HOMEOWNERSHIP IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD WITH SUBSTANTIAL TRANSACTION COSTS*

ABSTRACT This paper presents a dynamic model of residential real estate tenure decisions that takes into account the substantial transaction costs and the uncertain time paths of rents and prices. By temporarily postponing decisions, buyers and sellers obtain additional information and may avoid transactions that are costly to reverse. One implication is that the combination of high transaction costs and substantial uncertainty can create a large wedge between a household's reservation prices for buying and selling a home, which can explain why households do not switch back and forth between owning and renting as home prices fluctuate.     

Opportunistic versus target mode: Prey choice changes in central-western Korean prehistory

Human decision-making processes are usually hierarchical in that higher-level decisions impose constraints on lower-level decisions. As a result, prey choices during individual foraging trips are governed to a large degree by higher-level decisions regarding how to supply resources to satisfy demands, with higher-level decisions typically made prior to foraging trips. Resource selectivity and search bias sometimes take place in this context. By dividing resource procurement modes into opportunistic and target, I discuss how choice of mode on the basis of an overall economic plan affects prey choice during foraging trips and faunal assemblage composition resulting from those trips. An analysis of taxonomic diversity in shellmidden assemblages from the central-western Korean Late Chulmun Period (3500–1300 BC) and Middle and Late Mumun Period (700–100 BC) shows that Late Chulmun people adopted a target mode, while Middle/Late Mumun people adopted an opportunistic mode in their exploitation of marine resources. A decrease in the importance of marine resource in Middle/Late Mumun produced a change in taxonomic diversity by increasing the opportunistic cost of marine resource exploitation.     

在线信息搜索对旅游者感知形象及决策的影响研究

本文基于目的地形象理论,利用实验、出声思维、访谈等多种方法,结合词频统计、同位素示踪等分析手段解析了在线信息搜索对于旅游者感知形象演化及目的地选择决策的影响。研究发现:潜在旅游者持有的目的地原生形象具有集中性。随着外部信息搜索的进行,来自DMO控制型信息源的信息加强了这种印象并形成引致形象的热门词部分,依此旅游者对意识域中众多可选目的地进行筛选并形成考虑域。这一过程构成"广泛信息搜索路径"。而对非DMO控制型信息源的信息摄取则使引致形象演化出长尾,这些形象的细节性信息促使旅游者做出具体决策,此即为"精细信息搜索路径"。旅游者的目的地选择决策过程即是在不断重复这两条路径,直至做出最终选择。     

The success–failure dichotomy revisited: young adults' motives to return to their rural home region

Researchers are increasingly aware that nonlinear perspectives of the transition into adulthood and non-economic motives, such as family and friends, may help to improve our understanding of young adults' migration decisions. This paper combines these new insights with the traditional economic success–failure arguments in order to explain young adults' return migration to their rural home region. We present four orientations in return motives: the social, family, functional and partner orientation. They consist of different combinations of the stereotypical success–failure arguments with non-serial transitional stages, and with different attachments to the home region. They also show that in some cases, return migration should actually be interpreted as staying in the home region, because the young adult returnees had not mentally left the region. We therefore state that our results provide a solid argument for reinterpreting the out-migration of young people from rural areas.     

Using Decision Tree Induction Systems for Modeling Space‐Time Behavior

Discrete choice models are commonly used to predict individuals' activity and travel choices either separately or simultaneously in activity‐scheduling models. This paper investigates the possibilities of decision tree induction systems as an alternative approach. The ability of decision trees to represent heuristic decision rules is evaluated and a method of capturing interactions across decisions in a sequential decision model is outlined. Decision tree induction algorithms, such as C4.5, CART, and CHAID, are suited to derive the decision rules from empirical data. A case study to illustrate the approach considers decisions of individuals when they are faced with the choice to combine different out‐of‐home activities into a multipurpose, multistop trip or make a trip for each activity separately. Data from a large‐scale activity diary survey are used to induce the decision rules. Possible directions of future research are identified.     

Men Making Home: Masculinity and Domesticity in Eighteenth‐Century Britain

Eighteenth‐century England is, for many scholars, the time and place where modern domesticity was invented; the point at which ‘home’ became a key concept sustained by new literary imaginings and new social practices. But as gendered individuals, and certainly compared to women, men are notable for their absence in accounts of the eighteenth‐century domestic interior. In this essay, I examine the relationship between constructs of masculinity and meanings of home. During the eighteenth century, ‘home’ came to mean more than one's dwelling; it became a multi‐faceted state of being, encompassing the emotional, physical, moral and spatial. Masculinity intersected with domesticity at all levels and stages in its development. The nature of men's engagements with home were understood through a model of ‘oeconomy’, which brought together the home and the world, primarily through men's activities. Indeed, this essay proposes that attention to how this multi‐faceted eighteenth‐century ‘home’ was made in relation to masculinity shifts our understanding of home as a private and feminine space opposed to an ‘outside’ and public world.     

