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While the United States enjoys aggregate economic growth, the fruits are not shared equally across communities. While there has been numerous news coverage about the despair of US communities recently, there has been little empirical study on what socio-economic factors affect the level of despair. In this paper, we collect US county-level data and construct an index of despair for each county, with mean zero and a standard deviation of 1. We then run regressions with the despair index as the dependent variable, test how the number of social associations in a county affects the level of despair. We find that counties with higher social associations per capita have a lower level of despair, numerically, we find that a one standard deviation increase of associations per 10,000 people reduces the despair variable by 0.14-0.2 points. This result remains robust under different specifications of the model. We explain this relationship by saying that social associations allow more interactions with other individuals, and less need to indulge in self-destructive activities, which in turn reduces the level of despair in the county.

This paper investigates recent commuting trends by American workers. Unlike most studies of commuting that rely on data from the American Community Survey this study utilizes the American Time Use Survey to detail the complex commuting patterns of modern-day workers. Changes in the price of gasoline in recent years suggest that the incidence of “driving alone” should be on the decline. Indeed, results show that the sensitivity of modal commuting with respect to changes in gasoline prices appears to be relatively large. We estimate the gasoline-price elasticity of driving alone to be 0.057 and the gasoline-price elasticity of carpooling to be 0.502. Additional factors also affect commuting, including socio-economic characteristics and social desires. However, it is changes in gasoline prices that appear to account for nearly all of the recent variation in the mode chosen for commuting.

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to create a country‐level measure of tolerance and to test the relationships between this measure of country‐level tolerance and percentage of talented workers, economic development, and competitiveness.Design/methodology/approachA country‐level measure of tolerance for 62 countries is created using responses from the World Values Survey. In particular, four survey responses which closely mirror the traditional definitions of tolerance are considered in the creation of the index. To test the relationships between country‐level tolerance and percentage of talented workers, economic development, and competitiveness, a series of hypotheses tests are conducted using the Spearman and Pearson correlation coefficients.FindingsThe results suggest that more tolerant countries tend to attract more net migrants, have a greater concentration of talented workers, higher levels of economic development, and are more competitive.Research limitations/implicationsWhile, the results of this analysis suggest that tolerance is an important factor for economic prosperity, it should be noted that tolerance alone cannot foster development. Many other factors have a significant effect on economic prosperity and while tolerance is found to be a significant factor, a more tolerant environment alone will not create economic gains.Practical implicationsGlobal companies needing to attract talented workers should develop policies and work environments which encourage acceptance and tolerance for differences.Originality/valueThis paper provides a measure of country‐level tolerance for 62 countries and establishes the value of tolerance in regard to economic prosperity. This study has value to researchers studying tolerance at the country‐level and to managers of global companies.

I N 1970, THE PIKE PLACE MARKET IN SEATTLE WAS A COLLECTION OF run-down buildings in a worn-out corner of downtown. There were always farmers selling produce they had grown and a shopper could find a parking space on the street near the market, unless it was a particularly nice Saturday morning. The market regularly brought together small farmers from the Seattle area and loyal urban customers. There were also fish vendors and green grocers who sold produce they had purchased wholesale, but the heart of the market was the tables where farmers sold the fruit, vegetables, and flowers they had grown. As the sign said (and still says) ‘‘Meet the producer.’’ Developers who saw the potential of a six-acre site on the bluff overlooking Elliot Bay and the waterfront threatened the future of the market. A grassroots organization, ‘‘Friends of the Market,’’ went to work to save the livelihoods of the farmers and the market with its laid back atmosphere (Figure 1). In September 1971, Seattle citizens voted to make the market an historic district, and the market was saved. Today, Pike Place Market is probably more successful financially than ever, but something has been lost. The market has become a tourist destination and the experience is staged for the tourists. Parking is more difficult, and the crowds have become thick. Though there are still tables for farmers, only on Wednesday and Sunday are the local farmers out in force. The market is less a place for the old, regular, Seattle shoppers looking for regional, seasonal food, and easy interaction with growers and other shoppers. It is more a place for out-oftowners to take pictures, buy souvenirs, or have seafood packed as

Jan Jaśkiewicz was a successful small grocer in Białystok, Poland, a city of about 300,000. When Poland became a capitalistic nation again in the late 1980s, Jaśkiewicz was among the early entrepreneurs. In the late 1990s, multi-national grocery chains from across Europe began building new, large stores on the outskirts of most Polish cities, including Białystok. In early summer 2000, a few days before the case begins, local independent grocers had been called together by Lewiatan, a Polish wholesale grocer. Lewiatan could offer the smaller grocers the advantages of the chains: bulk buying, Lewiatan-branded goods, slotting fees, and cooperative advertising. The local grocers liked many of the benefits Lewiatan would bring, but were suspicious and wanted someone they knew to be the area representative before they would agree to join Lewiatan. They had called a second meeting to try and find someone to fill the role. Jaśkiewicz was a natural choice: he had been in both the retail and wholesale grocery business, had been in business longer than almost everyone else, and was well-respected. Jan was tempted. Not only did he want to grow his own business, he wanted other Poles to be successful business owners and felt that if he could help Lewiatan, Lewiatan could help others compete with the new, large, foreign-owned and professionally-managed stores.

