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This paper uses laboratory experiments to directly test a central prediction of disclosure theory: that market forces can lead businesses to voluntarily provide information about the quality of their products. This theoretical prediction is based on unraveling arguments, which require that consumers hold correct beliefs about non-disclosed information. Instead, we find that receivers are insufficiently skeptical about non-disclosed information, and as a consequence, senders do not always disclose their private information. However, when subjects are informed about non-disclosed information after each round, behavior slowly converges to full unraveling. This convergence appears to be driven by an asymmetric response in receiver actions after learning that they were profitably deceived. Despite the change in receiver behavior, stated beliefs about sender strategies remain insufficiently skeptical, which suggests that while direct and immediate feedback induces equilibrium behavior, it does not reduce strategic naïveté.

We study the design features of disclosure regulations that seek to trigger the green transition of the global economy and ask whether such regulatory interventions are likely to bring about sufficient market discipline to achieve socially optimal climate targets. We categorize the transparency obligations stipulated in green finance regulation as either compelling the standardized disclosure of raw data, or providing quality labels that signal desirable green characteristics of investment products based on a uniform methodology. Both categories of transparency requirements can be imposed at activity, issuer, and portfolio level. Finance theory and empirical evidence suggest that investors may prefer “green” over “dirty” assets for both financial and non-financial reasons and may thus demand higher returns from environmentally-harmful investment opportunities. However, the market discipline that this negative cost of capital effect exerts on “dirty” issuers is potentially attenuated by countervailing investor interests and does not automatically lead to socially optimal outcomes. Mandatory disclosure obligations and their (public) enforcement can play an important role in green finance strategies. They prevent an underproduction of the standardized high-quality information that investors need in order to allocate capital according to their preferences. However, the rationale behind regulatory intervention is not equally strong for all categories and all levels of “green” disclosure obligations. Corporate governance problems and other agency conflicts in intermediated investment chains do not represent a categorical impediment for green finance strategies. However, the many forces that may prevent markets from achieving socially optimal equilibria render disclosure-centered green finance legislation a second best to more direct forms of regulatory intervention like global carbon taxation and emissions trading schemes. Inherently transnational market-based green finance concepts can play a supporting role in sustainable transition, which is particularly important as long as first-best solutions remain politically unavailable.

Consider legal uncertainty as uncertainty about the legality of a specific action. In particular, suppose that the threshold of legality is uncertain. I show that this legal uncertainty raises welfare. Legal uncertainty changes deterrence in opposite directions. The probability of conviction increases for firms below the threshold, while the probability of conviction decreases for firms above the threshold. Hence, legal uncertainty acts as a welfare enhancing screen and increases welfare. Legal uncertainty discourages some actions with low private benefits, while it encourages other actions with high private benefits.

Entry regulations against big-box retailers have been introduced in many countries to protect smaller independent stores. Using a new dataset from the UK, I show that in fact these entry regulations have been associated with greater employment declines in independent stores they were meant to protect. The reason is that when large retail chains are prevented from entering a new area with a big-box store, they typically enter instead using a smaller in-town store format. These smaller format stores compete more directly with independent stores. To causally identify this impact I use the changing nature of local political control in the UK from 1993 to 2003. Since local politicians directly control planning regulation in the UK, and political parties have very different views on the ideal amount of planning control, this provides exogenous variation in the ease of entry for big-box retailers. I estimate that 15% of the employment decline experienced by independent retailers between 1998 and 2004 can be attributed to the perverse effect of planning regulation.

Argentina’s empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores (worker-recuperated enterprises, ERTs) are formerly investor- or privately-owned businesses in crisis ultimately taken over and re-opened by their employees, most commonly as worker cooperatives. Since 2002, the Programa Facultad Abierta (Open Faculty Program) of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature at the University of Buenos Aires has carried out a series of national studies of Argentina’s ERTs. The aim of this article is to present the conclusions of the fourth survey of Argentina’s ERTs carried out by the Facultad Abierta. This survey focused on ERTs that emerged between March 2010 and December 2013, providing the most complete and up-to-date database of the characteristics of Argentina’s ERTs, and showing evidence of a wave of new worker-recuperated enterprises emerging in the postcrisis years, especially since 2010. The key findings presented in this article include: the political economic reasons for the emergence of ERTs; the characteristics of the growing ERT movement today as compared to earlier ERTs; the nature of the conflicts and issues leading to the creation of Argentina’s new ERTs; a critical analysis of new legal frameworks for ERT firms, comparing and contrasting them to older legal outlets for their formation; and the involvement of unions with Argentina’s ERTs.

