Social disorganization in a modernizing Dalit community

India has a traditional community justice forum, known as the panchayat, which settles disputes, keeping them from escalating into serious problems. However, this forum is in decline, with serious consequences for Indian communities. Here we analyze how the demise of the panchayat in the Dalit (untouchable) community of Pudur contributed to serious conflicts and crime. Panchayats have been impacted by India’s democratization, economic development, and urbanization. Dalits, especially, want to be independent, equal, and economically prosperous. In Pudur these needs have disrupted collective sentiment to an extent that fulfillment of them has become difficult. That several non-Dalits live in Pudur has made panchayat success even more unattainable. Socially disorganizing forces—modernization, opposing values of equality and caste hierarchy, intergenerational frictions, and Pudur’s unique history and caste composition—have all contributed to the panchayat’s demise and social ills. Modern societies looking for innovative solutions to crime through community justice can learn from Pudur’s negative experiences.     

How Many Balance Functions Does it Take to Determine a Utility Function?

Call b your balance function at wealth W if you are indifferent between W and a 50–50 lottery with outcomes x and b(x). Given one b, u is arbitrary on one side of W but then determined on the other. Given two b‘s, u is arbitrary between the two W′ s but then determined elsewhere. Additional properties of u restrict the b’s but do not ordinarily make u unique. Contradictions can occur. Given three b′ s, an algorithm is developed using minimal domains of definition that determines the relative utility of the W’s. If it is irrational, then the set S generated by applying all combinations of b’s to W′ s is dense and u is determined. If finitely many b’s are rationally related, then S is discrete, a further algorithm determines it, the values of u on S are equally spaced, and u is arbitrary between any two adjacent points of S but then determined elsewhere. Infinitely many balance functions determine u unless they are rationally related in a uniform way.JEL Classification: D81     

The Value of a Statistical Life and the Coefficient of Relative Risk Aversion

Individuals’ risk preferences are estimated and employed in a variety of settings, notably including choices in financial, labor, and product markets. Recent work, especially in financial economics, provides estimates of individuals’ coefficients of relative risk aversion (R’s) in excess of one, and often significantly higher. However, it can be shown that high R’s imply equally high values for the income elasticity of the value of a statistical life. Yet estimates of this elasticity, derived from labor and product markets, are in the range of 0.5 to 0.6. Furthermore, it turns out that even an R below one is difficult to reconcile with these elasticity estimates. Thus, there appears to be an important (additional) anomaly involving individuals’ risk-taking behavior in different market settings.JEL Classification: D80, G11, G12, I10, J17     

Logic, liberty, and anarchy: Mill and Feyerabend on scientific method

On the surface, J. S. Mill and Paul Feyerabend appear to hold differing views of scientific method. Mill attempts to frame a set of rules or canons for testing evidence based on rationality and inference, whereas Feyerabend, in his so-called “epistemological anarchism”, calls for abandoning any attempt to separate the good from the bad in science according to a fixed view of rationality. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, Feryerabend cites Mill as the originator of what he (Feyerabend) has to say in defense of epistemological anarchy. First, I argue that those aspects of Mill’s On Liberty that are suggestive of an anti-rationalist philosophy are entirely compatible with the theory of scientific method Mill offers in A System of Logic. Second, in the process of reconciling these two works of Mill, I hope to shed light on how we are to understand Feyerabend’s critique of methodological dogmatism.     

The time frame problem: the law, social construction, and the sciences

Among our official noblest virtues are truth and justice. In the sciences, officially, truth overrides every other virtue. In the law, officially, justice likewise overrides. That is neither to deny that justice should be tempered by mercy, nor that truth should be qualified by wisdom. Any discussion of law and the sciences is potentially high philosophy, the meeting ground of truth and justice. But there are also more practical concerns. How should scientific information and advice be used in the law courts? There is now a rather staid but thoroughly solid assessment of the current state of play in the United States Federal Court systems, Foster and Huber’s(1997) Judging Science: Scientific Knowledge and the Federal Courts. Far more challenging to the philosopher, the scientist and the student of jurisprudence is Sheila Jasanoff’s(1995) Science at the Bar because she enters current debates as a professed social constructionist, with a distinguished career of investigating science and public policy (Jasanoff and Jasanoff).     

A space for safety: the transformation of automobile safety advertising in response to NHTSA crash test implementation, 1977 and 1981

Automobile safety became an issue of increased public concern during the 1960s. These concerns were institutionalized in the creation of a national regulatory administration charged with overseeing automobile safety. This article examines the impact of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s 1979 mandated federal automobile crash testing program (FMVSS 208) on the content of automakers’ advertising. Automakers’ advertisements were not directly responsive to mandated safety testing, though references to safety features increased.     

