THE LAW AND ECONOMICS OF REGULATING RATINGS FIRMS

Consumers and producers frequently rely on product ratings,such as college rankings, restaurant reviews, and bond ratings.While much has been written about the structure of ratings inparticular industries, little has been written on the generalstructure of different ratings industries and whether governmentintervention is typically needed. This paper begins that inquiryby examining the market structure of different ratings industries,and considering the circumstances under which firms that provideratings should be regulated. We find that most ratings firmsoperate in highly concentrated markets. We also find that mostratings firms determine their own testing standards and methods,although some industries have self-governing oversight bodiesthat offer their own accreditation standards. Despite the findingthat many ratings industries are concentrated, our analysissuggests that market forces generally appear to be an effectivemechanism for providing consumers and producers with usefulratings.     

Coercion and patient satisfaction on psychiatric acute wards

Legal-, perceived- and objective coercion were examined both separately and together as a measure of accumulated coercion, to determine how coercion affected patient satisfaction in patients admitted for acute psychiatric care. Accumulated coercive events significantly reduced both overall satisfaction, and satisfaction in four of five subscales evaluating different aspects of treatment. Neither legal status nor perceived coercion affected patient satisfaction, while objective coercion had a significant negative effect on overall satisfaction when these measures were analysed separately. Overall patient satisfaction reported at discharge was low, while satisfaction with different aspects of treatment showed considerable variation. The observation that perceived coercion in the admission process did not affect satisfaction significantly underlines the need to further explore the interaction between subjective and objective measures for coercion. It appears that multiple measures for coercion should be used in future studies.     

Goffman on the Jury: Real Jurors’ Attention to the “Offstage” of Trials

Social psychologist Erving Goffman, in his classic work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, provides a framework that explains why jurors may turn their attention at the courthouse to information not formally presented from the witness stand. We dub this “offstage observation,” a type of juror behavior that has not been systematically examined empirically. Analyzing a unique data source of 50 actual jury deliberations in civil trials, we find that jurors do look to the offstage in evaluating the claims of the parties. However, in contrast to predictions, these observations played a surprisingly minor role in the jury deliberation process.     

Corruption,bribery and patriarchy in Tanzania

This is an ethnography of the political culture of Tanzania as compared to the political culture of the United States. Endemic and harmful corruption among the political leadership of Tanzania and the United States alike stems from widespread popular equation of order with patriarchy, made worse by extending the logic of patriarchy to belief that social order and welfare rest on the strength of the nation state. The Tanzanian war on corruption and ensuing shutdown of the University of Dar es Salaam during the first half of 1990 affirm the radical feminist premise that the models of legitimacy we apply in the privacy of our families are identical to and inseparable from the models of legitimacy employeed domestically and internationally by our political leaders. Corruption and other violence are more directly expressed in Tanzania and more indirectly expressed by Americans who as a consequence are more enslaved to corruption and violence than Tanzanians. The contrast in Tanzanian and U.S. political cultures and the nature of patriarchy itself leads to a set of paradoxes about achieving freedom from corruption through exercise of patriarchal state power—as that children who are the ultimate victims of corruption are at once most blamed by adults, more responsive to change than adults, and unable to change as long as they remain the subjects of patriarchal discipline. Bribery is not necessarily a part of the problem of corruption but is a part of the solution. Freedom from corruption basically requires democratic accountability. Tanzanians and Americans are linked symbiotically: neither people can free themselves from corruption without before the other. There is no logical starting point for a patriarchal approach to freeing people from corruption. On the other hand radically effective emancipation from corruption is occurring across Tanzania and the United States.     

Morphometric Comparison of Clavicle Outlines from 3D Bone Scans and 2D Chest Radiographs: A Shortlisting Tool to Assist Radiographic Identification of Human Skeletons

This paper describes a computerized clavicle identification system primarily designed to resolve the identities of unaccounted‐for U.S. soldiers who fought in the Korean War. Elliptical Fourier analysis is used to quantify the clavicle outline shape from skeletons and postero‐anterior antemortem chest radiographs to rank individuals in terms of metric distance. Similar to leading fingerprint identification systems, shortlists of the top matching candidates are extracted for subsequent human visual assessment. Two independent tests of the computerized system using 17 field‐recovered skeletons and 409 chest radiographs demonstrate that true‐positive matches are captured within the top 5% of the sample 75% of the time. These results are outstanding given the eroded state of some field‐recovered skeletons and the faintness of the 1950's photofluorographs. These methods enhance the capability to resolve several hundred cold cases for which little circumstantial information exists and current DNA and dental record technologies cannot be applied.     

Gender Stereotypes and the Policy Priorities of Women in Congress

Political Behavior - Scholars find that women who run for Congress are just as likely to win as men are, yet women face considerable challenges related to their sex on the campaign trail. Women are...