Revolutions in genetic technology have heralded the age of population-scale genomic metadata. This article analyzes the tensions and gaps between traditional conceptions of personhood and international legal responses to a person’s right over disembodied data obtained from his/her body. The opportunities for breakthroughs in healthcare by interrogating population-scale genomic databases are accompanied by questions about privacy, property, dignity, and the nature of information regulation in a global economy. This article highlights instances where law and policy makers have grappled with these challenges, and foreshadows some emerging future challenges. It also highlights differences between jurisdictions, and calls for greater global participation in the development of a coherent framework, rather than continued reliance on a small number of stakeholders, to develop that framework.

Nearly half of U.S. employers test job applicants and workers for drugs. A common assumption is that the rise of drug testing must have had negative consequences for black employment. However, the rise of employer drug testing may have benefited African-Americans by enabling non-using blacks to prove their status to employers. I use variation in the timing and nature of drug testing regulation to identify the impacts of testing on black hiring. Black employment in the testing sector is suppressed in the absence of testing, a finding which is consistent with ex ante discrimination on the basis of drug use perceptions. Adoption of pro-testing legislation increases black employment in the testing sector by 7-30% and relative wages by 1.4-13.0%, with the largest shifts among low skilled black men. Results further suggest that employers substitute white women for blacks in the absence of testing.

The value of information regarding risk class for a monopoly insurer and its customers is examined in both symmetric and asymmetric information environments. A monopolist always prefers contracting with uninformed customers as this maximizes the rent extracted under symmetric information while also avoiding the cost of adverse selection when information is held asymmetrically. Although customers are indifferent to symmetric information when they are initially uninformed, they prefer contracting with hidden knowledge rather than symmetric information since the monopoly responds to adverse selection by sharing gains from trade with high-risk customers when low risks are predominant in the insurance pool. However, utilitarian social welfare is highest when customers are uninformed, and is higher when information is symmetric rather than asymmetric.

The shipping industry, although relatively carbon-efficient, is projected to produce rising carbon emissions in the future as a consequence of increasing world trade. A number of candidate regulations designed to mitigate these emissions have been canvassed by the UN’s International Maritime Organisation and by the European Commission. Many of these schemes are focussed on the use of market measures—emission trading schemes or fuel levies. This paper draws on observational and interview data gathered to examine enforcement issues associated with the control of ships’ sulphur emissions in order to consider the possible enforcement problems that might be associated with projected market measures to control ships’ carbon emissions. Enforcement problems are shown to be associated with the globalised character of the industry and its polycentric governance structure.

In this short paper, we study the asymptotics for the price of call options for very large strikes and put options for very small strikes. The stock price is assumed to follow the Black-Scholes models. We analyze European, Asian, American, Parisian and perpetual options and conclude that the tail asymptotics for these option types fall into four scenarios.

Central to the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) is the claim that a conferral of incapacity may not be based on the wisdom of a decision alone. This paper problematizes this position. Values-based medicine is drawn on to explore the process of capacity assessment, highlighting the presence of preconceptions throughout assessment. Two cases before the Court of Protection are examined to bring into focus the complexity of conducting assessment without reference to wisdom. The paper proposes that every stage in the assessment of capacity is undertaken with reference to preconceptions and that an acknowledgement of these, along with transparency about when they are to be employed, would allow for greater clarity about what the MCA demands of practitioners.

Using a two-account model with event risk, we model life insurance contracts taking into account both guaranteed and non-guaranteed payments in participating life insurance as well as in unit-linked insurance. Here, event risk is used as a generic term for life insurance events, such as death, disability, etc. In our treatment of participating life insurance, we have special focus on the bonus schemes “consolidation” and “additional benefits”, and one goal is to formalize how these work and interact. Another goal is to describe similarities and differences between participating life insurance and unit-linked insurance. By use of a two-account model, we are able to illustrate general concepts without making the model too abstract. To allow for complicated financial markets without dramatically increasing the mathematical complexity, we focus on economic scenarios. We illustrate the use of our model by conducting scenario analysis based on Monte Carlo simulation, but the model applies to scenarios in general and to worst-case and best-estimate scenarios in particular. In addition to easy computations, our model offers a common framework for the valuation of life insurance payments across product types. This enables comparison of participating life insurance products and unit-linked insurance products, thus building a bridge between the two different ways of formalizing life insurance products. Finally, our model distinguishes itself from the existing literature by taking into account the Markov model for the state of the policyholder and, hereby, facilitating event risk.

