Evidence of a filtered approach to environmental monitoring

This contribution focuses on the formulation of optimal inspection strategies and distinguishes between a targeting approach and a filtered approach to monitoring. Using a case study for the Flemish textile industry, we investigate the costs and benefits associated with specific monitoring and enforcement campaigns. The results show the beneficial role such campaigns can play in an effective and efficient monitoring policy. Thus we provide empirical evidence of the advantages associated with the filtered monitoring approach and show that filtering is an interesting complement to targeting.     

Accountability and Coalitions: Evidence from a Negotiation Experiment

This article tests the effect of accountability on negotiation outcomes in a face‐to‐face classroom experiment. Student participants were asked to form coalitions in groups of three. In the treatment condition, negotiators were held accountable by a personal forum during the formation of the coalition. In the control condition, negotiators were not held accountable. Results show that accountability leads to lower group performance in coalition negotiations. Accountability also reduced the willingness of negotiators to include all negotiators in a “grand coalition.” Rather, accountable negotiators reached agreement with a subset of negotiators. Accountability increased the odds of reaching no agreement. These findings challenge the idea of increased performance as a result of public accountability in the context of coalition negotiations.     

Inequality and Growth: Uncovering the Main Conclusions from the Empirics

Abstract

This paper is a critical survey of the empirical literature on the effects of inequality on economic growth. We conclude that it is most likely that the disparities found in the results are due to differences in the type of countries and time periods included in the samples, the variable used to measure inequality, the structure of the data, and the estimation techniques. These findings suggest that the mechanisms that link inequality to growth are likely to operate differently in different circumstances, an element that may offer important guidelines for both policy makers and researchers.     

Ecological Context,Concentrated Disadvantage,and Youth Reoffending: Identifying the Social Mechanisms in a Sample of Serious Adolescent Offenders

Serious youthful offenders are presented with a number of significant challenges when trying to make a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood. One of the biggest obstacles for these youth to overcome concerns their ability to desist from further antisocial behavior, and although an emerging body of research has documented important risk and protective factors associated with desistance, the importance of the neighborhoods within which these youth reside has been understudied. Guided by the larger neighborhood effects on crime literature, the current study examines the direct and indirect effects of concentrated disadvantage on youth reoffending among a sample of highly mobile, serious youthful offenders. We use data from Pathways to Desistance, a longitudinal study of serious youthful offenders (N = 1,354; 13.6 % female; 41.4 % African American, 33.5 % Hispanic, 20.2 % White), matched up with 2000 Census data on neighborhood conditions for youth’s main residence location during waves 7 and 8 of the study. These waves represent the time period in which youth are navigating the transition to adulthood (aged 18–22; average age = 20). We estimate structural equation models to determine direct effects of concentrated disadvantage on youth reoffending and also to examine the possible indirect effects working through individual-level mechanisms as specified by theoretical perspectives including social control (e.g., unsupervised peer activities), strain (e.g., exposure to violence), and learning (e.g., exposure to antisocial peers). Additionally, we estimate models that take into account the impact that a change in neighborhood conditions may have on the behavior of youth who move to new residences during the study period. Our results show that concentrated disadvantage is indirectly associated with youth reoffending primarily through its association with exposure to deviant peers. Taking into account youth mobility during the study period produced an additional indirect pathway by which concentrated disadvantage is associated with goal blockage (i.e., the gap between belief in conventional goals and perceived potential to reach those goals), which was then associated with exposure to deviant peers and indirectly, reoffending behavior. We conclude that the neighborhood effects literature offers a promising framework for continued research on understanding the successful transition to adulthood by serious youthful offenders.     

The Clinical Utility of Batterer Typologies

Domestic violence research has increasingly focused on the identification of batterer subgroups. Although typologies have been proposed using the utility of both empirical and theoretical methodologies, studies comparing empirically derived and theoretically based typology solutions have not been conducted. To what degree mental health practitioners can successfully classify batterers into subgroups is also not known. To address these questions, data were gathered from 49 male batterers who were treated for domestic violence in an outpatient mental health facility. A preliminary comparison of an empirically derived and a theoretically based typology solution revealed that many batterers were classified differently by the two strategies, although the overall grouping strategies were similar in content. Further, mental health professionals had substantial difficulty choosing which of the cluster analytically created subgroups into which to sort individual batterer's MMPI profile. Finally, different treatment efficacy indicators differentiated among the men in the two subtyping systems, suggesting that each system offers unique clinical information.The second author was supported as a predoctoral fellow by a NIMH Training grant     

Folktales of Legality: Family Law in the Procedural Republic The Narrative Structure of Family Law

This article explores the narrative structure offamily law where divorce is available on ground ofirretrievable breakdown following separation for oneyear. It argues that contemporary no-fault regimesexemplify law's procedural republic, a space with itsown legal, ethical and political requirements whichhas little if any connection to the life-worlds of theparties. Through an analysis of intractable parentingdisputes it argues that the interaction of no-faultdivorce, the requirement to have regard to the bestinterests of the child and the principle that childrenhave a right to contact with both parents has led tothe creation of particular narrative forms. Thesenarrative forms are characterised by their absolutismand map the unresolved grievances surrounding maritalbreakdown onto parenting disputes where the statutoryrequirements map them onto particular narratives andcounter-narratives. In this process, the narrativesof expert witnesses play an increasingly prominentrole, as do the naïve narratives put forward bylitigants in person. The article argues that thesenarratives are, in important ways, fictions and thatthey are compelled by the procedural requirements ofno-fault divorce. It argues further that thesefictions are a consequence of the empty narrative spaceat the heart of family law.