Evaluative Criteria and Social Distinctions in Renters' Residential Search Procedures

There are, as yet, no pragmatic or fully acceptable behavioural models of the housing search process. It is suggested that past studies lack concern for the functionally discrete nature of an individual's active and passive search procedures. Further, contemporary residential search and choice studies often mask social differences essential to understanding relocation decisions. The present study is an empirical investigation of renters' residential search behaviour. It emphasizes the importance of evaluative criteria and choice parameters during an individual's housing search. It also gives explicit recognition of the social contexts of renters' search behaviour .
Jusqu'ici il n'existe pas de modèles pragmatiques ou en-tièrement acceptables sur la dynamique des pratiques de recherche en matière de logement. jusqu'à maintenant, les etudes se sont peu souciées de la nature de fonctionnement discrete des pratiques actives et passives de recherche d'une personne. Bien plus, les études comtemporaines sur la recherche et le choix de résidences masquent souvent des differences so-ciales essentielles à la comprehension des decisions de relocalisation. La présente étude se penche de façon empirique sur les pratiques de recherche de residences par les locataires. Elle met l'accent sur l'importance des critères d'évaluation et des paramètres qui carac-térisent le choix durant la recherche d'un logement par une personne. Elle reconnait aussi de façon explicite I'importance des contextes sociaux dans les habitudes de recherche des localaires .     

Shopping for Schools: How Do Marginal Consumers Gather Information About Schools?

The theory of the marginal consumer holds that a subset of better informed consumers can create a globally more efficient market through their purchase decisions. In the market for education created by recent school choice initiatives, these "market mavens" are essential to the successful functioning of the choice system given the empirically documented low quantity and quality of information possessed by the average consumer. Little is known, however, about the differences between how marginal consumers and average consumers of education search for information and make decisions about their children's schooling.     

Choosing Health? Exploring Children's Eating Practices at Home and at School

Abstract:  This paper considers the influences on children's eating habits in both school and home spaces in the UK. Since 2002 the UK government has been committed to halting the increase in child obesity rates, and has sanctioned particular parental and school based practices as more "healthy" than others. This study examines this through critically questioning, in particular, the classed discourses written into health education advice and advocates a new way of thinking about health education messages. Based on qualitative research with children from one secondary school and with eight families in the North of England the paper reveals that while parents and children make decisions about their lives with reference to dominant discourses about ideal "healthy" family eating practices, their ability to realise these practices is limited in numerous ways. Moreover, the influences on children's eating habits in both home and school spaces are intricately interrelated and children's practices are clearly influenced by the spaces they inhabit. Their decisions involve balancing health education knowledge with a range of other knowledges that are bound up in the socio-spatial relations of their everyday lives. A holistic approach to understanding children's eating habits therefore requires a critical understanding of class background, parental influences and contemporary parenting practices as well as the microgeographical relations found in the school dining room.     

Homecoming or tourism? Diaspora tourism experience of second-generation immigrants

Diaspora tourism is often considered a form of ‘homecoming,’ but for the children of immigrants who are born in the new country, the question remains as to whether they perceive their parents’ homeland as ‘home’ or destination. Moreover, advancements in transportation and communication technologies allow contemporary immigrants to maintain transnational ties to their homeland, which in turn may affect the nature of diaspora tourism. The purpose of this study is to understand the lived experience of second-generation immigrants when they travel to their ancestral homeland, and explore the extent to which second-generation transnationalism shapes their diaspora tourism experiences. Using a phenomenological approach, 26 second-generation Chinese-Americans who had the experience of traveling in China were interviewed. Four themes were identified from semi-structured interviews: language and appearance, search for authenticity, family history, and sense of ‘home.’ Proficiency in their parental language was found to be a main cause of negative experiences, yet occasionally a source of pride and attachment. Their search for authentic experiences was not unlike other tourists, while familial obligations sometimes limited their experience. Traveling back to the homeland not only allowed them to understand their parents and family history, but also reflect upon their life through experiencing contemporary China. Finally, as the transnational attachment of second-generation immigrants was not rooted in a specific locale, they could feel connected to the homeland without actually visiting their family's place of origin. Findings contribute to transnationalism and diaspora tourism literature by comparing first- and second-generation immigrants and identifying the difference between contemporary transmigrants and classic diaspora groups with regard to their diaspora tourism experience.     

