Power delegation and the European Central Bank's democratic deficit

Delegation involves both costs and benefits. That is to say that delegation is problematic as the principal and agent may have conflicting interests in any act of delegation. Related to this puzzle, I focus on the issue of democratic deficit in the European Central Bank (ECB) as a consequence of power delegation by the European Union (EU) member states in the euro area. Critics claim that the ECB suffers from a democratic deficit as the Bank is seen immune from the people of the euro area, although it profoundly affects their everyday life. The fact that the ECB is a supranational non-majoritarian institution and distances itself from national political arenas further intensifies the issue. Hence, this article aims to evaluate the alleged democratic deficit of the ECB.

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Do Beliefs About Herbicide Quality Correspond with Actual Quality in Local Markets? Evidence from Uganda

Adoption of modern agricultural inputs in Africa remains low, restraining agricultural productivity and poverty reduction. Low quality agricultural inputs may in part explain low adoption rates, but only if farmers are aware that some inputs are low quality. We report the results of laboratory tests of the quality of glyphosate herbicide in Uganda and investigate whether farmers’ beliefs about the prevalence of counterfeiting and adulteration are consistent with the prevalence of low quality in their local market. We find that the average bottle in our sample is missing 15 per cent of the active ingredient and 31 per cent of samples contain less than 75 per cent of the ingredient advertised. Farmers believe 41 per cent of herbicide is counterfeit or adulterated. Beliefs are significantly correlated with quality at the local market level, but beliefs remain inaccurate, adjusting for only a fraction of actual differences in quality. Price is also significantly correlated with quality in local markets, but prices also adjust for only a fraction of quality differences. Although, like fertiliser and hybrid maize seed, herbicide in Uganda is low quality, herbicide use is substantially higher.     

Mental Health Service Recipients and Prison Work Release: How Do the Mentally Ill Fare Compared to Other Inmates in Prison Work Release Programs?

The objective of this study was to compare the success rate of the mentally ill and other inmates on prison work release within gender groups. Mentally ill (MI) men (n = 42) had a higher success rate (79%) than other men (NMI) (61%) (n = 49), but this difference only approached statistical significance (p = 0.07), and mental illness did not distinguish male success/failures in regression analyses. Mentally ill women (n = 51) had a statistically significant lower success rate (58%) than other women inmates (n = 49) (83%) on work release. The difference in rates, however, only occurred in the group of women who were currently in prison due to a parole violation, not new court commitments. Regression analysis confirmed the importance of mental illness and current commitment as a parole violator. A greater number of MI men should be allowed to participate in work release. Women with mental health issues who had prior trouble on parole may need enhanced services.     

Forensic profiling of non-volatile organic compounds in soil using ultra-performance liquid chromatography: a pilot study

Soil is of particular interest to the forensic community because it can be used as valuable associative evidence to link a suspect to a victim or a crime scene. Liquid chromatography is a powerful analytical tool for organic compound analysis. Recently, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) has proven to be an efficient method for forensic soil analysis, especially in discriminating soils from proximity locations. However, ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC), which is much more sensitive than HPLC, has never been explored in this context. This study proposed a UPLC method for profiling non-volatile organic compounds in three Malaysian soils (red, brown and yellowish-brown soils). The three soils were analysed separately to assess the effects of individual chromatographic parameters: (a) elution programme (isocratic vs. two gradient programmes); (b) flow rate (0.1 vs. 0.2 mL/min); (c) extraction solvent (acetonitrile vs. methanol) and (d) detection wavelength (230 vs. 254 nm). The injection volume and total run time were set to 5 µL and 35 min, respectively. Consequently, each soil sample gave 24 different chromatograms. Results showed that the most desirable chromatographic parameters were (a) isocratic elution; (b) flow rate at 0.2 mL/min and (c) acetonitrile extraction solvent. The proposed UPLC system is expected to be a feasible method for profiling non-volatile organic compounds in soil, and is more chemical-efficient than a comparable HPLC system.     

Mortality reporting in SSA linked data: preliminary results

The earnings and benefit data of the Social Security Administration represent a fairly large and balanced sample of present and past wage earners nationwide. Since the incentives for reporting deaths to the Social Security Administration mean that deaths are reported as a matter of course, this data base serves as an interesting prospect for examining problems of differential mortality. Variables available include age, race, sex, industry, and place of employment. To check on the coverage and content differences between social security and death certificate data, a sample study is being undertaken that links the two sources for 1975 decedents. This article provides a preliminary examination of the differences between the presumably complete frame of death certificates and the social security record data. Related efforts now in progress to improve available information for use in further mortality research are also discussed briefly.     

Political Brand Equity Model: The Integration of Political Brands in Voter Choice

The voters’ choices about political parties have many similarities with how they make their choices about commercial brands. Therefore, political parties are now constantly applying the concept and strategies of brand management to make the political product attractive, appealable, trustable, differentiable, a source of long-term relationships, and a decision-making driver. Furthermore, the political parties have to play an active role in the community's political socialization processes, which rely heavily on branding strategies. Because, the party equity is largely based on the community's social gregariousness that has profound effect on the electorates' propensity to participate in the politics. This study has deeply explored and broadened the concept of party equity analogous to commercial brand equity typology by developing a politics-specific brand equity model. This model demonstrates the integration of political brands in voter choice. Empirically, this model has been validated by collecting 550 valid responses from the constituency of District Gujrat, Pakistan. A careful analysis of these responses through structural equation modeling methodology has revealed that political parties vary according to the outcomes of their role in the political socialization process of the communities, loyalty, and voters’ attitude. Parties that have favorable role in the socialization process have strong party knowledge and thus have high party equity as compared to competing political parties, which have a weak position of party knowledge. Similarly, this study provides the roadmap and guidelines for the political parties to manage their party equity. Similarly, the model would be able to facilitate political parties in comparing different constituencies on the basis of their diversified social dynamics and political knowledge and in the development of a constituency-based manifesto, also termed “localized manifesto,” to further enhance their vote bank.     

Statistical Evaluation of Alternative Light Sources for Bloodstain Photography

Bloodstain photography is important in forensic applications, especially for bloodstain pattern analysis. This study compares the enhancement effect of bloodstain photography using three different types of light source: fluorescent white light, near‐ultraviolet (UV) light‐emitting diode (LED) light, and 410 nm LED light. Randomized complete block designs were implemented to identify the lighting that would statistically produce the best enhancement results for bloodstains on different types of surfaces. Bloodstain samples were prepared on white cotton, brown carpet, tar road, and wood. These samples were photographed in darkroom conditions using a Canon EOS 50D digital SLR camera, with Canon EFS 60 mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens. Two‐way analysis of variance and Fisher's least significant difference test were used to analyze the contrast of the images. The statistical analysis showed that 410 nm light is the best among the tested lights for enhancing bloodstains on the tested surfaces, where the contrast of bloodstain to background was the highest.