Mafia risk perception: Evaluating the effect of organized crime on firm technical efficiency and investment proclivity

The presence of illegal organizations in economic development settings contributes to the Italian economy’s regional heterogeneity by exacerbating other inefficiencies. We aim to investigate how three indicators of awareness of criminal interest in a firm’s activities affect the latter’s efficiency, as well as examining a potential channel through which illegal activities could hinder firm performance, using a unique set of firm-level data. According to our findings, the presence of criminal network pressure in a firm’s environment reduces its technical efficiency and propensity to invest. This phenomenon is particularly strong in Italy’s underdeveloped regions, across all illicit considered and risk classes, with inefficiency doubling when the fear of crime becomes significant. A similar pattern emerges in terms of firm investment proclivity. The research findings are relevant for policymakers because they demonstrate that even the perception of a criminal threat has significant effects on a firm’s performance; consequently, enhancing legal protection could prevent significant economic and social costs.     

家庭教养方式对青少年犯罪的影响

家庭是儿童社会化最重要的场所,也是青少年的价值观形成和行为规范习得的基础环境。父母教养方式是影响青少年成长的重要因素。近年来青少年犯罪率持续上升,探讨犯罪青少年的家庭教养方式对改善父母教养方式,发挥家庭教育功能,预防青少年犯罪和改造犯罪青少年具有重大现实意义。     

Econom(etr)ics of crime and litigation

Economists approach the behaviour of potential criminals, litigants and law enforcement agencies in terms of rational choice: the actors choose the best alternatives in terms of costs and benefits within the choices open to them. The prime focus of economists is on the general factors in society affecting the crime and litigation level and on the interaction between the crime and litigation level and the legal system. In doing so they have to study the interaction between the micro level of individual decision making and the macro level of the law enforcement system reacting on these decisions. Data are often only available at aggregate (macro) level. Econometric studies at the macro level, especially time series, have the problem that many effects have to be estimated from a limited number of data. Various types of studies and some empirical results regarding crime, litigation and the workload of judicial services are discussed.     

The Cosmopolitan Grassroots City as Megaphone: Reconstructing Public Spaces through Urban Activism in Jakarta

Discussions on social movements in Asian cities are inseparable from the abundance of public rallies in the region. In this article, I look at the case of Thamrin‐Sudirman, the main thoroughfare in Jakarta, Indonesia, to uncover how physical urban spaces constituting part of the city as living systems broaden the reach of social movements' agendas. The study involved continuous observation at rallies, interviews with social movement leaders and participants, and a look at simultaneous public rallies in various cities. This article analyzes the sites of public rallies as ‘megaphones’, based on the patterns of issues featured in the rallies, the groups participating, and the nodes and paths that they constructed. Two key dimensions of the megaphone are: (1) the symbolic and historical significance of the sites of rallies; (2) the relationship between the space and the media. Particular sites in cities become places where information is gathered, distributed and transferred through the media, facilitating a network among cities. This article concludes that cities are agents of political actions that amplify ideas and spread them across the globe. The urban centers' megaphonic function results from the synergy between the public space in the built environment and the public sphere, and is reflective of the recentering of the city.     

Why Cities? A Response

Why do cities exist? Geographers Allen Scott and Michael Storper recently put the question before the field of urban studies and provided a clear and concise answer in terms of economies of agglomeration and the urban land nexus. I argue that two other basic elements must be added to this duo: the spatial concentration of economic surplus by ruling classes and states and the creation of a built environment or urban landscape. In addition, I take issue with Scott and Storper's neglect of the problem of scale in urban theory and their overly tidy sense of what constitutes a scientific approach to complex phenomena like cities.     

