Time-consistent monetary policy under output persistence

This note merges the fact that real activity is persistent with a Barro-Gordon type model of endogenous monetary policy. It shows that persistence crucially affects policy choices. This applies in non-cooperative games with a finite horizon, and in games with an infinite horizon. Always, enforceable inflation announcements move higher when output persistence increases. Policymakers who discount future utility by 10% annually produce about ten times as much inflation under near-hysteresis as in a natural-rate scenario. A change in the policymaker's time preference may affect inflation both ways, depending on present time preference and persistence.     

The Role of Philanthropy in Local Government Finance

Nonprofit organizations thrive on the altruism of citizens, and actively court donors for major gifts. Yet individual gifts to government agencies are often unexpected, sporadic, and initiated by the donor. This article introduces the phenomenon of private giving to local governments and tests hypotheses regarding the expected forms of giving to public agencies. Results indicate that philanthropy is and will likely remain a minor and highly variable source of revenue, making it an ill‐suited replacement for broad‐based tax revenue. However, deliberate government efforts to provide a suitable environment for private donations appear to succeed in attracting more gifts per capita.     

Stability and Internal Consistency of the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire: A Study of Finnish Adolescents

Reliability of the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire (OSIQ) was assessed with two measures—internal consistency and stability—in Finnish children aged 13. The OSIQ was administered to 268 normal 13-year-old pupils (129 girls and 139 boys). Three weeks later, a third of the pupils (N = 88) were randomly selected for retesting. Eighty-three teenagers completed the questionnaire in an acceptable manner. The internal consistency of the test was verified for each scale using Cronbach . To estimate the stability of the test, Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated, and the mean raw scores for each scale were compared with those in the retest. The internal consistency of the test was fairly good ( = 0.54–0.84) for the majority of scales, except for scales S5 and S12 ( = 0.30–0.41). The stability of scales S1, S4, S5, S7, and S10 was good. On the basis of these two measures, we conclude that for Finnish adolescents, the OSIQ is sufficiently reliable only with respect to scales S1, S4, S7, and S10.     

A systematic and quantitative analysis of PCR template contamination

A quantitative and systematic analysis is provided for ubiquitously present template DNA interfering with the quantification of human DNA by PCR. Two sources contributing to DNA background were identified. The first one is interpreted as DNA present in chemicals and on equipment and the second as caused by operator handling. The amounts were equivalent to 2.5 and 8.9 pg per mL of sample, and the estimated frequencies of contamination were 65 and 35%, respectively, resulting in an effective limit of detection of 17.4 pg/mL. Below this level--named effective laboratory background--a result could not be considered as authentic. Knowledge of these parameters is important for laboratories that analyze minute amounts of human DNA by PCR for purposes such as quantification, typing, and sequencing.     

Forensic medicine experiences in Kosovo

In summer 1999, a German forensic team of CID officers and forensic pathologists was sent to Kosovo on request of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to investigate possible war crimes. For this purpose, witnesses had to be found and interrogated and graves of victims had to be located and the bodies exhumed and examined forensically. Roughly 200 bodies have been found and examined during the campaign that were predominantly of male sex and showed mainly gunshot wounds. A high percentage of all bodies could be identified. The article deals with different forensic-pathologic aspects of such an investigation.     

Someone else's feet

Abstract

Our Life was a succession of quiet days spent placidly inside thick wall of phlegmatic indifference. We lived in a strange state of imprisonment, entirely cut off from the outside, yet we had no thought of escaping nor the least enthusiasm for news of the outside. You could say that, for us, the outside world just didn't exist. Inside our wall, we lived quite fully and cheerfully.     

“A strange job”

Abstract

I was heading toward the clock tower along the broad pavement leading to Tokyo University Hospital and had reached the intersection where the view suddenly opens up to a wide vista, when I heard a lot of dogs barking. The sound came from somewhere near a building under construction, its steel framework jutting up against the sky behind the swaying tops of the saplings lining the avenue. Each time the wind shifted, the sound of the dogs swelled violently as if the terrible clamor were rising to the sky itself. Then the sounds would trail off, the echoes lingering persistently in the distance. Every time I'd walk along this road, head bent, shoulders hunched forward, I'd strain my ears as I came to the intersection, half-expecting to hear the dogs, although there were many times I never heard them at all. But anyway, it wasn't because these howling dogs aroused any particular concern in me.     

Variations in traditional marriage and family forms: Responses to the changing pattern of family-based social security systems in Sierra Leone and Kenya

A multitude of family forms can be found in African societies, and the functions we associate with the European term “family” do not necessarily belong to any specific form. The variety in the formation of different residence, consumption, and production units becomes obvious through the analysis of the social structure of individual b peoples, as well as through inter-ethnic comparisons. This article focuses on the differences between various types of social organization of an East- and a West-African people, and analyzes the complexities of and changes in family structures in the relevant socio-political and economic contexts. It also looks at the impact of the introduction of public administration and the commercialization of agriculture on social dynamics and family forms.     

The Shared History: Unknotting Fictive Kinship and Legal Process

This article looks in detail at a form of kinship that is contingently crafted and mobilized to achieve specific purposes. On the basis of ethnographic material collected among local actors within bodies that regulate kidney transplants in Israel, the objective of this article is to expand the sociolegal definition of fictive kinship. I use transplant relatedness to refer to the set of formal and informal norms that grow out of social and medico-legal practices in the field of kidney donations and sales; however, the form of fictive kinship that appears in this specific field tells us something broader about kinship as it is constructed and performed in legal processes more generally. The configuration of fictive kinship that is examined is the shared history ( historia meshoutefet ). I argue that in the present case, the shared history alters social and legal deep-seated understandings of kinship and ultimately makes the distinctions between allegedly real and pseudo-kinship collapse.