The Impact of Mass Incarceration on the Lives of African American Women

This paper examines the consequences of mass incarceration on various aspects of the lives of African-American women. In particular, it seeks to determine how the historically high growth rate in the prison population over the past 30?years has affected employment outcomes, family relationships, and the physical and mental health of Black women who have been incarcerated.     

思考世界秩序的不同方式

从观念结构的角度出发,作者认为观念结构有两个面向:共时性和历时性。共时性如同一副全景式的画面,能够同时看到不同权力实体——国家或帝国——的相对地位,而历时性关注的是世界权力性质的结构性变化。对于参与国际关系的国家和其他实体而言,它们包括了内部和外部两个方面。新现实主义所见到的外部由人口、资源、军事能力以及经济能力组成,内部则包括现实生活、思维本质和社会,而国家只是社会的一种表现方式。中国和西方的历史经验对塑造世界秩序产生了各自的影响。源于二元论思想的西方传统一方面导致了实证主义的产生并成为当时思想的主流,另一方面又引起了有关文明上升、衰落以及可能重生的历史主义和周期论。中国传统的世界观一方面与所谓的英国学派在某些方面有交集之处,也在一定程度上得益于历史主义传统;另一方面,由于中国近年来经济的快速增长和社会结构的变化,这也可能助长了中国国内美国式的实证主义和进步信念的发展。     

Securitization of Mortality Risks in Life Annuities

The purpose of this article is to study mortality‐based securities, such as mortality bonds and swaps, and to price the proposed mortality securities. We focus on individual annuity data, although some of the modeling techniques could be applied to other lines of annuity or life insurance.     

The source of value of voting rights and related dividend promises

This paper examines the relative share pricing of 98 firms with two classes of common stock trading in the United States from 1984 to 1999. The firms feature common stock classes with differential voting rights and, in some cases, differential rights to dividends. The observed voting premiums are higher than those reported in previous studies of U.S. firms and are dependent on the form of dividend promise to the low-vote shareholder. The voting premium is higher in the presence of a control threat, when insiders do not hold controlling voting power, and during periods of poor firm performance.     

Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection in Procurement Contracting

A model of procurement contracting is developed and tested in laboratory experiments. Market performance results are presented for both fixed-price and cost-sharing contracts. Contracts are awarded with first-price sealed-bid or second-price sealed-bid auctions. The environment contains post-auction cost uncertainty and opportunity for unmonitored effort in contract cost reduction. Cost-sharing contracts are found to reduce procurement expense but also to be inefficient because of their induced moral hazard waste and cost overruns.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C72, C92, D44, D61, D82, H57, L14.     

Refining value-based differentiation in business relationships: A study of the higher order relationship building blocks that influence behavioural intentions

Research on the behavioural intentions (BI) of business-to-business customers has focused on the influence and the interactions among constructs driving BI, giving rise to two perspectives for the structural equation modeling of constructs influencing BI. In the first perspective, BI is impacted directly by relationship quality (RQ) and its antecedents such as relationship benefits (RB) and relationship sacrifices (RS). The second perspective suggests that antecedent dimensions of RB and RS may act indirectly through the construct of relationship value (RV), which drives RQ but also directly influences BI. The current study was undertaken to resolve the differences between these two perspectives. The findings indicate that RQ has a strong direct influence on BI while RV has a weak direct influence but a significant indirect influence on BI through the RQ construct. In addition, the constructs of RB and RS influence RQ directly, as well as through the RV construct.     

Strategies for Adopting Consumer‐generated Media in Small‐sized to Medium‐sized Tourism Enterprises

Consumer‐generated media (CGM) are created when consumers submit, review or respond to online content. The bulk of research into CGM has focussed upon its use by consumers, with less research examining the use of CGM by small businesses. This article discusses small business sector use of online technologies such as CGM, concentrating on tourism small businesses as a key industry sector affected by CGM activities. A CGM ‘strategy’ framework, developed from an existing small business strategy framework, is proposed. This serves as a practical tool for developing CGM strategies and as a theoretical foundation for conducting research into the use of CGM. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Economics of Soil Conservation: The Upper Mahaweli Watershed of Sir Lanka

This paper estimates the benefits and costs of soil conservation in the Upper Mahaweli Watershed of Sir Lanka. The costs of soil erosion control include the implementation costs of control measures, while the benefits are reductions in the costs of soil erosion. In contrast to many studies in developed countries, the on‐site benefit of soil erosion control in Sri Lanka is estimated to be greater than the off‐site benefit While a social benefit‐cost analysis demonstrates that it is socially desirable to implement conservation measures, the private financial analyses indicate that it is feasible for individual farmers to adopt the conservation measures. Despite private economic feasibility, programs addressing farmers' reluctance to adopt soil conservation measures may be preferable to public intervention in soil conservation activities when the on‐site benefits are greater than the off‐site benefits.