“<Emphasis Type="Italic">Peer effects</Emphasis>” or “<Emphasis Type="Italic">quasi</Emphasis>-<Emphasis Type="Italic">peer effects</Emphasis>” in Spanish labour court rulings

The current work seeks to ascertain whether rulings on dismissal cases issued by incumbent judges in Spanish labour courts are influenced by whether they are acting alone in their own court or sharing duties with other judges such as replacement judges, support judges or incumbent judges from other courts. We consider that a court is treated when more than one judge rules in it. Then, an analysis is conducted so as to determine the effect of such a treatment on the percentage of cases ruled in favour of the dismissed worker. The data used in the research are taken from the information recorded at court level provided by the statistics kept by the General Council of the Spanish Judiciary. A total of 2888 observations were available, corresponding to the period spanning 2004 to 2012. As regards the findings, it may be concluded that there is a significant positive impact on the number of dismissal cases ruled in favour of workers when incumbent judges are not acting alone in their court, particularly when the incumbent judge solves cases together with another professional judge.     

Time is Money or Money is Time? A Rapid Operational Sequence for Detecting Fingermarks on Polymer Banknotes

Banknotes are often found in high-profile crimes such as armed robberies, bribery, and terrorist activity. However, such exhibits present a challenge to forensic operatives regarding fingermarks development, due to their mass quantities, potential for fingermarks on both sides, and their unique complex background in terms of color, irregular patterns, and topography. Hence, the standard development protocols become inefficient, due to the difficulty in achieving high contrast images over the background. This study focused on finding an operational sequence that would minimize the time of work on polymer banknotes, in terms of both development and image processing. Thirty-two fingermarks were developed by vacuum metal deposition (VMD), black magnetic powder, and cyanoacrylate fuming (CA) followed by visualization and imaging by reflected short-wave UV (RUVIS) (96 in total), showing a distinct advantage to the CA and RUVIS imaging over the other two techniques with a 75% success rate in the dark and high background regions, due to its physical principle which neutralizes high background interference. The images were then scanned by the automatic fingerprint identification system (AFIS) to test its ability to correctly differentiate false background features from real ones, again, showing a superiority of the RUVIS with 63% of the total initial marked features, being real. Overall, the CA and RUVIS sequence was found to be an ultimate method for multiple, same-type surfaces, with the RUVIS capable of visualization and capturing of the images simultaneously, significantly reducing the time of development and image processing.     

Income and Asset Poverty among Pastoralists in Northern Kenya

In this study we use household panel data collected in Marsabit district of Northern Kenya, to analyse the patterns of livelihood sources and poverty among pastoralists in that area. We estimate income poverty using imputed household income relative to the adjusted poverty line and asset poverty using a regression-based asset index and tropical livestock units (TLU) per capita. Our results indicate that keeping livestock is still the pastoralists’ main source of livelihood, although there is a notable trend of increasing livelihood diversification, especially among livestock-poor households. The majority of households (over 70%) are both income and livestock-poor with few having escaped poverty within the five-year study period. Disaggregating income and asset poverty also reveals an increasing trend of both structurally poor and stochastically nonpoor households. The findings show that the TLU-based asset poverty is a more appropriate measure of asset poverty in a pastoral setting.     

East Asia: Chile’s Missed Opportunity?

East Asia is regarded in Chile as an opportunity to achieve economic development, because economic integration would place it in East Asia’s value chains. This article suggests that the results of Chile’s economic strategy toward East Asia, based on trade agreements, have had a predominantly quantitative success. The value of exports toward East Asia has indeed increased impressively. However, the qualitative results are less impressive. These agreements are not adequate to achieve structural change, which would enable the Chilean economy to move along East Asia’s value chains. Statistical evidence confirms that Chile is still reduced to a commodity supplier and at the periphery of the chain. To change this situation, Chile has to design first a strategy of how to offer East Asia goods and services beyond commodities. This means looking beyond trade agreements.     

Mating (marriage) patterns and economic development

This paper looks at the relationship between economic development and mating (marriage) patterns in the very long run. For this purpose we introduce the Goldin and the Kuznets curves which relate female labour and income inequality with economic development respectively. To some extent, the Goldin and the Kuznets curves have followed opposite paths, which in turn, could illustrate how economic development has had an impact on mating (marriage) patterns, and thus household formation. The likely convergence in mating patterns among hunter–gatherers across societies vanished after the Neolithic revolution. Then, African polygyny and the ‘European’ marriage pattern developed into the most significant exceptions to the traditional dictate of nature “…an early attachment to one woman” (Malthus, 1798: pp. 15). Nowadays, monogamy and late attachments have become the norm rather than an exception.     

Building assets to reduce vulnerability: microfinance provision by a rural working people's union in Mexico

Proyecto Tequisquiapan (PT) provides protective microfinance services in a small region of rural Mexico, including, importantly, open access to deposit facilities. The authors report on new research which examined PT's record in enabling people with different degrees of vulnerability to build assets and protect themselves from both sudden shocks and more predictable demands for lump sums of cash. Proyecto Tequisquiapan was found to be relatively more useful for the most vulnerable households. Its successes rely on its small scale and on the commitment of its staff, whose salaries are subsidised, to innovation and experimentation in order to remain relevant to members' changing and differentiated financial lifeworlds. This stands in contrast to the current trend towards large‐scale commercialised microfinance. The World Bank, the authors argue, should take note.     

Violent behaviors in drug addiction: differential profiles of drug-addicted patients with and without violence problems

This study explored the prevalence of violent behaviors in patients who are addicted to drugs. A sample of 252 addicted patients (203 male and 49 female) who sought outpatient treatment was assessed. Information on violent behaviors, sociodemographic factors, consumption factors (assessed by the European version of the Addiction Severity Index [EuropASI]), psychopathological factors (assessed by Symptom Checklist-90-Revised [SCL-90-R]), and personality variables (assessed by Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory [MCMI-II]) was collected. Drug-addicted patients who were associated with violent behaviors were compared on all variables with patients who were not associated with violent behaviors. The rate of drug-addicted patients with violent behaviors in this sample was 39.68% (n = 100). There were significant differences between the numbers of patients who did and did not demonstrate violence on some variables. Patients with violence problems were younger than those without violence problems and were more likely to report having been a victim of abuse. Moreover, they were significantly more likely to have experienced an overdose and showed a significantly higher score on several EuropASI, SCL-90-R and MCMI-II variables. According to these results, patients with violence control problems present with both a more severe addiction and several comorbid problems. The implications of these results for further research and clinical practice are discussed.