Spatial Search for the Lowest Price

Search for low prices often requires that individuals make decisions not only about the optimal amount of search, but also about the optimal route to be taken through a set of known locations. In this paper, the fixed sample size strategy used in economic models of search is extended to account for the travel costs that are incurred as alternatives are examined. Analytical results for the optimal amount of search are given, and alternative routing algorithms for a modified version of the traveling-salesman problem are evaluated.     

A Decision-Making and Search Model For Intraurban Migration

Most of the research on the intraurban migration attempting to develop models of the mobility process has presented intuitively appealing statements about the residential decision process, but stopped short of a formal development of these concepts. If it is to be possible to predict the mobility pattern within the city, both the search and selection process must be more clearly specified. In this paper, a preliminary theoretical model containing decision rules similar to those found in optimal search models is developed. The model explicitly incorporates the spatial and temporal aspects of residential choice and has the potential to predict the probability that a prospective migrant will search for a new residence in a given area of the city, the time when the search process will come to a conclusion and, by implication, the expected location of the new residence. The preliminary results from the model suggest a major elaboration of the spatial and temporal aspects of residential choice under conditions of uncertainty in terms of a set of empirically measurable determinants, relating to a household's preferences, beliefs, and degree of risk aversion.     

Pre-emptive mobilities: Russian real estate abroad (the case of owners from Murmansk Region)

The article discusses mobilities connected with Russian real estate acquisition abroad during the post-Soviet decades. We take the specific case of Murmansk Region as a source location. Our main argument is that such mobilities are motivated to a significant extent by a search of risk-free destinations and thus reflect perception of insecurity at home. The empirical data reveal the predominantly post-Soviet middle class nature of this movement, as well as its trans-generational agenda. We claim that the movement is pre-emptive in the sense of establishing a foothold abroad in view of possible negative economic and political developments at home. Theorizing this phenomenon requires placing it in a politically informed and temporally extended perspective. We conclude that Russian real estate acquisition abroad reveals divergences between current ideological rhetoric of the political leadership, on the one hand, and preferred courses of action by the post-Soviet middle class, on the other hand.     

Travel choices? The Central Scotland transport corridor studies

The Central Scotland Transport Corridor Studies (CSTCSs) were announced in 2001 to investigate means of addressing problems of congestion along the A8, A80 and M74. The studies were to be undertaken on the principle of the English multi modal studies, wherein the search for ‘solutions’ to traffic congestion problems involved considering a range of modal options on an equal footing. This paper reviews the outcome of the multi modal studies and, against this background, analyses the decisions arising from the CSTCSs. It suggests that, although the amount of funding to be spent on road schemes — around 76% of the total budget — is undoubtedly high, the Scottish Executive's decisions should probably receive a cautious welcome, even in the context of the ‘sustainable’ transport agenda set out by UK ministers shortly after Labour's election to power in 1997.     

Towards individualising couple finance: women’s housing assets and household decisions in Japan

Individualisation, which is increasingly promoted in European welfare states, tends to be absent from policy discourse as well as housing studies in Japan. It is largely because the ‘family as a unit’ is still a dominant approach in their household finance, social security and taxation systems, which also reflects women’s lack of home ownership. However, recent demographic trends such as falling marriage rates, low fertility and increased female labour participation indicate significant diversification in women’s life-course. Thus, today women making their own financial investment and house purchase have increasingly become popular practice. In this context, a new approach beyond the conventional ‘family as a unit’ may be required in the development of a new social contract. Drawing on data from qualitative research conducted among women in their 30s, this article explores the relationship between financial independence, household decisions and asset holding of partnered women in Japan, which reveals contested dimensions of women’s independence and autonomy in household and family life. Through the lens of home ownership, it considers the importance of promoting individual assets in order to foster gender equality in marriage.     

