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.     

SINGING SUBJECTS AND SACRED OBJECTS: MORE ON MUNN'S ‘TRANSFORMATION OF SUBJECTS INTO OBJECTS’ IN CENTRAL AUSTRALIAN MYTH

Nancy Munn's ‘The Transformation of Subjects into Objects in Walbiri and Pitjantjatjara Myth’ is a landmark in our understanding of the processes by which the Aboriginal world is created and sustained. Her paper is summarised and then related to similar concerns extant among the neighbouring Aranda. Munn's account of relationships between people and country is shown to be part of a wider reality encompassing all stages of the life-cycle and characterised by a triple dialectic between ‘surface’ and ‘depth‘, between male and female, and between life and death. The study is preliminary to a psychological account of these dialectical processes to be published at a later date.