Voles don't take taxis

Johnson's paper advances understanding of sequences of burglaries committed by the same offender. Furthermore, it has heuristic value in suggesting new avenues for applicable research. Each of the current data shortcomings represents an opportunity for novel research approaches, and the optimum forager metaphor holds continuing appeal as an organizing principle helpful to operational policing.     

A Regulation of Bids for Dual Class Shares. Implication: Two Shares—One Price

This paper examines the consequences of a specific regulatory restriction on bids for dual class shares. Shares of different classes are often argued to have different prices because a premium will be paid to the superior voting shares in the case of a tender offer. This paper assumes a setup where regulations require that a tender offer pays the same relative premium to both classes of shares. In this setup, it is shown that both classes will sell at the same price as long as there is a strictly positive probability that either the current management is sufficiently strong or that a sufficiently strong rival will show up. Furthermore, under this weak condition the regulation is socially optimal in the sense that the management that provides the highest total firm value will be the management of the firm. Finally, the regulation is shown to favor (or protect) the holders of restricted voting shares and this is not necessarily at the expense of the holders of superior voting shares.The practical interest of this paper derives from the fact that some European countries have adopted different regulatory restrictions on bids for dual class shares. This has more or less occurred due to proposed EU Directives. The regulation examined in this paper applies to tender offers in Denmark. Empirical results on the voting premium in Denmark are shown to be consistent with the theoretical results in this paper.     

Backing Out or Backing In? Commitment and Consistency in Audience Costs Theory

Audience costs theory posits that domestic publics punish leaders for making an external threat and then backing down. One key mechanism driving this punishment involves the value the public places on consistency between their leaders’ statements and actions. If true, this mechanism should operate not only when leaders fail to implement threats, but also when they fail to honor promises to stay out of a conflict. We use a survey experiment to examine domestic responses to the president's decision to “back down” from public threats and “back into” foreign conflicts. We find the president loses support in both cases, but suffers more for “backing out” than “backing in.” These differential consequences are partially explained by asymmetries in the public's treatment of new information. Our findings strongly suggest that concerns over consistency undergird audience costs theory and that punishment for inconsistency will be incurred, regardless of the leader's initial policy course.     

More than darning socks

Joyce Stevens, Taking the Revolution Home: Work Among Women in the Communist Party of Australia: 1920–1945 (Sybylla) Fitzroy, 1987.     

BARGAINING OVER FIXED-TO-MOBILE TERMINATION RATES: COUNTERVAILING BUYER POWER AS A CONSTRAINT ON MONOPOLY POWER

The conventional wisdom that mobile operators are able to actas monopolists in pricing call termination on their networkshas recently been challenged by Hutchison 3G's entry into Europeanmobile markets. The European Commission's electronic communicationsregime allows national regulatory authorities to regulate mobiletermination rates if an operator is found to possess ‘significantmarket power’. This requires that the mobile operatornot be constrained by the ‘countervailing buyer power’of incumbents. The claim that incumbent operators possess countervailingbuyer power has been dismissed repeatedly because of their obligationto interconnect with other networks. This conclusion is erroneous.We analyse bargaining over fixed-to-mobile termination ratesand demonstrate that the existence of an interconnectivity obligationis entirely consistent with new entrants such as Hutchison 3Ghaving no market power at all in pricing call termination ontheir own networks.