Young people and AIDS in Thailand and South East Asia

In 1999, 1.5 million Asians were infected with HIV (compared to 5.6 million people worldwide).² The epidemic, spurred by the sex industry and intravenous drug use in south east Asia, is tragically concentrated among the young: 50% of the 6.5 million living with the infection worldwide are under 25.³ There is great cause for concern, but also vast potential for change and, until there is a vaccine, prevention is the key. Thailand's example offers proof that prevention efforts in many Asian countries can meet with success if they are well conceived and applied. As in Thailand, youth is a key factor in combating the epidemic for the rest of south east Asia.     

Tax earmarking, party politics and gubernatorial veto: theory and evidence from US states

This paper provides a theory of earmarking based on the relative power of a legislature and executive. The politically powerful use earmarking as a means of resolving uncertainty and insulating preferred policy from the reach of future government. Tax revenue will be earmarked more often when political power is unified under one party or when a party has the legislative majority needed to overturn a gubernatorial veto. An empirical test of the theoretical predictions are conducted using a panel of data for US states. A state with a legislature controlled by a single party with a large enough majority to overturn a gubernatorial veto will earmark 5% more of its tax revenue than other states and a state with a unified government will earmark 6.5% more. Together these explain 18.5% of the observed decrease in the percentage of state tax revenues earmarked from 1954 to 1997.     

The government of self-regulation: on the comparative dynamics of corporate social responsibility

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and government. CSR is often viewed as self-regulation, devoid of government. We attribute the scholarly neglect of the variety of CSR-government relations to the inadequate attention paid to the important differences in the way in which CSR has ‘travelled’ (or diffused), and has been mediated by the national governance systems, and the insufficient emphasis given to the role of the government (or government agency) in the CSR domain. We go on to identify a number of different types of CSR-government configurations, and by following empirically the CSR development trajectories in Western Europe and East Asia in a comparative historical perspective, we derive a set of propositions on the changing dynamics of CSR-government configurations. In particular, we highlight the varied role that the governments can play in order to promote CSR in the context of the wider national governance systems.     

The patent lottery

A recent study by Boston academic economists James Bessen andMichael Muerer has argued that many patents are simply not worthhaving. Their case is based on the analysis of a large bodyof data. As James Bessen says, in a comment posted in responseto criticism on the IPKat weblog,

"We derived our estimatesof patent rents after reviewing 16 different papers publishedover 25 years, involving 17 different authors and several differentmethodologies.     

An Improved Version of a Tool Mark Comparison Algorithm

Chumbley et al. (2010) described a statistically based algorithm for comparing pairs of tool marks. They presented empirical evidence that the algorithm produces well‐separated similarity score values for “matching” and “non‐matching” pairs of tool marks. However, the algorithm has two substantial weaknesses. First, it is “uncalibrated” in the sense that error rates can be determined only through empirical investigation. Second, it relies on a randomized test and can lead to different similarity scores when the algorithm is repeatedly applied to the same pair of tool marks. We present an improved version of the procedure, which eliminates the randomized scores and yields more consistent and predictable error rate control. This is accomplished by replacement of a random sampling step from the original algorithm with a deterministic process. We demonstrate the improved algorithm and compare its performance to the original by applying to known “matching” and “non‐matching” pairs of tool marks.     

A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of the Impact of Public Assistance on Prisoner Recidivism

Introduction

The Welfare Act of 1996 banned welfare and food stamp eligibility for felony drug offenders and gave states the ability to modify their use of the law. Today, many states are revisiting their use of this ban, searching for ways to decrease the size of their prison populations; however, there are no empirical assessments of how this ban has affected prison populations and recidivism among drug offenders. Moreover, there are no causal investigations whatsoever to demonstrate whether welfare or food stamp benefits impact recidivism at all.

Objective

This paper provides the first empirical examination of the causal relationship between recidivism and welfare and food stamp benefits

Methods

Using a survival-based estimation, we estimated the impact of benefits on the recidivism of drug-offending populations using data from the National Corrections Reporting Program. We modeled this impact using a difference-in-difference estimator within a regression discontinuity framework.

Results

Results of this analysis are conclusive; we find no evidence that drug offending populations as a group were adversely or positively impacted by the ban overall. Results apply to both male and female populations and are robust to several sensitivity tests. Results also suggest the possibility that impacts significantly vary over time-at-risk, despite a zero net effect.

Conclusion

Overall, we show that the initial passage of the drug felony ban had no measurable large-scale impacts on recidivism among male or female drug offenders. We conclude that the state initiatives to remove or modify the ban, regardless of whether they improve lives of individual offenders, will likely have no appreciable impact on prison systems.

     

Disaggregating Mass Public Shootings: A Comparative Analysis of Disgruntled Employee,School, Ideologically motivated,and Rampage Shooters

This study compares the demographic, background, motivation, and pre‐event and event‐level behaviors across four types of mass public shooters: disgruntled employee, school, ideologically motivated, and rampage offenders. Using a database containing detailed information on 318 mass public shootings that occurred in the United States between 1966 and 2017, we find systematic differences in the characteristics, motivations, target selection, planning, and incident‐level behaviors among these offenders. The results show that ideologically motivated shooters to be the most patient, and methodical, and as a result the most lethal. Conversely, disgruntled employees, who are driven by revenge, tend to have little time to plan and consequently are the least lethal shooters. These, among other differences, underscore the need for prevention strategies and policies to be tailored to specific types of offenders. Furthermore, the results also highlight commonalities across offender type, suggesting that the social and psychological pathways to violence are universal across offenders.