Trends in international human rights law have challenged States globally to rethink involuntary mental health interventions from a non-discrimination perspective. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in particular prohibits laws that discriminate on the basis of disability. However, a key criterion for compulsory mental health treatment under typical mental health legislation is a psychiatric diagnosis (in conjunction with risk of harm and other criteria). Hence, for people with mental health disabilities, rights to liberty and consent in healthcare are held to a different standard compared to other citizens. A prominent law reform option being explored by some governments and commentators for achieving non-discrimination is to replace the diagnostic criterion for triggering involuntary intervention with an assessment of mental capacity. After all, every citizen is subject to restrictions on autonomy where they are deemed to lack mental capacity, such as where concussion necessitates emergency service. However, the use of mental capacity “testing” is seen by diverse commentators as wanting in key respects. A prominent criticism comes from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which considers mental capacity assessments a form of disability-based discrimination. This article queries the call to replace the diagnostic criterion in mental health law with an assessment of mental capacity in the light of jurisprudence on equality and non-discrimination in international human rights law. Instead, we examine the doctrine of necessity as an area of law, which might help identify specific thresholds for overriding autonomy in emergency circumstances that can be codified in a non-discriminatory way. We also consider the need for deliberative law reform processes to identify such measures, and we suggest interim, short-term measures for creating a “supported decision-making regime” in the mental health context. The article focuses in particular on the Australian context of mental health law reform, though the analysis can be generalised to international trends in mental health law.

Due to the strong complexity of financial markets, economics does not have a unified theory of price formation in financial markets. The most common assumption is the Efficient-Market Hypothesis, which has been attacked by a number of researchers, using different tools. There were varying degrees to which these tools complied with the formal definitions of efficiency and predictability. In our earlier work, we analysed the predictability of stock returns at two time scales using the entropy rate, which can be directly linked to the mathematical definition of predictability. Nonetheless, none of the above-mentioned studies allow any general understanding of how the financial markets work, beyond disproving the Efficient-Market Hypothesis. In our previous study, we proposed the Maximum Entropy Production Principle, which uses the entropy rate to create a general principle underlying the price formation processes. Both of these studies show that the predictability of price changes is higher at the transaction level intraday scale than the scale of daily returns, but ignore all scales in between. In this study we extend these ideas using the multiscale entropy analysis framework to enhance our understanding of the predictability of price formation processes at various time scales.

New risk-based solvency requirements for insurance companies across European markets have been introduced by Solvency II and will come in force from 1 January 2016. These requirements, derived by a Standard Formula or an Internal Model, will be by far more risk-sensitive than the required solvency margin provided by the current legislation. In this regard, a Partial Internal Model for Premium Risk is developed here for a multi-line Non-Life insurer. We follow a classical approach based on a Collective Risk Model properly extended in order to consider not only the volatility of aggregate claim amounts but also expense volatility. To measure the effect of risk mitigation, suitable reinsurance strategies are pursued. We analyze how naïve coverage as conventional Quota Share and Excess of Loss reinsurance may modify the exact moments of the distribution of technical results. Furthermore, we investigate how alternative choices of commission rates in proportional treaties may affect the variability of distribution. Numerical results are also figured out in the last part of the paper with evidence of different effects for small and large companies. The main reasons for these differences are pointed out.

Recently, a political shift has been observed, in that some political conservatives are now advocating, adjusting, or abandoning draconian drug laws, including mandatory minimums, and funding diversion, re-entry, and drug programs. Vocal proponents of this movement include Grover Norquist, Rand Paul, Edwin Meese, and Mark Levin, from the Texas Public Policy Council. Any movement away from the mass incarceration that has characterized the U.S. correctional policy for the last 30 years is welcomed, however, it is important to note carefully the philosophical foundation of the conservative’s interest in shifting correctional policy. This paper explores the potential factors contributing to this philosophical shift.

