Internalities and paternalism: applying the compensation criterion to multiple selves across time

One reason to call an activity a vice and suppress it is that it reduces a person’s future happiness more than it increases his present happiness. Gruber and Koszegi (Q J Econ 116(4):1261–1303, 2001) show how a vice tax can increase a person’s welfare in a model of multiple selves with hyperbolic preferences across time. The present paper shows that an interself analogy of the compensation criterion can justify a vice ban whether preferences are hyperbolic or exponential, but subject to the caveat that the person has a binding constraint on borrowing.     

Racial bias in baseball card collecting revisited

Although research examining the role of racial bias in the secondary sports card market has been an emerging area of inquiry, empirical knowledge on the question: “Does the race of the player on a sports card affect the value of the card?” remains inconclusive. This paper revisits one of the first studies on this topic. Data were derived for 66 Black, White, and Latino members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame who were elected by a vote of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Data for each player's race, career performance statistics, rookie card price, and card availability were obtained from secondary sources. Findings indicate that card availability and, to a lesser extent, player performance is the most important factor affecting the value of a player's card, while importantly, a player's race is not a significant contributor to card value. Suggestions for future research are outlined.     

Validity and Psychometric Properties of the Early Development Instrument in Canada,Australia, United States,and Jamaica

There is an increasing support from international organizations and the research community for stepping beyond infant or child mortality as the most common child level social indicator and progressing towards an international measure of child development. The Early Development Instrument (EDI) is a teacher-completed measure of children’s developmental health at school entry, which to date has been used in more than a dozen countries. The EDI includes five developmental domains (Physical Health and Well-being, Social Competence, Emotional Maturity, Language and Cognitive Development and Communication Skills and General Knowledge) and 16 subdomains. This paper examines the EDI’s psychometric properties in four English-speaking countries (Canada, Australia, United States and Jamaica) by evaluating both the internal consistency and factor structures, as well as exploring the association between the EDI’s Language and Cognitive Development Domain and a direct assessment of children’s receptive vocabulary (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, PPVT). Overall, the factor loadings and internal consistencies of domains and subdomains were similar across the countries. The comparisons of the Language and Cognitive Development Domain with the PPVT showed high specificity and low sensitivity. The results of this paper indicate that the EDI, a measure of children’s developmental status at school entry, demonstrates similar psychometric properties in a number of countries, thus building the evidence for the instrument to be added to the limited array of internationally comparable child social indicators.     

Citizenship Beyond Borders: A Cross‐National Study of Dual Citizenship*

As global integration increases, the implications for state boundaries and citizens’ identity grow more significant. Some scholars suggest that the recognition of dual citizenship reveals the extent to which cross‐national immigration requires states to formally recognize a multiplicity of national identities through dual citizenship ( Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer 2002 ; Castles and Davidson 2000 ; Falk 1994 ). We propose that scholars need to additionally consider citizenship identity as a source of national assimilation of the international community and postnational citizenship in world culture ( Brubaker 1992a ; Faist 2004 ; Soysal 1994 ; Turner 2001 ). We use logistic regression to evaluate this argument by examining factors that lead states to enact legislation recognizing dual citizenship. The resulting analysis suggests that the recognition of dual citizenship reflects national, ex‐colonial, and postnational cultural identities rather than the presence of cross‐national immigration.     

Assessing Adolescents Who Threaten Homicide in Schools

Psychoanalytic and psychiatric perspectives on children who threaten to kill others are reviewed in the context of the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the problem. Converging technologies derived from a Psychoanalytically informed social systems model are compared to law enforcement approaches, Psychoanalytic understanding of the individual dynamics of the child, and empirical research a conduct disordered adolescents. The interdisciplinary orientation of a broadly trained community psychoanalyst allows a unique contribution when trying to distinguish adolescents who make a threat from those who pose a threat. Case vignettes are used to illustrate the hypotheses. This article is reprinted with permission of The American Society of Psychoanalysis, Volume 62, Number 3, pp. 213–235 (2002). Two of the authors (SWT & FCS), participated in a conference held by the federal Bureau of Investigation in July 1999, in which 18 schools where there had been homicides as well as thwarted attacks were invited to a weeklong conference with many national experts and FBI profilers. Well over 100 individuals attended the meeting, including school principals, counselors, deans of students, district attorneys, and members of the police force in a think tank setting to understand the psychology of school violence and, in particular of the child who commits or threatens homicide in school called by the FBI a “school shooter”.     

