Coase’s world and Coase’s blackboard

In this contribution I focus on a particular characteristic of Ronald Coase’s work, as exhibited in “The Problem of Social Cost”: his ability to force upon his audience a clearer grasp of reality than they previously held. More specifically, I aim to consider to what extent the “blackboard economics” that Coase himself derided have been avoided in a Coasean world, taking that expression to refer in some sense to a world where Coasean insights can flourish, and as such to be a world not simply of Coase’s own making but a world that has been developed by others in applying the Coase Theorem. My strategy is to interrogate the nature of a Coasean world through developing a framework that can look more closely at different approaches to theoretical modelling, the different worlds involved in these models, and the different positive and normative applications that can be derived from them. I shall further consider whether the understanding of the law that inhabits a Coasean world reflects a “real-world” legal environment. Finally, I shall seek to assess the impact of Coase’s work on our understanding of the relationship between law and economics, in our world.     

Crime, Freedom and Civic Bonds: Arthur Ripstein’s Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy

There is no question Arthur Ripstein’s Force and Freedom is an engaging and powerful book which will inform legal philosophy, particularly Kantian theories, for years to come. The text explores with care Kant’s legal and political philosophy, distinguishing it from his better known moral theory. Nor is Ripstein’s book simply a recounting of Kant’s legal and political theory. Ripstein develops Kant’s views in his own unique vision illustrating fresh ways of viewing the entire Kantian project. But the same strength and coherence which ties the book to Kant’s important values of independence blinds the work to our shared moral ties grounded in other political values. Ripstein’s thoughts on punishment are novel in that he embeds criminal law, both in its retributivist and consequentialist facets, into Kant’s overarching political philosophy to show how criminal law can be seen as one aspect of the supremacy of public law. But a criminal law solely focused on the preservation of freedom takes little notice of the ways criminal law need expand its view to account for how a polity can restore the victim of a crime back to civic equality, reincorporate offenders after they have been punished and cannot leave past offenders isolated and likely to reoffend, resulting in the rotating door prison system and communities of innocents who remain preyed upon by career criminals. Lastly, a political theory that does not prize our civic bonds will ignore the startling balkanization of our criminal punishment practices, where policing, arresting and imprisonment become tools of racial and social oppression. In illustrating the benefits in viewing criminal law as a coherent part of Kant’s political theory of freedom, Ripstein also highlights what is absent. It then becomes clear that though Kant presents one important facet of punishment, only a republican political theory can meet the most pressing moral demands of punishment by reminding us that criminal law must be used to preserve and strengthen civic society.     

Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 2000–1887, Globalism,and Race

This essay first considers the type of world that Edward Bellamy envisioned for the future and then holds his vision up for review. His society’s good points are discussed as well as the areas where Bellamy retains some of his 19th‐century limitations, especially where it comes to women’s role in the future. Because Bellamy did briefly turn to the international scene, the essay puts his version of international relations into the context of 21st‐century globalization. It is in this realm that Bellamy admits that his utopia is incomplete, a striking statement. Yet it is in the final realm of analysis—race—that Bellamy’s utopia is most swiftly criticized, since there are no people of color in America but they are to be found elsewhere on the planet. Finally, the article finishes with a few thoughts on the value of writing and reading fiction of this kind.     

On field mice,butterflies, and tigers: Mark Twain’s ‘Ten Commandments’ and circumstance-based justice

The first reports that the Obama administration had deported a record number of people came as a surprise to many. As both Presidents Obama and Bush have attempted to pass moderate immigration reform laws that allowed for legalization, we must ask from where the impetus for driving up the deportation rate has come. The explanation leads to the passage of Secure Communities in 2008, which allowed state and local law enforcement to identify undocumented immigrants through federal information sharing. I seek to explain the social dynamics behind the passage of Secure Communities starting with a review of previous cycles of rapid deportation in US history. I then examine the political activities of the contemporary immigrant restrictionist movement for an understanding of their role.     

Race and Women’s Imprisonment: Poverty, African American Presence, and Social Welfare

Female imprisonment rates have increased proportionately more than male imprisonment rates over recent decades. There are substantial race differences in women’s rates, as is the case for men. Yet, there has been little quantitative research on the correlates of women’s imprisonment using data over time, or on potential race differences in those correlates. The present research analyzes data on black and nonblack female imprisonment rates in the 50 states for the period 1981–2003. The analyses are guided substantively by existing research on race, social threat and criminal punishment, and theory and research on the penal-welfare hypothesis. The study uses bivariate-response multilevel modeling to simultaneously examine the factors associated with black and nonblack women’s imprisonment rates. The results show that black female imprisonment rates increase when the concentration of African Americans in metropolitan areas and poverty rates grow, whereas nonblack female imprisonment rates are unaffected by poverty rates and actually decrease when African American populations become more concentrated in metro areas. Both black and nonblack women’s imprisonment rates increase when welfare spending declines. The results are consistent with social threat perspectives and the penal-welfare hypotheses.     

