Federal Reserve transparency: The more things change, the more they stay the same?

The calculus of electoral politics and the central bank’s bureaucratic objectives can explain the recent trend toward greater Federal Reserve transparency and can shed light on the likelihood that this trend will continue. If incumbent politicians see no electoral advantage in pressuring the Fed to become still more transparent, and if the Fed sees no benefit to greater transparancy, then further changes in current practice are unlikely. Private sector agents will continue to face a significant degree of uncertainty about the Fed’s policy objectives and about the information that policymakers consider in the monetary policy decision process.     

Avoiding "Aborigines": Paul Hasluck and the Northern Territory Welfare Ordinance, 1953

Between 1951 and 1953, Commonwealth Minister for Territories, Paul Hasluck, oversaw the drafting of an item of Northern Territory legislation that became the Welfare Ordinance, 1953. While in many ways consistent with earlier Aboriginal legislation, in one significant respect it represented a radical innovation since it never once referred to "Aborigines" or any other racial category. This article takes the Welfare Ordinance as the starting point for an exploration of Hasluck's model of Aboriginal assimilation.     

Rationalizing pay inequity: women engineers,pervasive patriarchy and the neoliberal chimera

This article argues that neoliberalism with its pervasive patriarchy and co-option of feminism, renders women tacitly complicit in gendered pay inequalities. We show that in New Zealand, one of the world’s most neoliberal nations, women who might precisely be best equipped to argue for equal pay – engineers – do not do so because neoliberalism makes many feel responsible for, and accepting of, their lower salaries. In interviews and focus groups, many women engineers talk of deserving less pay than men because of their ‘choices’, their ‘personality’ and their lack of ‘responsibility’. In a disempowering environment, some women show agency by disavowing gender as a reason for the pay gap. Such narratives of individualized shortcomings reduce hope of collective action that might uncover and dismantle the systemic causes of pay inequity, which are not due to a woman’s choice or personality but rather what we frame as the neoliberal chimera.     

Credit and the rural poor: The changing policy environment in Bangladesh

This paper reviews the changing policy environment as regards credit for development in rural Bangladesh. The experiences of a range of both successful and failed formal credit interventions in rural areas are employed to reflect upon the adequacy of the currently dominant analytical approach, (Rural Financial Markets) to credit for development. The importance for the rural poor of the quality of access to credit is stressed and the political economy of access is examined. Nevertheless, the ‘Rural Financial Market’ analysis has directed recent credit policy shifts in Bangladesh, and the paper moves on to consider the implications of this for development organisations/projects seeking to work with the formal banking system. A typology of the forms of relationship between projects and the banking system is introduced and a case study of proposals for a line of credit for a production and employment generation programme is presented. This case study seeks to explore the possibilities of restructuring the access situation with respect to formal credit given the current policy environment. The paper concludes by raising some of the broader consequences of the policy changes for the rural development strategies in Bangladesh.     

Volunteer Immunity and the Public Sector

Every jurisdiction in Australia has now enacted legislation to protect volunteers of community organisations and all levels of government from incurring personal civil liability. In most jurisdictions these laws transfer liabilities incurred by volunteers to the public sector organisation that organises the work they undertake. This article provides a brief background to the reforms before undertaking an examination of the impact of the legislation upon public sector organisations and their volunteers.     

Morphological Features of Regurgitate and Defecatory Stains Deposited by Five Species of Necrophagous Flies are Influenced by Adult Diets and Body Size

The morphological characteristics of artifacts from five species of necrophagous flies were examined following feeding on several types of diets. Four types of insect stains were produced by each species: regurgitate, defecatory, translocation, and tarsal tracks. Regurgitate was the most frequent type deposited (70.9 ± 2.4%), followed by defecatory (19.8 ± 4.0%), tarsal tracks (8.6 ± 1.2%), and translocation (0.7 ± 0.1%). Artifact shapes, sizes, and color were highly variable and species and diet specific. Calliphora vicina and Sarcophaga bullata consistently deposited the largest artifacts after feeding, whereas Chrysomya rufifacies and Ch. megacephala produced more tarsal tracks than the other species examined. Artifacts with tails were infrequently observed (4.1 ± 0.6% of all stains) but occurred as either defecatory or regurgitate stains. The widely variable morphologies of all types of fly artifacts underscores the view that insect stains cannot be distinguished from human bloodstains based on morphology alone.     

Training police for intercultural sensitivity: a critical review and discussion of the research

Abstract: Conventional wisdom suggests police officers are insensitive towards members of cultural groups different from their own and, thus, are in need of training. This paper uses meta-analysis to examine the educational interventions that have been used to modify police attitudes towards others. Sommaire: On s'entend generalement pour dire que les agents de police montrent peu de sensibilite envers les membres de groupes culturels differents du leur, et qu'ils ont done besoin d'y etre sensibilises. Le present article fait appel a la meta-analyse pour examiner les types de formation auxquels on a fait appel pour faire evoluer l'attitude de la police envers les autres.