Validity of self-reports of marital violence

The most commonly used and practiced method for assessing spouse abuse is the individual's self-report of engaging in or being a victim of physical aggression. However, the socially undesirable nature of relationship violence raises questions regarding the likelihood that it is accurately reported. The current investigation found that a socially desirable response set is related to willingness to report one's own aggression. However, it is not related to willingness to report a spouse's aggressive behavior. Social desirability was not related to reports of frequency or severity of one's own aggression for individuals admitting the use of any form of aggressive behavior.     

Global change in microcosm: The case of U.S. water institutions

Water is a resource that already has been affected by some aspects of global change and whose availability in time and place may be substantially further altered by global warming. As human demands and impacts on water resources have increased, institutions governing water use have evolved in response to pressures exerted by competing resource users. The record of such institutional evolution and its implications for the impacts of environmental change on human welfare can provide a glimpse of issues that are likely to arise as other natural resources are increasingly subject to the effects of global environmental transformations. Efforts to manage multiple interdependent water uses present informative analogies to the general problem of managing the many interrelated aspects of global change.     

Limited government: An incoherent concept

Advocates of limited government argue that the role of government should be limited to preventing the use of coercion in exchanges and stopping people from harming others. They believe that government should not seek to change the distribution of wealth from that arising through voluntary exchange nor to influence the preferences people hold. But this view proves to be self-contradictory or incoherent. In order to define coercion and permissible harm, governments must make enormous numbers of determinations about how people are entitled to behave. These determinations, in addition to demanding extensive government activity, will also have important effects on the distribution of wealth and the preferences people hold.