Continued physical capacity after head gunshot injury

The human brain shows a very high density of functionally important structures. Even small lesions may therefore cause clinical symptoms. Penetrating gunshots to the head are presumed to cause immediate incapacitation by subsequent disturbance of cerebral functions. The authors discuss anatomical and functional principles of the terms action, capacity to act and incapacitation and report two illustrative cases with lack of incapacitation following gunshots to the head.     

The dark side of price cap regulation: a laboratory experiment

In a nutshell, price cap regulation is meant to establish a quid pro quo: regulators are obliged by law to intervene only at rare, previously defined points in time, and only by imposing an upper bound on prices; firms are meant to justify regulatory restraint by adopting socially beneficial innovations. In the policy debate, a potential downside of the arrangement has featured less prominently: the economic environment is unlikely to be stable while the cap is in place. If regulators take this into account, they have to decide under uncertainty and also anticipate how regulated firms will react. In a lab experiment, we manipulate the degree of regulatory uncertainty. We compare a baseline when regulators have the same information as firms about demand with treatments wherein they receive only a noisy signal and another when they know only the distribution from which demand realizations are taken. In the face of uncertainty, regulators impose overly generous price caps, which firms exploit. In the experiment, the social damage is severe, and does not disappear with experience.     

Human capital and social capital in criminal networks: introduction to the special issue on the 7th Blankensee Colloquium

This essay and review on criminal network analysis provides an introduction to the special issue “Human Capital and Social Capital in Criminal Networks”. It traces the history of the application of network analysis in the study of organized crime since the early 1970s. It argues that while criminal network analysis has brought a new level of methodological rigor to the study of organized crime, a number of limitations have become apparent. These include the problem of missing data and the challenges encountered in adequately capturing latent structures, individual characteristics of network members and socio-ecological conditions.     

The interdisciplinary dimensions of the study of organized crime

This essay and review systematically charts the various influences from other areas of scientific research, including economy, psychology, and neurobiology, on the study of organized crime. Drawing on an analysis of American and international literature, metaphorical, and substantive references to other disciplines are highlighted on five levels of observation: the individual “organized criminal,” the activities these individuals are involved in, the associational patterns through which they are connected, the power structures that subordinate these individuals and collectives to common or particular interests, and the relations between these individuals, structures and activities on the one hand, and the legal spheres of society on the other. It is argued that a research program aiming at building up a cumulative body of knowledge is needed to overcome the shortcomings of the current eclectic use of concepts and theories from other disciplines.