"Guns" vs. "Butter": Conceptual and Methodological Issues

Despite the vast number of studies of the guns-butter tradeoff, we still do not know whether guns come at the expense of butter. In this article we attempt to clarify some of the major conceptual, measurement and statistical problems associated with this line of research.     

The search for truth and freedom: ethical issues surrounding human cloning and stem cell research

The reality of cloning and stem cell research has provoked wonder, fear and anger. These developments have the potential fundamentally to alter humanity. But how well informed is the range of views being expressed? Is progress being threatened by understandable but uninformed fears? Or are scientists rushing toward an ethical abyss, so concerned with what they can do that they never stop to ask what they should do? This article identifies some of the fears and hopes surrounding cloning and stem cell research. It aims to provoke ethical debate in evaluating such research.     

我国消费信贷立法应借鉴澳大利亚《消费信贷法案》

随着我国金融市场管制的不断削弱,必将会显现出对加强消费信贷立法的需要。我国消费信用立法还很薄弱,澳大利亚《消费信贷法案》中特别体现保障消费者利益的立法精神,有利于信用经营者生存和发展的特别安排、消费信贷合同的担保与保证。信贷提供者、消费供应者及消费者之间关系的有关内容,可为我国消费信贷立法吸收和借鉴;我国应针对消费信贷中存在的主要问题,有步骤地适时合理地吸收和借鉴澳大利亚《消费信贷法案》。     

Popular initiatives in Uruguay: confidence votes on government or political loyalties?

Among stable democracies, Uruguay is one of the most prodigious users of direct democratic devices at the national level. If we analyze the relationship between the share of “yes” votes received by any popular initiative and the share of votes received by politicians who politically supported it, we observe a strikingly high positive correlation of 0.9. Explaining this correlation is the central objective of this paper. Three alternative hypotheses are plausible: First, such a correlation could be a spurious association due to aggregation bias. Second, PI results could be reflections of economic conditions. Third, Uruguayans are extremely consistent in following their political parties' advice. This paper finds that when Uruguayans go to the polls to vote on a popular initiative, their vote choice is primarily the result of their party loyalty, rather than their reaction to economic conditions. In testing my hypotheses I rely on the following statistical methods: King's “Ecological Inference,” multivariate regression, and path analysis. The data come from seven popular initiatives in Uruguay since 1985 (133 observations).