Vassar Scholarship

In rural regions, trained volunteer firefighters and medics provide emergency services, often with considerable personal risk and without financial reward. However, these Volunteers exhibit two different latent orientations: firefighters are more localistic in their outlook than medical volunteers. These latent...

This paper investigates the relationship between congressional support for foreign aid and the distribution of USAID contract spending across congressional districts within the United States. The extent to which such a relationship matters has become increasingly important in recent years...

This paper examines the role of U.S. domestic politics in the allocation of foreign aid using panel data on aid to 119 countries from 1960 to 1997. Employing proxies for four aid allocation criteria (development concerns, strategic importance, commercial importance...

A qualitative report on the experiences of first-generation, low income students at Vassar College. This report is the culmination of the Transitions Research Project.

Poole and Rosenthal (1997) argue that most congressional voting can be understood in terms of a low-dimensional spatial model. This paper uses their model to assess the importance of the two mechanisms that could contribute to the vote-predicting power of...

This article reports on theoretical and empirical research that explored the hypothesis that there is a sexual division of leadership in volunteer emergency medical service (EMS) squads. This hypothesis was tested against survey data obtained from 216 current members of...

A behavioral model is developed to explain the magnitude of surplus and the division of surplus into unproductive and profit for oligopoly firms in the manufacturing sector of advanced capitalist economies. Particular attention is focused upon the determinants of interfirm...

This research compares the personal, household, and professional characteristics volunteer emergency medical service (EMS) providers in Ulster County, NY with those of the general population of this rural upstate county, using a survey instrument implemented by the author in conjunction...

This article explores the multifaceted relationship between volunteer fire companies and their communities by examining a broad range of socioeconomic characteristics of volunteer fire fighters and general residents in rural New York State. The two data sets are generated by...

This is a theoretical and empirical exploration into the motivation of volunteer firefighters. After a brief discussion of methodology, the activities in which these volunteers engage are described and a theoretical model of volunteer motivation is presented. The central hypothesis...

This paper develops a model to test whether World Bank lending caters to U.S. interests. We use country-level panel data to examine the geographic distribution of World Bank lending to 110 countries from 1968 to 2002. After controlling for country...