Aligning National Bank Priorities with the Public Interest: National Benefit Banks and a New Stakeholder Approach

Banks have particular characteristics that set them apart from other business entities, including being more highly leveraged, benefiting from government safety nets, and generating massive negative externalities when they fail. These attributes mean that in addition to shareholder interests, bank directors should be allowed to carefully consider the interests of nonshareholders, such as creditors, taxpayers, and the overall economy, when making decisions. While directors of banks in states that have enacted constituency statutes may be allowed to consider nonshareholder interests, no federal act expressly allows directors of federally chartered banks to consider such interests. Moreover, to date, thirty‐seven states have enacted legislation to allow for the formation of public benefit corporations that require directors to consider the interests of nonshareholders. No federal law provides a clear path for federally chartered banks to do this. This article proposes dual federal legislation that would (1) enable directors of all federally chartered banks to expressly consider nonshareholder constituents when making decisions and (2) allow for the formation of national benefit banks that would require directors to consider nonshareholder interests in their decision‐making.     

Violence and the perception of risk associated with hosting refugees

Public Choice - How do individuals’ experiences with political violence affect their perceptions regarding the risk associated with hosting refugees? This is an important question given that...     

On Formal Theory and Statistical Methods: A Response to Carrubba, Yuen, and Zorn

e-mail: sign{at}mail.rochester.edu The recent article by Carrubba, Yuen, and Zorn (2007) (CYZ)attempts to relate the strategic random utility models in Signorino(1999, 2002, 2003) and in Signorino and Yilmaz (2003) to existinggame theory practice and to existing statistical techniques.It contributes to this literature by reminding us that comparativestatics analysis can be applied to the equilibria of these models.There are a number of claims in CYZ, however, that require clarification.In particular, the article's primary claim is that comparativestatics analysis, in combination with one of three proposedstatistical estimators, provides a simpler alternative to methodspreviously advocated. This claim (or combination of claims)is incorrect. When one examines the procedure CYZ recommends,it is no simpler for substantive researchers than anything previouslyrecommended. Moreover, none of the proposed estimators are new:they are exactly the same methods introduced in Signorino (1999,2003), in Signorino and Yilmaz (2003), in Signorino, Walker,and Bas (2002), and in Bas, Signorino, and Walker (2007).     

Recovery of DNA and fingerprints from touched documents

This study investigated the various factors affecting DNA profiling from DNA recovered from fingerprints deposited on paper before and after fingerprint enhancement treatments. The DNeasy^® plant mini kit (QIAGEN^®) was found to improve DNA recovery from paper by over 150% compared with the QIAamp^® mini kit. A significant decrease in the amount of DNA recovered was observed following treatment with DFO and/or Ninhydrin. This decrease in yield did not have a comparably significant effect on the quality of the SGM Plus™ profiles. Furthermore, this study found that whilst certain paper types, such as newspaper, magazine and filter paper allowed for the good recovery of DNA, common office paper and white card, strongly interfered with the recovery of DNA resulting in poor quality profiles.     

“Intuitive” Lie Detection of Children’s Deception by Law Enforcement Officials and University Students

Adults ability to detect childrens deception was examined. Police officers, customs officers, and university students attempted to differentiate between children who lied or told the truth about a transgression. When children were simply questioned about the event (Experiment 1), the adult groups could not distinguish between lie-tellers and truth-tellers. However, participants were more accurate when the children had participated in moral reasoning tasks (Experiment 2) or promised to tell the truth (Experiment 3) before being interviewed. Additional exposure to the children did not affect accuracy (Experiment 4). Customs officers were more certain about their judgments than other groups, but no more accurate. Overall, adults have a limited ability to identify childrens deception, regardless of their experience with lie detection.