Guns,Money and Justice

In late 2005, Suzette Nicolas, then known publicly only as ‘Nicole’, alleged that on 1 November of that year she had been gang-raped by US Marines in Olongapo City in the Subic Bay area on the island of Luzon, site of one of two former large US military bases in the Philippines. Thus began what was to become an internationally notorious rape case, involving the US and Philippine governments, the US military, the Philippine judiciary and a broad feminist-led activist coalition. The case, played out against the backdrop of the US state's Asian front in the ‘War on Terror’, has become inextricably linked with the ongoing Philippine campaign against the US–Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement. This article looks at the case, its background, its symbolism and the current political debate on the ongoing connections between militarism, globalization, US imperialism and violence against women in the Philippines.     

CLASH OF CAREER AND FAMILY: FERTILITY DECISIONS AFTER JOB DISPLACEMENT

In this paper we investigate how career considerations may affect fertility decisions in the presence of a temporary employment shock. We compare the birth rates of women displaced by a plant closure with those of women unaffected by job loss after establishing the pre‐displacement comparability of these groups. Our results reveal that job displacement reduces average fertility by 5%–10%, and that these effects are largely explained by the response of women in more skilled occupations. We offer an explanation of our results based on career interruptions of women.     

Firm-specific human capital, job matching, and turnover: evidence from major league baseball, 1900–1992

The two dominant labor market turnover hypotheses, the firm-specific human capital model (FSHCM) and the job-matching model, suggest different patterns of player mobility in major league baseball. The matching hypothesis predicts greater mobility of players in positions that require substantial team production. A better match may offer large productivity gains. Alternately, the FSHCM predicts players in positions requiring the greatest amount of teamwork will benefit from specific knowledge, making them less likely to change teams. We examine the frequency distribution of trades by player position from 1900–1992 and find the FSHCM provides the best explanation for turnover in this industry.     

AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF A HYBRID LIABILITY RULE

This article considers a legal setting with a tort liability rule that includes both a care-based component (such as negligence) and a non–care-based component (such as no liability). Children trespassers are sometimes protected by a doctrine known as attractive nuisance. Attractive nuisance acts as a hybrid liability rule in its application—it applies the negligence rule to accidents involving some types of children, and the no-liability rule to accidents involving other types of children. A standard economic model of torts is applied to a trespass setting, and the potential efficiency of a hybrid liability rule is examined.     

An axiomatization of the core for finite and continuum games

We provide a new axiomatization of the core of games in characteristic form. The games may have either finite sets of players or continuum sets of players and finite coalitions. Our research is based on Peleg's axiomatization for finite games and on the notions of measurement-consistent partitions and the f-core introduced by Kaneko and Wooders. Since coalitions are finite in both finite games and in continuum games, we can use the reduced game property and the converse reduced game property for our axiomatization. Both properties are particularly appealing in large economies.This paper is a revision of University of Bonn Sonderforschungsbereich 303 Discussion Paper No. B-149, with the same title.     

Fluctuations in infant mortality rates in Berlin during and after the First World War

The social crisis of war, defeat and postwar instability in the period 1914–24 is reflected in the history of infant mortality in Berlin. The prewar trend of infant mortality decline was interrupted by the war, and resumed its course only a decade later. From 1917 to 1923 there was a crisis in illegitimate infant mortality in Berlin, at a time when over 20% of all births were illegitimate. Only by disaggregating infant mortality statistics into legitimate and illegitimate categories can we appreciate fully the impact of the war on the most vulnerable and the most deprived parts of Berlin's population.     

Factor recovery by principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood factor analysis as a function of factor pattern and sample size

Principal axis factoring (PAF) and maximum likelihood factor analysis (MLFA) are two of the most popular estimation methods in exploratory factor analysis. It is known that PAF is better able to recover weak factors and that the maximum likelihood estimator is asymptotically efficient. However, there is almost no evidence regarding which method should be preferred for different types of factor patterns and sample sizes. Simulations were conducted to investigate factor recovery by PAF and MLFA for distortions of ideal simple structure and sample sizes between 25 and 5000. Results showed that PAF is preferred for population solutions with few indicators per factor and for overextraction. MLFA outperformed PAF in cases of unequal loadings within factors and for underextraction. It was further shown that PAF and MLFA do not always converge with increasing sample size. The simulation findings were confirmed by an empirical study as well as by a classic plasmode, Thurstone's box problem. The present results are of practical value for factor analysts.