Is peniaphobia an incentive to crime?

This article analysed the relationship between crime categories and unemployment rates using a set of panel data for 14 states in Malaysia with data spanning from 1982 to 2008. It is well documented that crime and unemployment are negatively related in Malaysia; the same is the case for both violent and property crime. Increases in unemployment rates cause the consumption expenditure to decrease, especially among households, hence, causing potential earnings from illegitimate activities to drop and discouraging a person from committing a crime. However, the significant properties of the t-statistics indicate that it is important to consider the labour market conditions in employing appropriate policies in fighting crime. That being said, unemployment can indirectly explain hunger, poverty, decreasing standards of life and economic downturn.     

The Effect of State Welfare Waivers on Family Earnings and Income Growth of AFDC Recipients, 1993-1995

SUMMARY

Many observers of welfare reform have argued that self-sufficiency on the part of welfare recipients is desirable. This would require, at least, that recipients' economic well-being not fall as a result of welfare reform. That question is addressed here by analyzing the impact of early state-level welfare waivers on the growth of earnings and income received by welfare recipients. Analysis of data from the Current Population Survey found that among welfare recipients (1) early work-related welfare reforms generally did not improve the growth in family earnings, and (2) waivers often had a small but negative effect on the growth of family income. Waivers were less detrimental for rural than for urban recipients. Since research has shown that rural employment and earnings generally lag behind urban areas, this is an interesting finding. It suggests that even though rural residents face greater barriers to employment, welfare reform has a smaller marginal effect on rural recipients.     

区域低碳经济发展中的政府角色定位——来自中部地区的实证分析

运用面板数据模型研究了1980—2009年间中部六省低碳经济的发展状况。结果表明,中部地区二氧化碳排放量与经济增长的关系比较显著。此外,能源消耗带动GDP增长的效率在逐年上升,从一定程度上反映了追求低能耗高产出增长模式的转变。中部地区经济发展与环境的相互关系正处于临近环境库兹涅兹曲线拐点的阶段。加速发展模式的转变,实现区域低碳发展的目标,中部地区政府必须进行有效的职能和角色定位。     

Issue and leader voting in U.S. presidential elections

The “Issues and Leaders” model shows that aggregate votes for President in U.S. elections from 1972 to 2012 can be accurately predicted from people's perceptions of the candidates' issue handling competence and leadership qualities. For the past five elections, the model's ex ante forecasts, calculated three to two months prior to Election Day, were competitive with those from the best of eight established political economy models. Model accuracy substantially improved closer to Election Day. The Election Eve forecasts missed the actual vote shares by, on average, little more than one percentage point and thus reduced the error of the Gallup pre-election poll by 30%. The model demonstrates that the direct influence of party identification on vote choice decreases over the course of the campaign, whereas issues gain importance. The model has decision-making implications in that it advises candidates to engage in agenda setting and to increase their perceived issue-handling and leadership competence.     

Trajectories of Administrative Reform: Institutions,Timing and Choices in France and Spain

The influence of national administrative institutions on contemporary reforms has often been noted but insufficiently tested. This article enriches the comparative perspective of administrative reform policies by focusing on four interrelated dimensions: the choices of reformers, institutional constraints, timing and sequencing and long-term trajectories. This article tries to determine whether most similar administrative systems exhibit analogous contemporary reform trajectories in content, timing and sequence. By comparing the administrative reform policies of two ‘most similar’ Napoleonic countries, France and Spain, this article analyses the commonalities and divergences of decentralisation, territorial state reorganisation, civil service reforms and policies that focus on performance management and organisational design. The article identifies the ‘causal mechanisms’ that characterise the specific role of institutions and considers both the role of context and the importance of policy intersections.     

