI script. Results indicate support for the first hypothesis, with an inverse correlation identified between perceived parental influence on career development and emotional independence from parents. The second hypothesis was also supported, with a significant, but weak correlation found between vocational commitment and perceived parental influence. However, no significant relationship was established between vocational commitment and emotional independence from parents During the course of the research it was established that the Perceived Parental Influence scale is a reliable and valid self-report measure of parental influence on career development. The items from the PPI were analyzed for reliability and produced a .86 Cronbach\u27s alpha reliability. Split-half reliability tests were also conducted, yielding coefficients of .83 and .69, for parts one and two, respectively. The confirmatory factor analysis conducted on the scale indicated that all items loaded reasonably well on one factor, generally indicating that the theoretical conception of the PPI as a discreet entity is valid

Trends in the Iowa dairy industry

This report is intended to serve as a source of Iowa dairy data and to highlight major characteristics and major trends in Iowa dairying. Some United States data are presented for comparative purposes.https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/specialreports/1051/thumbnail.jp

Distributed lag inventory analyses

The objective of this study was to measure determinants of short-term inventory behavior for selected commodities: beef, pork, butter, cheese, department store stocks, manufacturers\u27 nondurable inventories and manufacturers\u27 durable inventories. The last two were studied using monthly data; the others, with quarterly data. Dynamic considerations must enter into any adequate explanation of inventories. Distributed lag models were used in this study because they are one reasonable way of treating such dynamic phenomenon as expectations, frictions and lags. Such models are useful for study of inventory behavior. Nevertheless, there are some problems in using them. They commonly lead to equations to be estimated which are nonlinear in the parameters. Reduced equations containing exactly the same variables but different nonlinear combinations of parameters may be obtained from different models containing different behavioral assumptions. Whenever linear estimation is used, as in this study, we must be cautious about placing specific behavioral interpretations on the resulting coefficients

A statistical analysis of certain institutional variables in the butter and margarine market

The objective of this study was to explain recent trends in per-capita butter and margarine consumption -primarily, to determine the relation between these trends and the repeal of legal restrictions on the distribution and consumption of margarine. As a first step in the study, a historical summary was made of pertinent state and federal laws. The effects of these laws then were determined by statistical analysis. In most cases the sample period was 1920-41, 1947-49. In the time-series analysis, no relation was found between the retail supply of margarine and margarine excise taxes. This is understandable, since less than one-fifth of the population has ever lived in states which levied excises on margarine. The cross-section analyses of data by states and cities, however, show that excise taxes reduce the retail supply of margarine. They reduce the number of stores selling margarine and raise the prices charged by those stores that do sell it. On the other hand, margarine distributors\u27 license fees seem to have no effect on the retail supply of margarine

Survey of Promising Developments in Demand Analysis: Economics of Product Characteristics

I have subtitled this paper Economics of Product Characteristics to identify the set of recent developments that will be covered and to inform you that not all recent developments will be dealt with. This paper will not cover the recent work in systems of consumer demand equations: e.g., the linear e3q\u3eenditure systems, additive-preference systems, Theil-Barten work, Houthakker and Taylor dynamic model. For discussions of these, see Barten (1977), Hassan, Johnson, and Green (1977), and Thell (1975, 1976). Another body of literature that I will not cover concerns probabilistic product-choice models, in which utility is a random function and the probability that a product is chosen depends upon the characteristics of the chosen product and of other products. Among the papers on this topic McFadden (1973, 1976) and Manski and Lerman (1977)

Experiments with autoregressive error estimation

Autocorrelated errors are recognized as potentially troublesome in regression analysis. Because of the computational problems encountered, however, few economists have estimated equations under the assumption of autocorrelated errors. Recently, relatively economical procedures have been developed for estimating equations containing autocorrelated errors. In this study, one of these procedures-autoregressive least squares (A.L.S.) -is applied to equations describing the behavior of various economic agents, by using different unit observation periods-year, quarter and month. Some of the results have been published elsewhere; some are published here. In addition to presenting some results of autoregressive error estimation, this report summarizes experience with the use of AL.S. Some equations presented here were estimated by a simultaneous equations method under the assumption of autocorrelated errors. The results of four different tests for autocorrelation in errors were compared: Durbin-Watson d statistic, Theil-Nagar d, Hart-von Neumann ratio and A.L.S. Essentially, the Theil-Nagar d test classes as significant those values of d that are significant or inconclusive in the Durbin-Watson test. The Theil-Nagard yielded evidence of autocorrelated errors most frequently; A.L.S., second most frequently; Hart-von Neumann ratio, third most frequently; and Durbin-Watson test, least frequently. The proportions of the equations in which each test provided significant evidence of autocorrelated errors are: Theil-Nagard, 66 percent; autoregressive least squares, 51 percent; Hart-von Neumann ratio, 37 percent; Durbin-Watson test, 26 percent