Globalization,government spending and taxation in the OECD

Abstract. This article assesses the impact of globalization on welfare state effort in the OECD countries. Globalization is defined in terms of total trade, imports from low wage economies, foreign direct investment, and financial market integration. Welfare effort is analyzed in terms both of public spending (and separately on social service provision and income transfer programs) and taxation (effective rates of capital taxation and the ratio of capital to labor and consumption taxes). Year–to–year increases in total trade and international financial openness in the past three decades have been associated with less government spending. In contrast, integration into global markets has not been associated either with reductions in capital tax rates, or with shifts in the burden of taxation from capital to consumption and labor income. Moreover, countries with greater inflows and outflows of foreign direct investment tend to tax capital more heavily.     

Forensic voice comparison and the paradigm shift

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in the forensic comparison sciences. The new paradigm can be characterised as quantitative data-based implementation of the likelihood-ratio framework with quantitative evaluation of the reliability of results. The new paradigm was widely adopted for DNA profile comparison in the 1990s, and is gradually spreading to other branches of forensic science, including forensic voice comparison. The present paper first describes the new paradigm, then describes the history of its adoption for forensic voice comparison over approximately the last decade. The paradigm shift is incomplete and those working in the new paradigm still represent a minority within the forensic–voice-comparison community.     

Czechoslovak Ruthenia’s 1925 Latinization campaign as the heritage of nineteenth-century Slavism

In 1925, two newspapers, both published in Uzhhorod, advocated using the Latin alphabet in the Czechoslovak province of Ruthenia. Efforts by the Czech Agrarian party to consolidate the Republic played some role, but the plans mostly emerged from a longer tradition of Slavic thought which imagined literacy in more than one alphabet, conforming to more than one literary standardization. We trace the nineteenth-century history of Slavic linguistic ideologies from the original Panslavism of Jan Herkel, the “Slavic Reciprocity” of Jan Kollár and his successors, to the Kollárian Czechoslovakism used to legitimate the first Czechoslovak Republic. We survey Ruthenia’s status within Czechoslovakia and then contrast two 1925 Latinization schemes: a proposal from Czech chauvinist Franti?ek Svoj?e and a proposal from Rusyn journalist Viktor Barany. While Rusyns mostly remained with the Cyrillic alphabet, arguments made for and against Latinization show that nineteenth century Slavic ideals endured far into the twentieth century.     

Course and Severity of Maternal Depression: Associations with Family Functioning and Child Adjustment

Number of lifetime episodes, duration of current episode, and severity of maternal depression were investigated in relation to family functioning and child adjustment. Participants were the 151 mother–child pairs in the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) child multi-site study. Mothers were diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder; children (80 males and 71 females) ranged in age from 7 to 17 years. Measures of child adjustment included psychiatric diagnoses, internalizing and externalizing symptoms, and functional impairment. Measures of family functioning included family cohesion, expressiveness, conflict, organization, and household control; parenting measures assessed maternal acceptance and psychological control. Children of mothers with longer current depressive episodes were more likely to have internalizing and externalizing symptoms, with this association being moderated by child gender. Mothers with more lifetime depressive episodes were less likely to use appropriate control in their homes.

Is the Environment Getting Its Fair Share? An Analysis of the Australian Water Reform Process Using a Social Justice Framework

Australia is currently undergoing fundamental and far-reaching reforms in water management that have been prompted by wide-spread environmental degradation caused by past water management practices. This paper is an extract of a wider study that explores how governments incorporate social justice into water reform policies and how that effort is perceived by non-government stakeholders. Using a comprehensive Social Justice Framework, we used a mixed methods approach that combines a quantitative content analysis of key water reform documents with a qualitative semistructured interview process to identify and analyse three principles of social justice that apply to the environment as a water stakeholder: need as a distributive justice principle, representativeness and accuracy as procedural justice principles. We found that the environment is identified as a legitimate water stakeholder whose needs are meant to be assured through the water reform process. However, the environment suffers from a crisis of identity. Other water stakeholders claim to speak for the environment but say different things. Thus, due to a diversity of voices, strong government intention to satisfy environmental needs is diluted in practice. Furthermore, the prerogative to define and measure environmental needs through science, while deemed to be fair and objective, leads to unintended consequences that complicate management and disenfranchise less scientifically capable stakeholders. Overall, we believe that the formal recognition of the environment as a stakeholder in water reform is a significant forward step but its crisis of identity must be resolved before the environment can fully utilise its new role as a stakeholder.