Conflict Expectations and the Paradox of Economic Coercion

Despite their increasing importance, there is little theoretical understanding of why nation-states initiate economic sanctions or what determines their success. These events are often explained away as "symbolic politics" driven completely by domestic-level factors. This article develops a simple game-theoretic model of economic coercion to show that both "senders" and "targets" of economic coercion incorporate expectations of future conflict as well as the short-run opportunity costs of coercion into their behavior. Conflict expectations have a paradoxical effect on coercion events. First, senders that anticipate frequent conflicts will be more willing to initiate economic coercion, even if such attempts are costly. Senders that anticipate few conflicts will not threaten sanctions unless they incur minimal costs and the target would suffer significantly. While a robust anticipation of future disputes might make the sender prefer a coercive strategy, it also reduces its ability to obtain concessions. Target states that anticipate frequent conflict with the sender will make fewer concessions. Ironically, a sender will obtain the most favorable distribution of payoffs when it cares the least about its reputation or the distribution of gains. These hypotheses are tested statistically, with the results strongly supporting the conflict expectations model.     

Educational challenges after year 2007 post election violence in Kenya

This paper sorts to examine the effects of post election violence on education in Kenya, after the presidential election results were disputed over by the two main presidential candidates. The rationale of the paper is due to the fact that among many other aspects of society that were affected in such a case is education. All levels of education were affected, and particularly primary and secondary education could not proceed on schedule as had earlier been planned. Other issues raised in this paper include the trauma experienced by students, loss of parents and guardians among others. The objectives of this paper therefore include： （1） To determine the effects of political violence on the education system in Kenya; （2） To establish the challenges facing students in Kenya after the post election violence; （3） To analyze individual attitudes of students towards the role of education in promoting national unity; （4） To determine how to re-imagine the role of education in promoting peace and peaceful coexistence in Kenya.     

The prison in economics: private and public incarceration in Ancient Greece

Recent histories of Ancient Greece describe a transition from customary law to public criminal justice between 800 and 400 B.C. This narrative contains three pieces of evidence against the presumption that prisons are a public good and government must provide incarcerations. First, before the rise of a formal government, Ancient Greece had a functioning system of criminal law enforcement. Second, the timeline surrounding the rise of government institutions in Ancient Greece originated with Solon’s penal reforms. Lastly, the rise of a government system was more the result of private rather than public interest.     

Problem Drinking, Jealousy, and Anger Control: Variables Predicting Physical Aggression Against a Partner

Alcohol use and intimate partner violence (IPV) are significantly related, but only a subset of individuals who drink are aggressive and relatively little is known about what moderates this relationship in community samples. Two risk factors, anger control and jealousy, were hypothesized to moderate the relationship between IPV and problem drinking in a sample of 453 community couples. A significant three-way interaction indicated that men with jealousy problems, but not anger control problems, were most likely to show the strongest association between problem drinking and IPV. In accord with the multiple threshold model of IPV, specific combinations of risk factors appeared to represent different thresholds in which problem drinking influenced the likelihood of IPV.