Changing expectations:COSMIC in the new world

Twenty years ago, in the olden days, computer software was a specialty niche open only to gurus who were willing to devote years of study to the field. In the last three years the picture has changed. With the advent of comfortable user interfaces, word processors, spreadsheets, and easy-to-use databases, almost every secretary in the country is conversant with computer technology and their bosses are catching on fast. The result is a heightened awareness of computer software. COSMIC, a longestablished, non-profit software distribution facility devoted to technology transfer, is reviewing and revising its operations, trying to meet the expectations of a wider audience.     

Tax enforcement: A public choice perspective

Federal income tax inforcement varies greatly across individual states. While it is not known if this interstate variation enhances efficiency, anecdotal evidence suggests it does not. In this paper we apply the Weingast/Moran model to the treasury and explore the relationship between the legislature and the IRS. Specifically, we model IRS audit rates by state as a function of both political and efficiency considerations. We find that the interstate differences in enforcement is influenced by efficiency considerations but also the IRS shifts enforcement away from states represented by legislators who sit on committees with oversight responsibility for the IRS.     

Sex Differences in Age Patterns of Delinquent/Criminal Careers: Results from Poisson Latent Class Analyses of the Philadelphia Cohort Study

Applications of latent class analyses to the study of criminal careers have yielded results with implications for criminological theory. Distinct latent classes of individuals within various samples have been identified based upon the similarity of individuals with respect to their rate of offending across the teen and adult years, net of the effects of other regressors. In previous research on samples of males taken from the cities of London and Philadelphia, four and five such categories have been identified respectively, ranging from a group of nonoffenders to a group of chronic offenders. However, the question of whether similar findings hold for females has not been adequately addressed, in part due to the scarcity of longitudinal samples with sizable female populations. Data from the Second Philadelphia Cohort are used to address this and related questions. First, are there latent classes of female offenders? Second, if such categories do exist, how do they compare? Third, how do classes of male and female offenders compare on key measures of criminal careers? Analyses of the samples yield differing numbers of classes for males and females. Gender invariances as well as differences in patterns of offending are also found and are discussed.     

Book Reviews: Technological Change and the Evolution of Corporate Innovation

The Journal of Technology Transfer -     

Research on Gender and the Law: Where Are We Going,Where Have We Been?

This article provides an overview of issues related to research on gender and the law. Following a discussion of the ways in which gender and the law interact, we assess the extent to which Law and Human Behavior (LHB) has addressed the issue of gender. Specifically, we present the results of our analysis of the role of gender in articles published in LHB from 1990 through 1996. We discuss the relatively few gender-relevant studies that appeared, as well as comment upon the attention given to gender by research with other primary foci. We then discuss various strategies for conducting gender research and their implications for research on gender and the law. We conclude by introducing the articles in this special issue on gender and the law, commenting on how they add to our accumulated knowledge in this area.     

INITIATING A COMPARABLE WORTH WAGE POLICY IN MINNESOTA: NOTES FROM THE FIELD

As of January 1986, Minnesota has progressed farther than any other state in implementing acomparable worth (pay equity) wage policy, with two laws requiring pay equity, one covering state employees and a second covering employees of all types of jurisdictions. This article presents a discussion of Minnesota's importance as a case study, a definition of comparable worth, the history and politics o f pay equity policy in Minnesota, and an analysis of Minnesota's role in a national campaign to change wage policy. The article shows that implementation has been more straight-forward in state government than for the 1,583 local jurisdictions, many of which had less-developed personnel systems than did the state. The passage of the local pay equity law ushered in a new stage in this policy, where the issue Is no longer controlled by a small number of legislators, bureaucrats, and lobbyists.     

Sentencing disparity: An analysis of judicial consistency

This paper reports the results of an analysis of judicial disparity in the sentencing of persons represented by legal-aid lawyers. Because the socioeconomic characteristics of legal-aid clients are fairly uniform, the analysis of such cases made it possible to explore the influence of case facts, system factors, and the judicial disparity of the sentences given in relatively similar situations. The analysis finds that case facts and offender characteristics, particularly prior record, are good predictors of sentence type and excellent predictors of sentence length. While there was some indication of judicial inconsistency in sentence-type decisions, that is, unexplained variation from case to case, there was little indication of strong individual judicial bias across the cases used in the analysis.