The Forward Specialization Coefficient: Distributional Properties and Subgroup Differences

For both public policy and theoretical reasons, criminologists have been interested in the degree to which criminal offenders specialize in particular crimes. Traditionally, offense specialization has been measured with the forward specialization coefficient (FSC). Recently, the FSC has been criticized for being interpretationally obtuse and having no known sampling distribution. In this paper we examine both the interpretational and the statistical properties of the FSC. We conclude that (1) it has an intuitive interpretation that is no less useful than either a standard correlation coefficient or its competitors, (2) its sampling distribution is approximately normal, and (3) the conventional formula for the estimated standard error of the FSC may underestimate the true standard error in some circumstances. With these results behind us, we propose and illustrate both a parametric statistical test for the difference between two independent FSCs and two nonparametric alternatives.     

The impact of citizen influence on local government expenditure

This paper examines the impact of three measures of direct citizen influence — the initiative, referendum, and recall — on the level of local public expenditure for a national sample of communities with 10,000 persons or more. Two types of statistical tests are performed to analyze the role of the median voter model and to measure the effect of these governmental characteristics on the level of public spending. Like earlier literature, this paper finds only modest effects of these structural characteristics on local government expenditure. Alternative methodologies are needed to explore the ambiguities which exist in many of the previous studies.     

Gore Vidal’s Anti-Jewish nationalism

Edward Alexander is professor of English at the University of Washington and at Tel Aviv University in Israel. He is author of, among other works, Matthew Arnold and John Stuart Mill; The Resonance of Dust; Isaac Bashevis Singer;and, most recently. The Jewish Idea and Its Enemies.