The demand for military expenditures: An international comparison

Earlier studies have explained inter-country variations in the share of GNP devoted to military expenditures by international spillovers and by differences in the threat of attack related to relative incomes. In this paper, we use the theory of public choice to explain these differences. We attempt to measure the importance of both international spillovers and relative incomes, along with two other factors: the tax-price elasticity of demand and economies of scale in the consumption of security. We find that international spillovers are significant and positive, that the income elasticity of demand is greater than unity, that the tax-price elasticity of demand explains part of observed inter-country differences, and that there are considerable economies of scale in the consumption of military spending. Finally, between 1960 and 1975, there was apparently a substantial increase in the value which each country derived from a dollar of military spending by its allies. This phenomenon, which seems related to the increased importance of deterrent weapons, has tended to induce individual alliance members to reduce the share of their national income devoted to defense.     

WILLIAM H. REHNQUIST AWARD ADDRESS

The William H. Rehnquist Award is one of the most celebrated judicial honors in the country. ¹ It is given each year to a state court judge who demonstrates the "highest level of judicial excellence, integrity, fairness, and professional ethics." ² The 2004 recipient, Judge Leonard Edwards, is the Supervising Judge of the Santa Clara County, California juvenile dependency court. ³ He is the first juvenile court judge to receive this prestigious award. During the 24 years he has held his position, Judge Edwards has worked extremely hard to improve how the juvenile court system serves troubled families. He has founded two organizations to achieve this end, the Juvenile Court Judges of California and the Santa Clara County Domestic Violence Council. ⁴ Judge Edwards serves as a lead judge in San Jose's Model Court, which is one of twenty-five jurisdictions in the country which utilizes new ideas and techniques to improve adoption rates for children in foster care. ⁵ Moreover, he has worked as president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. ⁶ Below is the speech he gave after accepting the award from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. The speech notes the importance of the award to everyone working in America's juvenile courts.     

Housing Upkeep and Public Good Provision in Residential Neighborhoods

Neighborhood condition is a public good in part provided by neighborhood residents’ private property maintenance. Considering neighborhood condition as an impure public good provides a theoretical basis for understanding how the level of neighborhood quality may affect residents’ home maintenance decisions. Empirical results in a low-income neighborhood, where formulating public policy to improve neighborhoods is of significant concern, indicate a positive substitution effect. When neighborhoods improve, residents respond by increasing exterior home upkeep. This result is robust to both changes in the neighborhood condition generated by other neighbors’ increase in maintenance and exogenous public investment in the neighborhood.     

Once Again on the *Hetucakraḍamaru: Rotating the Wheels

The little versified treatise on the elements of Buddhist logic, often referred to as the Hetucakra?amaru, is usually attributed to Dignāga. It is only available in a Tibetan translation and quotations from a few of its verses are extant in Sanskrit sources. On the basis of a novel interpretation that is based on a critical edition of the text, we argue that there is a good reason why its title was Hetucakra?amaru - a ?amaru is a two-headed drum. The “heads” of the drum are circular and they refer to the sapak?a and vipak?a conditions of the logical reason (hetu). These “wheels” can be turned clock-wise and counter clock-wise. The nine positions that are located on the wheels do remind one of a dharmacakra, which has a center and eight positions that are placed around it as if it were a compass. We illustrate our interpretation of the text by means of various diagrams.     

The Cost of Terrorism: The Relationship Between International Terrorism and Democratic Governance

After Al Qaeda's destruction of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, many democracies reacted to the event, and to international terrorism in general, by passing laws restricting civil liberties and political rights, raising questions about the balance between security and liberty. Such laws have produced alarms among civil libertarians, worldwide. Are the alarms justified? In this article we analyze the relationship between the yearly number of international terrorist attacks in 24 countries from 1968–2003 and (a) measures of civil liberties and political rights as provided by Freedom House, and (b) levels of democracy as measured in the Polity IV scales. We take the number of international terrorist events, by country, from data provided by the Memorial Institute of the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) http://www.tkb.org/Home.jsp. Our analysis indicates that there is, generally, no relationship between the number of international terrorist events and the levels of civil rights, political rights, or democracy as measured by the Freedom House and Polity IV indicators. When there is a statistically significant relationship, it is negative, opposite to what is predicted by the tradeoff hypothesis.