Financial frauds and pseudo-states in the Pacific Islands

Since 1990 financial frauds have been associated with pseudo-states in thePacific Islands, particularly the Dominion of Melchizedek. The relative success of these schemes can be understood in terms of (i) the general atmosphere of overconfidence about financial dealings that prevailed during the decade to early 2000, (ii) Melchizedek's creation of opportunities for a growing mutually supportive network of fraudsters, (iii) this pseudo-state's identification with a rising global tide of secession and indigenous self-determination through its increasing involvement in a variety ofethnic nationalist movements in Oceania that have been connected with questionable financial dealings, and (iv) the attractiveness of its developing postmodern personality as a libertarian cyber-state. The article concludes by seeing Melchizedek's facilitation of financialfrauds as a challenge to recent libertarian thinking about the law of cyberspace and the anticipated neo-medieval world-system.     

Equity or Efficiency? Explaining Public Officials' Values

This article analyzes the positions of top public officials on an equity‐efficiency trade‐off and the determinants of those positions. It uses data from a survey across 14 European countries. The results show that differences in public officials' positions on equity‐efficiency are related to the context in which they work and to their personal background. Officials at the top of the hierarchy and those with a business or economics education are more oriented toward efficiency. Additionally, results show important differences associated with country administrative culture, including a stronger equity orientation in Scandinavian countries, and a stronger efficiency orientation in Southern European countries. The positions of public officials reflect those held by citizens in their country, confirming the contextualized nature of administrative values. This article contributes to understanding the determinants of public officials' dominant values.     

Are there “women’s crops”? A new tool for gender and agriculture

A “Gender Control Tool” was developed to measure women’s control over decision-making for agricultural production, sales, and use of income. The tool was tested for groundnuts in Eastern Province, Zambia, where mechanisation has increased male participation in groundnut shelling, and for goats in Gwanda district, Zimbabwe, where the introduction of auctions has increased investment and sales. A mixed methods approach was used, that involved focus group discussions (FGDs) and a quantitative household survey. This article compares the results obtained from these two methods and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the tool in understanding how commercialisation affects women’s control.     

Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument for mental health needs of youths in residential welfare/justice institutions: identifying gender differences across countries and settings

This study examines the use of the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument-Second Version (MAYSI-2) for mental health needs among 1643 youngsters in residential welfare/justice institutions in Europe and the USA, identifying gender differences across countries and settings. Overall, the MAYSI-2 appeared to be a reliable instrument among these youngsters, with only some scales falling (slightly) below the threshold of acceptable internal consistency. Girls (vs. boys) in Belgian/USA justice institutions and Swiss mixed welfare/justice institutions displayed higher scores for the angry–irritable, depressed–anxious, somatic complaints, suicide ideation scales. Also, detained girls from Belgium and Switzerland reported higher scores for traumatic experiences. No gender differences were revealed among adolescents in German welfare institutions. Our findings suggest that the MAYSI-2 may serve as a useful mental health screening instrument among youngsters in welfare/justice institutions and that girls in justice institutions and mixed welfare/justice institutions form a particularly vulnerable population with regard to mental health problems.     

Evaluating the Reliability of Expert Evidence in Compensation Procedures: Are Diagnosticians Influenced by the Narrative Fallacy when Assessing the Psychological Injuries of Trauma Victims?

The current study investigated whether mental health practitioners are influenced by the narrative fallacy when assessing the psychological injuries of trauma victims. The narrative fallacy is associated with our tendency to establish logical links between different facts. In psychodiagnostic assessments, this tendency may result in overdiagnosis of mental disorders when psychological symptoms can be attributed to a traumatic event. Consequently, legal decision makers may be at risk of awarding compensation for psychological injuries which are not severe enough to justify financial reimbursement. To explore this topic, we asked Dutch mental health practitioners whether they would assign a diagnosis of mental disorder to fictitious symptoms of psychological injury. Each participant was presented with two vignettes. The first vignette described symptoms in terms of a generalized anxiety disorder; the second in terms of a major depressive episode. The vignettes varied in the cause (trauma versus cause not specified) and severity (near threshold of DSM diagnosis versus below threshold of DSM diagnosis) of the symptoms. Results indicated that participants more often assigned a diagnosis of mental disorder if the psychological symptoms had been caused by a traumatic event than if that had not been the case. Further analysis of the data suggested that this difference was due to the high numbers of assigned diagnoses of posttraumatic stress and acute stress disorder in the trauma conditions. It was speculated that participants filled in missing information to justify the assignment of such diagnoses, for example by imagining symptoms of intrusion and avoidance.     

Does foreign investment enhance domestic manufacturing firms’ labour productivity? Evidence from a quantile regression approach

Economic Change and Restructuring - We provide new insights into the relationship between foreign investment and the labour productivity of domestic firms in the Vietnamese manufacturing industry....     

Face recognition as a function of distance and illumination: A practical tool for use in the courtroom

Abstract

This paper describes a practical courtroom tool that provides insight in face recognition accuracy as a function of distance and illumination. Subjects were shown 3/4 target portraits with an exposition time of 12 seconds, immediately followed by a target-absent or target-present lineup of six full-face portraits. Subjects were asked to identify the target. Seven distances (3 to 40 meter) and nine illumination levels (0.3 to 3000 lux) were used which resulted in a 7?9 matrix, with in the cells a hit score and a false alarm score. From these rough data several other measures were derived, like d-prime, diagnostic value and some idealised scores. The scores represent the upper margins of recognition accuracy with the memory component reduced to a minimum. The results clearly indicate a systematic increase of recognition performance with decreasing distance and increasing illumination. The end result is a practical rule of thumb, the Rule of Fifteen: Even in ideal conditions the desired diagnostic value of 15 is reached at not more than 15 meters, not less than 15 lux.