The political business cycle under rational voting behavior

This essay argues that politically motivated business cycles could persist in a democratic society even if the electorate votes in a rational, fully informed manner, provided that government policymakers have the means to systematically generate macroeconomic fluctuations. This cyclic outcome reflects the pReferences of an electorate that is composed of imperfectly altruistic voters belonging to different overlapping generations. Since each generation has a different horizon over which it would like to have elected politicians provide an optimal economic policy plan, an intergenerational conflict of interests situation arises. This conflict is placed into an explicit political context, whereby cycles become generated under the institutional constraint of periodic elections.     

Time-consistent monetary policy under output persistence

This note merges the fact that real activity is persistent with a Barro-Gordon type model of endogenous monetary policy. It shows that persistence crucially affects policy choices. This applies in non-cooperative games with a finite horizon, and in games with an infinite horizon. Always, enforceable inflation announcements move higher when output persistence increases. Policymakers who discount future utility by 10% annually produce about ten times as much inflation under near-hysteresis as in a natural-rate scenario. A change in the policymaker's time preference may affect inflation both ways, depending on present time preference and persistence.     

Politikwissenschaft als öffentlicher Beruf Zum Tod von Kurt Sontheimer (1928–2005)

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Stability and Internal Consistency of the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire: A Study of Finnish Adolescents

Reliability of the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire (OSIQ) was assessed with two measures—internal consistency and stability—in Finnish children aged 13. The OSIQ was administered to 268 normal 13-year-old pupils (129 girls and 139 boys). Three weeks later, a third of the pupils (N = 88) were randomly selected for retesting. Eighty-three teenagers completed the questionnaire in an acceptable manner. The internal consistency of the test was verified for each scale using Cronbach . To estimate the stability of the test, Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated, and the mean raw scores for each scale were compared with those in the retest. The internal consistency of the test was fairly good ( = 0.54–0.84) for the majority of scales, except for scales S5 and S12 ( = 0.30–0.41). The stability of scales S1, S4, S5, S7, and S10 was good. On the basis of these two measures, we conclude that for Finnish adolescents, the OSIQ is sufficiently reliable only with respect to scales S1, S4, S7, and S10.     

A systematic and quantitative analysis of PCR template contamination

A quantitative and systematic analysis is provided for ubiquitously present template DNA interfering with the quantification of human DNA by PCR. Two sources contributing to DNA background were identified. The first one is interpreted as DNA present in chemicals and on equipment and the second as caused by operator handling. The amounts were equivalent to 2.5 and 8.9 pg per mL of sample, and the estimated frequencies of contamination were 65 and 35%, respectively, resulting in an effective limit of detection of 17.4 pg/mL. Below this level--named effective laboratory background--a result could not be considered as authentic. Knowledge of these parameters is important for laboratories that analyze minute amounts of human DNA by PCR for purposes such as quantification, typing, and sequencing.     

Forensic medicine experiences in Kosovo

In summer 1999, a German forensic team of CID officers and forensic pathologists was sent to Kosovo on request of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to investigate possible war crimes. For this purpose, witnesses had to be found and interrogated and graves of victims had to be located and the bodies exhumed and examined forensically. Roughly 200 bodies have been found and examined during the campaign that were predominantly of male sex and showed mainly gunshot wounds. A high percentage of all bodies could be identified. The article deals with different forensic-pathologic aspects of such an investigation.