Discrimination and deprivation: The effects of social comparisons

This article deals with relative deprivation with regard to wages, particularly the effects of gender and occupational sex-type on justice evaluations and on the perception of individual and fraternal deprivation. Underlying this analysis of the factors that allow perceived discrimination to be translated into feelings of deprivation is the basic assumption that workers in different occupational and gender categories report different levels of relative deprivation primarily because of their diverse comparison criteria for evaluating their rewards. The empirical findings point to systematic gender and occupation-type differences in choice of comparison others and in justice considerations.This is a revised version of a paper presented at the 1988 meetings of the Social Justice and Societal problems convention, Leiden, The Netherlands.     

Vertical equity consequences of very high cigarette tax increases: If the poor are the ones smoking,how could cigarette tax increases be progressive?

Cigarette smoking is concentrated among low‐income groups. Consequently, cigarette taxes are considered regressive. However, if poorer individuals are much more price sensitive than richer individuals, then tax increases would reduce smoking much more among the poor and their cigarette tax expenditures as a share of income would rise by much less than for the rich. Warner (2000) said this phenomenon would make cigarette tax increases progressive. We test this empirically. Among low‐, middle‐, and high‐income groups, we estimate total price elasticities of _0.37, _0.35, and _0.20, respectively. We find that cigarette tax increases are not close to progressive, using both tax expenditure‐based and traditional welfare measures. This finding is robust to cross‐border purchasing, generic cigarettes, and substantial external effects. However, we find that taxes can be progressive under some behavioral economic models (Gruber & Koszegi, 2004) but that these may only apply to a small share of smokers. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Impact of American Political Marketing on Israeli Society

The extensive literature examining the impact of American campaign styles in other countries generally attributes various political changes to the presence of American professionals and imported campaign techniques. Yet foreign professionals working on international campaigns may have more or less influence, and there is little systematic understanding of the factors that contribute to their actual influence over the local campaign. This paper examines the Israeli case as an example of strong penetration of American campaign professionals and techniques and analyzes the factors that contributed to their relatively high level of influence. Following this, a framework is proposed for assessing when imported American professionals and/or styles are likely to have a strong or weak influence on a campaign, based on factors leading to easy adoption or requiring more extensive adaptation. The study finds that in Israel, endogenous factors including social, political, cultural, and economic evolution contributed to the easy adoption of American campaign practices, creating a welcoming environment for American professionals. Thus, the major changes in campaigns often attributed to Americanization in other countries may be due at least in part to organic social, economic, and cultural changes of that society.     

Domino Effect of Negative Hybrid Peace in Kosovo's Peacebuilding

The concept of hybrid peace is at the forefront of recent scholarship on the local turn in peacebuilding. It highlights the interplay between the international and local, and advocates for better involvement of local actors and agencies. This paper adds to the growing scholarship on hybrid peace by substantiating the concept of negative hybrid peace and characterizing its dynamics on the ground. Using the case of Kosovo's post-conflict peacebuilding process this paper reveals that the co-option of a select group of local actors unintentionally contributed to a rejection of minority rights, resistance to liberal justice, and contextualization of healthcare provision. It shows that negative hybrid peace has a domino effect in that when a negative form of hybrid peace takes root in a peacebuilding component, other peacebuilding components become susceptible to other forms of negative hybrid peace. The analysis in this paper proves the utility of the concept of negative hybrid peace in understanding the consequences of unresolved tensions from international/liberal–local encounters during internationally administered peacebuilding missions.     

The Sense of Justice—Introduction

Social Justice Research -     

On Measuring and Reducing Selection Bias With a Quasi‐Doubly Randomized Preference Trial

Randomized experiments provide unbiased estimates of treatment effects, but are costly and time consuming. We demonstrate how a randomized experiment can be leveraged to measure selection bias by conducting a subsequent observational study that is identical in every way except that subjects choose their treatment—a quasi‐doubly randomized preference trial (quasi‐DRPT). Researchers first strive to think of and measure all possible confounders and then determine how well these confounders as controls can reduce or eliminate selection bias. We use a quasi‐DRPT to study the effect of class time on student performance in an undergraduate introductory microeconomics course at a large public university, illustrating its required design elements: experimental and choice arms conducted in the same setting with identical interventions and measurements, and all confounders measured prospectively to treatment assignment or choice. Quasi‐DRPTs augment randomized experiments in real‐world settings where participants choose their treatments.     

Modeling health insurance expansions: effects of alternate approaches.

Estimates of the costs and consequences of many types of public policy proposals play an important role in the development and adoption of particular policy programs. Estimates of the same, or similar, policies that employ different modeling approaches can yield widely divergent results. Such divergence often undermines effective policymaking. These problems are particularly prominent for health insurance expansion programs. Concern focuses on predictions of the numbers of individuals who will be insured and the costs of the proposals. Several different simulation-modeling approaches are used to predict these effects, making the predictions difficult to compare. This paper categorizes and describes the different approaches used; explains the conceptual and theoretical relationships between the methods; demonstrates empirically an example of the (quite restrictive) conditions under which all approaches can yield quantitatively identical predictions; and empirically demonstrates conditions under which the approaches diverge and the quantitative extent of that divergence. All modeling approaches implicitly make assumptions about functional form that impose restrictions on unobservable heterogeneity. Those assumptions can dramatically affect the quantitative predictions made.     

Mainstreaming Therapeutic Jurisprudence in Family Law: The Israeli Child Protection Law as a Case Study

This article considers the contribution of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) to the theoretical development and practical advancement of reforms in child care law. It does so by presenting three dilemmas arising from The Israeli Youth Law (Care and Supervision) 1960 relating to its substance, procedures, and practice. TJ is a “field of enquiry” that examines the influence of the law on litigants in order to advance rules and practices that have therapeutic effects and to minimize the use of rules and practices that have antitherapeutic ones. Following the TJ methodology, we integrate psychosocial findings into the legal discussion. We propose some therapeutic practices, as well as legal reform to make the child protection legal regime more TJ friendly for children and families.