Estimating age in Maori, Pacific Island, and European children from New Zealand

The islands of New Zealand are populated by persons of European, Maori, and Pacific Island extraction. The purpose of this research is to quantify the levels of dental maturation of each of these three populations, in order to obtain data that will be useful in forensic identification and age estimation. The sample consisted of 1383 orthopantomographs (660 males, 723 females) of 477 Maori, 762 European, and 144 Pacific Island children between the ages of 3 and 14 years. Each radiograph was digitized and the stages of mineralization of the seven left mandibular permanent teeth were assessed using the eight stages described by Demirjian. Values for 1, 3, 5, 50, 95, 97, and 99% confidence intervals are listed for each maturity score. Intra-observer reliability was evaluated using Bland-Altman's method on data from re-scoring one out of every 20 radiographs and standard dental maturation curves were constructed for the three populations by means of a quantile regression method. Despite the fact that quantile regression analysis showed that across the age group investigated there were differences between boys and girls, knowledge of the sex does not increase the accuracy of the age estimate, simply because the magnitude of the error of age estimation is greater than the difference between the sexes. Our analysis also shows that population divergence is most marked after the age of 9 years, with a peak difference seen at age 10.     

Protection against Unfair Contracts: An Economic Analysis of European Regulation

After considering the possible outcomes that may result from the interaction between potential contract parties, this paper discusses potential causes of inefficiency and investigates how the law affects conditions that would give rise to inefficiency. The analysis is focussed on the European regulation of standard form contracts. This regulation implies that unfair terms in standard form contracts are unenforceable in Member States of the European Community, and can be interpreted as a measure to curtail the adverse selection problem that originates in the fact that contract parties may use standard form contracts. This paper investigates the welfare implication of this protection against unfair contracts.     

Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemonic Project: The Story So Far

This paper seeks to do two things: first, to map out in a broad way Laclau and Mouffe's intellectual development, since the publication of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy in 1985, and how they have created a following within academia; and second, to evaluate their 'hegemonic' endeavours so far. I argue that there is a place for a post-structuralist approach to the study of political ideologies and the 'political', but that the project as a whole is unlikely to achieve its intellectual and political ambitions.