"Guns" vs. "Butter": Conceptual and Methodological Issues

Despite the vast number of studies of the guns-butter tradeoff, we still do not know whether guns come at the expense of butter. In this article we attempt to clarify some of the major conceptual, measurement and statistical problems associated with this line of research.     

The search for truth and freedom: ethical issues surrounding human cloning and stem cell research

The reality of cloning and stem cell research has provoked wonder, fear and anger. These developments have the potential fundamentally to alter humanity. But how well informed is the range of views being expressed? Is progress being threatened by understandable but uninformed fears? Or are scientists rushing toward an ethical abyss, so concerned with what they can do that they never stop to ask what they should do? This article identifies some of the fears and hopes surrounding cloning and stem cell research. It aims to provoke ethical debate in evaluating such research.     

我国消费信贷立法应借鉴澳大利亚《消费信贷法案》

随着我国金融市场管制的不断削弱,必将会显现出对加强消费信贷立法的需要。我国消费信用立法还很薄弱,澳大利亚《消费信贷法案》中特别体现保障消费者利益的立法精神,有利于信用经营者生存和发展的特别安排、消费信贷合同的担保与保证。信贷提供者、消费供应者及消费者之间关系的有关内容,可为我国消费信贷立法吸收和借鉴;我国应针对消费信贷中存在的主要问题,有步骤地适时合理地吸收和借鉴澳大利亚《消费信贷法案》。     

Age and the Explanation of Crime, Revisited

Age is one of the most robust correlates of criminal behavior. Yet, explanations for this relationship are varied and conflicting. Developmental theories point to a multitude of sociological, psychological, and biological changes that occur during adolescence and adulthood. One prominent criminological perspective outlined by Gottfredson and Hirschi claims that age has a direct effect on crime, inexplicable from sociological and psychological variables. Despite the attention this claim has received, few direct empirical tests of it have been conducted. We use data from Pathways to Desistance, a longitudinal study of over 1,300 serious youthful offenders (85.8 % male, 40.1 % African-American, 34.3 % Hispanic, 21.0 % White), to test this claim. On average, youths were 16.5 years old at the initial interview and were followed for 7 years. We use multilevel longitudinal models to assess the extent to which the direct effects of age are reduced to statistical and substantive non-significance when constructs from a wide range of developmental and criminological theories are controlled. Unlike previous studies, we are able to control for changes across numerous realms emphasized within differing theoretical perspectives including social control (e.g., employment and marriage), procedural justice (e.g., perceptions of the legitimacy and fairness of the legal system), learning (e.g., gang membership and exposure to antisocial peers), strain (e.g., victimization and relationship breakup), psychosocial maturity (e.g., impulse control, self-regulation and moral disengagement), and rational choice (e.g., costs and rewards of crime). Assessed separately, these perspectives explain anywhere from 3 % (procedural justice) to 49 % (social learning) of the age-crime relationship. Together, changes in these constructs explain 69 % of the drop in crime from ages 15 to 25. We conclude that the relationship between age and crime in adolescence and early adulthood is largely explainable, though not entirely, attributable to multiple co-occurring developmental changes.