Are minorities free riders? Applying the social resistance framework to public goods production in Central-Eastern Europe

One of the key reasons for the scholarly and policy concern about the rising levels of ethnic diversity is its apparently detrimental effect on the production of public goods. Although numerous studies have tackled that issue, there is still much ambiguity as to the precise micro-level mechanisms underpinning this relationship. In this article, a novel theoretical explanation for this relationship is proposed, building on the social resistance framework. This proposition is tested using a new cross-sectional public opinion survey covering 14,536 respondents in 817 neighbourhoods across 11 Central Eastern European countries. Analysing national minorities defined by postwar border changes means one can overcome the endogeneity problem faced by research based on immigrant groups. The findings show that it is the combination of a minority group's discrimination and its spatial clustering that makes minorities reluctant to contribute to public goods. The article constitutes a novel theoretical and methodological contribution to the research on the effects of diversity on public goods provision.     

A FIELD EXPERIMENT ON INSURANCE FRAUD IN AUTO BODY REPAIR*

This article focuses on a particular form of white-collar crime–insurance fraud in auto body repair. Through the use of an experimental design, whether repair estimates were related to insurance coverage was investigated for a statewide representative sample of auto body repair shops in Massachusetts. The auto body repair estimates were significantly higher with insurance coverage than without, regardless of type of car, extent of damage, sex of driver, and location of shop. The implication of the findings is that the automobile insurance industry is very susceptible to fraudulent or illegal practices that take unfair advantage of consumers and insurance companies.     

PROBLEMS AND STRATEGIES IN GAINING RESEARCH ACCESS IN POLICE ORGANIZATIONS

“Access” is conceived of as involving passage through two gates: one manned by the top-level authority figures of the organization, and the other by the proposed subjects of one's study. Within this framework, informal contacts, contingent acceptance at successive organizational levels, and self-selection are identified and discussed as the factors most central to an understanding of our successful access into three police organizations and our failures to gain access to two police organizations.     

SELF‐CONTROL AND VICTIMIZATION: A META‐ANALYSIS

A consequential development in victimization theory and research was the idea that individuals with low self‐control self‐select into the various risky behaviors that may ultimately result in their victimization. To establish the empirical status of the self‐control–victimization link, we subjected this body of work to a meta‐analysis. Our multilevel analyses of 311 effect size estimates drawn from 66 studies (42 independent data sets) indicate that self‐control is a modest yet consistent predictor of victimization. The results also show that the effect of self‐control is significantly stronger when predicting noncontact forms of victimization (e.g., online victimization) and is significantly reduced in studies that control directly for the risky behaviors that are assumed to mediate the self‐control–victimization link. We also note that the studies assessing self‐control and victimization are not representative of victimization research as a whole, with intimate partner violence (IPV), violence against women, and child abuse being severely underrepresented. We conclude that future research should continue to examine the causal processes linking self‐control to victimization, how self‐control shapes victims’ coping responses to their experience, and whether self‐control matters in contexts where individuals may have limited autonomy over the behavioral routines that put them at risk for victimization.