Direct Government Investment: Perverse Privatization or New Tool of Government?

In recent years, public administration scholars have called attention to a blurring of the boundaries between the public and private sectors. However, little attention has been focused on the administration of public programs that seek to impact private markets through direct government investment in private firms. The direct government investment approach is a new tool of government that has been applied in several countries and at multiple levels of government. Through an analytic mix of theory and attention to practice, this article leverages a deep case analysis of the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program to propose and utilize criteria for examining justifiable rationales for direct government investment, areas of administrative capacity necessary to manage such investments, and potential pitfalls of this new tool of government.     

Postmortem genetic testing in sudden unexplained death: A public health laboratory experience

Sudden unexplained death in the young poses a diagnostically challenging situation for practicing autopsy pathologists, especially in the absence of anatomic and toxicological findings. Postmortem genetic testing may identify pathogenic variants in the deceased of such cases, including those associated with arrhythmogenic channelopathies and cardiomyopathies. The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene (WSLH) is a state-run public health laboratory which performs postmortem genetic testing at no cost to Wisconsin medical examiners and coroners. The current study examines sequencing data from 18 deceased patients (ages 2 months to 49 years, 5 females) submitted to WSLH, from 2016 to 2021. Panel-based analysis was performed on 10 cases, and whole exome sequencing was performed on the most recent 8 cases. Genetic variants were identified in 14 of 18 decedents (77.8%), including 7 with pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants (38.9%). Whole exome sequencing was more likely to yield a positive result, more variants per decedent, and a larger number of variants of uncertain significance. While panel-based testing may offer definitive pathogenic variants in some cases, less frequent variants may be excluded. Whole exome testing may identify rare variants missed by panels, but increased yield of variants of uncertain significance may be difficult to interpret. Postmortem genetic testing in young decedents of sudden unexplained death can provide invaluable information to autopsy pathologists to establish accurate cause and manner of death and to decedent's relatives to allow appropriate management. A public health laboratory model may be a financially advisable alternative to commercial laboratories for medical examiner's/coroner's offices.     

L’année 1998 en République démocratique du Congo: Survie et pratique du politique dans le miroir du quotidien

The four texts comprising this research note were written at the end of 1998 by Congolese scholars asked by B. Jewsiewicki to present people’s actions and local perception of the each region’s situation. Charles Djungu-Simba, a scholar and a writer, presents a fictionalized report of the August 1998 rebels’ intrusion into the city of Kinshasa. The second contributor (writing under a pseudonym) brings in interviews with two officers of the former Zairian army who were incorporated into Kabila’s armed forces. Justin Bisanswa analyses briefly the situation in Kivu with special attention to the local people’s attitudes toward the main militia groups. Jean-Pierre Nzunguba brings in a life story of a Bunia popular painter, an opportunity to present local perception of the life during the past forty years.     

Evidence on substitutability of adult and child labour

Whether child labour displaces adult labour, giving rise to unemployment, is a matter of their substitutability in production. Using a flexible form production function fitted to data on Egypt's economy, we generate Hicks elasticities of complementarity, own and cross‐price elasticities, as well as simulate employment effects on adult labour as a result of changing the fixed quantity of labour in compliance with the international call to end child labour. Adult males appear to be complementary with, and adult females substitutes for child labour, although the employment effects of banning child labour are inconclusive.     

In search of budgetary excellence: the government finance officers association award for distinguished budget presentation

During the twentieth century, American governments progressed from essentially no use of government budgeting to experimentation with a host of budgeting strategies designed to improve the control, efficiency, and decision making capacity of governing agencies. In 1984, the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada sought to synthesize many of these approaches into a broad definition of budgetary excellence by the establishment of an Award for Distinguished Budget Presentation. This article reviews the effort to define budgetary excellence, then offers a discussion of the lessons learned during the first years of the program's operation. he of the products of the program's operation.     

