Protecting Homebuyers in Low‐Income Communities: Evaluating the Success of Texas Legislative Reforms in the Informal Homeownership Market

Among low‐income homebuyers, a contract for deed (CFD) has been a widely used but risky and informal mechanism for purchasing a home or lot. This article examines a series of major consumer protections adopted by the Texas Legislature from 1995 to 2005 and whether this legislation shaped the behavior of sellers who historically relied on CFDs in Texas colonias. Tracking changes in the use of CFDs between 1990 and 2010, we show that developers responded to the legislative reforms by shifting away from CFDs and into other forms of seller financing. At the same time, developers have adopted a series of workarounds to the legislation (presumably legal), leaving low‐income buyers vulnerable to rapid repossession by the developer. In contrast, the impact of the legislation on low‐income residents selling their homes has been minimal. These consumer‐to‐consumer transactions remain highly informal, with ongoing reliance on the now illegal, unrecorded CFD.     

When Politics Fails: Hyper-Democracy and Hyper-Depoliticization

Although declining political engagement has been identified as a key problem for advanced liberal democracies, this article suggests that a more profound tension needs to be addressed. Specifically, it identifies interdependences between growing political pressures on national governments, and the tendency to delegate decisions away from control by elected politicians. These processes of “hyper-democracy” and “hyper-depoliticization” arguably create and re-enforce political tensions, magnifying a risk of central government “overload.” Through analyzing the arguments of prominent scholars of democracy, the article picks apart these interdependencies and argues for a more balanced approach to democratic governance.     

The the end of an age

Human Rights Review -     

Exploring the Positive Punishment Effect Among Incarcerated Adult Offenders

The vast majority of offenders released from prison will re-offend, about two-thirds will be re-arrested with three years, most current prison inmates have prior prison experience, and many repeat offenders are devoted to what has been termed a criminal lifestyle. Findings from a survey of over 700 incarcerated adult offenders explore the effect of different measures of past punishment on inmates’ perceptions of the certainty and severity of future sanctions, and self-reported likelihood of re-offending after release. Results are mixed, with measures of current imprisonment being associated with a deterrent effect, while measures of past imprisonment (juvenile and adult) and experience with alternative sanctions being associated with a criminogenic effect. Recognizing that the data are not longitudinal and contain no measures of actual re-offending, the implied positive punishment effect is explained by applying social learning dynamics and insights from ethnographic studies. Specifically, a) non-social reinforcers-particularly affective costs and benefits experienced through offending, b) association with criminal reference groups in and out of prison, and c) a lack of legitimate, reintegrative opportunities upon reentry all serve to promote re-offending. Findings have implications for the study of offender decision-making processes, and speak to the efficacy of imprisonment as a deterrent to crime.     

Making the Financial Sector Work for the Poor

This case study exploits matched firm–employee Tunisian data in order to underline the role played by within-firm human capital in worker remuneration. The estimated returns to human capital in wage equations remain unchanged when the dummies representing firm heterogeneity are replaced in the list of regressors with three firm variables: a textile industry dummy, within-firm mean education, and firm age. We find that part of what is usually considered as return to education may be due to within-firm externalities.     

Public health and vulnerable groups

Editors' Introduction

Public health and vulnerable groups     

An Examination of Local Climate Change Policies in the Great Plains

As the United States struggles with national solutions to address climate change, state and local governments have become leaders in both mitigation and adaptation policy. Although a significant and growing body of research targets these policies, most studies have assumed common factors motivating both adaptation and mitigation policy adoption. There remains a need for more research on cities of all sizes, their adoption of specific local policies, the factors motivating those choices, and whether the influences for mitigation differ from those that motivate adaptation. The paper uses data from a new survey of over 200 local governments in eleven states of the Great Plains region, including measures distinguishing between mitigation and adaptation policies. These data are employed to test the relative influence of factors from three areas: the policy environment, the attitudes of governmental actors, and community atmosphere, in explaining observed variation in the adoption of climate change policies.