The growing importance of Ukraine as a transit country for heroin trafficking: U.S.-Ukraine research partnership

This research was funded by the U.S.-Ukraine Research Partnership project, which began in November of 1999 when an agreement was signed between the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the Ukrainian Academy of Law Sciences (UALS). This partnership program was an integral part of the Gore-Kuchma Binational Commission, established in September 1996 to solidify the close ties between Ukraine and the United States. The increasingly global character of crime has created a mutual incentive for cooperation between the United States and Ukraine. In June of 1999, requests for proposals in the United States and Ukraine were concurrently announced by both NIJ and UALS. The proposals were to address the following crime areas: organized crime, corruption, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and economic crimes. The proposals were competitively reviewed by an expert working-group made up of both U.S. and Ukrainian representatives. The result was five U.S.-Ukrainian research teams, composed of twenty-two Ukrainian and five U.S. members. The size of each individual U.S.-Ukrainian team ranged from ten to three researchers. These teams met for the first time in November 1999 at a “kick-off” conference in Kiev, Ukraine. The greatest accomplishment of the conference was that researchers began the process of overcoming communication barriers and divergent methodological approaches to formulate a joint plan for their research. For this research, Layne worked with two Ukrainian research partners to jointly develop this paper. Khruppa was responsible for collecting Ukrainian data for the report and Muzyka supplied legislative expertise and background. Layne traveled to Ukraine (Kyiv and Kharkiv) four times over the course of two years and her Ukrainian counterparts came to the United States once. It was a challenge to collaborate across distance and language barriers, but a warm, collegial relationship developed and was maintained despite these obstacles.     

The Role of Academic Achievement in the Relationship between School Ethos and Adolescent Distress and Aggression: A Study of Ninth Grade Students in the Segregated School Landscape of Stockholm

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Equitable access to high-quality schools is important for student achievement. However, the increasing attention placed on adolescent mental health promotion...     

Bullying in Context: An Analysis of Psychosomatic Complaints Among Adolescents in Stockholm

Using multilevel modeling, this study examined how different types of bullying, involving both peers and teachers, relate to psychosomatic health complaints. Data were obtained via the Stockholm School Survey from 41,032 ninth- and eleventh-grade students in the years 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010. Results showed that students involved in bullying as either a bully, a victim, or both a bully and a victim displayed poorer psychosomatic health than those not involved in bullying. Victims of peer-bullying also reported significantly poorer health than perpetrators. Two class-aggregated measures of bullying remained positively associated with ninth-grade student health complaints even when their individual-level analogues were taken into account. Thus, both the proportion of victims of teacher-bullying and peer-bullying in the school class appeared to generate health problems that go beyond the directly exposed students. However, an interaction revealed that the latter association was confined to female students only.     

Interaction of the Russian Financial Markets

The different segments of he Russian financial markets are studied in the paper. The market crashed on 17 August 1998. We consider the stable period of the market between May 1996 and October 1997. We study the structure of interactions between the GKO market, stock market, currency market, currency futures market, GKO futures market, interbank credit market. We study the relations between the world financial market and the Russian financial market. It was shown that, in the period under consideration, different segments of the Russian financial market became more integrated and the market as whole became more stable and more integrated in the international capital flows.