Religious effects on environmentalism

Understanding of religious influences on environmentalism has been biased by political conflicts. This article summarizes the demographic parameters of environmental concern, then evaluates religious and political influences on that concern and related activity, using General Social Surveys data. It assesses influences on willingness to pay for environmental programs, individual environmental behaviors, and participation in political activities for related causes. Young people and women express greater environmental concern, but older persons more often engage in individual environmental activities such as recycling. The association of fundamentalism with political conservatism compounds interpretation of religion because political conservatives are antagonistic to environmentalism. Religious affiliation strength has positive effects on environmental concern, and worship attendance has positive effects on individual environmental behaviors, when fundamentalism and political variables are controlled. This article is part of the third stage of literature on religion and environmentalism in which positive as well as negative patterns are recognized.     

Improving social psychiatric treatment in residential programmes for emerging dependence groups in Europe: cross-border networking, methodological innovations and substantive discoveries

A mini-symposium series of papers presenting the results of the European Commission-supported Biomed II project is introduced. The project accomplished a cross-border scientific networking engaging 31 European residential treatment programmes. The results showed that scientific development is best served by a flexible bureaucratic approach. 'Old' science and the 'new' science ways of working were balanced. 'History' and 'social networks' are the key concepts signalling the project knowledge gains. A treatment sample (N=723) was extracted from a database of 1028 current European cases. Non-drug-specific characteristics are as important as drug-specific characteristics in distinguishing emerging dependence groups. The project networking created a process that increased the level of involvement of science and the service communities. To sustain the gains of the project, a reaching out of existing European treatment services to extended family and friendship networks with a history of dependence-related problems will be required.     

Effects of Conservative Sociopolitical Attitudes on Public Support for Drug Rehabilitation Spending

Objective . In this article we investigate why traditionally conservative social groups show less support for spending on drug rehabilitation programs than for drug control spending in general. Methods . Using data from the 1984 through 1998 General Social Surveys, we first estimate logistic regressions of support for drug control spending across five sociopolitical cleavages. We then estimate effects of three types of sociopolitical attitudes on support for drug spending within traditionally conservative groups. Results . Resistance to rehabilitation spending among conservatives is related to their opposition to the welfare state, punitive attitudes toward criminals, and among whites, racial attitudes. Conclusions . Our findings suggest that citizens may withhold support for a social policy to the extent that it evokes negative associations with other salient sociopolitical issues or attitudes. We discuss the importance of these associations for understanding the relationships among political debate, public opinion, and policy outcomes.     

Work Design Issues in Lean Production from a Sociotechnical Systems Perspective: Neo-Taylorism or the Next Step in Sociotechnical Design?

The similarities and differences between twoparadigms, Lean Production (LP) and SociotechnicalSystems (STS) thinking, which currently compete for theattention of managers and scholars interested inimproving the design of work systems, are studied in thisarticle. In order to find the logic behind eachapproach, the design principles formulated by Chernshave been used to evaluate LP from an STS viewpoint with respect to work design issues. The two conceptsdiffer most with respect to their definition of systemboundaries, the control mechanisms they favor and theirvalue bases and assumptions about workers. The way control is exercised in each concept isclosely related to the production structure and hasfar-reaching consequences for the human resourcepolicies practiced. Although each approach has something to offer the other, the question whether thebest ideas of both can be synthesized in designing asuperior overall system cannot be answered so easily. Inthe end, it will require more than just choosing features of each approach to apply incombination; the differences in fundamental beliefsabout people need to be reconciled in the design of theorganization and its system.