Public Capital Investment and Economic Growth in Forth Worth: The Implications for Public Budgeting and Infrastructure Management

There is a common assumption that local government investment in infrastructure stimulates private development. This article examines relationships in one southwestern city between public capital spending and city infrastructure assets and private economic activity as measured by building permit activity, permit values, and assessed property valuations. Two research questions are examined: (1) Is public investment in new capital associated with private capital formation? and (2) Is public investment associated with improvements in the property tax base? The findings hold implications for infrastructure planning, budgeting, and management. First, public and private capital spending patterns varied in tandem across several cycles, and tracking such cycles may help public managers predict short- and mid-term infrastructure needs. Second, utility capital spending is critically related to private capital formation, and may offer higher fiscal returns than other public infrastructure. Third, infrastructure capital had a strong significant effect on the assessed value of urban property, and will therefore influence the property tax base.     

Morality and philanthropy

Samuel Lipman is publisher of The New Criterionand music critic for Commentary.He has written widely on classical music as well as on contemporary painting.     

A comparison of the self-image of talented teenagers with a normal adolescent population

The self-image of a group of 177 adolescents talented in one of five areas — mathematics, science, music, athletics, and art — was compared to that of a normal group of teenagers, using the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire for Adolescents (OSIQ). In addition, correlations between the talented OSIQ scores and instructor ratings of engagement and aptitude in the talent area was obtained. The findings indicate that talented adolescents educated in a normal high school setting evidence patterns of self-image and esteem very similar to their more average peers. The talented teenagers, however, also report considerable uncertainty involving issues of sexual and social competence. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for later patterns of talent development.This study is part of a longitudinal study of talented adolescents supported in full by a grant from the Spencer Foundation.Research interests include adolescent self-concept and the psychology of challenging experience.Research interests include the psychology of adolescence and the study of optimal experience, creativity, and intrinsic motivation.     

Parental discord vs family structure: effects of divorce on the self-esteem of daughters

This study investigated the effects of family structure (parents together or not) and parental discord (ratings of the happiness of the marriage of biological parents) on the self-esteem of 199 female undergraduates. Family structure and happiness ratings were substantially related, with those separated rated as less happy. Self-esteem was significantly related to parental happiness, even with family structure controlled, but not to family structure with parental happiness controlled. With the sample divided into three groups (happy-together, unhappy-together, and separated) ANOVA showed a significant effect for group, with the unhappy-together group showing significantly lower self-esteem than the happy-together group, and the separated group intermediate. Parental discord thus appears to lower the selfesteem of daughters, whereas separation of parents does not. These findings support Heatherington's idea that children may be better off in a stable family where parents are divorced than in an intact family with much parental discord.Thanks are expressed to Susan Stevenson Cowles for her contributions to all stages of the study, and to Judith Fidati, Anita Katz, and Susanne Long for their assistance in the scoring and statistical analyses. The author is also grateful to Andrew Cherlin, Edmund Henderson, and Ruth C. Wylie for their helpful suggestions.Barbara H. Long is Professor Emeritus at Goucher College, where she has taught for 20 years. She is a social psychologist, having received her Ph.D. from the University of Delaware and has, at present, research interests in the attitudes of young women towards marriage and career.     

Selling Oneself into Slavery: Mill and Paternalism

'Voluntarily acceding to slavery', Joel Feinberg has written, 'is too much for Mill to stomach', and so Mill espouses strong paternalism and contradicts his famous principle of individual sovereignty. Mill's critics have found incoherence where none exists, largely because they have failed to take seriously his own claim that the non- enforcement of slavery contracts is required by the principle of liberty. The refusal to enforce such contracts arises not from Mill's espousal of paternalism, but from the paradox of sovereignty. Reconstruction of Mill's solution to this paradox not only dispels the charge that he abandoned the sovereignty of the individual, but also contributes to the reinterpretation of his defence of freedom, as a result of which his entire doctrine of antipaternalism emerges as a coherent and defensible position.     

The efficiency of the demarking point of the femoral head as a sex determining parameter

The percentage of skeletal remains that can be sexed depends on the degree of completeness of the skeleton, the parameters that are used and the type of statistical analysis that is done. The objective of the present study was to assess the accuracy of the demarking point in sexing the femur of South African whites and blacks. One hundred pairs of femurs were randomly selected from the bone collections of each of the two racial groups. The bones were sexed by measuring the head diameters and comparing them with the corresponding demarking point values that had been previously determined. The sex that was so allocated to each bone was compared with its documented sex in the database in order to assess the accuracy of the method. The overall success rate of sex identification was 32% for both white and black populations, but the accuracy of sexing was 100%.     

实现打击违法犯罪信息化的网上信息作战机制研究

在当前复杂严峻的违法犯罪形势下,利用公安信息化手段,实现公安机关各部门各警种之间、各地公安机关之间的资源共享、协同作战,可以实现对违法犯罪更有效的打击和防范。建立网上信息作战机制,是科技强警战略思想落实到具体公安工作中的必然结果。本文从科技支撑和制度保障这两个方面,阐述了公安机关如何建立网上信息作战机制的问题,并对建立网上信息作战机制,实现打击违法犯罪信息化作了展望。     

我国当代社会泛政治化因素分析

我国当代社会具有明显的“泛政治化”倾向。“泛政治化”是一种缺乏政治理性的行为,它妨碍了正常的政治发展,使人们对社会问题不能做出实质的理解和处理,也使社会功能难以正常发挥,还常常带来政治冷漠。我们应当摈弃“泛政治化”的思维模式,构筑政治的理性主义,按照社会发展的规律来处理政治、经济、文化、体育、司法、教育等等的关系,以积极理性的心态来开展政治参与。     

公共政策中的集团决策模型及在我国的适应性

如何制定出科学有效的、反映各方面利益并为社会所普遍认同的公共政策,是所有现代政府所面临的基本问题以及获得政治合法性的关键所在。通过描述社会政治现象,分析政府行为,探讨集团决策模型的起源、基本内容、主要缺陷及其在我国现实政治中的发展等问题,建立起公共政策决策中的集团决策模型的基本理念和分析框架,可为我国公共政策决策的科学化和民主化提供有益的思路。