The profitability life-cycle of direct investment: an international panel study

In this paper we test competing hypotheses about the shape of the time-profile of foreign direct investment profitability on a panel of countries. Using partial linearization method we derive the time-profile of the cumulative profitability for the stock of direct investment from aggregate macroeconomic data. By testing the non-linearity hypothesis of the cumulative profitability life-cycle of direct investment we find a cubic curve.

The FSB literati: the first prize winners of the Russian federal security service literature award competition, 2006–2018

This article analyzes the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) intervention in the process of popular culture production in Russia. After briefly discussing the KGB precedent, I focus on the FSB annual art awards established in 2006. Although these awards include six categories and three prizes per each category plus honorable mentions, due to the length limitations, I focus only on the first prize winners of the literature award (awarded for fiction, nonfiction, and journalism). The key questions I investigate are, first, what kinds of literary works the FSB deems worthy of the first prize and, secondly, what the FSB literary taste conveys about the self-image that it has sought to construct for domestic and international audiences as well as about its strategic orientation. I conclude that the FSB has a predilection for spy fiction based on real historical events and personalities. Some of the first prize winners are biographies and reference books, but the majority can be categorized as historical fiction. Not surprisingly, they depict self-confident and patriotic intelligence officers who ultimately, though not without a lot of effort, overcome the assorted villains: the tsarist officers, the criminal gangs, the corrupt officials and turncoats in contemporary Russia and, last but not least, the CIA operatives. Curiously, though they generally deal with the threat from the West, many FSB-awarded historical novels are set in the Russian Central Asian or Far Eastern regions. The emerging thematic patterns reveal the contours of the present and future FSB strategic orientation.     

Are Campaign Contributions a Form of Speech? Evidence from Recent US House Elections

This paper investigates the effects of the sources ofcandidates' campaign funding on their electoral outcomes, withparticular emphasis on whether candidates who rely on a narrowbase of funding suffer adverse electoral consequences. Anextensive dataset consisting of over 650,000 contributions toHouse candidates in elections from 1980 to 1992 is used. Theresults reveal a negative relationship between theconcentration of contributions and voteshare for open seatcandidates and challengers. This finding appears to havesignificant implications for some of the empirical premisesunderlying the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Buckley v.Valeo decision. At the very least, it represents an importantstylized fact about US elections that is robust over 1980–1992 period.     

Violence and Xenophobia as Means of Social Control in Times of Collapse: The Soviet Occupation of Post‐War Germany, 1945–1947*

This article explores an overlooked aspect of the Soviet occupation of post‐war Germany, namely, the influence of wartime violence on German behavioural patterns during the post‐war period. Whilst many historians have noted that violent Soviet conduct in Germany merely encouraged the intensification of existing anti‐Soviet attitudes therein, few have attempted to thoroughly investigate its influence on German behaviour. The conclusions made by those few historians who have done so are unsupported by the Soviet archival evidence drawn upon in the article. Using this evidence, the article highlights the tentative links between the violent repression of an occupation force and the muted responses of its subjects. It concludes that the nature of the repression and of the broader occupation landscape in which it developed, was integral in ensuring that the characteristically docile behaviour of the German population toward the Soviet occupier continued unabated throughout much of the occupation period.     

“Worth It If It Saves Just One Life”? Ethical Reservations Regarding AMBER Alert

This article provides an exploratory ethical critique of the AMBER Alert system. Using illustrative examples of actual AMBER Alerts and the public discourse regarding them, it notes potentially problematic impacts on victims and/or offenders, and investigation of child abduction cases, as well as the public discourse about the system in particular and threats to children in general. None of these issues have been adequately addressed either by system operators in their public portrayals of the system or rigorous research as to their practical impacts, or in the suggestion of possible remedies. At the heart of the open and unresolved ethical quandaries confronting the AMBER Alert system lies a failure on the part of system operators and supporters to acknowledge apparent limits to the system's effectiveness, and an exaggeration of its capacities in the absence of adequate evidence, which should be sought in earnest through rigorous research. The article argues that system operators should discuss AMBER Alert more candidly and downplay expectations to avert at least some of the problems its facile portrayal can engender. The article also provides directions for future research on the system—research which could either show some of the ethical reservations that are cited to be moot, or reveal ways they could be resolved.     

Research Note: Assessing the validity of college samples: Are students really that different?

Objective

The purpose of this research note is to explore the validity of college student samples for criminology and criminal justice research. Some scholars have suggested that college populations are comprised of individuals who are different from the rest of society and that the use of college students for social research may distort our theoretical understanding of crime and criminality.

Method

The National Youth Survey is used to assess, college students’ self-reported behaviors, frequency of behaviors, and attitudes in relation to the general population.

Results

The results indicate that there is almost no statistically significant difference in behaviors and only minor differences in the frequency of behaviors and attitudes.

Conclusion

The findings from this investigation suggest that while college students may be culturally unique, this uniqueness does not seem to affect validity.     

Desirability and effects of campaign spending limits

This paper measures the influence of campaign spending on incumbent and challenger votes in Canadian federal elections. The goal is to assess the influence of spending ceilings on political competition and on voter welfare. It is found that in the 1984 and 1988 Canadian federal elections challengers could increase their voteshare by spending but that incumbents could not. These results are used in a simulation to show that if ceilings were lowered, incumbent voteshare would rise. On this evidence it is argued that spending ceilings may tilt the playing field in favour of incumbents and reduce political competition.     

A painful break or agony without end? The stateness problem and its influence on democratization in Croatia and Serbia

That matters of the state must always be resolved before democratization seems to be a fairly common position in the scholarly literature. There are, however, also scholars that stress the importance of an alternative perspective: ‘no democracy, no state’. This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of this very important issue, advocating the need for a more nuanced argument about the relationship between the state and democracy. To do so, Croatia and Serbia serve as empirical examples as their different outcomes regarding the consolidation of democracy are explained as due to their (un)resolved stateness problem. The article uses process tracing to explain these outcomes and attempts to craft a minimally sufficient explanation of the outcomes by developing causal mechanisms.