A Critical Analysis of the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism: Its Contemporary Functionality and Prospects

Netherlands International Law Review -     

Unemployment and Crime: Toward Resolving the Paradox

While official crime statistics from many countries show that unemployed people have high crime rates and that communities with a lot of unemployment experience a lot of crime, this cross-sectional relationship is very often not found in time-series studies of unemployment and crime. In Australia there have been no individual-level or cross-sectional studies of unemployment and adult crime which have failed to find a positive relationship and no time-series which have supported a positive relationship. Consistent with this pattern, a time series of homicide from 1921 to 1987 in Australia reveals no significant unemployment effect. A theoretical resolution of this apparent paradox is advanced in terms of the effect of female employment on crime in a partriarchal society. Crime is posited as a function of both total unemployment and female employment. When female employment is added to the model, it has a strong positive effect on homicide, and unemployment also assumes a strong positive effect.     

Old people in Polish cities in the late eighteenth century

The issue of old age as a period in life of a person in the cities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was not widely discussed in historic literature of the past. This was due, to a large extent, to the beliefs of the researchers regarding the difficulty in capturing this phenomenon in light of rather Modest statistical sources. This study is, therefore, an attempt to scrutinise the mechanisms behind the functioning of city communities in the territories of central Poland in the late-feudal age on a basic level - the level of the smallest social unit and its economic base, i.e. the household, based on handwritten civil-military censuses from 1791-1792. The author is interested in the living situation of old people, their sizes and gender proportions in cities varying in size: from small to large ones in the second half of the 18th century. The article presents the dependencies between the age and position of men and women in the household and the proportions of old people being heads of households. Using the typology by Peter Laslett a model of a household ran by old people was shown against the background of a general structure of households in cities. The last part of the text concerns the size of households ran by old people, taking into account the social status, and their position within the family. The analysis of the censuses does not allow to determine any clear difference of living through old age in Polish cities in the 18th century in comparison to the regions which are attributed a ’unique’ model of European forms of family. The structural similarity of old age seen in Polish cities is closer to the model observed in cities of western than of eastern Europe.     

Elderly women in the cities of central europe in the eighteenth century

This study examines the elderly during the age of late feudalism in urban areas of Central Europe. Based on 1791 censuses carried out in six Polish towns (diversified both in size and functions), the author determines the population of older people by gender, marital status, and family position. The article also highlights the economic role of older women in the pre-industrial town. Calculations have been performed using software designed to process mass source data (e.g., censuses or birth, marriage, and death registers).