Who benefits from minority business set-asides? The case of New Jersey

Race-based remedies often are justified by evidence of prior discrimination. They work when they benefit groups previously disadvantaged. This article examines one such remedy—minority business set-asides—and its application in the award of public procurement and construction contracts by the state of New Jersey. Analyzed are contract awards to minority and non-minority/non-women-owned business enterprises in 1990, as well as in periods before, during, and after the imposition of a state minority set-aside program. Using a conventional decomposition approach, the article reveals significant discriminatory gaps in the success of minority- versus non-minority-owned firms in obtaining contracts from the state of New Jersey. The analysis suggests that minority contracting success rates fell from the pre-set-aside era to the set-aside era and that discriminatory outcomes persisted. The particular remedy chosen—while justified based on evidence of prior discrimination—appears not to have reduced the original discrimination nor did it unambiguously benefit minority businesses.     

A More Efficient Method for Synthetic Textile Fiber Analysis Using Polarized Light Microscopy

The efficiency of conventional polarized light microscopy (PLM) methods for analyzing synthetic fiber evidence analyses is improved. Historically, using PLM for fiber identification relied on measuring refractive index. This prior PLM technology is reliable, but it is not efficient. Most fibers are optically anisotropic, having two principal refractive index values, N_(High) and N_(Low). When the fiber is mounted in intermediate refractive index medium, efficiency is improved by observing the change in contrast while the polarized light’s vector is rotated relative to the fiber’s axis. Minimum contrast occurs when the refractive indices of the mounting medium and fiber are equal. This angle of equality is determined by orienting the fiber’s highest refractive index parallel to the polarized light’s electric field vector, rotating the fiber or polarizing element, observing minimum contrast and measuring the angle of equality. This method is rapid, reduces remounting fibers in different mounting media and provides a quantitative measure for fiber comparisons.     

What Interventions Work Best for Families Who Experience Homelessness? Impact Estimates from the Family Options Study

What housing and service interventions work best to reduce homelessness for families in the United States? The Family Options Study randomly assigned 2,282 families recruited in homeless shelters across 12 sites to priority access to one of three active interventions or to usual care in their communities. The interventions were long‐term rent subsidies, short‐term rent subsidies, and transitional housing in supervised programs with intensive psychosocial services. In two waves of follow‐up data collected 20 and 37 months later, priority access to long‐term rent subsidies reduced homelessness and food insecurity and improved other aspects of adult and child well‐being relative to usual care, at a cost 9 percent higher. The other interventions had little effect. The study provides support for the view that homelessness for most families is an economic problem that long‐term rent subsidies resolve and does not support the view that families must address psychosocial problems to succeed in housing. It has implications for focusing government resources on this important social problem.     

Candidate and Party Strategies in Two-Stage Elections Beginning with a Primary

In the United States and Latin America, candidates for national and state-level office frequently must win primary elections in order to advance to the general election. We model policy and valence issues for office-seeking candidates facing such two-stage elections. We determine a Nash equilibrium for the candidates' optimal strategies, and we find that holding a primary is likely to increase a party's chances of winning the general election, particularly in situations where valence issues that involve the candidates' campaigning skills and that are not known prior to the campaign are more salient than policy issues. Furthermore, we find that primary elections are especially likely to benefit parties that expect to be underdogs in the general election. Our conclusions are directly relevant to U.S. politics and by extension to the strategic decisions that many Latin American parties currently confront, about whether it is strategically desirable to hold primaries.     

Do National and International Media Cover the Same Event Differently? The Online Media Framing of Irreecha Festival Tragedy

This article examines how media framed the deadly stampede that killed several dozen people gathered to celebrate a festival in Ethiopia. News articles published by 14 national media (N=21) and 116 international media (N=117) on October 2 and 3, 2016 were collected and comparative content analysis was carried out between April and May 2017. Conflict, attribution of responsibility and political consequences frames dominated the coverage. The differences observed in the use of conflict, responsibility and morality frames by national and international media were statistically significant. The differences in the appearance of political consequences and human-interest frames in national and international media were not statistically significant. In terms of coverage pattern, the themes of headlines of almost all the news articles published on the first day after the incident focused on deaths of people whereas the second day headlines diverged to deaths, mourning, unrest that followed, and other issues as the media found additional facts to organise strong and compelling frames to influence the audience. Based on the findings, this article generalises that national and international media cover the same disaster from different perspectives—national media promote national interest whereas international media emphasise conflict.     

Course corrections and failed rationales: how comparative advantage and debt are used to legitimise austerity in Africa and Latin America

This article examines the role of ideological mechanisms in support of long-term economic liberalisation. Specifically we examine the ideological roles of comparative advantage and debt reduction as precursors to austerity policy imposition. Austerity policies, as episodic mechanisms designed to deepen neoliberalisation, are examined in the comparative historical context of Africa and Latin America.