Imperial Metaphors and Native Savagery: Law’s Imagery,Crime and Empire

For all of law’s emphasis on its originary claims, this article argues that modern law has always been heavily dependent on categories and a set of images and metaphors for constituting identities. The presence of a racialised Other in the written, verbal and visual form all reveal striking parallels in the metaphorical forms used in the categorisation of people in temporality. In essence, law’s commitment to principles of universality and equality, is practically sustained only by the reinvented and rationalized exclusions of racial particularity, and hierarchies of otherness, which are variously exotic, dangerous and irredeemable. What is clear from this binary division is that the processes of criminalizing the unruly heathens, the wayward savages and the lower strata in the early nineteenth century, was part of a process of knowledge production which drew heavily upon key images of morality and of pathology. Such a stratum, as in the parallel process in the colonies amongst the criminal savages, was anxiously understood through a proliferation of stereotypes and labels imbued with this threatening menace. This article further explores how this imagery was policed and disciplined, and also opens up the possibility to assess how these images impart the same mythic forces in the ongoing acts of violence and specters of postcolonial imperialism that persist in its new global forms. This article aims, to reveal that legal forms and identities, far from being stable in their construction, are inherently unstable, and remain forever in an ambivalent relationship to the things being constructed and those engaged in the construction.     

Japan’s Reformed Prosecution Review Commission: Changes,Challenges, and Lessons

This article evaluates how Japan’s Prosecution Review Commission (PRC) has performed since it was reformed in 2009 to allow panels of 11 citizens to override the non-charge decisions of professional prosecutors. In the first eight cases of “mandatory prosecution” that have occurred since 2009, the conviction rate is 20%—far lower than Japan’s usual conviction rate, which exceeds 99%. In the ninth case of mandatory prosecution, three former executives of the Tokyo Electric Power Company have been subject to mandatory prosecution for “professional negligence resulting in death and injury,” for failing to prevent the nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima that were precipitated by the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, which killed 18,500 people and caused 200,000 more to flee their homes. As of 2018, the trial of the Tepco executives is still in progress. This evaluation study of prosecutorial reform in one Asian nation suggests that, in principle, prosecutors’ non-charge decisions can be checked and controlled. In practice, however, Japan’s PRC reform has done little to alter the standard operating procedures of professional prosecutors. Further reform of the PRC may be necessary.

     

Children’s Aggression, Parenting Styles, and Distress for Hong Kong Parents

This study examined the connection between parental perceptions about their children’s reactive and proactive aggression, parenting styles, parent–child communication, and parental distress. A total of 1,485 Hong Kong parents and guardians with children 8 to 17 years old completed the Reactive and Proactive Aggression Questionnaire, Kessler Psychological Distress Scale, Adjective Checklist, and Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire. When reactive and proactive aggression responses were used to predict parental distress, a significant regression model was obtained with both predictors making a contribution. A significant model also was discovered when parenting styles and parent–child communication were used to predict parental distress. Authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting contributed significantly to this model. One final regression was performed with the significant predictors from the two previous equations. This model was significant, with reactive and proactive aggression, and authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting styles making significant contributions. Practice and research implications are briefly discussed.     

Childhood Maltreatment,Intimate Partner Violence,Work Interference and Women’s Employment

This study examined the long-term effects of childhood maltreatment, intimate partner violence (IPV) and work interference on women’s employment in a sample of 135 housed or homeless women. Work interference (defined as a partner’s interference with or restraint of a woman’s working) was reported by 60% of women who had experienced IPV and was more common among non-Hispanic White women. Abuse history of any type was not predictive of women’s employment or receiving job training, but child sexual abuse history and lifetime IPV were predictive of non-Hispanic White women’s not looking for a job. Receiving job training was negatively correlated with women’s current mental health. The study suggests different but overlapping pathways to the outcome of underemployment for racial/ethnic minority and majority women—namely, macro level factors and individual vulnerability factors, respectively. The need for trauma-informed services for unemployed and/or homeless women is highlighted.     

Internal and external networks,and incubatees’ performance in dynamic environments: entrepreneurial learning’s mediating effect

The Journal of Technology Transfer - Business incubators (BIs) have gradually evolved to focus increasingly on the development of networks and network functions. However, existing literature...     

