Usefulness of combining clinical and radiological dental findings for a more accurate noninvasive age estimation

The aim of this study was to establish correlations of clinical and radiological dental findings, alone or in combination, with chronological age in adults. Dental findings and orthopantomograms of 984 patients (aged 20-60 years; 524 females/460 males) were analyzed. DMF-T index and distance (alveolar bone level, ABL) between cemento-enamel junction and alveolar bone margin were recorded. Additionally, clinical and radiological findings at each tooth crown and root were collected according to the actual status of destruction and restoration, and a total score for each dentition (TSD) was calculated. After univariate correlation analysis, correlation coefficients for ABL and TSD were improved by using square root (sqrt). However, the determination accuracy was still not satisfactory; 90% of the residuals were in the range of about +/-10. The present study showed that clinical and radiological dental findings could not be used, not even in combination, for accurate age estimation as a single method, but that they could support other methods.     

Why Be Just? The Problem of Motivation in Hegel and Rawls

At the heart of any theoretical problem of justice lies the problem of motivation: Even if we could conceive of a way to develop a comprehensive system of just laws, and even if we could rationally believe in the justice of these laws, how could we ever ensure that we—or anyone else—would be motivated to abide by them? By unearthing how the problem of motivation sways canonical discussions of justice, the article brings forth intrinsic similarities and differences in these discussions that are often overlooked in the literature. In particular, the article highlights intrinsic similarities in the analysis of the concept of justice in two central works that belong to the continental and the analytic tradition respectively and are otherwise rarely discussed together: Hegel’s Outlines of the Philosophy of Right and Rawls’s Theory of Justice .     

How liable should an exporter be?: The case of trade in hazardous goods

This paper analyzes liability issues in the context of internationally traded goods like hazardous waste. It focuses on waste disposers of a small open economy that are judgement-proof due to either wealth constraints or regulatory liability limits. In this case, the extension of liability to waste exporters distorts the factor allocation and may reduce disposal care. Hence the optimal extension is partial at most. However, extending liability increases incentives of the waste importing country to hold domestic disposers liable. Interaction through the price system and through contracts that condition payments for disposal services on the occurrence of an accident yield identical outcomes if disposers are judgement-proof.     

Promises made,promises broken: a political economic perspective on German unification

The article provides an overview of the state of the East German economy after more than ten years of unification. It demonstrates that, contrary to what had been promised in 1990, the situation is far from ‘flourishing landscapes’. We argue that a number of policy mistakes, based in the desire of the then government to maintain electoral support, is responsible for this. In addition, the behaviour of West German labour market participants is held responsible for the dismal record of unemployment in East Germany. Hence, political and distributional conflicts lie at the root of the still present East German problem.     

Electoral Mobility and Social Change in Denmark

Danish politics in the 1970s is characterized by a remarkable increase in electoral fluidity. Increasing political mobility should be seen not as a product of passing and specific events, but as a product of basic societal change. The link between political mobility and some dimensions of social change is discussed theoretically and investigated empirically. The discussion focuses on the joint effects of socioeconomic change and political-institutional change. Some reasons why these changes should lead to increased electoral mobility are stated. The empirical analysis is carried out at the level of municipalities. A positive relationship between various indicators of socio-economic change and political mobility is demonstrated. The relationship is sustained when a control for the effects of social structure is introduced.     

Modernization,ethnic fractionalization,and democracy

In recent years, a number of studies have examined the relationship between ethnic fractionalization and democracy – so far with inconclusive results. We argue that the lacking robustness of existing findings is due to a theoretical and empirical misspecification of how ethnic fractionalization may influence the level of democracy. Ethnic fractionalization does have an impact on the regime form because it moderates the well-established positive effect of modernization on democracy. In other words, at low levels of ethnic fractionalization, modernization has a strong positive effect on democratization, but with increasing levels of ethnic fractionalization, the positive effect of modernization decreases. This relationship is documented empirically by using data on 167 countries since 1972.