Is technology transfer to subsistence farmers doubling nothing?

Editors Note: This commentary touches on an aspect of technology transfer to the Third World that often is neglected: Can the technology recipients afford to use it? Although the authors focus on the economics of shrimp production by subsistence farmers, affordability is one of the major concomitant issues of transfer from developed to developing countries.     

Explaining “Pain and Suffering” Awards: The Role of Injury Characteristics and Fault Attributions

The present research explored factors thought to affect compensatory awards for non-economic ham (pain and suffering) in personal injury cases. Experiment 1 showed that the nature and severity of the plaintiffs injury had a strong effect on perceptions of the extent of harm suffered and on award amounts. The parties' relatively active or passive roles in causing the injury affected assessments of their degree of fault, but perceived fault had little influence on awards. Experiment 2 replicated with more varied cases the strong impact of injury severity on harm perception and on awards for pain and suffering. In both studies, the disability and the mental suffering associated with injuries were stronger predictors of awards than were pain and disfigurement.     

Political Institutions and Economic Performance: The Effects of Accountability and Obstacles to Policy Change

Numerous analyses have been conducted on how political institutions affect economic performance. In recent years the emphasis has been on a causal logic that emphasizes institutional obstacles to policy change, such as those presented by multiple veto points. This has especially been the case when it comes to the important question of how political institutions influence governments' responses to exogenous economic shocks. We make the case for a substantial broadening of focus and show that when it comes to a major type of exogenous shock, a forced exchange-rate devaluation, variations in the breadth of accountability of the chief executive are more robustly associated with the post-shock growth recovery than variations in obstacles to policy change. We first argue that the size of the winning coalition will be positively associated with growth recoveries following forced devaluations. We then use a newly developed measure of the size of the winning coalition to test our claim. Our statistical analysis is based on a study of the responses of 44 countries to forced exchange-rate devaluations in the late 1990s.     

Exploring the utility of entitlement in understanding sexual aggression

Purpose

Sexual aggression on college campuses has received a great deal of research attention. Little criminological theory, however, has systematically linked individual-level risk factors for sexual aggression with broader societal factors like patriarchy. DeKeseredy and Schwartz (1993) proposed that societal patriarchy is translated into individual attitudes of male sexual proprietariness and entitlement, which provide motivation and justifications for sexual violence.

Methods

This study explored the concept of entitlement through various measures and demonstrated the utility of the concept by linking it with other theoretically-relevant variables, including self-control, sexual partners, use of pornography, adversarial sexual beliefs, and rape myth adherence.

Results

Entitlement was significantly correlated with theoretically-relevant variables in the expected directions. Additionally, entitlement was able to distinguish sexually aggressive and nonaggressive men. Multivariate models provided support for the theoretical assertion that entitlement fosters rape-supportive attitudes and behaviors, which in turn was related to sexual aggression.

Conclusions

Entitlement is an important concept in understanding sexual aggression, and the causal relationships implied by theory should be explored further in future research. Implications and directions for future research and theory are discussed.     

Examining the effects of paper type, pen type, writing pressure and angle of intersection on white and dark dominance in ESDA impressions of sequenced strokes--an application of the likelihood ratio

Questioned document casework can occasionally involve the sequencing of impressions. Although some conclusions can be drawn from looking at ESDA traces of intersections there is currently no way of assessing the strength of the observations made in any given case. Using a range of paper and pen types this work examines points of intersection and evaluates the results statistically in order judge the value of the results obtained.