The social cost of adoption agencies

The use of adoption agencies to place adoptable children is compared with a market. The lost consumer surplus to potential adopting parents amounts to between $45 million and $1.7 billion per year. In addition, evidence is presented from follow-up studies of adoptions to indicate that social workers do a poorer job of matching parents with children than the market would. Finally, recent trends are surveyed to show that the market for parenthood rights is continuing to evolve despite various barriers to its development.This is the day they give babies away With a half a pound of tea You open the lid, and out pops the kid With a ten-year guarantee. (Margaret Berry)     

THE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT

Domestic abuse allegations have become a serious problem in our society. They present our court system with difficult decisions and problems. This becomes an even more difficult situation when the abused is an illegal immigrant. Many of the abused are too frightened or intimidated to go to the authorities for help. This article examines how the U.S. government is attempting to protect these immigrants .     

Infrared Imaging of the Crime Scene: Possibilities and Pitfalls

All objects radiate infrared energy invisible to the human eye, which can be imaged by infrared cameras, visualizing differences in temperature and/or emissivity of objects. Infrared imaging is an emerging technique for forensic investigators. The rapid, nondestructive, and noncontact features of infrared imaging indicate its suitability for many forensic applications, ranging from the estimation of time of death to the detection of blood stains on dark backgrounds. This paper provides an overview of the principles and instrumentation involved in infrared imaging. Difficulties concerning the image interpretation due to different radiation sources and different emissivity values within a scene are addressed. Finally, reported forensic applications are reviewed and supported by practical illustrations. When introduced in forensic casework, infrared imaging can help investigators to detect, to visualize, and to identify useful evidence nondestructively.     

Economic development and the administration and regulation of transport

This paper examines the impact on total factor productivity (TFP) growth in the South of North-South and South-South trade-related technology diffusion and of foreign direct investment (FDI). North-South and South-South trade-related research and development (R&D) stocks are constructed based on industry-specific R&D in the North, North-South and South-South trade patterns, and input-output relations in the South. The main findings are: 1. Both North-South and South-South trade-related R&D have a positive impact on TFP growth in the South; 2. FDI has a positive, though smaller, impact on TFP growth; 3. The impact on TFP growth of trade-related technology diffusion increases with the level of education in the case of North-South trade but not in the case of South-South trade.     

Standard of Living and Disability in Cambodia

Little is known about the extra costs faced by households with disabled members in low resource settings and the impact of these costs on living standards. In this paper we estimate the direct cost associated with disability for households in Cambodia. Using the Standard of Living approach, the direct cost associated with having a member with disabilities is estimated to be 19 per cent of monthly household consumption expenditure. Accounting for the direct cost of disability doubles the poverty rate amongst households with disabled members from 18 per cent to 37 per cent, and increases the poverty gap from 3 to 8 per cent. A comparison of the direct cost associated with disability and income support received from government and family sources reveals that only 7 per cent of the costs of disability are met. Our findings suggest that, in the absence of increased coverage of public income support, households with disabled members will continue to experience a lower standard of living compared to households without disability in Cambodia.     

Reconsidering individual-level heterogeneity in economic voting

This paper proposes a general theory of individual-level heterogeneity in economic voting based on the perspective that the strength of the relationship varies with factors that influence the relevance of the economic evaluation to the vote choice. We posit that the electoral relevance of the economic evaluation increases with the strength of partisanship as well as political sophistication. Given the strong correlation between partisanship and sophistication, this theoretical perspective casts doubt on extant evidence that more sophisticated voters are more likely to hold the incumbent party electorally accountable for macroeconomic performance since this result might be an artifact of failing to control for the economic evaluation being more relevant to the vote choice of stronger partisans. Our statistical investigation of this question finds no significant evidence that sophistication conditions the economic voting relationship once the conditioning effect of partisanship is included in the model. This finding suggests that individual-level heterogeneity in the strength of the economic voting relationship is largely due to stronger partisans voting more consistently with their national economic evaluation than to more sophisticated voters being more policy-oriented by holding the incumbent party more electorally accountable for macroeconomic performance.     

Whistleblowers, the Public Interest, and the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998

Corporate crime and organisational deviance raise complex legal issues. An initial problem lies simply in identifying when such wrongdoing has occurred. Here, whistleblowers can perform a valuable service. However, publicized cases suggest that they often pay dearly for their candour, encountering unfair sanctions at work. In Britain, the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 seeks to protect "good-faith" whistleblowers from employer reprisals. In the wake of this legislation, the authors examine whistleblowing from a socio-legal perspective, asking what motivates whistleblowers, how do institutions respond to them, can legislation adequately protect them, and what effects will PIDA have on whistleblowing, employment practices, the culture of the workplace and, ultimately, society.