PurposeThis paper aims to provide a classification for the process by which crafters find appropriate consumers in the post‐modern market structure that exists between black or gray markets where illegal or illegally obtained goods are sold, and the markets that serve the Fordist, mass‐production, mass‐distribution portion of an economy.Design/methodology/approachPrincipally the research was done via personal interviews and visits to craft show sites and comparing the findings to the existing street‐market structures of Europe.FindingsThe institutions that have evolved to support market segregation/segmentation in crafts markets are interesting and are better understood within a classification system like the one developed here. How these institutions differ from the street‐market culture of Europe lends an insight into this uniquely American post‐modern market system.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is the beginning of a larger body of work that should be undertaken to better comprehend how the increasing post‐modern market structure is interacting with and occasionally replacing, the traditional market structures in the USA.Practical implicationsAs the post‐modern market structure becomes more prevalent in the USA understanding how it is similar to and differs from, the comparable market structures in Europe is important to policy decisions on the local level, particularly with respect to local support of this type of market.Originality/valueThis work extends earlier work looking at farmers’ markets into the crafts market environment. As such it brings the overall understanding of the post‐modern market structure in to more clear focus.

At lower levels of income, the authors find, nations are more ethnically diverse. As nations become industrialized, their populace becomes more ethnically homogeneous. Finally, as nations move toward the highest levels of income, their populace returns to a more ethnically diverse state. The result is what the authors call an Ethnic Homogeneity Kuznets Curve. And they argue that there are interesting policy implications.

Poles do much of their shopping outdoors. In any city with urban bus or tram service, and in many towns without, there are kiosks on important street corners that sell bus or tram tickets, magazines and newspapers, basic stationery items, cigarettes and candy, bottled water and soft drinks, and an amazing number of other small items. More important than the kiosks are the targowiska or “free and open markets” where Poles can buy clothing, stationery, food, small electronics, cosmetics, and a large variety of other goods. The targowiska are the descendents of the weekly market days that occurred in almost every Polish town and village up to World War II. These free and open markets appeared quickly with the liberalisation of the economy in the late 1980s, popping up at traditional market places and on other open spaces convenient for shoppers. While these markets appear to be unorganised and informal, in the past fifteen or twenty years their operations have become regulated and more formal. While these markets are less informal than they may first appear, they do still perform many of the functions of informal markets. These markets also have become an important source of revenue for local governments.

Farmers’ markets in the United States are structured in various ways. Even those once‐or‐twice‐a‐week markets that remain outside of the mass production and distribution system by requiring that all goods sold be produced by the seller take two distinct forms. The varieties of produce sold, the number of choices offered customers, the prices charged, the age and income expectations of the sellers, the rules the sellers obey and the role of the sellers in writing and enforcing those rules are consistent within each type of informal, American farmers’ markets but are quite different between the two types.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a practical, effective method of teaching short-term study abroad courses to increase students' global awareness and lay the foundation for the development of a sophisticated global mindset in future managers. The global mindsets discussed in the literature coincide with the levels of cognitive complexity found in the critical thinking literature. Building on these traditions, we construct an approach based on facilitated, group discussion. One major advantage of this technique is that, because it is done in a group setting, it is less time-consuming for faculty than other ways of providing feedback to students during study abroad courses. Given that short-term study abroad courses have become a popular way to internationalize business school curricula, this approach offers a way to maximize the impact of these experiences.

There is a well established relationship between exercise and weight in individuals. Recently, relationships between less urban sprawl and more leisure exercise and between certain urban characteristics usually associated with less sprawl and exercise for transportation have been found. This paper completes the less-sprawl-more exercise for transportation-lower weight sequence by finding that counties in metropolitan areas where more people complete their journey to work by walking, biking, or taking public transportation have fewer people who are overweight.

Despite the urging of the profession to include a capstone experience in the undergraduate economic major, little has appeared in the literature about such courses. Additionally, though changes in computing have made it possible for undergraduates to complete reasonable professional-style research, a natural capstone experience, little has been written about teaching undergraduates to complete research at that level. At our small university, we have discovered that a successful capstone research project requires teaching students the rhetoric of economic research as well as economics and econometrics. We have also discovered that the complexity of completing that task requires more than one semester for most students. We describe our curriculum, our method of assessment, and some evidence that our students have improved as the curriculum has evolved.

Traditionally, the intraurban location patterns of industrial firms have been explained with an equilibrium bid-rent model. Recently, location theorists have begun to use models which recognize that cities are seldom in long-run equilibrium, largely because of the fixed nature of the stock of buildings and the costs of moving an industrial firm. Utilizing a regression model with qualitative explanatory variables, it is found that the variation of industrial locations is greater across urban areas than across industries. This finding supports the contention that the disequilibrium nature of urban areas should be recognized in explaining emergent location patterns.

McGrath and Tiemann discuss the rationale for requiring students to become familiar with the empirical side of economics and describe seven exercises that can be used in the first course.