Increasing the Human Capital of Children in Latin American Countries: The Role of Parents’ Time in Childcare

In this paper, we focus on the relationship between parents’ education and activities aimed at increasing the human capital of children (for example, educational childcare). Using time use surveys from Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia we find that in Mexico, Peru, and Colombia the level of education of both father and mother has a positive association with the time devoted to educational childcare, while in Ecuador only fathers’ level of education has a positive association with father’s time devoted to educational childcare. Furthermore, we find that the time devoted to educational childcare by parents is positively related in all four countries.     

Electoral Risk and Redistributive Politics in Mexico and the United States

What strategy does a rational party follow in allocating discretionary expenditure? This article conceives redistributive politics as an investment strategy where expenditure allocations respond to electoral risk. To show the effects of risk, it provides evidence from Pronasol in Mexico and an analysis of New Deal spending in the United States. The analysis finds that the federal administrations in both countries responded to systematic electoral risk. Spending diversification into risky voters was a rational response to chances of losing elections. The analysis hence connects electoral volatility with redistributive spending.     

The Limits of Emotivism. Some Remarks on Professor von Wright's Paper "Valuations"

According to the old tradition in ethical theory that Professor von Wright attempts to revive in his paper "Valuations," value judgments are to be viewed as nothing but expressions of approving or disapproving emotional attitudes. The present paper argues against this view on the grounds that (i) to have an emotional attitude towards an object o does not merely mean to express our liking or disliking of it, but to make a genuine (i.e., true or false) judgment about o ; and that (ii) this judgment, and not the emotional attitude o arises in us, is what we are justified to properly call a "value judgement."     

Trusts find a tax rule within the Italian financial bill 2007

The revision of the Italian tax laws on trusts reduces the riskof different interpretations on the taxation of trusts and whichshould encourage a better understanding and use of trusts byresidents in Italy. The authors examine the new law and discussthe interpretation of some of the more difficult provisions.     

Community participation and local government capacity in Vietnam: Conditions for coproduction

With Public Administration Reform in Vietnam comes more local government responsibility for policy making. Building on the results of a multiple case study research on housing and infrastructure upgrading projects in four cities of Vietnam, it has been confirmed that the community participation and local government capacity in urban housing and infrastructure upgrading projects are positively related. The level of community participation in urban housing and infrastructure upgrading projects is influenced by local government capacity, and in turn, it has effects on the outcomes. There are some important aspects for the enhancement of the level of community participation. These are effective leadership, the financial resources aspect, and communication/information exchange. Moreover, based on the patterns of community participation in urban upgrading projects, it has been found that participation is strongly supported by government actors in these four cases, and a process of coproduction between the local government and the affected communities has taken place.     

Security challenges in alliance: The southern periphery

Barack Obama's first year should appear disappointing only to persons blind to the constraints imposed by the Bush legacy, the still reeling world economy, an intimidating agenda of domestic problems, a polarised domestic politics, and at least temporarily intractable opponents of the President's undoubted ambitions to tame the Middle East and promote cooperation among the leading states without jettisoning a commitment to liberal values. By ordering an end to torture and moving to close Guantanamo, he has signalled the restoration of moral restraint on the exercise of American power and implicitly expressed belief in the efficacy of soft power assets. Additionally, he has attempted to create political space for change by pushing the conventional limits of American presidential discourse. A decent start, but the hard part lies ahead.     

Can foreign aid reduce income inequality and poverty?

This paper’s goal is to examine the effect of foreign aid on income inequality and poverty reduction for the period 1971–2002. Since simple cross-country regressions cannot be taken as ‘true’ time series findings we focus on dynamic panel data techniques, which allow accounting for potential simultaneity and heterogeneity problems. We find some weak evidence that foreign aid is conducive to the improvement of the distribution of income when the quality of institutions is taken into account; however, this result is not robust. This finding is consistent with recent empirical research on aid ineffectiveness in achieving economic growth or promoting democratic institutions.     

The Persistence of Home Bias for Important R&D in Wireless Telecom and Automobiles

We argue that in this age of globalization, important R&D—in automobiles and wireless telecommunication—exhibits a decisive home bias. This contrasts with findings on the rate and extent of globalization of the aggregate of activities classified as R&D. Sorting out R&D was deemed important at the outset by the firm, and comparing that to "regular" R&D by the same firms enables the argument. We take our findings on location a step further by examining, for this category of R&D, the reasons for nonglobalization.