Environmental Regulations and Multinational Corporations' Foreign Market Entry Investments

In this study, we examine how differences in environmental regulation characteristics are linked to multinational corporations' (MNCs) foreign market entry (FME) investments decisions around the world. We rely on a data set with 29,303 observations from 94 European Fortune Global 500 companies operating across 77 countries during the period 2001–2007. We found that MNCs are more likely to enter countries with more certain—i.e., clearer and more stable—environmental regulations than those of their home countries. Results also suggest that there is a higher level of MNC entry into foreign countries with environmental regulations that are more stringent than those of their home countries. This finding challenges the controversial but commonly held view that more stringent environmental regulations deter MNCs' FME investments. Notably, the magnitude of the regulatory certainty relationship with MNCs' FME investments is larger than that of regulatory stringency. Findings also indicate that the increased tendency of MNCs to enter countries with more stringent environmental regulations is higher in more democratic countries and for cleaner industry firms.     

Making a Home in Gold-rush Victoria: Plain Sewing and the Genteel Woman

In the rush to be rich, contemporary commentators warned that not everyone was suited to life on Victoria’s goldfields. Women unfamiliar with household labour or exertion were cautioned to remain at ‘home’. This article explores the genteel women who migrated to Victoria during the first two decades of the gold rush, and how they negotiated the British ideal of genteel leisure against the demands for domestic labour in the colony. In particular, it interrogates the often-mundane plain sewing practices necessary to make a new home alongside the push for a colonial genteel industriousness, demonstrating how women manipulated standards of living through everyday material practices.     

From temporary to permanent townsmen: migrants from the Malalaua District,Papua New Guinea

An attempt is made to explain how a group of people moved from being newcomers to town in the 1940s to being one of the most permanent and stable residential elements in Papua New Guinea's towns in the 1970s. Circular and permanent migration, as Young maintains, are not 2 distinct processes, and both initial rural urban movements and migrants' decisions to return or not to return home are examined simultaneously. The hypothetical career of a migrant is considered all the way from village residence to permanent urban residence along with the different decision points that might vary this career. In this case study focus is on 2 sets of factors that affect migration decisions: an imbalance in rural and urban economic conditions and the effects of the migration process itself. The people discussed come from what is now known as the Malalaua District of the Gulf Province and are referred to as Malalauas. Historically, there are several feastures of Malalaua urban migration that are important. Malalaua migration began earlier than that of most urban migrant groups in Papua New Guinea. In the 1963 urban population there were a number of Malalauas who first came to Port Moresby before or during World War 2. Migration from the Malalaua District has continued in a steady stream from the 1940s to the 1970s, although there is no evidence on absolute numbers of new migrants in any 1 year. The pattern of Malalaua migration to towns over the entire period has been largely one of the movement of young single adult males and young female adults moving to town on marriage. Both the absolute numbers of migrants and the proportion of Malalauas absent from the District have risen rapidly over the 20 years to 1972. Finally, children are being born to Malalaua migrants in town. Malalauas are possibly the migrant group most firmly established in town. The Malalauas are one of the most longterm and residential groups in Port Moresby. In Papua New Guinea as a whole they must be one of the migrant groups with the greatest commitment to urban living. Economic factors have been very important in Malalau decisions to leave the village, particularly the decisions of adult males. The migration process itself has increasingly affected migrant decisions: factors such as the diminished attraction of a depopulated rural community, a change in tastes towards urban based ways of living, the growth of strong personal and family ties among urban residents, and a simultaneous reduction in such ties with rural residents. It is argued that this 2nd set of factors over time increases in importance relative to rural-urban economic imbalance as an explanation of migration behavior. In general, rural urban economic opportunities have become less important over time. So in the 1970s and 1980s it would be argued that many Malalauas would not respond to increases in urban unemployment of rural incomes by moving back to the village. They would be permanent townspeople. This explanation of migration decisions is dynamic: in the history of individuals and groups the context and thus the explanation of decisions change.     

Geographical Scale, the 'Feel-Good Factor' and Voting at the 1997 General Election in England and Wales

Many analysts associate voting patterns in Great Britain with electors' evaluations of the state of the economy, whereby those who think it has improved recently are likely to vote for the government's return to power, whereas those who think it has worsened are more likely to vote for an opposition party. Most of these studies consider the national economy only, but data derived from the 1997 British Election Study cross–sectional survey show strong relationships between votes and evaluations of recent changes in the electors' (self-defined) home areas. This paper relates those evaluations, and the resultant voting patterns, to the 'objective circumstances' in the respondents' home areas, using unemployment rates as an indicator of local economic well-being. Using specially devised data for 'bespoke neighbourhoods' around each respondent's home, we show that the probability of a vote against the government was a function of both 'objective conditions' and 'subjective evaluations', and that there were significant scale effects in this: people apparently reacted to very local variations when making their voting decisions.