Unreasonable Women: Gender and the Law of Accidental Injury, 1870-1920

At the wheels of railroads and streetcars, the law of accidental personal injury, known as negligence, became a discrete body of law between 1870 and 1920. The defining component of negligence was "fault"–the notion that the individuals (injured and injurer) must have failed to act according to some minimal standard of caution. Theorists of the history of negligence have explained that the conduct of all was measured against what a "reasonable man" would have done under the circumstances. The author here challenges this fundamental assertion. Through trial records, lawyer's written arguments, and appellate opinions, she reconstructs the critical role of gender in shaping the law of accidental injury. As she argues, in 19th- and 20th-century America, injury was a gendered event. The fact that courts in these years held men and women to different standards of care undermines theorists' arguments that economic considerations drove the law of accidental injury. Moreover, the reification of gender nm in private law, in turn, vitally affected the experience of gender in turn-of-the-century America.     

Forecasting economies in transition: The case of Romania

Structural change is endemic in the Eastern European economies and the newly emerging Commonwealth of Independent States yet conventional econometric modelling techniques proceed under the assumption that there is a structurally stable ‘true’ economy to be discovered. This paper extends the analysis of Hall (1993) by exploring the consequences of endemic structural change for forecasting and building structural econometric models. We propose a model formulation which makes the econometric model itself able to adjust its parameters in the light of economic change using the Kalman Filter. The paper then illustrates this approach by building a small model of Romania and investigating its forecasting properties.     

Calibration procedure and the robustness of CGE models: Simulations with a model for Poland

Calibration is commonly used in order to specify a numerical computable general equilibrium model. As it involves the evaluation of model parameters on the basis of a single observation, there is a concern about the reliability of the results obtained from the model. A one-sector model for the Polish economy is specified and calibrated using various years as a benchmark equilibrium. Different assumptions are also made about some elasticity parameters. The model response is examined by simulating an increase in government expenditure. The results are quite robust to the choice of the base year but very sensitive to some elasticity parameters such as trade substitution elasticities.     

Measuring the correlation of shocks between the EU15 and the new member countries

This paper considers the question of the symmetry of inflation, exchange rate changes and GDP shocks between the EU15 and the new member countries. It applies a relatively new technique, the orthogonal GARCH model, which allows us to calculate a complete time varying correlation matrix for these countries. We can then examine the way the conditional correlation of shocks between the EU15 and the new member countries has been evolving over time. Our results suggest that the shocks which hit the EU are not symmetrical with those affecting the majority of new member countries. In addition, most of the new member countries seem to exhibit relatively low correlation with EU15.     

Analyzing Multiple-Item Measures of Crime and Deviance I: Item Response Theory Scaling

Multiple-item measures of self-reported offending typically provide the principal outcome measures for individual level research on the causes of crime and deviance. This article directs attention to the substantial problems presented by the task of forming composite scores for these measures, and it presents a possible solution to those problems. We consider scaling by means of the graded response model from item response theory (IRT) as a potential means of overcoming the shortcomings of traditional summative scaling and of obtaining valuable information about the strengths and weaknesses of our measures. We illustrate this strategy through a scale analysis of a fourteen-item, self-report measure of delinquency, using three years of data from the Monitoring the Future study, an annual national survey of high school seniors. The graded response model proves to be consistent with the data, and it provides results that address important substantive questions about self-report measures. The findings are informative about the strengths and weaknesses of alternative strategies for developing self-report instruments, indicating that there is little to be gained by making fine distinctions in the frequency of individual delinquent acts.     

Building the Evidence Base for Intensive Family Preservation Services

This article examines the state of intensive family preservation services (IFPS) research. Using studies of IFPS in five states, this article seeks to establish whether IFPS can be regarded as an evidence-based practice, an increasingly important standard for publicly funded services. While reporting rates of repeat child maltreatment, the analysis uses placement rates as the main outcome measure and compares effect sizes using Cohen's arcsine transformation for data reported as proportions. Significant differences in rates of child out-of-home placement and repeat maltreatment were found in some studies, particularly for higher risk families. The findings also underscore the difficulty of identifying which families to serve (targeting), ensuring treatment fidelity, and employing rigorous and appropriate evaluation methods. Overall, additional research is needed to move IFPS from a promising practice to an evidence-based practice.