Ingestion of pointed objects in a complex suicide

A 51-year-old woman with a psychiatric history of depression and drug abuse was found hanged in her bedroom. The ligature was a scarf attached to the door handle. The autopsy findings suggested that two methods of suicide had been used one after the other. In the first stage, numerous nails, pins and needles were swallowed; in the second stage, the suicide was completed by hanging.     

Political participation of youth. Young Germans in the European context

Impatience with politics, weariness with political commitment, and individualisation are labels frequently used to characterise the political involvement of young people. Empirical analyses show a rather more complex picture. A basic willingness to become politically involved and to express one’s political opinion is apparent: Indeed, many young people use numerous and varied opportunities to express themselves politically; however, this usually covers only occasional activities. Not surprisingly, participation in some traditional associations has become lower. On the other hand, affinity and commitment to new social movements remain fairly consistent. Participation patterns differ according to gender, education level, and the youth’s place of origin (federal states of the former Federal Republic, or former GDR). These are some of the key results of the follow-up youth surveys carried out by the German Youth Institute. If the comparison between eastern and western Germans is seen in a European perspective, the complex interconnections between the institutionalised political cultures of nations and the participation patterns of young people become apparent. In what kind of institutions and to what extent do young people between 16 and 29 years show political engagement in Germany? What kind of differences can be seen between the new and the old Federal states? Is it possible to identify typical trends of development? Do gender, educational level, value orientations or social background conditions such as unemployment play a role in this regard? In the following, we will endeavour to answer these questions on the basis of empirical research. For this reason, in the following tables and analyses we will particularly focus on the differences between East and West Germany and the temporal development of discrepancies. The question of how specific and changing social institutions influence human attitudes and behaviour can be analysed using the quasi-experiment of 40 years of German division as an example. However, additional aspects reveal themselves and new questions arise by comparing young people across the different European Member States. Hence, we will discuss this additional comparative perspective.     

European Corporate Laws, Regulatory Competition and Path Dependence

Beyond the well-known discussion in regard to the Cassis de Dijon of the European Court of Justice, implying the mutual recognition of national product regulations, the topic of mutual recognition and regulatory competition has emerged again in the realm of European corporate laws (“Centros” of the ECJ in 1999). Can effective competition among European corporate laws be expected? In the US a broad discussion has developed whether the existing competition process among US corporate laws leads to permanent legal improvements by legal innovations or to a race to the bottom. Beyond this discussion a new point has been raised recently: the possibility and importance of path dependence as a potential problem for the efficacy of competition among corporate laws (lock-ins). For the analysis of this problem we apply the concept of technological paradigms and trajectories to legal rules in corporate law and introduce “legal paradigms,” which direct the search for better legal solutions in certain directions and might be stabilized by certain factors (esp. complementarities to other legal rules) leading to considerable path dependence effects. Our results show that path dependence might play a crucial role for competition among European corporate laws, even if the principle of mutual recognition would be introduced to corporate laws in the EU, implying that competition among European corporate laws might be difficult and sluggish. Consequently the question arises whether additional meta-rules should be established that might mitigate the problem of path dependence and lock-ins in regulatory competition in corporate law.     

How Well Are Authorities Suited to Prevent Damage to the Environment?

Environment protection in Austria is still carried out mainly by public authorities. This article focuses on preventive measures. It takes up the approval of new or rebuilt plants according to the Trade Act as an illustration for a considerable number of similar procedures. Although there is an ongoing discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of those procedures, no attempt has been made yet to examine their contents from a strictly economic perspective. Therefore, the article extracts the economic consequences from the wording of the law and examines whether they can give rise to efficient environment protection, taking into consideration the goals and constraints of all the participants in the negotiations. It is found that in principle the procedure allows for efficient solutions, despite the disadvantages, which are frequently observed in the course of its application. Moreover, it is argued that some features of the procedure, such as the selection of an appropriate techn ology on behalf of an applicant as well as negotiations with the potential pollutees have not yet been interpreted correctly. An assessment against more market-orientated measures, which are favored nowadays, ought to take into consideration that they generally cannot be implemented without support from the government.