The Municipal Bond Market in a Changing Economy

Due primarily to the Tax Reform Act of 1986, the municipal bond market has undergone great changes in the last two years. Because of severe limitations on the purposes for which and processes by which tax-exempt bonds can be issued, the volume of new issues has fallen dramatically. Interest rates, while volatile, have been declining. The municipal market, although dealing with various cross-currents of unrest emanating from credit quality problems, changing buyers, disclosure concerns, and adverse court decisions, nevertheless appears well positioned to concentrate its resources on its traditional role in the financing infrastructure.     

Pubertal timing and grade effects on adjustment

Effects on adjustment of biological maturation and social timing were compared using data from a longitudinal sample of 335 young adolescents, who were followed from the sixth through eighth grades. Biological maturation was estimated from the relative timing of the adolescent growth spurt. Social timing was assessed by grade in school. Five adjustment constructs were examined: school achievement (course grades in five subjects), family relations (a 17-item scale), peer relations (a 10-item scale), body image (an 11-item scale), impulse control (an 8-item scale), and psychopathology (an 11-item emotional tone scale and an 11-item general psychopathology scale). All but one adjustment construct showed grade effects, but only three of the six constructs showed pubertal timing effects. There were no grade by pubertal timing effects. Although there were gender differences for some of the adjustment constructs, there were no gender by pubertal timing effects. The results are discussed in terms of the life-span developmental perspective.Received Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1973. Research interest is biopsychosocial development in early adolescence, with a focus on sex differences.Received Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Research interests are social development, biosocial interactions in early adolescence, and sex differences.     

Estimating the Impact of Education on Political Participation: Evidence from Monozygotic Twins in the United States,Denmark and Sweden

In this study we provide new evidence on the much-discussed effect of education on political participation by utilizing the quasi-experiment of twinning. By looking at the relationship between education and participation within monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs we are able to circumvent traditional sources of confounding of the relationship rooted in genes and early life family environment because MZ twins share both. The results of within-twin pair analyses based on surveys from the United States, Denmark and Sweden show that while the relationship between education and political participation is highly confounded by genes and/or familial environment in all three countries, a positive impact remains of years of education in the US and of high school completion in Denmark. No effect is found in Sweden. Robustness checks suggest that the observed effect is not confounded by within-twin pair differences in prenatal environment nor differential treatment during childhood, and, if anything, that it most likely constitutes a lower bound estimate.     

Facilitators and obstacles to cooperation in international development networks: a network approach

This paper draws attention to the value of a network approach for understanding cooperation in international development networks. The approach emphasises the impact of social interaction, and the values, ideas, and behaviours of individuals on the achievement of development goals. Social network analysis is used to analyse the social structure and dynamics of interaction in an aid-funded development network organisation that aimed to develop optometry capacity in Mozambique. The analysis shows the value of combining quantitative and qualitative methods in a complementary way to identify factors facilitating (network consciousness and social skill) and hindering (power dynamics) cooperation.     

Institutionalizing inequality in the courts: Decomposing racial and ethnic disparities in detention,conviction, and sentencing*

A significant body of literature has examined racial and ethnic inequalities in sentencing, focusing on how individual court actors make decisions, but fewer scholars have examined whether disparities are institutionalized through legal case factors. After finding racial and ethnic inequalities in pretrial detention, conviction, and incarceration based on 4 years of felony court data (N = 83,924) from Miami-Dade County, we estimate nonlinear decomposition models to examine how much of the inequalities are explained by differences in criminal history, charging, and for conviction and incarceration, pretrial detention. Results suggest that inequality is greatest between White non-Latinos and Black Latinos, followed by White non-Latinos and Black non-Latinos, ranging from 4 to more than 8 percentage points difference in the probability of pretrial detention, 7–13 points difference in conviction, 5–6 points in prison, and 4–10 points difference in jail. We find few differences between White non-Latinos and White Latinos. Between half and three-quarters of the inequality in pretrial detention, conviction, and prison sentences between White non-Latino and Black people is explained through legal case factors. Our findings indicate that inequality is, in part, institutionalized through legal case factors, suggesting these factors are not “race neutral” but instead racialized and contribute to inequalities in court outcomes.     

Intelligence expertise in the age of information sharing: public–private ‘collection’ and its challenges to democratic control and accountability

The emergence of a more elusive and uncertain threat environment has transformed the nature of intelligence, increasing its reliance on civil society partners. Once the work of an insular and carefully select few, intelligence production is now a networked, partially open and extensively public–private enterprise. Most poignantly, new practices of public–private ‘collection’ face Western intelligence services with novel questions about control and accountability – questions to which the services have responded with hopes that by standardizing ‘methodologies’, central command may be retained. Suggesting a more complex picture, this article argues that ‘managing uncertainty’ imply forms of interpretation and choices which cannot be pre-empted by rule-regulation: more than Weber’s ideal of the procedural and rule-bound, it may be his (once central, yet largely marginalized) emphasis on institutional and individual capacities for critical ‘judgment’ that is of relevance today.     

Dreams and disillusionment: engagement in and disengagement from militant extremist groups

People engage in terrorism and similar forms of violent extremism for a variety of reasons, political or non-political. The frequent failure to achieve what they expected or dreamed about is also usually the source of their disillusionment, and subsequently, a main reason to disengage from violent extremism. Individuals involved in terrorism often come from a diversity of social backgrounds und have undergone rather different processes of violent radicalisation. Profiles of terrorists do not work as a tool to identify actual or potential terrorists because such profiles fail to capture the diversity and how people change when they become involved in militant extremism. This study suggests a more dynamic typology of participants in militant groups, based on dimensions which represent dynamic continuums rather than static positions. During their extremist careers individuals may move from resembling one type initially into acquiring more of the characteristics of other types at later stages. When it comes to prevention and intervention measures, one size does not fit them all. The typology may be used as an aid to develop more specific and targeted strategies for preventing violent radicalisation and facilitating disengagement, taking into account the diversity and specific drivers behind different types of activists.     

Fatal overdose of the herbicide bentazone

A 59-year-old woman who intentionally ingested 100-200 ml Basagran was taken to the hospital with a cardiac arrest 2 days after she had consumed the herbicide. During this period she suffered vomiting, urination and diarrhoea and she was drowsy with a muddled speech. Biological samples obtained at the autopsy were analysed and presence of bentazone, alcohol and an active metabolite of citalopram were detected. Blood concentrations of bentazone, alcohol and desmethyl-citalopram were 625 mg/kg, 0.62 g/l and 0.03 mg/kg, respectively.