Support for the environment post-transition? Material concerns and policy tradeoffs

Though many individuals are aware of the need to address environmental concerns, fewer are willing to pay for climate action or think the environment should be a priority for government spending. One compelling reason is that they prioritize using scarce resources to address immediate material concerns. This is particularly likely for individuals facing absolute material scarcity or for those who think they are relatively economically worse off, especially in contexts characterized by rapid transformation and volatility in the levels and quality of social welfare provision. To test these expectations, we analyze survey data from formerly Communist economies, which today find themselves with vastly different fortunes. Empirical findings suggest that absolute and relative material scarcity affect opinions regarding government spending on, and the willingness to pay more for, environmental action. However, willingness to pay more for government public services, inclusive of anti-poverty initiatives, has an impact on willingness to pay more for climate action, but in counter-intuitive ways. Overall, the results appear to suggest that explicitly addressing and relating individual living standards and inequality with environmental concerns may expand support for climate action.     

Fiscal Policy Composition,Public Debt,and Economic Activity

This paper uses a dynamic general equilibrium model i) toinvestigate how changes to different spending and revenue items of the budgetaffect economic activity and public finance; and ii) to evaluate thewelfare costs of alternative fiscal policy maneuvers. The paper shows that,unlike an increase in government purchases of final goods, an increasein public employment and transfers can have a contractionary effect onthe economy in the same way as a rise in tax rates. It also suggests thatfiscal adjustments implemented by cutting spending items increasehouseholds' welfare and are more effective in reducing the primary deficitand public debt than are increases in tax rates.     

Peace education research in the twenty-first century: three concepts facing crisis or opportunity?

This article focuses on the concepts of peace, education and research, and the ways in which they combine to form the field of peace education and peace education research. It discusses the ways in which each can be said to be facing a crisis of legitimation, representation and praxis, and the structural and cultural violence that inhibit efforts towards a more inclusive global conception of peace. It will review some ways in which it may be possible to rise to Gur-Ze’ev’s challenge to respond to post-structural critiques of the field. Drawing on participatory, auto ethnographic and arts-based research methodologies, it suggests ways of creating synergies between research and aspirations towards positive (rather than negative) peace.     

Messages from a rarely visited island: Duress and lack of consent in marriage

If we fear repetition in the signs that come to us from the world, it is because in that repetition we discover that the world's powers are always there, dozing perhaps, and surely somewhat removed, but still present and ready to swallow us as if we were a word in their language. If we feel strangely uneasy when we note that a word, automatically repeated, seems to lose all connection with its meaning, it is because at the very moment we sense the weakness, the precarious nature of the act on which all culture is based.I would like to thank the following for reading and commenting upon my work at various stages: Kate Green, Jeremy Roche and Qudsia Mirza.     

Competing bureaus and politicians: A compliance approach to the diversion of public funds

This article analyzes the effects of the compliance relationship between the governing party and two competing bureaus producing differentiated goods. We assume that the three players simultaneously and independently take their decision in terms of production and rents with perfect knowledge of each others strategies. Unlike Niskanen's competitive results, which are invariant with respect to the monopoly solution and only depend on the characteristics of the review process, here the budgetary equilibrium changes depending on the nature of the goods supplied by the competing bureaus and is affected both by their demand and cost conditions and by the resources available to the governing party.     

Two items of evidence, no putative source: an inference problem in forensic intelligence

Intelligence analysts commonly associate cases on the basis of similarities found in compared characteristics of scientific evidence. The present paper studies some of the inferential difficulties associated with such operations. An analysis is proposed that breaks down the reasoning process into inference to common source, and inference to case linkage. The former requires an approach to the difficulty associated with evaluating the similarities of items of evidence from different cases with no putative source being available. The latter requires consideration to be given to the relevance of evidence. Throughout the paper, probability theory is used to describe the nature of the proposed inferences. Graphical models are also introduced with the aim of providing further insight into the dependence and independence relationships assumed to hold among the various propositions considered. Notions from decision theory are used to discuss ways in which intelligence analysts may assist investigators in deciding whether or not cases should be considered as linked.