Educating local government managers: a national survey of MPA programs

This article reports the findings of a national survey of masters degree programs in public administration. The goal of this study was to assess the effectiveness of efforts to educate local government managers. The findings suggest that programs with an overall focus on local government management or a specialized concentration are distinctly different from generalist programs. Furthermore, they indicate that internship programs may suffer from some serious shortcomings and that they may not offer an effective content supplement for generalist programs.     

Labor's ace in the hole: casino organizing in Las Vegas

This article critically evaluates the argument that individuals and nations have a right to forget their past. Since our histories shape our identities, forgetting is unnecessary, impossible, and politically problematic. Cosmopolitanism allows individuals to combine memory and de-essentialized group identities with more universal identities. Further, governments have no right to forget the past, since they could use this right to avoid grappling with the legacies of historical injustices in the present. Against the view that time heals all wounds, I argue that promoting justice in the present requires us to recognize the legacies of historical injustices such as slavery and to promote some form of restitution.     

Comment on Martin D. Abravanel's “Public knowledge of fair housing law: Does it protect against housing discrimination?"—Organize! the limits of public awareness in ensuring fair housing

Abstract

Public awareness may contribute to enforcement of fair housing law. But available resources would be more productively used if they were invested directly in more aggressive and innovative law enforcement activities. Emerging debates over land use practices, particularly those pertaining to sprawl and affordable housing, may create new avenues for fair housing activity. The overriding challenge for the fair housing community, however, is to organize an effective constituency that can demand greater attention to education, enforcement, or other actions to achieve fair housing goals.     

Joint production and consumption in traditional households: Fuelwood and crop residues in two districts in Nepal

Forest conversion by agricultural households is the leading cause of deforestation. Yet we know little about agricultural household use of forest and tree products. This article measures household production of and demand for fuelwood and fuel substitutes in two districts in Nepal. Women play a larger role in collection in the district dependant on production from common forestlands. Men and agricultural capital are more important inputs in the district dependant on production from private lands. The article also measures demand elasticities for fuelwood, combustible agricultural residues, and improved stoves (a technological substitute), each by household income group. All price and income demand elasticities are less than one. The substitution elasticities between residues and fuelwood are less than one. Residues are more important substitutes for low income households and improved stoves are more important substitutes for high income households.     

The New Model of Economic Management

One of General Secretary Gorbachev's key economic advisors outlines the basic components of a new “model” of economic management in the USSR (e.g., new forms of private and cooperative activity, increased flexibility in production, relationships in state enterprises, election of directors), to be in place by the early 1990s. Also presented is the rationale for the current timetable of the reform. American participants in the first joint Soviet Economy roundtable then discuss with the Academician the role of collectives and local Party officials in the new system of management. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: 027, 052, 124.     

Ceylon Coffee,the Comtesse and the Consignee: A Historical Reappraisal of Rochefoucauld v Boustead

This paper examines the Court of Appeal judgment of Rochefoucauld v Boustead [1897] 1 Ch. 196 through use of archive records, rarely cited law reports and nineteenth-century academic opinion. A full and hitherto untold account of the facts of the case is presented. It is revealed that the land which was the subject matter of the dispute was sold under the direction of the Ceylon District Court, and that the plaintiff was an accomplished individual who utilized various means to frustrate her former husband's attempts to obtain the land. The Court of Appeal's rulings that the defendant was a trustee of the land for the prevention of fraud, and that the trust was to be treated as an express trust, are also analysed with the aim of establishing how these issues were understood at the time of the judgment. It is argued that both of these aspects of the judgment were regarded as uncontroversial because there was a settled concept of equitable fraud, and because trusts imposed for the prevention of such fraud were an established category of trust in their own right, separate from express, resulting or constructive trusts.     

Introducing Human Mandible Identification [(hu)MANid]: A Free,Web‐Based GUI to Classify Human Mandibles

Statistical programs have revolutionized the way in which forensic anthropologists conduct casework by allowing practitioners to use computationally complex analytics at the click of a button. Importantly, the products of these statistical programs are reproducible and contain measures of error or uncertainty, thereby strengthening conclusions. This paper is an introduction to (hu)MANid, a free, web‐based application that uses linear and mixture discriminant function analyses to classify human mandibles into one of many worldwide and/or periodic reference groups. The mechanics, development, and use of the application will be discussed. Further, the program was tested against other software to compare model performances and classifications. Total correct classifications among the test cases and programs were identical. Ten mandibles were tested using both statistical procedures. Mixture discriminant analysis improved classification by an average of 9.3% and correctly identified three more mandibles than LDA. Therefore, we believe (hu)MANid will be an asset to the anthropological community.