Crazy for Real Estate

Cultural factors, lack of household investment alternatives, and local governments’ reliance on property-related taxes are all contributing to soaring housing prices in urban China, despite the slew of regulatory measures of the government.     

Legal,Extra-Legal,and Organizational Factors in the Disposition of Juveniles

This paper examines the effect of legal, extra-legal, and organizational factors on the processing of delinquents in selected California counties. A brief review of each perspective is given followed by a discussion of the data base and variables included in the analysis. Overall, bivariate relationships stress the importance of legal compared to extra-legal characteristics. The analysis also reveals clear evidence of the importance of organizational differences in juvenile court processing. Multivariate analysis revealed few differences in this pattern with the exception of “race” where some degree of interaction was found to exist when controls for offense were introduced. An analysis of covariance model shows that case sequence, county, and referral source were the most important predictors of case outcome.     

DRIVING WHILE BLACK: BIAS PROCESSES AND RACIAL DISPARITY IN POLICE STOPS*

We estimate the degree of racial disparity in police vehicular stops separately for local and state police in North Carolina in the year 2000. We introduce four mechanisms that might produce racial disparities in police stops—racial profiling, race sensitive police deployment, cognitive bias and stereotyping, and prejudice. We then model the relative odds of police vehicle stops as a function of race, driving behavior, and other demographic statuses separately by police organization type, with controls for omitted variable bias at both the driver and spatial level. We find only weak evidence of racial disparity in stops by officers of the state highway patrol but stronger evidence in those made by local police officers.     

Implementing GASB 45: Recommended Best Practices in Local Government

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board issued Statement No. 45—Accounting and Financial Reporting by Employers for Postemployment Benefits Other Than Pensions in 2004, requiring local governments to actuarially determine their annual required contribution to fund other postemployment benefits (OPEB) and to account for the unfunded amount as a liability on annual financial statements. This article discusses best practices on the implementation and management of this accounting standard, including actuarial practices, funding decisions, and benefit changes. It also presents how Phase I cities and counties in North Carolina implemented Statement No. 45 for further explanation. The hope is that these best practices will serve as a guidepost for making OPEB policy decisions, especially among smaller local governments, on the criteria of financial accountability and sustainability.     

What's an Elite to Do? The Threat of Populism from Left,Right and Centre

Anthony Painter's report for Policy Network correctly describes populism as a ‘democratic argument’ which sets up a morally pure ‘people’ against vilified ‘elites’, in binary opposition. This is an argument which is increasingly prominent in political discourse, whether the elites in question are political, financial or technocratic. Painter focuses on the now‐familiar ‘radical right‐wing’ version of populism, as reflected across Europe in the rise of parties such as the UKIP. He omits discussion of other types of populism (of the left and centre), which perhaps represent the future for populist politics.     

A METHODOLOGICAL ADDITION TO THE CROSS‐NATIONAL EMPIRICAL LITERATURE ON SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND HOMICIDE: A FIRST TEST OF THE POVERTY‐HOMICIDE THESIS*

Dozens of cross‐national studies of homicide have been published in the last three decades. Although nearly all these studies test for an association between inequality and homicide, no studies test for a poverty—homicide association. This absence is disconcerting given that poverty is one of the most consistent predictors of area homicide rates in the abundant empirical literature on social structure and homicide in the United States. Using a sample that coincides closely with similar recent studies, applying a proxy for poverty (infant mortality) that is commonly employed in noncriminological cross‐national research, and controlling for several common covariates (including inequality), this study provides the first test of the poverty—homicide hypothesis at the cross‐national level. The results reveal a positive and significant association between a nation's level of poverty and its homicide rate. The findings also suggest that we may need to reassess the strong conclusions about an inequality—homicide association drawn from prior studies, as this relationship disappears when poverty is included in the model.