公诉证明标准探析

公诉的证明标准是指控诉机关决定提起公诉或者维持已经提起的公诉时,控诉证据必须达到的法定标准,是法律规定的运用证据证明待证事实所要达到的程度和要求。我国公诉证明标准与定罪证明标准的关系应如何界定,是当前理论与实务界讨论的热点问题。本文考察了西方主要国家公诉证     

Anti-corruption reform in indonesia: an obituary?

Indonesia's Anti-Corruption Court had until recently convicted all the defendants brought before it by the Corruption Eradication Commission. Many of these were well-known and politically powerful figures. Yet both the Court and the Commission are under threat. Between February and October 2011, the Anti-Corruption Courts issued more than 20 acquittals, and on 11 October 2011, for the first time, a defendant prosecuted by the KPK itself was acquitted. This article traces the history of the Court and the Commission and explains why their fall may be imminent. Both institutions have been the targets of efforts to discredit and hobble them, apparently orchestrated by people the Commission has investigated. If the current trend continues, the Anti-Corruption Court and the Corruption Eradication Commission may soon join the growing list of Indonesia's failed anti-corruption initiatives.     

State bloc versus individual delegate voting at the constitutional convention: Did it make a difference?

Voting at the 1787 Constitutional Convention followed the procedure of requiring state votes to be determined by the majority vote of each state's present delegates, and the outcome of the vote to be decided by majority vote of the states. In establishing the new legislature, the adopted Constitution set rules such that a simple majority of all present representatives would determine the outcome of each legislative vote. We investigate how Convention vote outcomes might have changed if this voting rule was in place for the Convention. Using spatial models on 398 separate roll calls, we identify which vote outcomes would have differed under individual delegate voting. Analysis suggests only 16 of the vote outcomes would have changed but those that were predicted to change included considering unequal representation in the Senate (i.e., similar to representation in the House) and requiring two‐thirds (rather than three‐fourths) of states to ratify constitutional amendments.     

State Firearm Sales and Criminal Activity: Evidence from Firearm Background Checks

The FBI has reported the number of monthly firearm background checks in every state since November 1998. This article uses data on background checks at the state level to explore the relationship between guns and crime. The background checks capture an individual's intention to purchase a firearm and explain 96% of the variation in gun manufacturing at a national level. Fixed effect negative binomial regressions show a positive, but insignificant, relationship between background checks and violent crimes. Property crimes are negatively related to background checks and statistically significant at the 10% level. The results suggest that gun control policies should be coupled with other initiatives if policy makers intend to reduce gun‐related crime.     

China＇s Urban Employment and Urbanization Rate： A Re-estimation

The present paper argues that China＇s existing population and employment statistics are misleading, and have failed to include many of the migrant and labor force flows between urban and rural areas. The paper reconciles the differences between official census data and other survey statistics and attempts to recalculate China＇s urban population and employment figures. Our analyses indicate that official statistics of 2012 underestimate China ＇s urban employment by approximately 47 million while overestimating rural employment by 31 million. The adjusted urbanization rate exceeded 55 percent in 2012, almost 3 percentage points higher than the official statistics. Nevertheless, there remains much potential for rural-to-urban migration. More specifically, if the current bottlenecks in household registration, social security and public welfare systems can be removed or relaxed, China＇s urbanization rate could rise by another l O percentage points or even more over the next decade.     

Child Access Prevention Laws and Nonfatal Gun Injuries

Many states have passed child access prevention (CAP) laws, which hold the gun owner responsible if a child gains access to a gun that is not securely stored. Previous research on CAP laws has focused exclusively on gun‐related deaths even though most gun injuries are not fatal. We use annual hospital discharge data to investigate whether CAP laws are associated with decreased nonfatal gun injuries. Results from Poisson regressions that control for various hospital, county, and state characteristics, including state‐specific fixed effects and time trends, indicate that CAP laws are associated with reductions in nonfatal gun injuries among children under age 18. Our results are bolstered by the absence of effects on other outcomes such as self‐inflicted gun injuries among adults and nongun self‐inflicted injuries.     