少年罪错司法防治域外借鉴研究

"有比较才有鉴别",纵观人类历史长河,放眼全球,少年罪错司法防治并非新事物。两大法系主要国家或地区都有相关详细而又完备的规定,外国有许多先进的法律制度值得我国学习和借鉴,少年罪错司法防治也不例外,当然,两大法系的少年罪错司法防治制度也有着它们各自的一些特点,我国可以在鉴别的基础上结合我国国情进行学习和吸收。     

Systemic risk of Chinese financial institutions and asset price bubbles

Although there has not been a large-scale systemic crisis in China, high-risk financial events have occurred continuously in recent years. This research thus creatively analyzes the determinants of systemic risk for Chinese financial institutions from the view of asset price bubbles. First, we identify bubbles in the China stock and real estate markets on the basis of the generalized sup Augmented Dickey-Fuller (GSADF) model and explain the reasons for bubble formations according to the stage of China's economic development and policies implementation. At this stage, considering the differences in economic development levels of different cities, the real estate bubbles in the first, second and third tier cities and the whole country were innovatively identified. Second, on the basis of the DCG-GARCH-CoVaR model to measure the systemic risk of listed financial institutions in China and to classify institutions, the results show that the main source of such risk is the banking sector. Furthermore, by constructing regression models, stock market bubbles and real estate bubbles both positively correlate with systemic risk throughout the sample period. Meanwhile, the impact of bubbles on the systemic risk of different types of financial institutions was taken into account so that regulators prioritized different types of institutions with different characteristics when faced with decisions. Finally, we provide macro-prudential policy advice to regulators in order to weaken the impact of bubbles on financial stability to avoid systemic crises.     

Evaluating spatial service and layout efficiency of municipal Wi-Fi facilities for SmartCity planning: A case study of Wuhan city,China

This paper explores an approach to evaluating spatial service and layout efficiency of municipal Wi-Fi facilities for cyber infrastructure planning in the construction of a smart city. Based on the equilibrium principle that Wi-Fi services supply should meet the spatial demand for recreation, urgency, and security, two evaluation models were built. In the first model, the spatial service efficiency of Wi-Fi facilities is measured by a mean ratio of three types of demand spaces covered by Wi-Fi service. In the other model, spatial layout efficiency of each Wi-Fi facility is calculated by a demand load indicator - the sum of the three types of demand space's ratios of served quantity to the average quantity it should carry, and then assessed by relationship with its adjacent facilities. Corresponding statistical methods and analysis processes were also designed using the function modules found in ArcGIS software. The approach was applied to Wuhan city in 2016. After overlaying influence areas of 688 Wi-Fi facilities with demand spaces of 137 access points for recreation, 1200.99 km roads for urgency, 121.54 km² regions for security, the results show that there exists a spatial disequilibrium between supply and demand of Wi-Fi service in Wuhan due to lack of comprehensive planning. Specifically, there are 67 points, 700.76 km roads, and 42.59 km² regions of demand spaces covered by Wi-Fi service, with service efficiencies of 48.91%, 58.35%, and 35.04% respectively and an overall spatial service efficiency of 47.43%. Among all the Wi-Fi facilities, there are 481 carrying saturated demand, 3 straying from the centre of demand space, and 204 redundant. The overall spatial layout efficiency of Wi-Fi facilities is 43.01%. The conclusion is that the dense and massive redundant Wi-Fi facilities should be optimized, especially in the centre areas along the confluence of Yangtze and Han rivers and new Wi-Fi facilities supplemented in other ill-equipped areas. Since many metropolitan cities experience the same problem, this novel approach will find wide application in the future and offer improved evaluation strategies for researchers and policymakers.     

Korean Television Dramas and the Political Economy of City Promotion

This article examines the ways in which urban processes are associated with the production of culture. It does so by exploring how Korean cities sponsor drama. The historically conditioned and economically neglected status of regional cities, combined with elected local leaders' desire to promote their own areas, has led to a strategy to publicize them by leveraging the popularity of Korean television dramas in Asia. Two distinct types of drama sponsorship by cities — the construction of outdoor settings for drama and ‘city placement’ — manifest the interactions between story‐making and place‐making. The affective process that blends city sites with the characters, storylines and emotional flows of TV drama imbues those sites with a dramatic quality that stimulates the audience's empathy and persuasively motivates them to actually visit the places they have seen televised. Thanks to the broad penetration of television drama, sponsorship by cities has strikingly boosted drama‐driven tourism. Nevertheless, reflecting the speculative nature of TV drama, city promotion through this medium has had limited stability and sustainability. In sum, this article demonstrates that the production of Korean television dramas is deeply associated with the material and spatial conditions in Korean cities.     