“You put politics in the scale:” Stewart L. Udall and excess land law in California, 1961–1968

During the 1960s, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall faced controversy about enforcement of federal reclamation’s excess land law on California’s San Luis Project and the Imperial Irrigation District. The San Luis Project was a complex mix of state and federal funding and operation, and Udall ruled that excess land law did not apply to the state service area. Yet he overruled past practice on the Imperial Irrigation District and called for enforcement of land limits. This paper examines Udall’s effort to balance politics and principle.     

What accounts for China''s trade balance dynamics?

This paper proposes a structural VAR model which extends the frameworks of Hoffmaister and Roldós [Hoffmaister, A. W., & Roldós, J. E. (2001). The sources of macroeconomic fluctuations in developing countries: Brazil and Korea. Journal of Macroeconomics, 23, 213–239] and Prasad [Prasad, E. S. (1999). International trade and the business cycle. Economic Journal, 109, 588–606]. The model is then used to analyse the sources of China's trade balance fluctuations in the period of 1985–2000. Efforts are made to distinguish the forces which underlie the long-run trend in trade balance from those with transitory impacts. The effects of four types of shock are examined—the foreign supply shock, the domestic supply shock, the relative demand shock and the nominal shock. Among other findings, two emerge as important. First, the movements in China's trade balance are largely the result of real shocks. Second, the Renminbi is undervalued, yet changes in the exchange rate bear little on the trade balance. Therefore, monetary measures would not suffice to redress China's trade ‘imbalance’.     

Adaptation of Tastes to Constraints

This paper examines a model in which people’s preferences adjust to changes in their relative ability to attain various goals. Preference changes are modeled as changes in the configuration of weights (or values) attached to these goals. The model permits to explain common prototype changes of preferences such as the ‘sour grapes’ or the ‘overcompensating’ phenomenon. It is found that whether the first or the second phenomenon occurs depends on whether a goal is easy or difficult to substitute by other goals. If two goals are sufficiently strong substitutes for each other, no weight will be placed on that goal which is harder to attain. The results readily apply to the standard microeconomic set-up involving goods and prices, rather than abstract goals and abilities. In this case, one implication of the model is that only a subset of the overall commodity space is relevant for everyday consumer choice, which reduces the complexity of the choice procedure. The model also permits to explain how new and unfamiliar products are incorporated into the consumer’s preference pattern.     

Does financial development cause economic growth? Implication for policy in Korea

The causal relationship between financial development and economic growth is examined, utilizing the superexogeneity methodology. We use annual data for Korea during 1971–2002, during which Korea has experienced both phenomenal economic growth and a variety of financial liberalization and reforms. In our tests for superexogeneity, we find that financial development control causes economic growth, but the reverse is not true. Our empirical results provide evidence in favor of the ‘finance causes growth’ view for the case of Korea while rejecting the ‘growth causes finance’ view. The policy implication is that Korea should give policy priority to financial reform rather than economic growth, because only a decisive and accelerated pace of financial restructuring can ensure a sustainable growth in the medium or long term.     

Promoting a feminist policy agenda: indigenous women leaders and closet feminism

In the Southwestern United States, Hispanas and American Indian women are increasingly adopting policymaking roles in state, local, and tribal politics. This study examines the influence of gender and ethnic identity on the policy agendas of 30 women who hold public office in New Mexico. Although the findings reveal a distinct pattern of advocacy for a feminist agenda, the majority of these indigenous leaders do not identify themselves or their goals as feminist. This research indicates that women’s policy concerns transcend ethnic/race boundaries. Furthermore, to understand Hispanas’ and Indian women’s politics, and to effectively apply feminist theory to praxis, new models incorporating their practical application of feminism are needed.     

Rethinking Aotearoa’s human geography

This essay is a reconsideration of my attempt as a geography Master’s candidate in 1950, to estimate the Maori population of New Zealand about the time of James Cook’s 1769–1773 voyages. Thinking that the 100,000 estimated by J. R. Forster, naturalist with Cook , excluded significant populations, I proposed a number approaching 250,000. But the subsequent rise of particular Social Sciences with a focus on Maori prehistory has challenged some earlier authorities. Critical evaluations of historical sources, demographic analysis, archaeological calculations based on settlement-sites, residues of fish and shellfish consumed, and analyses of past evaluations, generally suggest estimates not much exceeding 100,000 despite severe losses incurred through introduced diseases and tribal wars between 1770 and 1840. Parallels to losses among Pacific Islanders exist, yet may be deceptive. A survey of recent authorities on the Maori indicates general acceptance of deflated estimates.     

