A HEDONIC MODEL OF INTERREGIONAL WAGES,RENTS, AND AMENITY VALUES*

ABSTRACT This paper develops a general multimarket hedonic model appropriate for a national, interregional study of wages, housing prices, and location-specific amenities. The model encompasses the effects of interregional location, intraurban location, and city size. Typically, hedonic studies focus on a single market such as labor or housing and ignore interactions implicit in a more global compensation mechanism. Examination of the comparative statics of our model indicates that single-market differentials are partial prices and are unreliable measures of amenity values in an interregional context. Unbiased amenity values are estimated for a comprehensive set of amenities using data on housing prices for 34,414 households and wages for 46,004 workers from the 1980 Census of Population and Housing. Statistically significant differences in housing prices and wages are found due to amenities.     

GAMBLING IS HARD WORK: CARD PLAYING IN TIWI SOCIETY

This paper examines the gambling activities of Tiwi women and men of North Australia and situates the activities within the anthropology of work. It is shown that gambling for money redistributes an unequal resource (wages and pensions) while the derivative game using beer rather than money redistributes an equal resource unequally. The principal conclusion is that for women the activity may be equated to foraging — a low risk activity but fundamental for personal status in that it is directed toward providing daily subsistence, while for men the activity closely resembles hunting — a high risk activity where success is less likely but also essential for personal status.     

Carter's foreign policy: The perception of failure

Harold Brown, Thinking about National Security: Defence and Foreign Policy in a Dangerous World. (Westview Press, Boulder, 1982.)

Seyom Brown, The Faces of Power Constancy and Change in United States Foreign Policy from Truman to Reagan. (Columbia University Press, New York, 1983.)

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser 1977–1981. (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York, 1983.)

Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President. (Bantam Books, New York, 1982.)

Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in America's Foreign Policy. (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1983.)     

Glacial Stratigraphy of the Upper Mersey Valley,Tasmania

The upper Mersey Valley was glaciated on three occasions during the Pleistocene. The youngest, Rowallan Claciation, probably commenced after 28000 years B.P. The maximum ice limit was attained before 13500 years B.P., and retreat occurred before 10000years B.P. Deposits associated with Rowallan Glaciation are weakly weathered chemically. They overlie moderately weathered deposits that were formed during the Arm Glaciation, which is inferred from relative dating data to have occurred before the Last Interglacial Stage. North of the deposits and ice limits of the Arm Glaciation extremely weathered tills and rhythmites occur. They were formed by ice of the Croesus Glaciation which is inferred to be of Early Pleistocene age or older.     

Tin Mining and Sediment Supply to the Ringarooma River,Tasmania, 1875–1979

Tin mining, based largely on alluvial tin deposited along the line of the ancestral Ringarooma, began in 1875 and reached a peak in the period 1905-9. Output declined thereafter and, following a brief recovery during the Second World War, had virtually ceased by 1981. Neither the methods, location nor level of production remained constant during the mining era. The widespread use of hydraulic sluicing and the proximity of many mines to the main river were major factors contributing to the high rate of sediment supply, with the Briseis mine at Derby being the dominant source. Based on data from published and unpublished papers, and mine records, the variable nature of that supply was estimated using a procedure which takes account of the effects of storage and changing practices. Many input points supplied material but the overall pattern is one in which downstream reaches made later starts and reached later peaks, suggesting that they will continue to experience the effects of an increased sediment load for some time.     

Book reviews

Leonard Blussé. Strange company: Chinese settlers, mestizo women, and the Dutch in VOC Batavia . xiii, 302 pp. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1986. (Verhandelingen van het Kononklijk Instituut voor Taal‐, Land‐ en Volkenkunde, 122.) Guilders 35.

John S. Guy. Oriental trade ceramics in South‐East Asia, ninth to sixteenth centuries. With a catalogue of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai wares in Australian collections, xiv, 161 pp. Singapore, etc: Oxford University Press, 1986. (Oxford in Asia Studies in Ceramics.) £47.50.     

Hunter-gatherer adaptations and assemblage structure

There is a growing tendency to conceive of hunter-gatherer adaptations as points on a yardstick, with foragers at one end and collectors on the other. Such a view limits our perspective and may trap anthropologists into seeing these categories as steps in an evolutionary progression. It is more productive to think of human adaptation as an N-dimensional space, with individual cases occurring at the intersections of the various dimensions. When this viewpoint is taken, it becomes clear that a search for a single dimension in archaeological data that can be used to characterize all prehistoric adaptations is unlikely to be fruitful. This paper explores the multidimensionality of hunter-gatherer adaptive behavior and reviews those archaeological manifestations that are empirically or logically linked with various dimensions of three components of adaptation: mobility, predation, and technology. Those manifestations with the greatest potential for characterizing prehistoric hunter-gatherer adaptive strategies are identified as measures of mobility type, frequency, stability, scheduling, demography, and range; predation mode, breadth, and scheduling; and the time budgeting and storage dimensions of technology. A subset of these measures is evaluated by comparing assemblages from the late prehistoric Columbia Plateau with expectations derived from ethnographies written on the same local area.