城市群协调发展:内涵、概念模型与实现路径

城市群是一定地域内的一组相互密切联系的城市,这组城市之间存在着规模等级和空间结构及功能分工,具有共同的利益目标和与之相对应的集体行为。城市群协调发展是在内生与外生动力双重作用下系统秩序逐渐形成、整体发展能力不断增强的演进过程,包括城市群内部的各个城市之间相互开放,形成有利于资源和要素自由流动,实现资源和要素优化配置的环境;通过竞争优选或者政府推动,形成以产业分工和合作为主要内容的功能分化,依此形成日益密切的经济联系和发展上的依赖、互动关系;通过城市之间的平等协商或上一级政府的安排,共同解决跨区域的交通、通信、资源开发、环境保护等公共领域的问题,降低交易成本。实现城市群协调发展的路径有城市群发展战略与规划、政策法规、空间管制与生态环境治理、要素流动、企业跨区域发展以及产业分工与合作。     

Land Value Taxation and Housing Development

A bstract . The effects of land value taxation on housing development are studied in three disparate cities: Pittsburgh, McKeesport, and New Castle, Pennsylvania. These places are examples of three different types of city: central city, suburban city , and relatively isolated city , respectively. Shifting taxes from buildings to land is hypothesized to have different effects in the different types of cities. A liquidity effect , due to increases in the land tax rate , is expected to operate in all three types of cities. An incentive effect , due to decreases in the tax rate on improvements , is expected to function in central cities and, possibly, in relatively isolated cities. It is not expected to be important in suburban cities such as McKeesport. An incentive effect was found in Pittsburgh, but not in the other two cities. No evidence of a liquidity effect was found in any of the three cities. An explanation of why observed effects may not conform with hypotheses is given.     

Marked point process hotspot maps for homicide and gun crime prediction in Chicago

Crime hotspot maps are a widely used and successful method of displaying spatial crime patterns and allocating police resources. However, hotspot maps are often created over a single timescale using only one crime type. In the case of short-term hotspot maps that utilize several weeks of crime data, risk estimates suffer from a high variance, especially for low frequency crimes such as homicide. Long-term hotspot maps that utilize several years of data fail to take into account near-repeat effects and emerging hotspot trends. In this paper we show how point process models of crime can be extended to include leading indicator crime types, while capturing both short-term and long-term patterns of risk, through a marked point process approach. Several years of data and many different crime types are systematically combined to yield accurate hotspot maps that can be used for the purpose of predictive policing of gun-related crime. We apply the methodology to a large, open source data set which has been made available to the general public online by the Chicago Police Department.     

计算机犯罪的特征及其对策探析

计算机犯罪是高科技发展的附属产品,对社会危害日趋严重。文章分析了计算机犯罪的主要特征,然后从技术、管理、法制3个方面提出了预防和打击计算机犯罪的措施。     

Local Industrial Conditions and Entrepreneurship: How Much of the Spatial Distribution Can We Explain?

Why are some places more entrepreneurial than others? We use Census Bureau data to study local determinants of manufacturing startups across cities and industries. Demographics have limited explanatory power. Overall levels of local customers and suppliers are only modestly important, but new entrants seem particularly drawn to areas with many smaller suppliers, as suggested by Chinitz (1961) . Abundant workers in relevant occupations also strongly predict entry. These forces plus city and industry fixed effects explain between 60% and 80% of manufacturing entry. We use spatial distributions of natural cost advantages to address partially endogeneity concerns.     

PARATRANSIT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: A Market Response to Poor Roads?*

Southeast Asia's paratransit sector has become a vital source of mobility in many cities. Run by private operators, generally under free market conditions, paratransit vehicles maneuver into areas that standard buses cannot serve and provide frequent door-to-door service, at a profit. Yet despite past successes, pressure is mounting to greatly restrict or even ban paratransit vehicles from many cities, replacing becaks, bajajs, tuktuks, microbuses, minibuses, and jeepneys with large buses operated by public monopolies. While it is well known that paratransit provides low performance services tailored to what poor people can pay, an often overlooked benefit is that it compensates for the inadequacies of many roads in Southeast Asian cities. This paper empirically tests the extent to which mixes of paratransit fleets and services have evolved so as to adapt to the low capacity, poorly interconnected road systems in this part of the world. Using data for eight of Southeast Asia's largest cities, it is found that the greatest variety of paratransit modes, both in terms of types and seating capacities, generally exists in the places with the least amount of road capacity per capita and a poor road hierarchy. The paper concludes that any retrenchment in paratransit's role in Southeast Asian cities should be governed by market conditions rather than government fiat.     

