The Nature of Mass Murder and Autogenic Massacre

Incidents of mass murder have gained considerable media attention, but are not well understood in behavioral sciences. Current definitions are weak, and may include politically or ideological motivated phenomenon. Our current understanding of the phenomenon indicates these incidents are not peculiar to only western cultures, and appear to be increasing. Methods most prominently used include firearms by males who have experienced challenging setbacks in important social, familial and vocational domains. There often appears to be important autogenic components (Mullen Behavioral Sciences and the Law (22)3, 2004), including dysthymic reactions and similar antecedents. There have been observations of possible seasonal variations in mass murders, but research to date is inadequate to establish this relationship. It is recommended behavioral sciences and mental health researchers increase research efforts on understanding mass killings, as the current socioeconomic climate may increase vulnerability to this phenomenon, and the incidents are not well understood despite their notoriety.     

China's Energy-Driven ‘Soft Power’

Energy security has prompted China to turn its strategic gaze to the seas for the first time in six centuries. For now, Taiwan remains Beijing's uppermost priority, but there are signs that Chinese leaders are already contemplating the “day after” matters in the Taiwan Strait to resolve them to their satisfaction. In the meantime, China is attempting to shape the diplomatic environment in vital regions such as Southeast and South Asia using “soft power.” By invoking the voyages of Zheng He, the Ming Dynasty's “eunuch admiral,” Beijing sends the message that it is a trustworthy guarantor of Asian maritime security. But the success of this soft-power strategy remains in doubt.     

On tort as an implicit insurance system with state-dependent utility: The case of child mortality risk

Parents deriving utility from children and their material standard of living will equate neither marginal utilities of consumption nor of income across states of the world and, contrary to claims in the literature but according with the historical record, will sometimes purchase fair insurance against child mortality risks even if a child's death reduces the marginal utility of consumption. Thus criticism of tort as an implicit insurance system should be refocused. It is not inefficient per se because it leads to payouts in death-contingent states but, rather, because the implicit third-party insurance which it provides crowds out more cost-effective first party insurance which households would and did purchase prior to the expansion of suppliers' liability under tort.     

Interest groups and lobbying in Latin America: theoretical and practical considerations

The major purpose of this Special Issue is to provide the first comprehensive treatment of interest groups in Latin America. This first article provides background to this end by defining key terms and concepts; explaining the ubiquity of power groups, interests and interest groups in politics and government, and the fundamental elements of an interest group system, relating all this to past characteristics of Latin America's politics. Additionally, the article identifies the reasons for the dearth of studies of interest groups in the region and makes the case for the value of such studies. Drawing on this background, the article also sets out a heuristic for approaching the contributions to this volume and for developing a theoretical framework for the analysis of Latin American interest group systems. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Whatever it takes’: Polanyian perspectives on the eurozone crisis and the gold standard

Abstract

The parallels between the monetary politics of the gold standard and that of the eurozone crisis are striking and have informed contemporary debate about the future of European integration. The eurozone crisis has been widely interpreted as the result of a mismatch between international monetary integration and a concomitant lack of fiscal integration, or more broadly as the result of a European Union which is economically integrated, yet politically fragmented. The prospect of a 1930s-style descent into division and nationalism has formed the backdrop against which moves towards extensive integration at the supranational level have been made. Polanyi diagnosed the political effects of monetary integration through his analysis of the gold standard system in The great transformation, making it important that we unpack his analysis and consider carefully how a Polanyian perspective might apply to the eurozone today. I argue that Polanyi encourages us to look beyond ‘monetary vs. fiscal’ and ‘economic vs. political’ characterizations of European integration, and instead to examine how such oppositions are formed in the first place and how they constrain political debate, particularly in terms of how ‘sound money’ is established as the highest policy concern. Through a re-reading of Polanyi's distinction between ‘all-purpose’ and ‘special-purpose’ money, I highlight how, despite the huge efforts undertaken to preserve the identity of the euro as an all-purpose currency, the eurozone crisis has rendered visible a series of latent conflicts between the different functions of money. This analysis moves us away from the ‘monetary vs. fiscal’ integration view of the eurozone crisis and towards a more open study of how the various possible purposes of money are being articulated and challenged, offering some limited hope for alternatives to the current eurozone policy agenda.     

On solow's residual with intermediate goods

Many efforts have been made to identify the sources of the ‘unexplained’ output, better known as the ‘residual’ generated in the process of growth. The paper is an attempt to show that the magnitude of the estimated residual based on Professor Solow's well‐known method actually depends on how the dependent variable in the production function is defined. Part of the computed residual is built‐in if value‐added, instead of gross production, is chosen as the dependent variable when Solow's method is applied to a disaggregated model. The paper also demonstrates how the extent of the bias is measured.