Share the Wealth: Redistribution Can Increase Economic Efficiency

People frequently face uncertain income and the threat of loss can inhibit economic investments. Government redistribution can insure citizens against economic losses, but its effect on people’s investment decisions depends on how they react to redistributive rules. We apply methods from experimental economics to study how a redistributive institution affects people’s investment decisions. Experiment 1 tests whether redistribution can increase economic efficiency when people face risk problems—investment opportunities that are profitable on average but could result in a loss. In a between-subject design, participants decide whether to make a risky investment either individually or under an institution that redistributes earnings equally among four group members. We find greater investment and profits when participants are required to share their earnings. In Experiment 2, we examine free-riding by comparing an institution that allows non-investors to exploit investors to an assortment institution that matches investors with investors. We find that vulnerability to free-riding suppresses investment, whereas an assortment mechanism increases investment by preventing free-riding and thereby facilitating risk pooling.     

Ophthalmologic Concerns in Abusive Head Trauma

When Abusive Head Trauma (AHT) is suspected in a child, a dilated eye examination by an ophthalmologist is an essential part of the medical workup, as the presence and pattern of retinal hemorrhages can have a high positive predictive rate for abusive head injury. This article proposes to review the clinical presentation, pathophysiology, natural history, sequelae, and differential diagnosis of retinal hemorrhages and other ocular lesions associated with AHT.     

Transaction costs can encourage Coasean bargaining

When there are three parties, instability problems brought about by the emptiness of the core of the corresponding cooperative game may cause the Coase Theorem to fail, even when other more direct impediments to bargaining are low. We show that the standard Coasean bargaining game involving three parties is strategically equivalent to an asymmetric three-player majority game. Hence, when there are three parties, instability problems will cause the Coase Theorem to fail if and only if the core of the corresponding three-player majority game is empty. We use this equivalence result to derive all instances in which the Coase Theorem will and will not hold with three parties, and show that a priori, such instability problems are likely to be rare—the Coase Theorem will actually hold most (over 80 %) of the time. We also demonstrate that it is always possible to find a set of transaction costs which, when introduced into a frictionless bargaining situation, will cause an empty core to become non-empty. In other words, transaction costs can mitigate instability problems: situations exist in which the presence of transaction costs will cause the Coase Theorem to hold when, in the absence of those direct transaction costs, it would fail to hold. When there are three parties, rather than hindering agreements, the existence of direct transaction costs can sometimes—but not always—reduce instability and encourage Coasean bargaining.     

Communicating law,building peace: the pedagogy of public outreach from war crimes courts

ABSTRACT

There has been a growing interdisciplinary concern with the implications of public outreach processes from war crimes trials for new forms of citizenship in the wake of violent conflict. The enactment of such outreach, through seminars, civil society initiatives and workshops, provides a glimpse of the tensions between different conceptions of justice, belonging and rights in the post-conflict period. Specifically, such events constitute a rare public arena in the more fragmented and securitised domain of international legal practices. This paper focuses on a series of public workshops for survivors of wartime sexual violence carried out in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) 2011–13. Drawing on participant observations and open-ended interviews, we argue that such public outreach programmes can be viewed as a form of pedagogy, where the materials, format and arrangement of the events structure the nature of participation and engagement. In doing so we are making two contributions. First, the discussion advances understandings of public outreach as a form of pedagogy, illustrating how practices of dissent, rejection and resistance animate processes of public outreach. Second, the paper illuminates the role of pedagogy as a governmental instrument, reflecting the micro-situations within which individuals are interpellated into the state.     

A test of recent subcultural explanations of White violence in the United States

Recent subcultural theories suggest that real and perceived status loss among some White males as a result of social change during the last four decades-such as increasing gender and racial equity and agricultural job loss-added to the traditional patriarchal and masculine characteristics of this group to create cultural adaptations that led to higher levels of violence. One would thus expect higher homicide rates in areas where these traits are more fully developed and/or where status threats are more strongly felt. To test the efficacy of these claims, this study used OLS regression, and (1) employed census 2000 data and both homicide victimization and arrest data to update and replicate a common model of social structure and homicide, and then (2) added several variables to this baseline model that represented the subcultural traits, conditions, and behaviors outlined by these theories. The analyses yielded little support for these ideas. Thus while they might be appropriate for explaining the variation of the strength of specific subcultures and types of violence (e.g., Far Right wing paramilitary groups and political violence), an extension of these theories to more general interpersonal violence did not appear warranted.     

Does capitalism need the state system?

Contemporary Marxist students of international relations, like their mainstream counterparts, disagree over whether geopolitics has a future. Many believe that it has none, either because globalized capitalism has overcome the nation-state or because the ‘informal empire’ of the United States has overridden inter-state conflict. This article supports those who argue that significant economic and political conflicts persist among the main capitalist states. It does so by exploring the question of whether, in Marxist theory, the capitalist economic system and the international system of states are necessarily or contingently related. Marx's method in Capital offers, it is argued, a way of non-reductively incorporating the state system within the capitalist mode of production. This argument provides the basis for a partial reconciliation of Marxism and realism. More importantly, it offers a theoretical framework in which to explore the scope for inter-state conflict in the 21^st century.