Industry‐specific Exchange Rate Fluctuations,Japanese Exports and Financial Constraints: Evidence from Panel Vector Autoregressive Analysis

Using a panel vector autoregression approach and industry breakdown data for financial constraints obtained from the Bank of Japan's Tankan (Short‐Term Economic Survey of Enterprises in Japan) database, this study empirically investigates whether and how Japanese firms' financial constraints (internal and external) influence the response of Japanese sectoral exports to an exchange rate shock. Furthermore, we use the industry‐specific real effective exchange rate data developed by to allow for different movements of real effective exchange rates across industries. It is found that financial constraints have a significant influence on Japanese exports in response to exchange rate shocks. Japanese exporters with either lower internal financial constraints or external financial constraints are less affected by the yen's appreciation. In addition, if firms face high external financial constraints, only reducing the internal financial constraints cannot help them mitigate the impact of the yen's appreciation on their exports. Thus, an accommodative financial environment also plays an important role in alleviating the impact that the yen's appreciation has on Japanese exports.     

Is There any Threshold in the Relationship Between Mother's Education and Child Health? Evidence from Nigeria

The literature on mother's education and child health casually observes some nonlinearities and also a threshold in the relationship. Even though this nonlinearity or threshold has significant bearing on policy matters such as quality of education, any rigorous attempt to address this issue is missing in the literature. With height for age z‐score as a proxy for long‐run child health capital, regression results reveal that there are significant effects of mother's education on child health if mothers do not continue past primary school. Rather, poor quality of education at the primary level, especially literacy, is argued to have given rise to this threshold. It indicates that greater public investment in improving quality of education at the primary level is essential for maximizing the nonmarket outcomes of girls’ education in developing countries.     

Productivity Measurement and the Relationship between Plant Performance and JIT Intensity*

The management accounting and operations management literatures argue that the adoption of advanced manufacturing practices, such as just‐in‐time (JIT), necessitates complementary changes in a firm's management accounting and control systems. This study uses a sample of JIT and non‐JIT plants operating in the Canadian automotive parts manufacturing industry to study the interaction among performance outcomes, intensity of JIT practices, and productivity measurement. This study provides evidence that productivity measurement mediates the relationship between performance outcomes and intensity of JIT practices. Specifically, both JIT and non‐JIT plants that use a broader range of productivity measures are more efficient and profitable than other plants. Also, plants that employ industry‐driven productivity measures are more profitable and efficient than plants that employ idiosyncratic productivity measures, especially if the former are more JIT‐intensive than the latter. Furthermore, plants that employ quality productivity measures are less efficient and less profitable than those that do not, especially if they use more intensive JIT practices. The latter result is consistent with JIT‐intensive plants overinvesting in quality. This study also finds that plants that invest more in buffer stock are less efficient and less profitable, especially if they use more intensive JIT practices. Despite the fact that plant profitability and efficiency are highly correlated, JIT‐intensive plants are more profitable but less efficient than plants that are not JIT‐intensive, after controlling for productivity measures, plant size, and buffer stock. This result suggests that despite wasting resources, JIT‐intensive plants are still able to generate relatively higher profits than plants that are not JIT‐intensive.     

Who Cares about Auditor Reputation?*

I provide evidence on the demand for auditor reputation by examining the defections of Arthur Andersen LLP's clients following the accounting scandals and criminal conviction marring the auditor's reputation in 2002. About 95 percent of clients in my sample did not switch auditors until after Andersen was indicted for criminal misconduct regarding its failed audit of Enron Corp. I test whether the timing of client defections and the choice of a new auditor are consistent with managers' incentives to mitigate potentially costly information and agency problems. I find that clients defected sooner, mostly to another Big 5 auditor, if they were more visible in the capital markets; such clients attracted more analysts and press coverage, had larger institutional ownership and share turnover, and raised more cash in recent security issues. However, my proxies for agency conflicts — managerial ownership and financial leverage — are not associated with the timing of defections or the choice of new auditor. Overall, my study suggests that firms more visible in the capital markets tend to be more concerned about engaging highly reputable auditors, consistent with such firms trying to build and preserve their own reputations for credible financial reporting.     

Breaking Bad in Bourbon Country: Does Alcohol Prohibition Encourage Methamphetamine Production?