The politics of water scarcity in the western states

Water is a scarce and highly prized commodity in the arid Western states. Not surprisingly, water policy creation is very much a challenge for a number of reasons. Citizens hold multiple water values such as economic development and the protection of wildlife which are often contradictory. State prior appropriation laws are not easily reconciled with federal reserve rights and the public trust doctrine. There are multiple governmental and nongovernmental actors who work to influence and implement policy in a decentralized political system. If actors lose a policy battle in one decisionmaking arena (such as a legislature), they often try to influence policy at another venue (a court, Congress or an agency). Policymaking involves water issues that are dynamic over time. Furthermore, there are several types of water policy (distributive, allocative, redistributive and cooperative) that vary according to who pays costs and receives benefits, the level of conflict, the openness of decisionmaking to interested parties, and the level of government which dominates. Long ago, Mark Twain was correct when he said “Whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting about.”     

Where o’ where did my baseball cards go?: Race,performance, and placement in the Topps ERA, 1956–1980

On the surface, baseball cards appear to be little more than uninteresting object of child's play; yet they provide invaluable data for assessing unique aspects of the social order. They reveal much about the state of society when they were produced and the people who collected them. This paper examines the unique numbering system the Topps company developed to differentiate among the “royalty of the diamond” from 1956 to 1980. Their system assigned to each card in a set a number that explicitly designated its placement, while implicitly establishing a hierarchical ordering among the players, ostensibly based on performance. It is arguable whether the numbering system Topps developed was based on performance or the ascribed characteristic of race. The results of our work suggest that player performance, not race, was the primary factor in the assignment of “prestigious” card numbers in Topps’ system.     

The political orientation of Blacks and Whites: Converging,diverging, or remaining constant?

This paper examines the extent to which patterns of public opinion between Blacks and Whites have converged, diverged, or remained constant since the late1970s. It explores how trends in public opinion reflect a decline in the role of race in the formation of pubic opinion. The findings show a slight convergence of public opinion between Blacks and Whites on some issues and stabilization on others depending of the nature of the issue. The data also showed that the magnitude of difference on most issues, other than those related to race, rarely constituted anything more than a gap in public opinion and not a gulf of chasm. The fact that significant differences continue to exist between Blacks’ and Whites’ public opinions suggest that race is still a significant indicator of opinion position.     

Policy Stable States in the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution

A new approach to policy analysis is formulated within the framework of the graph model for conflict resolution. A policy is defined as a plan of action for a decision maker (DM) that specifies the DM’s intended action starting at every possible state in a graph model of a conflict. Given a profile of policies, a Policy Stable State (PSS) is a state that no DM moves away from (according to its policy), and such that no DM would prefer to change its policy given the policies of the other DMs. The profile of policies associated to a PSS is called a Policy Equilibrium. Properties of PSSs are developed, and a refinement is suggested that restricts DMs to policies that are credible in that they are in the DM’s immediate interest. Relationships with existing stability definitions in the graph model for conflict resolution are then explored.     

Asian Americans and campaign finance in municipal elections

This paper explores the political significance of Asian American campaign finance activity in municipal elections. We examined both the donation patterns of Asian contributors and the fundraising coalitions assembled by Asian candidates. From the contributor perspective, we found that Asians contributed in roughly proportional levels to their population as a whole, and were willing to contribute not only to coethnics but also to Asian candidates of other ethnicities and to non-Asians. As for Asian candidates, we found that they relied heavily on Asian contributors for campaign funds, especially coethnics. Asian candidates’ ability to draw on ethnic networks for campaign funds is an important political resource that enhances their ability to mount competitive campaigns. However, the value of these networks is limited by candidates’ inability or unwillingness to form panethnic fundraising coalitions.     

Breaking the Stability Pact: Was it predictable?

We show analytically that the credibility problem which has affected the European Stability Pact originates from the insufficient distinction between two reasons for having binding fiscal constraints. The first reason deals with the governments’ tendency to neglect the effects of their fiscal policy on foreign governments (fiscal free-riding). The second reason follows from the governments’ tendency to raise debt by lowering taxes or increasing expenditures, and then to leave it to their successors (fiscal short-termism). An enforcement mechanism relying on governments’ collusion works if the fiscal constraints are not calibrated for curing fiscal short-termism but only for preventing fiscal free-riding.     

Soccer, stock returns and fanaticism: Evidence from Turkey

This paper assesses the effect of three major soccer teams’ wins on the returns of the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE). We argue that the effect of soccer wins on ISE returns increases with the fanaticism of the teams’ supporters.