Not guilty? Another look at the nature and nurture of economics students

In this paper, we re-examine students’ attitudes towards various allocation mechanisms for a scarce resource. For this purpose, we have run a survey among officers of the German military who are enrolled in different courses of study (such as economics) at the University of the German Federal Armed Forces. We find that significantly more students who are enrolled in economics courses judge price increases as fair than students enrolled in other courses. Moreover, this tendency strengthens the more training in economics the students receive. In addition, fewer students with advanced economic education judge allocation through the local community as fair when compared to first-year students in economics courses or other students. These results stand in contrast to results obtained by Frey et al. (J Econ Educ, 24:271–281, 1993) on the same survey. In summary, we find evidence for both nature and nurture effects.     

Automated Quantifiler quantitative PCR setup, template normalization and PCR setup using HID EVOlution™ qPCR/STR setup on trace evidence samples

We have implemented and validated customized protocols for automated Quantifiler^® setup, template normalization and PCR setup using the Tecan HID EVOlution™ qPCR/STR setup. The protocols were validated for the Quantifiler^® human DNA quantification, AmpF?STR^® SGM Plus^® and SEfiler Plus™ PCR Amplification Kits (Applied Biosystems) according to EN/ISO 17025.     

Measuring Political Preferences: Ratings for Members of the Swiss National Council

Party affiliation as the standard measure of political preferences of Swiss legislators is associated with several problems. To overcome these problems the authors develop ratings for members of the National Council, based on roll-call votes. They discuss the construction of the ratings and their limitations in detail, and outline the importance of this kind of information for the participants of the political process, as well as some applications in empirical research.     

What Role for the Party Group Leader? A Latent Variable Approach to Leadership Effects on Party Group Cohesion in the European Parliament

Previous research has identified several structural and situational factors that affect party cohesion in parliamentary voting behaviour. The potential role of leadership has been neglected so far. The authors apply a latent variable approach to model leadership effects in roll call votes from the European Parliament (EP), 1979–2001. Other things being equal, their findings suggest that a small but significant 7 per cent share of the total variance in party group cohesion is due to the party group leaders. About 40 per cent of this leader component can be accounted for by their experience inside the European institutions, their career prospects, and their ideological positions.     

Trust and Safety in the Segregated City: Contextualizing the Relationship between Institutional Trust,Crime‐related Insecurity and Generalized Trust

Trust is a crucial asset for any society, and the quest to generate and uphold trust is as crucial as ever. Several contemporary societal developments are proposed as being particularly challenging for upholding and restoring the levels of trust in society, including increasing ethnic diversity, rising inequality and the related geographical segregation. It has been convincingly argued that democratic institutions may generate trust by neutralizing some of these effects. This article explores how the mechanisms of trust differ in segregated, disadvantaged neighbourhoods as opposed to the surrounding general society. The empirical material consists of individual‐level data from a segregated neighbourhood (Vivalla) in a medium‐sized city in Sweden (Örebro), with a random sample from the population of the city (the Vivalla area excluded) as the comparison reference point, representing the general society. In the article, perceived safety is introduced as an important mediator between trust in legal and government institutions and generalized trust, through which the differing mechanisms become evident. In the disadvantaged neighbourhood, it is shown that trust in government institutions has the function of primarily decreasing crime‐related insecurity, which in its turn affects generalized trust. Thus, the relationship is indirect. In the city population, the effect instead goes directly from trust in government institutions to generalized trust. The results suggest that the potentials of different means to build and restore trust are dependent on local context.     

Trustee strategies,politicization and de-delegation: The case of the European Central Bank

This article shows how the European Central Bank (ECB) reduced the risk of politicization and de facto de-delegation despite experiencing contestation. During the euro area crisis and the coronavirus emergency the ECB's monetary policy measures have been widely praised for their effectiveness. Even though the ECB is an independent trustee that cannot be easily sanctioned, it needs to engage with its principals to receive their political backing for common projects and in order to reaffirm its own centrality in governance. This article identifies different trustee strategies to reduce politicization and thereby to decrease the risk of de facto de-delegation: (i) dualism, (ii) voluntary self-restraint, and (iii) changing the yard stick. It concludes by showing that the ECB has expanded its monetary policy toolbox without triggering neither formal nor de facto de-delegation.