The determinants of minimum wage rates

This paper attempts to test the degree of responsiveness of Canadian provincial governments to different political groups in establishing their relative minimum wage policies over the 1975–1982 period. It discusses alternative explanations of minimum wage policies and focuses on the political market approach, where women, youth, small business and unions play a role. An econometric model is specified and estimated on pooled annual time series and cross-section data for nine provinces in Canada. The results tend to support most of the hypotheses.     

Attentional and intellectual deficits in unmedicated behavior-disordered adolescent inpatients

The authors examined the hypothesis that impairments in attention and verbal intelligence are associated with seriously maladaptive social behavior in behavior-disordered, hospitalized adolescents. Twenty-five unmedicated inpatients with disruptive behavior disorder diagnoses were rated during a one-month period for frequency of severe disruptive episodes, or critical incidents (CI); these included assaults, behavior resulting in the use of restraints, etc. All subjects independently received intelligence testing and continuous performance testing (CPT). Based on CI scores, subjects were divided into a high-CI group (CI>5; N=9) and a low-CI group (CI<4; N=16). On the CPT, the high-CI group showed more impairment in perceptual sensitivity (d; this group also had lower verbal IQ scores. (Both findings were significant at the p<.05 level.) The latter result was largely due to differences in Comprehension subtest scores. These results support the hypothesis, and may have implications for the treatment of behavior-disordered adolescents.Received M.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Major research interests are adolescent psychopathology, disruptive behavior disorders, and information processing.Received Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Major research interests are outcomes measurement, psychosis proneness, and psychodiagnostic assessment.Received Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Major research interests is adolescent psychopathology.Received M.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Major research interests are adult attachment and mental representation.Received M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Major research interests are schizophrenia, personality disorders, and trauma.     

The MCMI-III and the Daubert Standard: Separating Rhetoric from Reality

Law and Human Behavior -     

A comparison of incumbent security in the House and Senate

The authors would like to thank Charles Bullock, Evelyn Fink, Kevin Grier, Paul Johnson, Benjamin Page, Brian Roberts and Eric Schonsberg for their assistance. Any remaining errors are the sole responsibility of the authors.     

The new OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises: better but not enough

This viewpoint addresses the extent to which the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises adequately serve as a system of global governance for MNEs. We argue that, while a 2011 revision has strengthened the Guidelines, their somewhat limited scope, voluntary nature, and less than satisfactory implementation render their potential utility unrealised.     

Informal Consequences of Budget Institutions in the US Congress

Though considerable research focuses on formal institutions in Congress, scholars have long acknowledged that much of what guides legislative behavior is unwritten. To advance this area, we leverage a tool that allows appropriators to redirect billions of dollars from mandatory programs to discretionary projects. Changes in mandatory program spending—known as “CHIMPs”—show that existing institutions are often maintained by the strategic action of legislators. In the case of CHIMPs, we find their use is largely a response to formal constraints and that they are preserved through avoidance of minimum reform coalitions. This highlights that the legislative process—and budgetary outcomes in particular—cannot be understood without attention to procedures which remain “off the books.”     

Representation and participation in child care proceedings: what about the voice of the parents?

In Ireland, the Constitution guarantees very strong rights to parents and the family, and there has been a long and unfortunate history of failures to adequately protect children at risk. As a result, there has been much discussion in recent years about the need to improve legal mechanisms designed to protect the rights of children. By comparison, little attention has been given to establishing whether the theoretically strong rights of parents translate into strongly protected rights in practice. This paper presents new empirical evidence on the manner in which child care proceedings in Ireland balance the rights and interests of children and parents, including the rates at which orders are granted, the frequency of and conditions in which legal representation is provided, and the extent to which parents are able to actively participate in proceedings. A number of systemic issues are identified that restrict the capacity of the system to emphasise parental rights and hear the voice of parents to the extent that would be expected when looking at the legal provisions in isolation.     

Lawyers and Embedded Legal Activity in the Southern Civil Rights Movement

We introduce the concept of embedded legal activity to capture the ways in which lawyers and legal organizations can become intertwined in the ongoing activities of social movements. Embedded legal activity is characterized by diverse issues and venues and comprises legal activities that help support movement infrastructure, close coordination between movement lawyers and other activists, and responsiveness to constituent needs. Investigating a comprehensive data set on legal activity during the southern civil rights movement, we identify forms of legal activity beyond the typical focus of legal mobilization, including defense for movement participants charged with misdemeanors and other crimes, movement assistance on organization‐level legal matters, and general legal aid to movement constituents. These were by far the more common types of legal activity and emerged from the embeddedness of lawyers in a mass movement. We argue that embedded legal activity is likely where movements prioritize grassroots leadership and community organizing and face significant countermobilization, hostile legal and political opportunity structures, and substantial social and economic inequality.     

Local Context, Retrospective Economic Evaluations, and Voting: The 1997 General Election in England and Wales

Local context is widely believed to influence voting behavior with, for example, the voters' evaluation of the state of their local economy affecting whether they choose to reward or punish the incumbent government. Such reward-punish models apply in the United Kingdom at the national scale: those who believe that the government has delivered prosperity vote for its return, whereas those who believe that its policies have produced a worsening economic situation vote against it. This article shows that the operation of this calculus varies spatially, according to the level of unemployment in the voter's home area: the higher the local level of unemployment the lower the probability of someone who thought that government polices had delivered national prosperity voting for the incumbent government. It also shows that this is a consequence of cross-pressured situations. Those who thought that the government's policies had delivered both national and local prosperity were very likely to vote for it; those who thought that the policies had delivered national but not local prosperity were less likely to vote for it—especially in areas of high unemployment.