Introduction: Rethinking Agrarian Labor in the US South

This special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies seeks to broaden discussion of the history of rural labor in the post-Civil War US South beyond the confines of the cotton plantation, studies of sharecropping, and black-white race relations. This introduction summarizes the contributions to the special issue, highlighting their most significant points. Collectively, five interrelated issues emerge from the essays: the role of the state in mediating agrarian labor relations, the importance of paramilitary or vigilante violence in the reassertion of the social power wielded over rural laborers, the significance of access to land and other resources of rural self-sufficiency, the ongoing struggle over labor mobility, and the recomposition of agrarian households as units of production.     

How to solve the many-state problem: a reply to the debate

This article responds to the debate provoked by the author's ‘Does capitalism need the state system?’ (Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 20:4 2007, 533–549) and his exchanges with Justin Rosenberg (Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 21:1 2008, 77–112). It is divided into three parts. The first restates the issues, situating them in the context of a growing Marxist preoccupation with the international in recent years, and contrasts the ‘high road’—Rosenberg's attempt to use Trotsky's concept of uneven and combined development to provide a transhistorical perspective on intersocietal relations—with Callinicos's own preferred ‘low road’ of more focused analysis centred on the prevailing mode(s) of production. The second addresses the fundamental criticisms addressed to him by Hannes Lacher, Benno Teschke and John M Hobson, all of whom deny that there is a necessary relation between capitalism and the interstate system. The third considers the more specific comments offered by Neil Davidson, Gonso Pozo-Martin, and Jamie Allinson and Alex Anievas, before concluding with an appeal for a move off the terrain of abstract theory to more empirical studies that can test the relative value of rival conceptual constructions.     

A Reevaluation of the Effects of State and ACA Dependent Coverage Mandates on Health Insurance Coverage

We study state and federal health insurance coverage mandates for young adults. Despite consistent findings that the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) federal mandate was effective, research has disagreed on whether preexisting, state-level mandates were successful in increasing coverage. We reconsider the issue with a new analytical perspective and newly available accurate data on state mandates. We show that the impact of the state mandates was substantive and concentrated among young adults between ages 19 and 23. Our estimates indicate that dependent coverage rose by 3.9 percentage points and overall coverage rose by 3.3 percentage points. Crowd-out of coverage through young adults’ own jobs was negligible. For those above 23, we find little evidence of changes in coverage. We incorporate these insights into analysis of the ACA's mandate, showing its effects were focused among those who were not eligible for state mandates, or were eligible but older than 23. Our results suggest that eligibility restrictions played important roles in limiting the scope of the state mandates, but they can be practical and effective tools for policymakers looking to ensure or expand coverage for young adults in the face of uncertainty about the ACA.     

Share the Wealth: Redistribution Can Increase Economic Efficiency

People frequently face uncertain income and the threat of loss can inhibit economic investments. Government redistribution can insure citizens against economic losses, but its effect on people’s investment decisions depends on how they react to redistributive rules. We apply methods from experimental economics to study how a redistributive institution affects people’s investment decisions. Experiment 1 tests whether redistribution can increase economic efficiency when people face risk problems—investment opportunities that are profitable on average but could result in a loss. In a between-subject design, participants decide whether to make a risky investment either individually or under an institution that redistributes earnings equally among four group members. We find greater investment and profits when participants are required to share their earnings. In Experiment 2, we examine free-riding by comparing an institution that allows non-investors to exploit investors to an assortment institution that matches investors with investors. We find that vulnerability to free-riding suppresses investment, whereas an assortment mechanism increases investment by preventing free-riding and thereby facilitating risk pooling.     

Ophthalmologic Concerns in Abusive Head Trauma

When Abusive Head Trauma (AHT) is suspected in a child, a dilated eye examination by an ophthalmologist is an essential part of the medical workup, as the presence and pattern of retinal hemorrhages can have a high positive predictive rate for abusive head injury. This article proposes to review the clinical presentation, pathophysiology, natural history, sequelae, and differential diagnosis of retinal hemorrhages and other ocular lesions associated with AHT.     

Transaction costs can encourage Coasean bargaining

When there are three parties, instability problems brought about by the emptiness of the core of the corresponding cooperative game may cause the Coase Theorem to fail, even when other more direct impediments to bargaining are low. We show that the standard Coasean bargaining game involving three parties is strategically equivalent to an asymmetric three-player majority game. Hence, when there are three parties, instability problems will cause the Coase Theorem to fail if and only if the core of the corresponding three-player majority game is empty. We use this equivalence result to derive all instances in which the Coase Theorem will and will not hold with three parties, and show that a priori, such instability problems are likely to be rare—the Coase Theorem will actually hold most (over 80 %) of the time. We also demonstrate that it is always possible to find a set of transaction costs which, when introduced into a frictionless bargaining situation, will cause an empty core to become non-empty. In other words, transaction costs can mitigate instability problems: situations exist in which the presence of transaction costs will cause the Coase Theorem to hold when, in the absence of those direct transaction costs, it would fail to hold. When there are three parties, rather than hindering agreements, the existence of direct transaction costs can sometimes—but not always—reduce instability and encourage Coasean bargaining.