Strain, Coping, and Socioeconomic Status: Coping Histories and Present Choices

Objectives

Using household survey data from three major cities in foreign countries, we add to research concerning General Strain Theory (GST) by focusing on aspects that have been ignored or under-researched. First, we address questions concerning SES variations in the operation of the processes of GST, with particular focus on whether various relationships specified by the theory are more likely in the lower SES group. Second, we explore the extent to which prior coping strategies influence subsequent coping choices. Finally, we seek to determine the links between SES, coping histories, and subsequent coping choices.

Methods

The study analyzes the effects of past and contemporaneous strain/negative emotions and prior coping efforts on various coping strategies across three SES groupings using negative binomial, ordered logit, and OLS regression.

Results

We find that, with some variations, the basic processes of GST are operative across all SES categories. However, whereas strain appears to have a moderate association with alcohol-related and criminal coping strategies, avoidant coping appears to be largely irrelevant for anybody who faces strain. Our data also demonstrate that specific forms of prior coping partially influence the types of coping employed later. But, with few exceptions, these effects are not more pronounced among those of lower SES.

Conclusion

In sum, our findings suggest that individuals in various SES groupings may prefer certain types of coping, whereas different types of attempted coping may predispose individuals to specific forms of subsequent adaptation.     

Fostering management education to deter corruption: what do students know about corruption and its legal consequences?

This article analyses the current knowledge about corruption and its legal consequences among university students. Based on data from 1,511 undergraduate and graduate students from all academic disciplines at four major universities in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, it appears that the majority of students have difficulty identifying corrupt behaviour and its legal consequences. Law students achieve slightly better results. However, even law students demonstrate a significant lack of knowledge of corruption issues. In particular, most of the students are unaware that corruption that occurs abroad can also be prosecuted in Switzerland. The limited knowledge among students regarding corruption and its legal consequences as identified in this study suggests that the teaching and study of anti-corruption-related subjects should be better integrated into the curricula of universities and business schools.     

Dialect on trial: use of African American Vernacular English influences juror appraisals*

ABSTRACT

We investigated the effect of dialect and race on juror decision making. Mock jurors read a summary of an ambiguous criminal case, which included audio of a defense witness (Study 1) or defendant (Study 2). Both speaker dialect [General American English (GAE)/African American Vernacular English (AAVE)] and race (White/Black) were crossed; Study 2 also included three levels of case (Ambiguous/Pro-Prosecution/Pro-Defense) to evaluate any effects of evidentiary context. In both studies, jurors who listened to the AAVE recording found the AAVE-speaking witness to be less professional and less educated than their GAE-speaking counterparts. Interestingly, jurors in Study 2 who heard the defendant use GAE were more likely to find him guilty and found him less credible when the case favored the prosecution, hinting that ingroup biases such as the black sheep effect may also play a role in perceptions of dialect. Secondary analyses found that AAVE predicted more negative overall evaluations of the speaker, and these negative evaluations were associated with an increase in guilty verdicts. Together, these findings suggest that dialect plays an under-investigated role in the courtroom, and that bias against AAVE negatively impacts juror appraisals of its speakers and can potentially influence juror decision making.     

The dynamics of committee outliers: Evidence from the house of representatives, 1951–90

In this study, we enter the on‐going debate on committee outliers by addressing two important points. First, we dispute the conventional wisdom that committee outliers are best identified and evaluated using traditional tests of statistical significance. Contesting the appropriateness of such tests, we contend that any observed difference between chamber behaviour and floor behaviour may be substantively significant and use raw mean differences between Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) scores to examine differences between the full House of Representatives and its committees. Second, we attempt to integrate the committee outlier literature into the broader literature on the historical development of the House by using data from 20 Congresses over four decades (1951–90). This longitudinal analysis indicates that there have been interesting dynamic changes in the prevalence of committee outliers across time and committee types in patterns that are consistent with both the principal‐agent framework and the more general literature on congressional change and reform. Many of these important changes are not obvious when relying solely on traditional tests of statistical significance to examine committee outliers.