The work presented here has attempted to test the hypothesis that changing [U.S.] demographic structure has been a major factor in the changes in relative wages that have occurred over the last 30 years leading to the observed sharp decline in the wages of young adults and those approaching retirement relative to prime-age workers as well as to the decline and then steep increase in the wages of the college-educated relative to high-school graduates.... The analysis has identified pronounced effects of changing age structure on wages.... (EXCERPT)
In economics, the standard mechanism for allocating scarce resources is the market. A smoothly functioning market, however, is built upon legally enforceable contracts and property rights. In the absence of law, it is likely that violence (or the threat thereof), rather than prices, is the means by which resources will be allocated. Interactions among animals provide clear evidence for this claim. Dominance hierarchies based on fighting ability, also sometimes known as pecking orders, have been documented across a wide variety of species (e.g., primates, chickens and other birds, reptiles, lobsters) and a broad range of resources including food, nesting sites, and access to mates (Warder C. Allee, 1938; John Alcock, 1993). Evidence suggests that violence also plays a critical role in human interactions when property rights are not legally enforceable (e.g., drug dealing and extortion) (see e.g., Peter Reuter, 1983; Geoffrey Canada, 1995). In this paper, we analyze the determinants of the efficiency with which illegal markets allocate scarce resources. We develop a stylized model in which players compete for a fixed prize, with the winner determined by fighting ability. Efficiency in this context is determined by the amount of resources spent on fighting. Two factors affecting efficiency emerge from the model: lethality and predictability. Perhaps surprisingly, the use of more lethal mechanisms for resolving disputes does not have a clear impact on the social costs of violence. The intuition underlying this result is that, as the costs of losing a fight rise, the willingness to fight falls. We show that holding other factors constant, the resources spent on fighting are lowest when the cost of losing is either very low or very high (e.g., nuclear deterrence), but over a wide range of lethality levels, the overall social costs of fighting are fairly stable. In contrast, the costs of violence are critically linked to the predictability of dispute outcomes (i.e. the certainty with which potential combatants know who will be victorious ex ante). When the outcome of a conflict is highly correlated with observable characteristics such as strength or size, there is little need to actually fight. Thus unpredictability, all else equal, increases the expected payoff to fighting for the lower-ranked member, leading to more conflicts.
America is a nation filled with guns and gunowners. Using the General Social Survey, we investigate who owns guns. Gunowners resemble neither criminals nor victims, although they do hunt. Waiting periods appear to have little effect on the overall level of gun ownership, but they do lower the propensity to own guns among people who have been arrested. Living around other gunowners increases gun ownership. Guns appear to be a substitute for the legal system, because gun ownership is highest among people who do not trust the government and where the availability of police is lowest. Guns also are associated with a general taste for violent retribution.
The populations of most of the worlds countries are growing older.... The rapidly growing populations of the elderly are putting unprecedented stresses on societies because new systems of financial support social support and health care have to be developed and implemented. I will focus on a particular research thrust namely demographic analyses of survival and longevity. (EXCERPT)