Conflicting evidence and decisions by agency professionals: an experimental test in the context of merger regulation

Many important regulatory decisions are taken by professionals employing limited and conflicting evidence. We conduct an experiment in a merger regulation setting, identifying the role of different standards of proof, volumes of evidence, cost of error and professional or lay decision making. The experiment was conducted on current practitioners from 11 different jurisdictions, in addition to student subjects. Legal standards of proof significantly affect decisions. There are specific differences because of professional judgment, including in how error costs and volume of evidence are taken into account. We narrow the range of explanations for why professional decision making matters.     

Consensual partnering in Australia: A review and 1991 census profile

This paper is the first part of a two-part examination of consensual partnering in Australia. It reviews the Australian literature on consensual partnering, summarizing evidence of its proliferation since the mid-1960s and also the findings of investigations into its nature and the personal attributes that predispose some people more than others to adopt it. It then discusses the shortcomings of Australian census data as a source for studying consensual unions, before using data from the 1991 Census to present the first elements in a comprehensive profile of the cohabiting population. These cover the basic demography of consensual partnering: the ages, marital statuses and family type distributions of those involved. The second author contributed to this paper while a student of Graduate Studies in Demography, The Australian National University. Views expressed are those of the authors, and are not necessarily those of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.     

Parental choice and the rural primary school: Lifestyle,locality and loyalty

This paper discusses the geography of parental choice in a rural locale and shows how a group of parents negotiated their way through the process of primary school choice. Using ethnographic data collected through interviews and observations with parents and staff from three rural primary schools in England, the research utilises Bourdieu's concepts of capital, habitus and field to show how the resources and values the parents held affected the school choices they made. The paper demonstrates that the longer-term resident local parents were influenced not only by their cultural capital but also by familial ties and an emotional commitment to the rural locale and these parents were therefore more inclined to support their local school. In contrast, the more recent newcomer parents used their cultural capital and spatial power to shop around to find what they believed to be the ‘right’ school. The paper argues that the newcomer parents had less allegiance to place and hence to the symbolic position that the school holds within the rural community within which they lived.     

Adoption and Antisocial Personality: Genetic and Environmental Factors Associated with Antisocial Outcomes

The present review critically evaluates evidence from adoption studies on the heritability of antisocial personality, interactions between genetic predispositions and the characteristics of adoptive mothers and fathers, and both the methodological and diagnostic shortcomings of existing studies. The article concludes with directions and suggestions for future research and practice.     

On the sociology of women's unemployment,its neglect and significance

Although there is an extensive and varied literature on the nature and consequences of unemployment very little has been written about the experiences of jobless women. This is unfortunate since there are good sociological reasons why the reactions to job loss among women may be different from those of men. Empirical data tend to support this expectation although more research is needed and called for. Sociological studies of unemployed women could contribute to the development of theories about wage-work, family life and domestic labour. Women's unemployment also has a broader significance in that it bears directly upon theories of social stratification and social order that are central to sociological study as a whole.