Breaking the taboo: a history of monetary financing in Canada, 1930–1975

Monetary financing – the funding of state expenditure via the creation of new money rather than through taxation or borrowing – has become a taboo policy instrument in advanced economies. It is generally associated with dangerously high inflation and/or war. Relatedly, a key institutional feature of modern independent central banks is that they are not obligated to support government expenditure via money creation. Since the financial crisis of 2007–2008, however, unorthodox monetary policies, in particular quantitative easing, coupled with stagnant growth and high levels of public and private debt have led to questions over the monetary financing taboo. Debates on the topic have so far been mainly theoretical with little attention to the social and political dynamics of historical instances of monetary financing. This paper analyses one of the most significant twentieth‐century cases: Canada from the period after the Great Depression up until the monetarist revolution of the 1970s. The period was a successful one for the Canadian economy, with high growth and employment and manageable inflation. It offers some interesting insights into the relationship between states and central banks and present‐day discussions around the governance of money creation.     

“Men never cry”: Teaching Mormon Manhood in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

We examine the ways Mormon leaders establish “what it means to be a man” for their followers. Based on content analysis of over 40 years of archival material, we analyze how Mormon leaders represent manhood as the ability to signify control over self and others as well as an inability to be controlled. Specifically, we demonstrate how these representations stress controlling the self, emotional and sexual expression, and others while emphasizing the development of self-reliance and independence from others’ control. We draw out implications for understanding (1) how religious leaders create ideal notions of manhood, (2) what the religious interpretations of secular constructions of manhood are, and (3) how these relate to the reproduction of gender inequalities.     

Characteristics of Couples Who Attend Family Services Counselor Visits in Relationship Education

Case management services for low-income couples receiving relationship education have been required by federal funding agencies. Studies examining relationship education outcomes for low-income couples have yet to address participant characteristics of those who attend case management services (e.g., distressed vs. nondistressed). Thus, this study examined the influence of baseline relationship satisfaction and demographics on attendance at case management visits for 2,628 low-income, partnered participants who attended relationship education. Findings indicated that participants who reported higher baseline relationship distress attended more family services counselor (FSC) visits. However, when we added demographics to the model, relationship distress no longer predicted FSC visits, whereas income served as a predictor for men and women, with those reporting greater monthly income attending more FSC visits.     

The Epistemic Culture of Homebrewers and Microbrewers

Homebrewing and microbrewing have been growing in popularity during the last few decades. One way this phenomenon can be analyzed is through the culture of knowledge production. We use the subfield of science and technology studies (STS) to examine homebrewing and microbrewing in this light. Early STS was interested in the social construction of scientific facts within daily practices of scientists. Through these early studies, STS revealed not only the process of scientific fact creation but also existence of “epistemic cultures.” Our study investigates the epistemic culture of homebrewers and microbrewers. Analysis of this epistemic culture was accomplished through use of in-depth interviews with homebrewers and microbrewers at several regional sites. Three major themes emerged from the data: home space as lab; the art and science of beer brewing; and brewing as “friendship”. These themes establish a foundation for understanding the shared epistemic culture existing between homebrewers and microbrewers.     

The Legacy of Lynching? An Empirical Replication and Conceptual Extension

Research shows enduring impacts of lynching on a variety of modern outcomes. For instance, Messner, Baller, and Zevenbergen found that lynching is associated with contemporary white-on-black homicide. We propose a model describing how events from the past can have effects on events in the present. Essential to our framework is the notion of social forces of “resistance” that can impede or facilitate the temporal transmission of collective memories. We test “indicators of resistance” that influence the transmission of a collective memory supportive of a “legacy of lynching.” Analyses reveal that the positive and significant association between lynching and white-on-black homicide observed by Messner et al. is attenuated and becomes statistically nonsignificant with the inclusion of these indicators. Our results suggest that the temporal transmission of a racist cultural schema manifested through lynching is more likely where resistance is low. These findings have implications for how researchers can study historical legacies.     

