The South Australian Prohibition of Discrimination Act and Racism

The effectiveness of the South Australian Prohibition of Discrimination Act is examined with respect to its effect on individual and institutional racism. It is concluded that the act only deals with individual racism and not the less overt aspects of institutional racism; for example the latter still exists in poor standards of health, housing, and education. For a significant improvement in race relations in Australia there needs to be a wider guarantee against discrimination to cover both individual and institutional racism. It is suggested that the Australian government's Bill of Rights and Racial Discrimination Bill be examined in this light.     

The relationship between conflict events and commodity prices in Sudan

Though recent literature uncovers linkages between commodity prices and conflict, the causal direction of the relationship remains ambiguous. We attempt to contribute to this strand of research by studying the dynamic relationship of commodity prices and the onsets of conflict events in Sudan. Using monthly data ranging from January 2001 through December 2012, we identify a structural breakpoint in the multivariate time series model of prices of the three staple foods (sorghum, millet, and wheat) and conflict measure (number of conflict events) in September of 2011. Applying structural vector autoregression (SVAR) and linear non-Gaussian acyclic model (LiNGAM), we find that wheat price fluctuation is a root cause of conflict events in Sudan. We recommend several policy and programmatic suggestions structured toward production, subsidy, price regulation and support for rural farmers and consumers to stabilize commodity prices.     

The prevalence and composition of asset poverty in Canada: 1999, 2005, and 2012

A household is considered asset poor if its assets (financial assets or net worth, taken separately) are insufficient to maintain well‐being at a low‐income threshold for 3 months. We provide the first national‐level estimates of asset poverty for Canada, using the 1999, 2005, and 2012 cycles of the Survey of Financial Security, and juxtapose these estimates with income poverty. The analysis provides new insight into economic insecurity by showing that asset poverty rates are consistently two to three times higher than income poverty rates. In addition to the prevalence of asset poverty across socio‐demographic groups, we analyzed how the composition of the poor change over time. Age and geography shape the risk for asset poverty in distinct ways. We found that while education appears to play a comparable role in shaping both income poverty and asset poverty, immigration places Canadians at a relatively higher risk of income poverty but not asset poverty. Key Practitioner Message: ? Practitioners ought to consider assets as well as income in assessing economic vulnerability; ? Asset poverty levels are 2–3 times higher than income poverty levels; ? Certain groups (e.g., immigrants) may be income poor but maintain sufficient assets.     

VOLUNTARY DISCLOSURE AND EARNINGS EXPECTATIONS IN MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING

Multi-level marketing (MLM) firms recruit individuals into a business opportunity but are not required to disclose the earnings of past participants. Some MLMs voluntarily create income disclosures, which may serve both marketing and risk-management functions. We create an economic experiment to explore the impact of MLM income disclosure on consumer interest and expectations. Results suggest that disclosure does not significantly alter interest in the business opportunity but does reduce expectations, on average, when subjects are asked to estimate annual income in a lab environment. We discuss findings in the context of current regulatory policy. (JEL D18, D82, M38)     

SOCIAL HIERARCHIES: A LABORATORY STUDY ON PUNISHMENT PATTERNS ACROSS NETWORKS

We experimentally study punishment patterns across network structures, and their effect on cooperation. In a repeated public goods setting, subjects can only observe and punish their neighbors. Centralized structures (like the star network) outperform other incomplete networks and reach contribution levels like the ones observed in a complete network. Our results suggest that hierarchical network structures with a commonly observed player benefit more from sanctions not because central players punish more, but because they follow, and promote, different punishment patterns. While quasi-central players in other incomplete architectures (like the line network) retaliate, and get trapped in the vicious circle of antisocial punishment, central players in the star network do not punish back, increase their contributions when sanctioned by peripheral players, and sanction other participants in a prosocial manner. Our results illustrate recent field studies on the evolutionary prevalence of hierarchical networks. We document a network-based rationale for this positive effect in an identity-free, fully anonymous environment. (JEL C72, C91, C92, D90, H41)     

Put to the test: For a new sociology of testing

In an age defined by computational innovation, testing seems to have become ubiquitous, and tests are routinely deployed as a form of governance, a marketing device, an instrument for political intervention, and an everyday practice to evaluate the self. This essay argues that something more radical is happening here than simply attempts to move tests from the laboratory into social settings. The challenge that a new sociology of testing must address is that ubiquitous testing changes the relations between science, engineering, and sociology: Engineering is today in the very stuff of where society happens. It is not that the tests of 21st-century engineering occur within a social context but that it is the very fabric of the social that is being put to the test. To understand how testing and the social relate today, we must investigate how testing operates on social life, through the modification of its settings. One way to clarify the difference is to say that the new forms of testing can be captured neither within the logic of the field test nor of the controlled experiment. Whereas tests once happened inside social environments, today’s tests directly and deliberately modify the social environment.     

Underground testing: Name-altering practices as probes in electronic music

Name-altering practices are common in many creative fields—pen names in literature, stage names in the performing arts, and aliases in music. More than just reflecting artistic habits or responding to the need for distinctive brands, these practices can also serve as test devices to probe, validate, and guide the artists’ active participation in a cultural movement. At the same time, they constitute a powerful probe to negotiate the boundaries of a subculture, especially when its features are threatened by appropriation from the mass-oriented culture. Drawing evidence from electronic music, a field where name-altering practices proliferate, we outline dynamics of pseudonymity, polyonymy, and anonymity that surround the use of aliases. We argue that name-altering practices are both a tool that artists use to probe the creative environment and a device to recursively put one’s creative participation to the test. In the context of creative subcultures, name-altering practices constitute a subtle but effective form of underground testing.