POSTDECREE LITIGATION Is Joint Custody to Blame?

The Joint Custody Symposium Project examined almost 600 court files in five judicial districts to investigate the common perception that joint custody contributes significantly to relitigation rates. Data indicated that joint custody as a factor accounted for only 10.8% of court returns. Financial concerns accounted for the majority of actions. Disputes over child custody appeared to be related to finances as well. Unfortunately, returns to court do not necessarily resolve the financial needs of divorced parents. The findings suggest that children may be used as pawns in court battles over money that are disguised as parenting concerns, as evidenced by the close relationship found between visitation or custody disputes and child support modification filings.     

Patents and Appropriation: Concerns and Evidence1

For over the past twenty years, the United States has witnessed a pro-patent movement. In response, numerous concerns have been raised, including possible impediments to innovation in cumulative technologies, emergence of anti-commons, barriers to entry and an elevation of costs of innovation associated with defensive patenting, growth in patent litigation and poor quality patents. Although there is little systematic evidence that these concerns have materialized in any substantial way, vigilance is nonetheless warranted.     

Negotiating Integrative Medicine: A Framework for Provider–Patient Conversations

Efforts to integrate complementary and alternative medical (CAM) therapies into conventional medical settings are creating a variety of negotiation challenges between various stakeholders. Focusing on the two-party encounter between physician and patient offers a way to understand the application of principled negotiation to perhaps the most fundamental and emotionally charged place within the health care system in which the introduction of CAM therapies is likely to disrupt relationships and produce conflict. This article suggest ways in which the theory and analysis of principled negotiation can add to current liability and ethical frameworks, and might thereby contribute to optimal future health care by helping to wisely integrate CAM therapies into conventional medical care.     

Foreign advisors and capacity building: The case of Kenya

Approximately 100,000 foreign advisors work in the public sectors of Sub-Saharan African countries at an annual cost of more than $4 billion. The numbers, range of services, and costs of such advisors increased during the 1980s while at the same time donors launched new efforts to build professional capacity in the African civil service. Based on a study of advisors and their counterpart economists in Kenya's Ministry of Planning and National Development, this article addresses three important questions: what are the functions carried out by advisors in the development ministries?; why is it so difficult to retain skilled professionals in the civil service?; and how does the provision of advisors affect the retention of skilled government officers?     

Welfare paradox in economic restructuring

It can be proved theoretically that, because of the previously existing price and structural distortion, a welfare paradox is possible in the former command economies during the transition period. This paradox refers to a situation in which a welfare gain is accompanied by a fall in the reported GNP figure.     

A dynamic test of the marginality hypothesis

The marginality hypothesis is an attempt to relate the voting margins of members of Congress to their subsequent legislative behavior. A major corollary of the hypothesis is that members of Congress with small victory margins will be more responsive to constituents than those with large victory margins. This has been assumed to mean that electorally secure representatives can afford to be more loyal to their congressional parties, since they have less cause to worry about their chances for reelection. Previous empirical studies have produced mixed results. We ask the question in a different way: Do changes in marginality affect party voting within Congress? If so, major shifts in the electorate potentially can have a fundamental impact on the behavior of Congress itself. We find that this is not true. Electoral margin is simply not related to party loyalty.