The Methuselah Effect: The Pernicious Impact of Unreported Deaths on Old-Age Mortality Estimates

We examine inferences about old-age mortality that arise when researchers use survey data matched to death records. We show that even small rates of failure to match respondents can lead to substantial bias in the measurement of mortality rates at older ages. This type of measurement error is consequential for three strands in the demographic literature: (1) the deceleration in mortality rates at old ages; (2) the black-white mortality crossover; and (3) the relatively low rate of old-age mortality among Hispanics, often called the “Hispanic paradox.” Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Older Men matched to death records in both the U.S. Vital Statistics system and the Social Security Death Index, we demonstrate that even small rates of missing mortality matching plausibly lead to an appearance of mortality deceleration when none exists and can generate a spurious black-white mortality crossover. We confirm these findings using data from the National Health Interview Survey matched to the U.S. Vital Statistics system, a data set known as the “gold standard” (Cowper et al. 2002) for estimating age-specific mortality. Moreover, with these data, we show that the Hispanic paradox is also plausibly explained by a similar undercount.     

Coordination in a Single‐Supplier,Multi‐Retailer Distribution System: Supplier‐Facilitated Transshipments

We consider supplier‐facilitated transshipments for achieving supply chain coordination in a single supplier, multi‐retailer distribution system with non‐cooperative retailers. The previous transshipment literature has focused on coordination through retailer‐negotiated transshipments and thus does not consider the supplier's decision‐making. In contrast, in this study, we assume the supplier is an active participant in the system and we seek to understand how the supplier can facilitate the implementation of coordinating transshipments. We study a two‐period model with wholesale orders at the start of the first period and preventive transshipments performed at the start of the second period. Inspired by a supplier‐facilitated transshipment scheme observed in practice, we assume the supplier implements transshipments through a bi‐directional adjustment contract. Under this contract, each retailer can either buy additional inventory from, or sell back excess inventory to, the supplier. We show that coordination can be achieved through carefully designed contracts with state‐dependent adjustment prices and a wholesale price menu. We demonstrate that the supplier's role in facilitating coordinating transshipments is critical. In addition, we use our understanding of the coordinating contract form to derive some simpler and easier‐to‐implement heuristic contracts. We use a numerical study to demonstrate the value, to the supplier, of using the coordinating adjustment and wholesale prices, and to evaluate the heuristics’ performance.     

Engaging with Comparative Risk Appraisals: Public Views on Policy Priorities for Environmental Risk Governance

Communicating the rationale for allocating resources to manage policy priorities and their risks is challenging. Here, we demonstrate that environmental risks have diverse attributes and locales in their effects that may drive disproportionate responses among citizens. When 2,065 survey participants deployed summary information and their own understanding to assess 12 policy‐level environmental risks singularly, their assessment differed from a prior expert assessment. However, participants provided rankings similar to those of experts when these same 12 risks were considered as a group, allowing comparison between the different risks. Following this, when individuals were shown the prior expert assessment of this portfolio, they expressed a moderate level of confidence with the combined expert analysis. These are important findings for the comprehension of policy risks that may be subject to augmentation by climate change, their representation alongside other threats within national risk assessments, and interpretations of agency for public risk management by citizens and others.     

Patterns of Nonverbal Behavior Associated with Truth and Deception: Illustrations from Three Experiments

The digital age has brought with it new and powerful computer-based methods of analyzing heretofore elusive patterns of nonverbal behavior. C-BAS (Meservy 2010) is a computer-assisted behavioral observation tool for identifying and tracking nonverbal behaviors from video. THEME (Magnusson, The hidden structure of interaction: from neurons to culture patterns, IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp 4–22, 2005) is a software program that discovers patterns among discrete events in time-ordered data. Together, these tools enable more precise measurement and analysis of nonverbal behavioral dynamics. Applications to three corpora derived from interpersonal deception experiments reveal unique nonverbal patterns that distinguish deceptive from nondeceptive interactions. The first and second experiments produced serial, hierarchically related patterns of behaviors that differed in length and complexity between truthful and deceptive participants during interviews about a theft and cheating, respectively. The third experiment produced differential patterns by and among group members completing a task. Deceivers were inclined toward strategic initiations and interactional control, whereas suspicious group members adopted a more passive, possibly watchful stance. Discovery of these patterns challenges the prevailing view that nonverbal behaviors are too faint and inconsistent to identify deceptive communication. Results have numerous implications regarding the following: the development of new measurement tools locating significant effects of nonverbal behaviors, support for theory that coherent and repetitive relationships exist within and among interactants’ communication, demonstration of the role of nonverbal behaviors in deceptive communication and the dynamic and strategic nature of deception.