This article examines the influence of local alcohol prohibition on the prevalence of methamphetamine labs. Using multiple sources of data for counties in Kentucky, we compare various measures of meth manufacturing in wet, moist, and dry counties. Our preferred estimates address the endogeneity of local alcohol policies by exploiting differences in counties' religious compositions between the 1930s, when most local-option votes took place, and recent years. Even controlling for current religious affiliations, religious composition following the end of national Prohibition strongly predicts current alcohol restrictions. We carefully examine the validity of our identifying assumptions, and consider identification under alternative assumptions. Our results suggest that the number of meth lab seizures in Kentucky would decrease by 35% if all counties became wet.     

Are China's Farms Growing?

China's agricultural sector faces challenges because most farms are still small scale. China's policy is to encourage the consolidation of farms and promote farms that are larger in scale. A question that arises is: Are China's farms growing? The goal of the present paper is to determine whether large farms in China have emerged or if farms remain small. To meet this goal, we systematically document the trends in the operational sizes of China's farms and measure the determinants of changes in farm size. Using a nationally representative dataset, the study shows that in 2013 China's farming sector was still mostly characterized by small‐scale farms. However, at the same time, there is an emerging class of middle‐sized and larger‐sized farms. Most large farms are being run by households but there is a set of large farms that are company/cooperative‐run. Today, farmers on larger farms are younger and better educated than the average farmer.     

Human Capital and Hours Worked of Children in Cambodia: Empirical Evidence for Policy Implications*

This study uses data from the Cambodian Child Labor Survey 2001/02 (CCLS‐2001/02) to investigate the trade‐off between child labor and their human capital formation. It also investigates the determinants of child schooling and that of the income earned from child labor. This study finds that children's education is a significant determinant of their wage rate, which implicitly explains the logic behind the household's decision to allow a child to both work and study, and thus explains why parents keep investing in their children's education. We also find that non‐poor households and fathers’ and mothers’ education have statistically significant effects on child schooling. Finally, this study has found that if children's average working hours are below the threshold level of 22 h per week, then education is not affected. These research findings have policy implications for the human capital development of children, as well as for broader social policy in Cambodia.     

Managers' Commitment to the Goals Contained in a Strategic Performance Measurement System*

A strategic performance measurement system (SPMS) is a set of causally linked nonfinancial and financial objectives, performance measures, and goals designed to align managers' actions with an organization's strategy. This study identifies and tests features unique to the cause‐effect structure of an SPMS likely to affect an important antecedent to managerial performance: goal commitment. Companies often set difficult goals for the multiple performance measures contained in an SPMS, but research shows difficult goals are significantly more likely to lead to performance gains if individuals are committed to achieving them. Two features central to the SPMS approach are predicted to affect goal commitment: (1) the strength of the cause‐effect links among the nonfinancial and financial performance measures contained in an SPMS and (2) managers' beliefs in their ability to achieve the SPMS nonfinancial goals. Results from an experiment conducted with experienced managers show both SPMS features have a positive effect on goal commitment.     

Socioeconomic status and judicial disparities in England and Wales, 1870–1910

In a criminal sentencing system based on optimal deterrence, groups will receive different average sentences based on disparities in conviction probabilities, with longer prison sentences balancing more frequent acquittals. A taste-based model makes no such prediction. I compare these models using trial records from England and Wales in 1870, 1883, and 1910, years with extensive jury trials and broad latitude in sentencing for judges. In the earlier years, higher status defendants accused of property crimes receive substantially longer sentences, with no such difference for violent crimes. In contrast, higher status defendants are less likely to be convicted at trial, both when accused of property crimes and of violent crimes. In a Heckman selection empirical model, selection into sentencing has a large effect on the magnitude of these sentencing patterns. For property crimes, there is negative selection on unobservable traits, possibly explained by using imperfect proxies for social class. I conclude that an optimal sentencing and deterrence model is more supported for property crimes than for violent ones, with judges balancing disparate rates of conviction from juries.     

