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Is Hanukkah Responsive to Christmas?
s: We use individual-level survey and county-level expenditure data to examine the extent to which Hanukkah celebrations among US Jews are driven by the presence of Christmas. We document that Jews with young children are more likely to celebrate Hanukkah, that this effect is greater for reform Jews and for strongly-identified Jews, and that Jewish-related expenditure on Hanukkah is higher in counties with lower shares of Jews. All these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that celebration of religious holidays…
1 min read
Does the price of getting married affect whether or not people get hitched?
s: We use state repeals of blood test requirements for a marriage license that occurred between 1980 and 2005 to examine the impact of changes in the price of marriage on the marriage decision. Using a within-group estimator that holds constant state and year effects and exploits variation in the repeal dates of BTRs across states, we find that BTRs are associated with a 5.7% decrease in marriage licenses issued by a state. Using individual-level marriage license data from 1981-1995,…
1 min read
How are female-directed porn movies different from male-directed porn movies?
decided to undertake this study myself over the weekend by renting 50 films... Just kidding. Female-directed pornography features more women-only scenes and significantly more aggressive women: Pornography is a lucrative business. Increasingly, women have participated in both its production, direction, and consumption. This study investigated how the content in popular pornographic videos created by female directors differs from that of their male counterparts. We conducted a quantitative analysis of 122 randomly selected scenes from 44 top-renting adult videos in…
3 minutes
Why do big companies pay more than small companies?
cause they have to. Working conditions at big companies are worse: Using a Spanish survey, this paper investigates the relationship between firm size and working conditions, and whether firm size differences in workers’ job satisfaction can be accounted for by differences in their work environment. The results indicate that: (1) workers in larger firms have a significantly lower level of autonomy and, in general, face worse working conditions; (2) working in large firms has no statistically significant effect on job…
1 min read
How do you get more people to become organ donors?
ke it the focus of an episode of HOUSE: Drawing on theories of social learning, social representations and the organ donation model, online surveys were used to examine the impact of organ donation storylines of 4 U.S. television dramas (CSI: NY, Numb3rs, House, and Grey's Anatomy) on viewers' attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors. Results revealed that viewers acquired knowledge from the content of each drama, despite the fact that some content was inaccurate. Viewers who were not organ donors prior to…
1 min read
Does Health Insurance Make You Fat?
s. Can you say morale hazard?: The prevalence of obesity has been rising dramatically in the U.S., leading to poor health and rising health care expenditures. The role of policy in addressing rising rates of obesity, however, is controversial. Policy recommendations for interventions intended to influence body weight decisions often assume the obesity creates negative externalities for the non-obese. We build on earlier work demonstrating that this argument depends on two important assumptions: 1) that the obese do not pay…
2 minutes
If you’re emotionally distant, where should you live?
ght here in the good ol' USA! The penalties for attachment avoidance are much greater in collectivist cultures than in individualist cultures: This study examined the impact of attachment avoidance on relationship outcomes. A "cultural fit" hypothesis, which states that individual differences in personality should be associated with relationship problems if they encourage patterns of behavior that are incongruent with cultural norms, was investigated. It was hypothesized that attachment avoidance, a style of relationship in which emotional distance and independence…
1 min read
How many people have ever lived on Earth?
in over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You Happy New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More Successful How To Get People To Like You: 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior Expert
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