A Census of Medicolegal Death Investigation in the United States: A Need to Determine the State of our Nation’s Toxicology Laboratories and Their Preparedness for the Current Drug Overdose Epidemic

In 2007, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported on 2004 data collected from the Census of Medical Examiner and Coroner Offices (CMEC). The CMEC was one of the first comprehensive reports on the state of the medicolegal death investigation system in the United States and included information on administration, expenditure, workload, specialized death investigations, records and evidence retention, and resources. However, the report did not include responses on questions that were related to toxicology such as specimen retention and type of testing. The purpose of this publication is to provide the community with toxicology laboratory-specific responses from nearly 2000 medical examiner and coroner (MEC) offices. Data obtained from a BJS CMEC public use dataset for any remaining information that was not reported in the 2007 BJS report were evaluated specific to the operation of toxicology laboratories within a MEC office or specific to toxicology testing. The CMEC includes information on average operating budget for MEC offices with internal or external toxicology services, budget for toxicology/microbiology services, respondents’ routine uses of toxicology analysis, toxicology specimen retention time, average turnaround times, use of computerized information management systems, and participation in federal data collections. These historical data begin to address the present state of our nation’s toxicology laboratories within the medicolegal death investigation system and their preparedness for the current drug overdose epidemic.     

隐藏在行政解释背后的政策裁量:概念、定位与功能

现有研究承认公共政策介入行政执法和司法职能的事实,但鲜少有研究关注公共政策在法律解释中的功能。“吐槽医院被拘案”为讨论政策裁量在行政解释中的功能角色提供了契机。学理研究显示,行政与政策之间的相似性与现代行政国家的行政效率诉求促使行政机关实施政策裁量。我国的行政解释过程背后蕴涵着复杂的利益纠纷,为政策裁量提供了合适的研究论域。政策裁量的实质是在行政解释过程中进行利益衡量,以便于解决行政解释过程中的各类争端,同时引导行政解释结果适应社会发展方向。政策裁量内容对于行政解释结论具有正反双重影响。     

我国公共政策失灵问题研究综述

政策失灵是世界各国共有的现象。我国学界主要从理论和实践两个方面分析了政策失灵的内涵、类型、成因、对策等,不断加深对政策失灵问题的认识。但目前政策失灵研究还存在基本概念界定不清、理论创新不足、视角较为狭窄、研究深度不够等问题。深化政策失灵研究,需要在学理上对其内涵进行清晰界定,构建政策失灵的分析模型;将政策失灵与政策过程相结合,将思辨分析与实证分析相结合,分析政策失灵的具体表现、内在机理、应对思路,增强政策失灵分析的中国特色和理论创新。     

People and places left behind: work,culture and politics in the rural United States

Using interview and survey data, we argue there are three types of places in the rural United States, and that their social and economic conditions help us understand emerging political trends, including the rural support for Donald Trump. More rural votes were cast for the Republican presidential candidate in 2016 than in other recent elections, yet shifts to Republican votes were greatest in places undergoing the most significant economic transitions. Work in rural communities has been a source of pride and cultural identity for people as well as places, but many feel the new economy is not working for them.     

“一带一路”背景下国际发展经济学学科综述

国际发展研究是反映现实世界变化的窗口之一。最近几年的发展经济学文献对诸如援助的动因、援助有效性等传统议题的研究更为深入,对新议题的探索也逐渐涌现。移民问题、局部地区的战争与恐怖主义活动与援助的相互关系,援助是如何塑造受援国行为及其所产生的效果,是反映援助国政治诉求的现实性研究。除此之外,源自其他学科的新研究方法也丰富了学者们对传统议题研究手段,补充了传统研究方法在诸如内生性等问题上存在的缺陷。     

Corporate policy entrepreneurship and cross-boundary strategies: How a private corporation champions mobile healthcare payment innovation in China?

The private nature of corporate actors does not necessarily preclude them from contributing to public interest. When business strategies and genuine public motivation are favorably aligned, corporate actors from the private sector can also drive public sector innovations. For a private corporation, policy entrepreneurship inherently entails crossing not only the public–private boundary but also various policy domains. This study formulates five propositions to characterize the cross-boundary strategies of corporate policy entrepreneurship, a distinct form of policy entrepreneurship in a developing authoritarian state. The case study of mobile healthcare payment innovation in China finds that the corporate entrepreneur used a series of cross-boundary strategies adeptly that eventually made the innovation not only adopted in one locality but also rapidly diffused nationwide. These strategies were not used in isolation or in a pure stepwise fashion but appeared to be recursive and interactive, suggesting the dynamic nature of corporate policy entrepreneurship in a multilevel governance system. More studies could be done to further examine strategies and processes of other forms of policy entrepreneurship in various national and sectoral settings.     

Diffusion models over the life cycle of an innovation: A bottom-up and top-down synthesis approach

The diffusion models tend to be tested individually in isolation and remain the same over time for the studied innovations in the literature. Moreover, there is growing interest to learn from other countries in our current age of globalization. Therefore, this paper chooses the innovation of public resources trading platforms in China to fulfill above literature gaps. We have examined key events and the issuances of related laws and regulations by Chinese governments. Our contributions are twofold: (a) Our analysis and results show that the diffusion models evolve over the different stages of a life cycle of an innovation, contrasting to the literature results that diffusion models remain the same for their studied innovations. Due to major diverse characteristics among different adopter categories over a life cycle of an innovation, we argue that it is appropriate and necessary to apply different diffusion models on different adopter categories, which is missing in the current literature. (b) We find a first bottom-up and then top-down synthesis approach as an effective, efficient diffusion process for both fitting local needs (i.e., effective) and adopting innovations rapidly nationwide (i.e., efficient).