Linda R. Stanley

Revenue Sharing as an Incentive in an Agency Problem: An example from the National Football League

We consider a professional sports leagues use of a well-defined incentive mechanism, revenue sharing, to encourage the desired behavior of teams in the league. The incentive mechanism works by internalizing externalities that arise across agents (the team owners). We find revenue sharing to be a potentially powerful incentive scheme because in this setting it encourages an optimal distribution of resources among agents. Its effectiveness is mitigated, however, by agents who enjoy private, nonmonetary benefits that are not shared. Using data from the National Football League, we examine how well the propositions explain observed behavior in this relationship.

Hedonic Prices for a Nondurable Good : The Case of Breakfast Cereals

Numerous studies have estimated hedonic price functions for durable goods. In this paper, the authors apply the methodology to breakfast cereals, a nondurable good. They employ maximum likelihood to estimate the hedonic price functions using data from three large supermarkets. The price function depends on characteristics that provide taste, nutrition, and convenience to consumers, and the estimates yield insights into pricing policies, consumer preferences, and consumer use of information. Copyright 1991 by MIT Press.

Rates of Substance Use of American Indian Students in 8th, 10th, and 12th Grades Living on or near Reservations: Update, 2009–2012:

Objectives. Understanding the similarities and differences between substance use rates for American Indian (AI) young people and young people nationally can better inform prevention and treatment efforts. We compared substance use rates for a large sample of AI students living on or near reservations for the years 2009–2012 with national prevalence rates from Monitoring the Future (MTF). Methods. We identified and sampled schools on or near AI reservations by region; 1,399 students in sampled schools were administered the American Drug and Alcohol Survey. We computed lifetime, annual, and last-month prevalence measures by grade and compared them with MTF results for the same time period. Results. Prevalence rates for AI students were significantly higher than national rates for nearly all substances, especially for 8th graders. Rates of marijuana use were very high, with lifetime use higher than 50% for all grade groups. Other findings of interest included higher binge drinking rates and OxyContin® use for AI students. Conclusions. The results from this study demonstrate that adolescent substance use is still a major problem among reservation-based AI adolescent students, especially 8th graders, where prevalence rates were sometimes dramatically higher than MTF rates. Given the high rates of substance use-related problems on reservations, such as academic failure, delinquency, violent criminal behavior, suicidality, and alcohol-related mortality, the costs to members of this population and to society will continue to be much too high until a comprehensive understanding of the root causes of substance use are established.

Individual and Contextual Effects of School Adjustment on Adolescent Alcohol Use

This paper examines the effect of a student’s own school adjustment as well as the contextual level of school adjustment (the normative level of school adjustment among students in a school) on students’ self-reported use of alcohol. Using a dataset of 43,465 male and female 8th grade students from 349 schools across the contiguous United States who participated in a national study of substance use in rural communities between 1996 and 2000, multilevel latent covariate models were utilized to disentangle the individual-level and contextual effects of three school adjustment variables (i.e., school bonding, behavior at school, and friend’s school bonding) on alcohol use. All three school adjustment factors were significant predictors of alcohol use both within and between schools. Furthermore, this study demonstrated a strong contextual effect: Students who attended schools where the overall level of school adjustment was higher reported lower levels of alcohol use even after taking their own school adjustment into account. The results demonstrate the importance of both a student’s own level of school adjustment and the normative level of school adjustment among students in the school on an adolescent’s use of alcohol. Differences in school adjustment across schools were quite strongly related to an adolescent’s own alcohol use, indicating that school adjustment is an important aspect of school climate. Initiatives aimed at improving school climate may have beneficial effects on students’ alcohol use.

Pretrial bargaining behavior within the shadow of the law: Theory and experimental evidence

When dispute arises from a consensual relationship, two possible outcomes can occur. Pretrial bargaining may result in an out of court settlement, or if the bargaining process breaks down, the dispute will go to trial. Because the trial solution to the dispute always looms in the background, pretrial bargaining has been described and modeled as a game played in the “shadow of the law” (Mnookin and Kornhauser, 1979; Cooter. Marks, and Mnookin, 1982). Each litigant in this game is assumed to balance a bargained share of the stakes against the expected stakes forthcoming from a trial solution. This characterization of pretrial bargaining suggests that what happens or might happen inside the courtroom impacts the out-of-court bargaining process. The expected court outcome is, in turn, influenced by the legal rules and procedures used in trial by the litigants. If a party’s assessment of his expected gain or loss in trial differs according to the legal procedures used in trial, so. too, will his pretrial negotiating behavior differ over these institutional procedures. The legal institution used in trial becomes, in effect, a third party to the negotiation process and to a great extent determines whether and at what level pretrial settlement will occur. A pretrial bargaining theory should allow an investigator to predict how various legal institutions used in trial affect both the negotiation process and the bargain struck by the litigants when negotiations are successful. In Section 1 of this paper, we develop a mode1 of the pretrial bargaining process for different institutional settings that rely on different sets of rules to allocate the costs of trials.’ We consider three legal cost allocation methods: the American system in which both parties bear their own legal costs; the British system in which the loser pays the legal costs; and California law 998 and federal rule 68 in which a party who rejected a pretrial offer must pay the legal costs of the opponent if the judge’s award is less favorable than the pretrial offer. The theory is developed in the spirit of economic models of labor dispute

Assessing media campaigns linking marijuana non-use with autonomy and aspirations: "Be Under Your Own Influence" and ONDCP's "Above the Influence".

