Bequests, sibling rivalry, and rent seeking

We examine bequest-sharing rules where sibling rivalry creates wasteful competition for intergenerational transfers. We show that equal division of bequests minimizes rent-seeking expenditures by siblings while primogeniture maximizes rent-seeking costs. Our results lend theoretical support to the empirical findings of equal bequests without appeal to complex models of the parent-child relationship.     

Managing and Sustaining Your Juvenile Drug Court

Since the introduction and subsequent growth of the juvenile drug court movement in the mid‐1990s, practitioners have struggled to fully implement the Juvenile Drug Courts: Strategies in Practice. This struggle may lead to weaker outcomes for youth and a dysfunctional team atmosphere. Originally written as a two‐part technical assistance brief, this article will guide readers through the Juvenile Drug Court Development Cycle in order to help re‐direct practitioners to a more “back‐to‐basics” approach that focuses on collaboration, team dynamics, and decision making.     

Temporal regulation and intertemporal substitution: The effect of banning alcohol at college football games

We would like to thank Art Blakemore, Stuart Low, Dennis Hoffman, Robert McCormick, David Laband, John Lott and Skip Sauer for helpful comments; Arizona State University Director of Athletics, Charles Harris, for providing game data; and Bill Crowder for research assistance.     

Public Administration Dilemmas: An Analysis of Teachers’ Perceptions of the Effects of Performance Evaluation in Post-Colonial South Africa

The adoption of the principles of New Public Management by many governments across the world was invariably accompanied by the implementation of performance evaluation. It is generally accepted that performance evaluation optimizes the performance of workers. As part of a broader investigation which employed a mixed methods approach, the study used data from six interviews with high school principals and 100 survey questionnaires with purposively selected high school teachers in uMgungundlovu District of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In the analysis of this data, the paper demonstrates that beyond the obvious benefits of performance evaluation such as improvement in performance, there are also unintended consequences such as a narrow focus on measured output, teacher burnout, and falsification of information in order to maximize credit or to avoid punishment. This study illustrates the understandings of high school educators in uMgungundlovu District of the effects of performance evaluation. The findings have important implications for public administration and scholars alike.     

Police-probation partnerships: Professional identity and the sharing of coercive power

As formal police-probation partnerships become more commonplace, the occasional incompatibility of police and probation functions becomes increasingly obvious. Understanding how police-probation partnerships create unique pressures on officers and ultimately reconciling the real or perceived incompatibility of police and probation objectives is an important prerequisite to partnership success. Few studies had considered how inter-agency collaborations have the potential to alter the role distinctions between police and probation officers and how the quality, diversity, and effectiveness of the services that they provide may be compromised or enhanced. This study, based on interviews with police and probation officers participating in a formally organized police-probation partnership in Spokane, Washington considered how close working relationships may influence the professional orientations of the participating officers. Findings suggest that tension between organizational objectives threatens to create an imbalance of power between partnership participants.     

Support provided by corporate social responsibility programmes for the creation of universal access to ICT: a content analysis of corporate websites

ABSTRACT

This study analyses messages within corporate web pages as physical indicators of the following: the extent to which sampled companies provide information communication technology (ICT) to the South African society in terms of geographical spread; the types of ICTs they provide; the nature of their support; and the members of society targeted. Through latent coding, it seeks to deduce whether the companies realise their role in social development by focusing their corporate social responsibility programmes on societal needs and to establish whether their support is broadly aligned with government priorities.

Although the study is exploratory in nature, it reveals the following noteworthy issues: The geographical spread indicates that seven of the 11 companies analysed focus their support for ICT on the country as a whole; most companies tend to provide a whole range of technological equipment rather than one type; the provision of equipment is coupled with training; and the support for ICT is largely aimed at schools.

It is inferred that the companies realise their societal obligations; support government priorities; and are committed to social development by creating appropriate mechanisms for access to ICT.     

Resilience in Sexually Abused Women: Risk and Protective Factors

The goal of this study was to evaluate the contribution of family characteristics (family conflict and cohesion) and abuse characteristics (age at which abuse occurred, abuse severity, and relationship to perpetrator) to resilience (self-acceptance, ability to engage in positive relationships with others, and environmental mastery) in a sample of one hundred and 77 university women who had experienced childhood sexual abuse (CSA). The respondents completed a questionnaire that focused on childhood experiences including family environment in childhood, characteristics of the abuse they had experienced in addition to degree of current resilience defined as their level of well-being (self-acceptance, ability to engage in positive relationships with others, and environmental mastery). The results indicated that family characteristics accounted for 13–22% of the variance in the well-being outcomes. In contrast, abuse characteristics accounted for 3% or less of the variance in the well-being outcomes. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Damages for Mental Distress and Bad Faith in Disability Claims

This article examines recent changes in the law in Canada in relation to the court’s willingness to acknowledge the significance of, and award compensation for, intangible loss arising from breach of contract. When a claim for benefits is wrongly refused in a disability contract, a primary goal of the contract, which is to provide peace of mind, is unrealized. Where this causes mental distress, Canadian courts are now willing to award compensation. Similarly, if an insurer conducts itself in such a manner as to attract a punitive damages award, a consideration in assessing the quantum of the award is the vulnerability of the insured. The evidentiary basis for these claims will often include expert psychological opinion. Various considerations for determining the existence, nature, and scope of the psychological issues relevant to a claim for damages for mental distress and/or punitive damages are covered in this article.