The Demand for Land Title Registration: Theory with Evidence from Kenya

This article examines the role of title registration in providingsecurity of property rights for landowners. A simple model isdeveloped to examine the trade-off between increased securityof registering title against the administrative costs of accessingthe system. The model predicts that the demand for registrationshould be increasing in the value of the land, the educationof the landowner, and proximity to the central government (thelatter two being measures of the cost of accessing the system).Evidence on land registration in Kenya provides support forthe model.     

International Law Book Facility Officially Launched

There has been growing international consensus on issues related to child labour – evident in various declarations, platforms, conventions, programmes of action etc. Child labour is the economic exploitation of children, or performance of any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development. Poverty is the principal cause of child labour. Mostly the children work to support their families and also for their own survival. Paradoxically, however, child labour further aggravates the poverty syndrome as it usually deprives the children of education and opportunity to acquire skills for developing earning potentials. Other causes of child labour include family indebtedness, the lack or poor quality of schooling or non‐formal education, breakdown of extended family, uneducated parents, local cultural setting, and consumerism. It goes beyond economic exploitation or hazardous employment to include forced labour, trafficking, sexual exploitation and the use of children for the production and trafficking of illegal drugs. This article will ponder the socio‐legal situation of child labour and the large number of legislative enactments regarding labour in India, as well as their realities on the ground.     

Competition and R&D cooperation with universities and competitors

This paper analyses the relationship between competitive environment and R&D cooperation with universities and competitors. Our simple model suggests that cooperation creates benefits in terms of synergies but also induces costs due to spillovers. Since the value of these synergies and spillovers depends on the competitive pressure, cooperation propensity depends on the competitive environment. Differentiating between the dimensions of competition, we hypothesize that university cooperation corresponds to quality competition, while horizontal cooperation relates to price competition. Furthermore, we predict that a higher number of competitors reduces the incentives for horizontal cooperation as it diminishes the gains from “collusion”. We test these hypotheses using Swiss firm-level panel data that allows us to control for simultaneity of cooperation decisions and endogeneity of competition. Our empirical analysis supports the relevance of distinguishing between competition dimensions and cooperation partners, respectively. We find that price competition has an influence on university cooperation in the form of an inverted U. Quality competition only has an influence on university cooperation and the relationship shows a U-form. Moreover, we see that the number of principal competitors reduces cooperation between competitors.     

The Armenians of Los Angeles: Rethinking “Americanization”

Abstract

The existing scholarship typically measures “Americanization” along structural lines—such as knowledge of public policies, percentage of life spent in the U.S., or proficiency in the English language. While these variables are certainly important, they overlook another important dimension of newcomers’ post-migration experiences—namely, immigrants’ psychological attachment and sense of belonging to the American social, political, and economic fabric. This article therefore reevaluates what it means to Americanize by exploring the psychological (or symbolic) dimensions of multigenerational immigrants’ evolving political beliefs toward the polity. In rethinking the process of Americanization, we rely on a largely understudied immigrant population—that is, the Los Angeles Armenians (or Armenian Angelenos)—and an original public opinion survey—the Armenian Angeleno Survey (AAS). This study demonstrates that symbolic (rather than merely structural) Americanization is a useful framework in studying how contemporary immigrant groups position themselves in relation to the polity and understand important political outcomes. This article thus introduces an expanded model based on how multigenerational immigrants cultivate their ethnic communities while becoming ideological members of American society.