Dangerous Patriots: Washington's Hidden Army during the American Revolution

Despite current dire warnings, study of episodes in the history of industrial espionage and economic spying reveal that surreptitious collection of manufacturing and other business secrets has been a methodical, calculated and abundant practice. Widespread predation of commercial information in the sixteenth to twentieth centuries is illustrative of the insatiable appetite for proprietary information for both private and governmental interests, and cases as varied as those of pre‐industrial times to the sophisticated covers used by the Third Reich attest to the lengths gone to for obtaining a variety of industrial secrets. The patterns and tactics used in other eras are instructive for our own, and place contemporary commercial espionage activity in an historical context, asserting that current industrial spying is part of a larger legacy.     

Business Development Support and Knowledge-Based Businesses

Knowledge-based businesses are vital to the economic development and revitalization of many regions, especially areas that have experienced a decline in traditional industries. Notwithstanding the importance of KBBs to areas with marginal economies, little is known about the business development support requirements of these firms and the extent to which their support needs are being met. Through the use of a telephone survey, this empirical study investigates the demand-side perspectives and experiences of entrepreneurs in a peripheral region of Canada to determine the types and sources of support used at various stages of business development, and to identify potential support gaps. Findings indicate support used by KBBs differs from more traditional firms and that support needs change as firms move through the life cycle. There appears to be a low level of awareness among firms in the study region of available support services and a perception that support beyond the start-up stage is generally lacking. These findings have important implications for researches and for agencies with a business development support mandate.     

Capacity,Guidance, and the Implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Programs administered by the U.S. Department of Energy under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 were designed to spur investment in clean energy and jump‐start the economy. There was considerable variation, however, in the proportion of obligated funds that states spent during each year. A primary goal of the ARRA was to infuse as much money as possible into the struggling economy; however, there was significant variation in the success with which states implemented these programs. This article draws on and extends the literature on intergovernmental implementation to explain such variation. The authors argue that jurisdictional capacity and federal guidance were important determinants of the rate at which states spent ARRA funds and, more important, that these factors interacted with one another in the implementation process. This assertion is tested using a mixed‐methods approach that includes a regression analysis of state ARRA spending between 2009 and 2012, as well as an evaluation of interviews conducted with 46 state agency representatives responsible for spending ARRA energy funds.     

Local Economic Shocks and National Election Outcomes: Evidence from Hungarian Administrative Data

Political Behavior - What are the consequences of unequal economic conditions on national election results? In this study, we use extraordinarily granular economic data measured without sampling...     

The Meanings of the Logical Constants in Deontic Logic

If deontic logic is to cast light on any of the normative sciences, such as legal reasoning, then certain problems regarding its logical constants must be faced. Recent studies in the area of deontic logic have tended to assume that it is our responses to the "paradoxes" of deontic implication which are fundamental to resolving problems with the use of deontic logic to investigate various branches of normative reasoning. In this paper I wish to show that the paradoxes are of secondary importance; that they are merely by-products of the central issue, namely the ability of certain syntactic forms to embody natural language structures used in reasoning about norms. An investigation of modal syntax is proffered as the best starting-point from which to tackle the questions that still dog the legitimacy of deontic logic. Part I provides some philosophical background to the discussion of deontic logical constants. Part II addresses in greater detail issues concerning the representation of normative concepts; and Part III offers a few remarks on the general issue of deontic logic's fruitfulness as an analytical tool.