Democide and genocide as rent-seeking activities

Murder of the population by the state has been common historically and in modern times. I estimate a demand function for state-sponsored murder and find that it obeys the law of demand. The main focus of the paper is estimation of the change in the growth path of economies that practice democide relative to those that do not. On average, the rent-seeking loss associated with democide is about a 20 percent loss of wealth.     

Erikson stage resolution: The relationship between identity and intimacy

Ego identity and intimacy statuses were determined for 88 college students, 44 men and 44 women, and related to each other and to measures of intimacy, loving, and liking. As hypothesized, more advanced stages of identity development were associated with higher levels of intimacy formation. Further, for both males and females, occupational identity development was the primary predictive factor in the identity/intimacy stage resolution relationship.Received her M. S. from Utah State University.Received his M. A. in psychology from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and his Ph.D. in human development from The Pennsylvania State University.     

The political market for real income redistribution through choice of the weights in COLAs

This paper studies alternative cost-of-living indexes derived from the generalized Fechner-Thurstone (GFT) utility form, their use in contracts for cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs), and the resulting effect of choice of index on the distribution of real income. The indexes and their distributional effects are compared to the officially reported Consumer Price Index (CPI) and a CPI computed from the same data set used to compute the GFT indexes. It is found that the choice of index used in adjustment clauses in contracts has an impact on the distribution of real income of the group. As an example, the U.S. federal government schedule of wages and salaries is adjusted from 1981 through 1984 by all of the indexes reported here. Use of alternative indexes illuminates the normative assumptions regarding the relative importance of different income strata (among other things) implicit in any public practice of pegging COLAs to a single form of price index.We wish to thank Mason Gerety and Kathy Hayes for helpful criticisms of the first drafts of this paper.     

Toward the development of an objective assessment of ego-identity status

Four investigations were completed to develop a self-report measure of ego-identity status. Following James Marcia's definition of diffusion, moratorium, foreclosure, and identity achievement status, a series of Likert-type items were constructed and validated for use in the study of ego-identity formation. Convergent-divergent, concurrent, and predictive validity and test-retest reliability are documented in the reported data. Cross-sectional data suggest the measure will be sensitive to intraindividual change in identity formation. The new Objective Measure of Ego-Identity Status allows researchers to use either a typology or a distribution of stage responses in future longitudinal investigations.This research was supported by a Division of Research Grant at Utah State University.Received his Ph.D. in human development from the Pennsylvania State University. Current research interests include adolescent personality and social development, interpersonal attraction, and family relations.Received her M.S. from Utah State University and is currently a doctoral student at Pennsylvania State University.Received his B.S. from Utah State University and is currently a graduate student at that institution.