Cheap bribes and the corruption ban: A coordination game among rational legislators

Legislators in modern democracies (a) accept bribes that are small compared to the value of the statutes they pass and (b) allow bans against bribery to be enforced. In our model of bribery, rational legislators accept bribes smaller not only than the benefit the briber receives but than the costs the legislators incur in accepting the bribes. Rather than risk this outcome, the legislators may be willing to suppress bribery altogether. The size of legislatures, the quality of voter information, the nature of party organization, and the structure of committees will all influence the frequency and size of bribes.     

Generalised estimates of diffusion rates for the oxygen blown steel process: An international comparison

The purpose of this study is to build on the results recently obtained by Poznanski (1990). First, the estimation technique is generalised by removing both the symmetric restrictions and the effects of autocorrelated errors that are present in simple logistic functions. Secondly, attention is drawn to the existence and consequences of multicollinearity when non linear techniques are applied to a general exponential. Thirdly, an attempt is made to quantify the importance of market structure and time lags in adoption as determinants of diffusion speed. Finally, a comparison between these generalised results and Poznanski's is made. The study concludes that, by generalising the estimation technique, some significant changes take place. Changes occur in the ordering and magnitude of diffusion speeds, especially amongst the developing and centrally planned economies. Changes also occur in the nature of the diffusion process, and in the importance attributed to market structure and diffusion lags in determining the rate of diffusion. It is also shown that, for some countries, multicollinearity imposes constraints on the type of generality that can be obtained.     

Globalization is What We Make of It: Contemporary Globalization Theory and the Future Construction of Global Interconnection

There are four perennial questions that preoccupy globalization theory. For those who write about globalization, there is a constant attempt to discover what globalization is, when it may have started, what benefits and burdens it offers for global cohabitation and whether globalization is ultimately a good thing or a bad thing. The purpose of this article is to review several new works in contemporary globalization theory and to assess what new answers they offer to these questions. Through this examination it will be argued that although these recent works provide significant improvements to former discussions on globalization, they still tend to lack an obvious insight. Namely, they fail to highlight fully the fact that whatever globalization is, it is as important to think normatively about directing its future as it is to understand its past. In other words, globalization is entirely what we make of it, both in how we cognitively come to understand it, but also in how we decide to shape its future.     

Collective Memory from a Psychological Perspective

The study of collective memory has burgeoned in the last 20 years, so much so that one can even detect a growing resistance to what some view as the imperialistic march of memory studies across the social sciences (e.g., Berliner 2005; Fabian 1999). Yet despite its clear advance, one area that has remained on the sidelines is psychology. On the one hand, this disinterest is surprising, since memory is of central concern to psychologists. On the other hand, the relative absence of the study of collective memory within the discipline of psychology seems to suit both psychology and other disciplines of the social sciences, for reasons that will be made clear. This paper explores how psychology might step from the sidelines and contribute meaningfully to discussions of collective memory. It reviews aspects of the small literature on the psychology of collective memory and connects this work to the larger scholarly community’s interest in collective memory. The first three authors contributed equally to this paper. The order in which they are listed reflects the throw of a die.