Applicability of Latent Dirichlet Allocation to multi-disk search

Digital forensics practitioners face a continual increase in the volume of data they must analyze, which exacerbates the problem of finding relevant information in a noisy domain. Current technologies make use of keyword based search to isolate relevant documents and minimize false positives with respect to investigative goals. Unfortunately, selecting appropriate keywords is a complex and challenging task. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) offers a possible way to relax keyword selection by returning topically similar documents. This research compares regular expression search techniques and LDA using the Real Data Corpus (RDC). The RDC, a set of over 2400 disks from real users, is first analyzed to craft effective tests. Three tests are executed with the results indicating that, while LDA search should not be used as a replacement to regular expression search, it does offer benefits. First, it is able to locate documents when few, if any, of the keywords exist within them. Second, it improves data browsing and deals with keyword ambiguity by segmenting the documents into topics.     

A shortened child behavior checklist for delinquency studies

This study examines the reduction of the number of items in the scales of the Child Behavior Checklist, while maintaining the reliability and predictability of its original scales. For that purpose, the original scales were replicated with data from the Pittsburgh Youth Study. New, abbreviated scales were constructed using the most potent items. This process yielded trimmed scales that were highly correlated with the full scales and that still reflect the original meanings of the scales. Further, there was no loss of reliability or predictability with the trimmed as opposed to the full scales. The results were replicated in an analysis with identical variables from the Rochester Youth Development Study. This replication produced equally high reliabilities with similar levels of prediction of delinquent behavior.We would like to thank Terence P. Thornberry for helpful comments and advice on early drafts of this paper.     

Court processing and sentencing of drinking drivers: Using new methodologies

Driving while intoxicated (DWI) offenses provide a unique focal point for research in criminology. In recent years, legislative and media attention has increasingly focused on the harmful acts of drunk drivers, but little is known of the characteristics of individuals arrested for driving while drunk or of the court processing and sanctioning of such offenders. The research presented here uses a variety of methodological techniques to analyze individual-level court processing data for persons convicted of DWI on a revoked license. We find that the population of persons processed for this offense have certain characteristics which are not unlike those of persons processed for street crimes. Further, we find evidence of differential sanctioning related to ethnicity and level of education. We conclude with a call for future investigation of court processing to understand better why the DWI legislative mandate is being applied differently across social groups.     

Disentangling the Effects of Bounding and Mobility on Reports of Criminal Victimization

Replacement respondents who move into NCVS households after the initial bounding interview can introduce measurement error since their reports of victimization may be influenced by their mobility (actual experiences) and by their unbounded interview status (response error). Which of these factors affects reporting is unknown and is the focus of this research. The availability of incoming respondent data from the NCVS School Crime Supplement and mobility status from the NCVS provides a unique opportunity to study these effects separately. Both bounding and mobility were found to influence reporting; however, this influence was not consistent. Unlike findings from past research, bounding only had significant effects on reports of property victimization. Conversely, moving only significantly affected reports of violent victimization. As this study is the first to disentangle the effect of unbounded interview status from mobility on reports of victimization, the findings emphasize the need for further research to better understand these issues.     

Homo– et hétérogamie dans les attitudes et le comportement politique en Suisse

Ce texte est consacré au comportement politique de partenaires hétérosexuels vivant en couple, interrogés durant la première vague d'en quête du Panel suisse de ménages ( www.swisspanel.ch ). L'hypothèse générale défendue est que le comportement politique est influencé par une multitude de flux et d'interactions personnelles, notamment au sein du foyer. Considérant les caractéristiques des deux partenaires d'un couple, plutôt que d'interroger un individu isolé de son contexte familial, comme c'est généralement le cas dans les études électorales, on peut raffiner l'analyse et l'interprétation du comportement politique. Les résultats présentés montrent notamment que les comportements politiques sont indubitablement convergents au sein des couples, mais qu'il existe aussi une large part d'autonomie pour chacun des partenaires. Ils mettent en évidence l'influence prééminente de l'homme dans les foyers, ainsi que le faible impact des variables socio‐démographiques quant à l'explication du comportement politique.