Sorry mates: Reconciliation and self-determination in Australian aboriginal health

In this article I examine the political relations between Aboriginal communities and government in the development of Australian Aboriginal health policy. How do government policymakers interpret the concept of Aboriginal self-determination? What does reconciliation mean in the context of Aboriginal health? The article is based on 12 months of ethnographic research in southeast Australia with key stakeholders in the Aboriginal community-controlled health sector as well key stakeholdes in regional, state, and national (Commonwealth) government. The research was a response to the call for anthropologists to engage in ethnographic studies of colonial relations.¹ I argue that although Australian health policy today is premised on community-government partnerships, contemporary relationships are still, fundamentally, rooted in and informed by Australia’s colonialist history with all of its attendant institutions, structures, and practices.     

Rent-seeking with non-identical sharing rules

The primary object of this paper is to examine the role of differential sharing rules within a collective rent-seeking setting on the possible non-existence of Nash equilibrium. Focusing on groups that distribute part of the rent equally among their members and the residual according to relative effort, we show that in rent-seeking societies applying the two polar sharing rules equilibrium never exists. In the general case where groups apply different but not necessarily the polar sharing rules, we study the relationship between group variability in distributing rents and the problem of non-existence of equilibrium in the rent-seeking game.     

Rent-seeking for pure public goods

In this paper we present a formal analysis of rent-seeking for public goods by two or more groups with different numbers of individuals. We begin by considering equally wealthy groups under risk neutrality, a case which constitutes our basic model. Several surprising and interesting results emerge from the analysis of this basic case. The problem is then extended to deal with (a) groups with different wealth levels, and (b) risk aversion. This last extension brings about a further crop of interesting and useful results.     

Monopoly vs. competition in light of extraction norms

This note demonstrates that whether the market is competitive or monopolistic need not be the result of ideology, political power or non-convexity of the technology. The answer can be determined by a government that maximizes the extracted resources from the alternative market structures. Our claim is illustrated by assuming that demand and supply are linear functions and that the government can extract the same share of the producers?? profit under the alternative market structures. This share can be extracted from the actual producers or from the potential producers who take part in the contest to get a license to produce.     

Adolescent perception of family climate and adaptation to residential schooling

The article investigates the role that adolescents' perceptions of the family plays as he/she adapts to living away from home. Family atmosphere perceptions of adolescents who study at a residential school and adolescents who live at home were evaluated. The adaption of these two groups of adolescents, as perceived by their teachers, was also evaluated. Results have shown differential contributions of family dimensions to adolescent adaptation in residential and nonresidential schooling. Results are discussed in connection with the process of adolescent separation from the family and the increased impact of the peer group.In 1987–1988, Visiting Faculty, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota. Received his Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Research interests include developmental and family processes in normal and handicapped children and adolescents.     

Ambiguous political power and contest efforts

When there is incomplete information on the source of power in a contest, the contestants may divide their lobbying efforts between the potential centers of power, only one of which determines the contests’ winning probabilities. Our analysis focuses on the effect of ambiguity regarding the source of power on the contestants’ aggregate effort in a symmetric, simple lottery contest with two potential centers of power. Specifically, we examine the effects of varying the informativeness of the contestants’ private signals (i.e., the probability that a signal is correct) and the degree of correlation between them. Our benchmark case is the standard Tullock’s model, in which the source of power is known, i.e., the contestants’ signals are perfectly informative. We show that the level of aggregate effort in this case is reached also when the signals are perfectly uninformative. However, in any intermediate case the contestants’ aggregate effort is lower, provided that the signals are not perfectly correlated. In other words, there is a U-shape relationship between the informativeness of the signals and the aggregate effort in the contest. The lowest level of effort is spent when the signals are independent and the probability that a signal is true is about 0.85. In this case, efforts are reduced by about one-fifth in comparison with the benchmark case: from a rent dissipation of 50% to slightly over 40%.     

Stakes and Welfare in Rent-Seeking Contests

Using a public-policy application ofTullock's two-player rent-seeking contest,this paper focuses on the relationshipbetween the aggregate expected utility ofthe players and their asymmetricvaluations. In our game these valuationsare the players' payoffs in the twopossible states of nature, namely, theapproval and rejection of the proposedpublic policy. Our main result provides thecondition that ensures that the aggregateexpected payoff of the two contestants (theinterest groups that compete on theapproval of the proposed policy) is positively related to the valuationparameters.