Effect of Migration on Children＇s Self-esteem in Rural China

China＇s rapid economic growth has been facilitated by its large volume of rural to urban migration. China ＇s projected future development, especially increasing urbanization, implies that such migration will further intensify. However, migration does not come without cost. There are concerns about the potential negative impacts of migration on children＇s care, education, and, in particular, the self-esteem of children left behind in villages where one or both parents have out-migrated to cities. In this paper, we employ unique survey data collected from Shaanxi Province, where more than 4700 ninth grade students from 36 rural junior high schools in five counties were surveyed in late 2011. The results show that having both parents migrate into cities significantly reduced children ＂s self-esteem. The effects are also gender sensitive. Girls that had a father or both parents who had out-migrated were inclined to have lower self-esteem than boys. Moreover, our study findings indicate that parental migration decreased children ＂s self-esteem more for individuals with initial low self-esteem.     

Entrepreneurship and family businesses in Thailand

This paper investigates the impact of exposure to a family business and participating in a family business on an individual's decision to start a business and the likelihood of its survival. We find that having a family member doing business increases the probability of starting a business but not its survival. In contrast, working in a family‐owned business for a high number of hours increases both the likelihood of entrepreneurship and survival. The impact of working hours in a family‐owned business remains significant even if the sample includes only individuals who are the spouses of business owners. Given the evidence, an apprenticeship scheme should be considered as a policy instrument for promoting entrepreneurial success.     

Discretionary Disclosures to Risk‐Averse Traders: A Research Note

Verrecchia (1983) investigates a manager's incentives for costly, discretionary disclosure of his information to risk‐averse traders when the functional form of prices is exogenously specified. We extend Verrecchia (1983) by deriving the endogenously determined functional form of prices that would arise when all traders have constant risk tolerance. We show that these endogenously determined prices are inconsistent with the assumed prices in Verrecchia (1983) when the manager elects to not disclose. We derive the manager's disclosure strategy for our setting and extend the comparative static results in Verrecchia (1990) for risk‐neutral traders to a setting where traders have constant risk tolerance and prices are endogenously derived. Further, in our setting, discretionary disclosure does not affect how traders price risk of different outcomes. Also, we offer a representation of risk‐averse traders' prices using risk‐adjusted distributions. Finally, these results provide implications for empirical‐archival discretionary disclosure studies.     

How would Capital Account Liberalization Affect China＇s Capital Flows and the Renminbi Real Exchange Rates？

In this paper we study the determinants of gross capital flows, project the size of China's international investment position in 2020, and analyze the implications for the renminbi real exchange rate if China liberalizes the capital account. We assume in this exercise that the renminbi will have largely achieved capital account convertibility by the end of the current decade, a timetable consistent with recent proposals by the People's Bank of China. Our analysis shows that if the capital account were liberalized, China's gross international investment position would grow significantly, and inflows and outflows would become much more balanced. The private sector would turn its net liability position into a balanced position, and the official sector would reduce its net asset position significantly, relative to the country's GDP. Because of the increasing importance of private sector foreign claims and the decreasing importance of official foreign reserves, China would be able to earn higher net investment income from abroad. Overall, China would continue to be a net creditor, with the net foreign asset position as a share of GDP remaining largely stable through this decade. These findings suggest that the renminbi real exchange rate would not be particularly sensitive to capital account liberalization as capital flows are expected to be two‐sided. The renminbi real exchange rate would likely be on a path of moderate appreciation as China is expected to maintain a sizeable growth differential with its trading partners.     

Creative Destruction and Optimal Patent Life in a Variety‐Expanding Growth Model

This article presents more channels through which the optimal patent life is determined in a R&D‐based endogenous growth model with an expanding variety of consumer goods. It features an endogenous hazard rate at which patented firms' monopoly profits are “creatively destructed” by arrivals of newer varieties, among other things. A patent's effective life is, therefore, endogenized and less than its legal life. This model is calibrated to a global economy with a set of baseline parameter values. The optimal patent length is computed with the algorithm of Golden Search Section, ranging from 17 to 19 years. With the creative‐destruction hazard, the world needs a longer patent term to maximize social welfare but with the prevalence of research congestion, the world needs a shorter patent term. However, if the world's aggregate welfare appreciates varieties of goods in a way strong enough, the optimal patent term can surprisingly extend beyond 1000 years!