Experiences of Urban Militarism: Spatial Stigma,Ruins and Everyday Life

A key question in urban sociology is how people interpret the urban environment. At a time when cities are increasingly militarized, this question is particularly important for understanding how militarism impacts urban life. However, urban sociologists have not addressed how people experience militarized environments. This article turns to this question by considering the case of Lydda‐Lod, an Israeli city that has been demographically and physically transformed by war, displacement and securitization. Drawing on Wacquant's sociology of spatial stigma and adding insights from works on emotions in (post‐)conflict cities, I examine how poor Palestinians think and feel about the surveilled districts where they live within the city's broader landscape of ruins. I show how the Israeli military, security and policing agencies have collectively produced spatial stigmatization of these districts. I discuss how Palestinians respond to this spatial stigma by attaching a sense of worthlessness to their districts. However, this reproduction of spatial stigma is punctuated by expressions of care for the built environment and by a desire to revalorize collective Palestinian life in the city. I conclude by discussing how a perspective on militarized cities focused on everyday responses to militarism and attentive to marginalities enriches urban sociology and urban studies more generally.     

An Examination of the Link Between Employment Volatility and the Spatial Distribution of Property Crime Rates

Abstract . Recent criminological research has produced inconsistent findings in its attempts to establish a statistical relationship between economic marginalization and the spatial distribution of crime rates. This paper contends that this inconsistency is partly attributable to the way in which economic marginalization has been conceptually defined and measured. By focusing strictly on unemployment and poverty as the processes that produce economic marginalization, researchers have ignored other important economic dynamics that can marginalize workers and provide an environment conducive to crime. Further, commonly used indicators of economic marginalization, such as the unemployment rate and poverty rate, fail to measure the full range of dynamics that produce marginalization. It is our contention that employment volatility represents an important source of economic marginalization that can help foster higher levels of criminal activity. This hypothesis is tested using regression procedures to analyze the effects of employment volatility measures and frequently identified structural correlates of crime on change in the rate of property crime offenses across 683 U.S. metropolitan counties during the 1980–1983 period. The findings suggest that high levels of employment volatility are conducive to the maintenance of higher levels of property crime in general, as well as less severe forms of property crime such as larceny, when such crimes are examined on an individual basis.     

工程成本人文风险及其转化

工程成本管理总是处在一定的人文环境之中，研究工程成本管理中的人文风险因素及其转化和利用，是防范和化解工程成本风险，提高工程成本管理水平的需要。本研究按照人文因素作用于工程成本的方式，构建出以冲突、低绩效和额外支出为维度的工程成本人文风险形成模式；区分传承性、渐变性和突发性人文风险因素，设计了工程成本管理人文风险因素识别表；以适应、引导、影响和合作为维度，建立了工程成本管理人文风险转化模式。最后，借用风险识别、度量、应对和控制的概念，构造出工程成本人文风险管理模式。这一模式的关键特征，在于工程成本人文风险管理是一个以人文风险的转化和利用为管理主轴的循环过程，人文风险形成模式、人文风险识别表、人文风险转化模式统一在其中。     

城市边缘区犯罪问题的环境影响

针对城市边缘区犯罪问题已成为严重影响城市社会稳定甚至城市可持续发展的突出问题 ,本文试图从环境行为学角度进行分析 ,并在此基础上提出了预防措施     

Identification of binary choice models with social interactions

This paper provides a set of results on the econometric identifiability of binary choice models with social interactions. Our analysis moves beyond parametric identification results that have been obtained in the literature to consider the identifiability of model parameters when the distribution of random payoff terms is unknown. Further, we consider how identification is affected by the presence of unobservable payoff terms of various types as well as identification in the presence of certain forms of endogenous group membership. Our results suggest that at least partial identification may be achieved under assumptions that in certain contexts may be plausible.