Children’s Perceptions of Intimate Partner Violence: Causes,Consequences, and Coping

Children’s appraisals of conflictual and aggressive parental interactions mediate their effect on children’s adjustment. Previous studies have relied almost exclusively on self-report questionnaires to assess appraisals; consequently we know little about perceptions that occur naturally when children witness interparental aggression. This study employed a semi-structured interview to assess the thoughts and feelings of 34 children (ages 7–12) whose mothers were receiving services at domestic violence agencies, and mothers reported on interparental aggression that took place in the home. Children’s thoughts centered on consequences and efforts to understand why fights occurred. They generally viewed their mother’s partner as responsible for violence, though a significant number viewed both parents as playing a role. Sadness and anger were more common than anxiety, and children often attempted to stop or withdraw from fights or both. When asked why family violence occurs, most focused on perpetrators’ lack of control of anger or personal characteristics, but approximately one-third viewed victims as provoking aggression. These findings support the idea that children actively attempt to understand the causes and consequences of interparental violence and suggest that their perceptions and interpretations are important for understanding the development of beliefs regarding the use of violence in close relationships.     

Parental Migration,Caretaking Arrangement,and Children’s Delinquent Behavior in Rural China

The purpose of this study was to investigate the associations between parental rural-to-urban migration, caretaking arrangement, and left-behind children’s self-reported delinquency in rural China. The direct effect of parental migration on children’s delinquency as well as the indirect effect through children–caretaker conflict, school bonding, and children’s association with deviant peers are explored. The study uses data from the Parental Migration and Children’s Well-Being Survey, which collected information on parental migration and delinquency from a probability sample of 600 middle school students in southern China. Path models are used to evaluate hypotheses generated from mainstream criminology theories and the literature of immigration and internal migration in rural China. Parental migration and caretaking arrangement has a significant effect on children’s socialization and behavioral outcomes in rural China. Results indicate that pathways to delinquency among left-behind children differ across various caretaking arrangements. Grandparents and other extended family members, when serving as primary caretakers, are challenged to effectively monitor and supervise left-behind children’s interaction with deviant peers, which is the main route to further delinquency. Stay-at-home mothers, on the other hand, have difficulty in developing strong mother–child bonds and in avoiding conflictual and strained relationships with their children. The study highlights the importance of a father’s presence on children’s behavioral outcomes in the context of rural China.     

Disproportionate minority contact in juvenile justice: today’s,and yesterdays,problems

Disproportionate minority contact (DMC) has been a perplexing problem for the juvenile justice system, and recognized as a national priority since the 1980s. The over-representation of minority youthful offenders throughout juvenile court processing, from arrests to dispositions, has not changed even though significant federal and state efforts have been employed. This paper reviews these racial and ethnic disparity problems, and investigates the history of the juvenile justice system and courts, from the eighteenth century to today’s reformation movement, identifying that DMC is not a recent phenomenon. The history of slavery and the Jim Crow Era greatly impacted the establishment of the juvenile courts and child-centered justice efforts, finding disparities at all historical markers where records are available. When reviewing DMC as we know it today through this context, an argument can be made that limited progress has been made over the past 200 years.     

Post-Soviet Society and Russia’s Macroeconomic Statistics

This article investigates the causes of the distorted macroeconomic statistics in the Russian Federation. It introduces alternative methods for the estimation of gross domestic product (GDP) growth, and the growth and amount of fixed capital stock, and estimates them by drawing on alternative data. Our estimates for the period of 1992–2015 differ substantially from those reported by the Russian Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat). According to our estimates, GDP declined by 10.2 percent, which is in sharp contrast with the official estimate reporting growth of 13.4 percent. The same is found with regard to labor productivity, for which we find a decline of 30.1 percent instead of a growth of 9.2 percent. Accordingly, the full book value of fixed capital stock shrunk by 29.2 percent instead of the officially reported 50.9 percent growth. The drop in the residual value of fixed capital is estimated at 52.6 percent. The ratio of replacement to book value of fixed capital fluctuated between 4:1 in the middle of the period and 7:1 toward the end of the period. Additionally, we estimate the amount of investment in human and physical capital necessary for producing 3 percent annual GDP growth. Financing such investment would require a decline in personal consumption by about a factor of 2, with a greater part of it falling on the better off population strata. Finally, we make suggestions regarding income redistribution.     

The impacts of executives’ political connections on interactions between firm’s mergers,acquisitions, and performance

Economic Change and Restructuring - This research examines the effects of executive political connections on corporate performance by comparing firms with mergers and acquisitions (M&As)...