Economic Voting and Multilevel Governance: A Comparative Individual-Level Analysis

An important component of incumbent support is the reward/punishment calculus of economic voting. Previous work has shown that "clarity of responsibility" within the central state government conditions national economic effects on incumbent vote choice: where clarity is high (low), economic effects are greater (less). This article advances the "clarity of responsibility" argument by considering the effect of multilevel governance on economic voting. In institutional contexts of multilevel governance, the process of correctly assigning responsibility for economic outcomes can be difficult. This article tests the proposition that multilevel governance mutes effects of national economic conditions by undermining responsibility linkages to the national government. Individual-level data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Module 1 are used to test this proposition. Results demonstrate that economic voting is weakest in countries where multilevel governance is most prominent. Findings are discussed in light of the contribution to the economic voting literature and the potential implications of multilevel governance.     

Injuries of the Head from Backface Deformation of Ballistic Protective Helmets Under Ballistic Impact

Modern ballistic helmets defeat penetrating bullets by energy transfer from the projectile to the helmet, producing helmet deformation. This deformation may cause severe injuries without completely perforating the helmet, termed “behind armor blunt trauma” (BABT). As helmets become lighter, the likelihood of larger helmet backface deformation under ballistic impact increases. To characterize the potential for BABT, seven postmortem human head/neck specimens wearing a ballistic protective helmet were exposed to nonperforating impact, using a 9 mm, full metal jacket, 124 grain bullet with velocities of 400–460 m/s. An increasing trend of injury severity was observed, ranging from simple linear fractures to combinations of linear and depressed fractures. Overall, the ability to identify skull fractures resulting from BABT can be used in forensic investigations. Our results demonstrate a high risk of skull fracture due to BABT and necessitate the prevention of BABT as a design factor in future generations of protective gear.     

Do graduated university incubator firms benefit from their relationship with university incubators?

Business incubators have become a popular policy option and economic development intervention tool. However, recent research shows that incubated firms may not benefit significantly from their incubator relationships, and may even be more vulnerable to failure post departure (graduation) from an incubator. These findings suggest that the impact of business incubation on new venture viability may be contingent on the type of support offered by an incubator and attributes of business environments within which incubation services are provided. Incubation services that protect and isolate ventures from key resource dependencies may hinder venture development and increase subsequent vulnerability to environmental demands. Alternatively, incubation services that help ventures connect and align with key resource dependencies are likely to promote firm survival. We propose that incubators vary in the services and resources they offer, and that university incubators typically provide greater connectivity and legitimacy with respect to important contingencies associated with key industry and community stakeholders. This leads us to propose that university affiliation is an important contingency that affects the relationship between firms’ participation in incubators and their subsequent performance. The purpose of this study is to evaluate this contingency by examining whether firms graduating from university incubators attain higher levels of post-incubation performance than firms participating in non-university affiliated incubators. We test this by evaluating the performance of a sample of graduated firms associated with the population of university-based incubators in the US contrasted against the performance of a matched cohort of non-incubated firms. The analysis uses an enhanced dataset that tracks the number of employees, sales, and the entry and graduation (departure) points of incubated firms from a university incubation program, so as to delineate the scope of influence of the incubator.