A microeconometric study of theatre demand

We develop a model of theatre demand with learning by consuming, and test some of its implications on a large random sample of theatregoers and non-theatregoers. This seems to be the most comprehensive econometric study of demand for the theatre from individual data. We hypothesize that each time the consumer watches a play, he experiences a degree of pleasant or unpleasant surprise on the basis of which he will revise his future expectations of his own taste. The learning phase is likely to be unusually long for highly differentiated cultural goods. Our set of data contains unique information about the full price and the fixed cost of theatre, the objective quality of the outing, past experience of and taste for the theatre, and consumption of substitute leisure activities such as reading, television and cinema. Our methodology and data enable us to infer price elasticity on survey data from knowledge of theatregoing experience and taste. After controlling for many variables, we conclude that demand for the theatre is price-elastic, which contradicts previous estimates on aggregate time-series data. Moreover, we estimate demand conditional on past attendance after controlling for selectivity bias. Satisfaction reported by consumers after the last play is also estimated and interpreted as an ordinal conditional choice.     

Arts participation: Comparing the elderly and non-elderly

Conclusions From this brief examination of the leisure activities of older Americans, several previous findings have been validated with national, representative data and a few surprises have been discovered in arts participation. As expected, those younger than 65 years of age were more active than seniors in nearly all of the leisure activities tested. In addition, the elderly were more likely to participate in in-home rather than out-of-home activities.The most intriguing finding concern the elderly's arts participation. While leisure activities decline as one grows older, participation in passive arts activities in the home and out of the home decline far less than for leisure activities and more participatory arts activities. Unlike other activities discussed, few significant difference existed between the younger and older groups in the away from home art activities. Those 65 and older were more willing to attend fine arts performances, such as opera, musical plays, stage plays, and ballet. It is also notable that the differences in frequency of the away from home arts activities are in not great between the older and younger groups. Finally, this study does dispel somewhat the idea that the elderly prefer solitary activities. The elderly are a diverse and widely varying group of citizens who in some cases maintain their patronage of the arts while other leisure activities decline.     

Macroappraisal, the Next Frontier: An Approach for Appraising Large and Complex Government Institutions

“Macroappraisal, the next frontier” describes a records disposition pilot project which was based on a refinement of the current macroappraisal methodology in use at Library and Archives Canada. Still very much a work in progress, the refined approach builds upon macroappraisal theory and methodology, and this paper presents its application to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, a major federal government department in the Government of Canada. The project focused on providing the institution with total records disposition coverage based on a single archival appraisal and two Records Disposition Authorities. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of appraising records at the mandate level instead of at the function or program level. It also outlines and points to the benefits and advantages of appraising large government institutions intheir totality rather than in smaller, discrete sectors, branches, or divisions. We wish to thank the journal’s readers for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. We also wish to thank Candace Loewen for her insights, comments, and encouragement. Thanks are also extended to our colleagues who commented on various aspects of the project during Library and Archives Canada (LAC) appraisal seminars. Kerry Badgley also wishes to thank Sarah, Paul, and Shannon Badgley for providing a daily reminder of why it is important to document the past.     

A developmental study of school performance explanations of 6 to 11-year-olds: Causal differentiation and internality norm

Children's explanations of their performances are characterized by an increase of internal explanations over external ones. Originally considered a manifestation of cognitive development, this change has more recently been considered as an appropriation of a social norm. Two investigations are presented analyzing development of causal explanations of success and failure in mathematics and drawing. In the first study, two measures of causal attribution are compared in order to show that the use of unipolar scales is more suitable for illustrating differences in causal factors progressively operated by children. The hypothesis of the appropriation of a norm of internality is investigated in the second study. Results do not confirm this hypothesis and further, they cannot be interpreted solely in terms of cognitive development. They are discussed in the frame of a theory of socio-cognitive development.     

The persistence of social attraction in socially deprived and satiated rats

Pairs of socially deprived or satiated rats were observed for 71÷2 continuous hours in an open field. Social contact increased monotonically throughout this time, with socially deprived animals showing more attraction, and a greater increase in attraction, than satiated animals. The quality of social contact changed, however, from a predominantly active interaction, in which the most sociable animals were most mobile, to a predominantly passive huddling, in which the most sociable animals were least mobile. The results suggest that social attraction in rats is not transitory, and may serve several different functions.     

On the compression of search trees

Let X=_x1,_x2,…,_xn$X=x_1\text{,}{x}_2\text{,}\dots \text{,}{x}_n$ be a sequence of non-decreasing integer values. Storing a compressed representation of X that supports access and search is a problem that occurs in many domains. The most common solution to this problem uses a linear list and encodes the differences between consecutive values with encodings that favor small numbers. This solution includes additional information (i.e. samples) to support efficient searching on the encoded values. We introduce a completely different alternative that achieves compression by encoding the differences in a search tree. Our proposal has many applications, such as the representation of posting lists, geographic data, sparse bitmaps, and compressed suffix arrays, to name just a few. The structure is practical and we provide an experimental evaluation to show that it is competitive with the existing techniques.