The Effects of Majority State Ownership of Significant Economic Sectors on Corruption: A Cross-Regional Comparison

Given both corruption's and bureaucratic inefficiency's importance for development and good governance, understanding their causes is paramount. This paper argues that majority state ownership of most the most important economic sectors of a country results in higher levels of corruption and inefficiency. When political and managerial elites both own and manage the country's most important economic resources, they have greater incentives for corrupt or inefficient behavior. These elites use national resources at their disposal more for short-term personal and political goals than for long-term economic ones. This paper tests this hypothesis on a relatively underused, but often cited, data set from the 1980s. Using a cross-national, regression analysis, this paper finds that the best predictors a country's level of corruption or bureaucratic inefficiency are these: majority state ownership of significant economic sectors, levels of GDP per capita, levels of government spending, and levels of democracy. Other factors, such as common law heritage, percent of population that is Protestant, federalism, economic freedoms, or mineral/ oil exporting, were not consistent, significant predictors of either bureaucratic inefficiency or corruption. We also argue that Tobit may be the best estimation procedure for these data.     

Trace DNA Sampling Success from Evidence Items Commonly Encountered in Forensic Casework

Trace DNA analysis is a significant part of a forensic laboratory's workload. Knowing optimal sampling strategies and item success rates for particular item types can assist in evidence selection and examination processes and shorten turnaround times. In this study, forensic short tandem repeat (STR) casework results were reviewed to determine how often STR profiles suitable for comparison were obtained from “handler” and “wearer” areas of 764 items commonly submitted for examination. One hundred and fifty‐five (155) items obtained from volunteers were also sampled. Items were analyzed for best sampling location and strategy. For casework items, headwear and gloves provided the highest success rates. Experimentally, eyeglasses and earphones, T‐shirts, fabric gloves and watches provided the highest success rates. Eyeglasses and latex gloves provided optimal results if the entire surfaces were swabbed. In general, at least 10%, and up to 88% of all trace DNA analyses resulted in suitable STR profiles for comparison.     

GPS tracking and the right of privacy

Government authorities and law enforcement agencies start using the satellite-based GPS tracking technology more often for various purposes. Due to its unique technical features, GPS tracking poses a much greater threat to the right of privacy compared with traditional electronic tracking techniques, such as the Beeper. Comparisons are extensively analyzed and a number of the US cases are quoted for illustrations. In the end, several key principles are proposed to facilitate the supervision of investigation behaviors in China.     

生产-流通关系协调发展：理论与对策研究

在流通产业对现代生产发展的意义日益加大的同时,我国传统流通产业发展滞后于生产发展的问题也日益暴露。模块化时代的到来,生产、流通环节的专业化分工要求有更多的协作,分工的协调效率受到更多的关注。目前我国生产-流通关系不协调,原因主要在于流通产业发展滞后于生产需要,借助于产业链整合实现流通产业的规模化发展,提升专业化流通渠道的效率功能,是中国产业系统健康发展的有效途径。      

Benchmarking Tax Compliance Efficiency Among South African Retail Firms Using Stochastic Frontier Approach

Random selection of taxpayers for audit mostly nets tax compliant taxpayers. There is hence a need to adopt other methods that are efficient and and effective in performing their specific and general deterrence roles. This article uses profit efficiency benchmarking to analyze selected retail firms tax compliance risk in South Africa over the 2005–2006 period. It seeks to identify firms that should be audited because of their suspected tax compliance risk, using a stochastic frontier analysis. The profit efficiency estimates of 24 retail stores are used to rank them in terms of their performance. They are also tracked over time. Approximately, 50 percent of the firms performed better than the average profit efficiency of 0.39. The top 10 firms are significantly performing better. However, the bottom 50 percent of the retail firms performed poorly and could be targeted for tax audit.     

Economics of State-Owned Enterprises

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) account for a substantial proportion of gross domestic product, employment, and assets in many countries. Based on a review of the theory and empirical evidence, we develop a novel five-step framework that can guide policymakers and economic advisors in making decisions about maintaining and/or creating SOEs. The framework suggests that the use of SOEs should be limited to circumstances in which a market failure exists, less invasive forms of intervention such as regulation/taxes/subsidies and private-sector contracting are ineffective or not possible, and the welfare loss of the market failure exceeds the costs, distortions, and inefficiencies of SOEs.     

从罪犯到地点：犯罪空间防控的兴起

街面犯罪的持续暴涨引发了各界对潜在罪犯的犯罪防控模式的反思,犯罪地理学的发展、美国地点警务的日臻成熟与上述反思一道,促成了基于城市犯罪聚集热点的空间防控的兴起。犯罪的空间防控为警务应对的改进、平安中国建设的完善及防卫空间刑事政策的发展带来了全新的尝试与改良的契机。     

HOPE VI relocation: Moving to new neighborhoods and building new ties

Abstract

Severely distressed public housing developments are being torn down and redeveloped through the HOPE (Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere) VI initiative in cities across the United States. This article examines how families from one HOPE VI site decided where to move and how they fared in building social ties with their new neighbors. Semistructured interviews from a random sample of 41 families with children were analyzed.

Families that chose to move into public housing expressed concern about the unreliability of the Section 8 program and their own ability to pay the extra utility costs involved. Those who used Section 8 vouchers to relocate had more education on average and made this choice to improve the neighborhood for their families. Over the past two years, regardless of what kind of neighborhood they moved into, families have not rebuilt the close ties most of them had in their former neighborhood.     

我国发展独立第三方公共政策评估机构论析

发展独立第曼方政策评估机构是对公共政策公平与效率两大价值追求的必然要求。相比国外而青,当前我困独立笫三方政策评估机构的发展尚不健全,究其原因主要受限于内外两方面因素制约,文章对如何促进我国独立第三方政策评估机构发展展开研究。     

人的合理需要视角下的思想政治教育实效性研究

思想政治教育实效性体现在其教育效果上。脱离了人的合理需要前提下开展的思想政治教育,容易使思想政治教育工作失去方向性、先进性与超前指导性。实现思想政治教育效果的前提是满足人的合理需要,在满足人的合理需要的过程中,要处理好利益认同和价值认同的关系。