Two media-based interventions designed to reduce adolescent marijuana use ran concurrently from 2005 to 2009. Both interventions used similar message strategies, emphasizing marijuana’s inconsistency with personal aspirations and autonomy. “Be Under Your Own Influence” was a randomized community and school trial replicating and extending a successful earlier intervention of the same name (Slater et al. Health Education Research 21:157–167, 2006). “Above the Influence” is a continuing national television, radio, and print campaign sponsored by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). This study assessed the simultaneous impact of the interventions in the 20 U.S. communities. Results indicate that earlier effects of the “Be Under Your Own Influence” intervention replicated only in part and that the most plausible explanation of the weaker effects is high exposure to the similar but more extensive ONDCP “Above the Influence” national campaign. Self-reported exposure to the ONDCP campaign predicted reduced marijuana use, and analyses partially support indirect effects of the two campaigns via aspirations and autonomy.

Physical, Social, and Perceived Availabilities of Alcohol and Last Month Alcohol Use in Rural and Small Urban Communities

This study seeks to provide a greater understanding of the factors that determine the perceived availability of alcohol and its role in predicting adolescents’ alcohol use. Participants were 151,703 7th–12th grade students (50% female) from a sample of 219 rural communities across the United States, with oversampling for predominantly Mexican-American and African-American communities. Multilevel analysis was used to estimate the perceived availability of alcohol as a function of physical and social availability measures and individual and community-level control variables. Physical availability was measured as the number of alcohol outlets in the community and whether beer and wine were sold in non-liquor stores. Social availability measured the availability of alcohol from social or family groups. Last month alcohol use was then estimated as a function of physical, social and perceived availabilities and control variables. Physical availability had little relationship to perceived availability or recent alcohol use while social availability was a strong predictor of both. Perceived availabilities at the individual and community levels were significant in predicting last month alcohol use. The findings suggest that altering both perceived and actual availability of alcohol can potentially have strong effects on the levels of adolescent alcohol use.

Rurality, Region, Ethnic Community Make‐Up and Alcohol Use Among Rural Youth

PURPOSE As the most widely used substance among adolescents in the United States, alcohol remains a critical public health issue. The majority of research in this area has focused on individual-level variables. This study examined the contextual effects of rurality, geographic region, and community ethnicity in the prediction of alcohol use among adolescent youth. METHOD Participants were 7th-12th grade students from a sample of 260 rural communities across the United States, with oversampling for predominantly Mexican American and African American communities. The total sample comprised 213,225 students. Multilevel modeling was used to estimate both individual and contextual effects for use of alcohol and getting drunk. FINDINGS Those living in more rural communities were somewhat more likely to have used alcohol and gotten drunk than their less rural counterparts. Consistent with a trend toward a narrowing gender gap across a number of substances, gender differences in alcohol use were not large, except in the South. A minority in a community, eg, a white student in an African American community, had greater risk for alcohol use and getting drunk. CONCLUSIONS Models of alcohol use among rural youth that include only individual-level variables are likely to result in misleading results. While students from varying levels of rurality may not differ substantially from one another, geographic region and minority status within communities are likely to interact with individual-level variables, resulting in unique patterns of alcohol use and getting drunk.

Disparities in young adolescent inhalant use by rurality, gender, and ethnicity.

Inhalant use is of increasing concern as rates appear to be rising among young adolescents and gender differences narrowing. Data from 20,684 Mexican American and White non-Hispanic seventh- and eighth-grade males and females from the Western United States and 15,659 African American and White non-Hispanic seventh- and eighth-grade males and females from states in the southeastern United States collected via in-school surveys from 1996 to 2000 were analyzed using a variety of statistical techniques including multilevel modeling. Questions addressed in the study included: Does inhalant use vary by level of rurality? What effect does the ethnic composition of the community have on inhalant use and does this effect differ by an individuals ethnicity? Do males use more inhalants than females and does the level of use by males and females differ by individual ethnicity, ethnicity of the community, or level of rurality? Do males and females of different ethnicities initiate inhalant use at different ages? Limitations of the study and implications of findings for prevention are discussed and areas of future research are suggested. This study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

A Systematic Review of Community Readiness Tool Applications: Implications for Reporting

Background: A systematic review characterised and synthesised applications of the Community Readiness Tool (CRT) and synthesised quantitative results for readiness applications at multiple time points. Methods: Eleven databases in OvidSP and EBSCHOhost were searched to retrieve CRT applications. Information from primary studies was extracted independently by two researchers. Results: Forty applications of the CRT met inclusion criteria focussing on 14 different health and social issues. The community of interest was most often defined solely on the basis of its geographical location (52.5%). Most studies used the CRT to plan (85%) and/or evaluate programs (40%). The CRT protocol was modified in 40% of studies. Six applications evaluated readiness at multiple time points, however limited reporting in primary studies precluded any synthesis of results. Applications identified methodological rigour, contextual information and community engagement as strengths, and time and resource costs as limitations. Conclusions: The CRT is well suited for planning and evaluating complex community health interventions given its flexibility to accommodate diverse definitions of community and issues. CRT applications would benefit from improved reporting; reporting recommendations for use of the CRT are outlined.