Güterverteilungsmatrizen und ihre Bewertung

The distribution of personal income comprises information about the distribution of possible but not actual provisions of households or individuals with goods and services. Value judgements about the actual provisions with goods and services, therefore, should not be confounded on the distribution of personal income. In this paper we are discussing matrices for the distribution with goods and services with m columns (goods and services) and n rows (individuals or households). We distinguish between matrices with columns adding up to personal income and matrices with columns which do not add up to something meaningful. We also analyse problems which arise when either some columns are meant to desire special attention (‘specific egalitarianism’) or when some rows are seperated for special treatment (measurement of relative poverty). Finally, we concentrate on problems of comparing two such matrices. Methodological means are Lorenz-Curves, Concentration-Curves, Gini Coefficients with decompositions and reasonable generalisations thereof.     

What’s Wrong with the HIPC Initiative and What’s Next?

This article reviews the problems of the enhanced HIPC initiative and outlines possible steps towards a more efficient debt and poverty reduction initiative. After brief comments on the rationale for debt relief, it analyses some key issues related to the HIPC initiative’s aim to achieve debt sustainability, describes other fundamental problems of the HIPC framework, and discusses some less known but still crucial flaws of the initiative. It then proceeds with necessary improvements for an efficient debt reduction programme, possible modifications for a revised HIPC initiative, and some suggestions on how to overcome financing constraints. Apart from being in several respects unfair, the current framework is unlikely to permit a lasting exit from unsustainable debt for many HIPCs, and may lead to a decline in traditional development assistance.     

Twelve-month-old infants’ physiological responses to music are affected by others’ positive and negative reactions

Infants show remarkable skills for processing music in the first year of life. Such skills are believed to foster social and communicative development, yet little is known about how infants’ own preferences for music develop and whether social information plays a role. Here, we investigate whether the reactions of another person influence infants’ responses to music. Specifically, 12-month-olds (N = 33) saw an actor react positively or negatively after listening to clips of instrumental music. Arousal (measured via pupil dilation) and attention (measured via looking time) were assessed when infants later heard the clips without the actor visible. Results showed greater pupil dilation when listening to music clips that had previously been reacted to negatively than those that had been reacted to positively (Exp. 1). This effect was not replicated when a similar, rather than identical, clip from the piece of music was used in the test phase (Exp. 2, N = 35 12-month-olds). There were no effects of the actor's positive or negative reaction on looking time. Together, our findings suggest that infants are sensitive to others’ positive and negative reactions not only for concrete objects, such as food or toys, but also for more abstract stimuli including music.     

NEWS MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGICAL RISKS: The Case of Pesticides after Silent Spring

The 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring vaulted pesticide risks to a prominent place on the media agenda. This article reports on a study of the relative weight of attention given by the New York Times to alarming or reassuring messages about pesticides in the immediate aftermath of Silent Spring . Theoretically, it uses a combination of inductive and deductive approaches to explain the empirical findings. Three models of media coverage are examined: conflict theory, sensationalism, and problem frame. These models are employed chronologically as analysis revealed a complicated pattern of coverage which first highlighted, then downplayed, risk.     

Violence in children's programmes on British television

This paper presents a study of violence on children's television in Britain. A total of 943 children's programmes were coded in an exercise which content analysed more than 4,700 hours of programmes broadcast on eight television channels. Thirty nine per cent of these children's programmes contained violence. More than 4,000 violent acts and 7.2 hours of violence occurred in these programmes. More than half of the violence occurred in general children's programmes, with somewhat under half being found in children's cartoons. The violence mostly involved shootings or various forms of physical assault, using hand-held weapons or the hand or foot. Much of the violence occurred in a crime context or following an argument between two or more individuals. Violence was usually committed for negative purposes, rather than to serve socially positive interests. Violent acts were rarely followed by painful consequences. Perpetrators of violence were most likely to be white, male, young adults, or cartoon characters. Results are discussed in relation to implications for effects upon children and those with responsibilities for children.