Publicly provided long-term care (LTC) insurance with means-tested benefits is suspected to crowd out either private saving or informal care. This contribution predicts crowding-out effects for both private saving and informal care for policy measures designed to relieve the public purse from LTC expenditure such as more stringent means testing and increased taxation of inheritance. These effects result from the interaction of a parent who decides on the amount of saving in retirement and a caregiver who decides on the effort devoted to informal care which lowers the probability of admission to a nursing home. Double crowding-out effects are also found to be the consequence of exogenous influences, notably a higher opportunity cost of caregiving.

This article proposes a change in public policy that promises to greatly reduce major crime in the United States, protect society, eliminate prison overcrowding, and save taxpayer dollars. This policy would employ electronic monitoring (EM) technology in a way that discourages individuals who might otherwise be tempted to commit crimes. The approach is arguably more effective, efficient, humane and ethical than any alternative strategy and potentially could revolutionize law enforcement and the American criminal justice system. Keywords: crime; policy; corrections; law; electronic monitoring; cost-benefit; criminal justice 1. Introduction Existing policies to “get tough” on crime have not only failed to control crime but have contributed to an enormous increase in the number of incarcerated individuals [1,2]. This suggests that the underlying premise—stiffer sentences deter criminals—may be incorrect. Furthermore, even in the unlikely event that incarceration rates could be tripled through a tripling of law enforcement and prison budgets, the available data suggest that the probability that an offender would be apprehended and incarcerated would remain low. As of 2004, the probability that an offender would be incarcerated was negligible for residential burglary (0.8 percent), vehicle theft (0.6 percent), robbery (1.7 percent), and assault (1.2 percent); and fairly small for rape (12.4 percent) [3]. This suggests that the deterrent effect of policies to “get tough” on crime would remain weak, and suggests a need to switch paradigms.

Insurance companies use conservative first order valuation bases to calculate insurance premiums and reserves. These valuation bases have a significant impact on the insurer’s solvency and on the premiums of the insurance products. Safety margins for systematic biometric and financial risk are in practice typically chosen as time-constant percentages on top of the best estimate transition intensities. We develop a risk-oriented method for the allocation of a total safety margin to the single safety margins at each point in time and each state. In a case study, we demonstrate the suitability of the proposed method in different frameworks. The results show that the traditional method yields an unwanted variability of the safety level with respect to time, whereas the variability can be significantly reduced by the new method. Furthermore, the case study supports the German 60 percent rule for the technical interest rate.

“Why workers’ rights are not women’s rights” is an argument whose purpose is to make clear why workers’ rights rest on a masculine embodiment of the labor subject and it is this masculine embodiment which is at the center of employment contracts and employment relations systems. By excavating the gender subjects implicit to and explicit in regulations of labor, the paper reveals the opposition of paired terms, masculinity and femininity privileging production over reproduction and naturalizing gender-based power relations. The paper identifies various laboring activities associated with differential rights and responsibilities. An examination of the treatment of part-time employment and waged caring labor, framed in labor, welfare, immigration, and citizenship policies and practices, locates exclusions from labor standards and exemptions from entitlements due to eligibility requirements and thresholds that assume the masculine embodiment of the worker-citizen. Gendering the analysis illustrates how contemporary labor laws and conventions grant rights on the basis of, and to, a rather abstract conception of the prototypical worker-citizen. Its origins lie in what classical political economy labeled a capitalist logic, as well as the historical practices in which free class agents entered into contracts for continuous, full-time work free of care responsibilities outside of the wage/labor nexus. Thus, it is this particular abstract construction of the proto-typical worker which instantiates the separation of “rights to” from “responsibilities for”, and it is this separation that allows the masculine embodiment of the labor subject. Modes of regulation privileging rights over responsibilities will valorize the masculine worker-citizen whose rights derive from their participation in wage labor and simultaneously devalue the feminine worker who is directly connected to caring labor.

После введения Россией запрета на ввоз отдельных видов сельскохозяйственной продукции, сырья и про- довольствия из США, ЕС, Канады, Австралии и Норвегии, ухудшения отношений с Украиной и Молдавией остро встала проблема импортозамещения отечественными продуктами и соответствующей кор- ректировки аграрной политики. Для ускоренного импортозамещения в Госпрограмму развития сельско- го хозяйства и регулирования рынков с/х продукции, сырья и продовольствия включены новые подпро- граммы. Однако практически ни по одной из новых подпрограмм нельзя сказать, что она действитель- но способствует импортозамещению. В ряде случаев (субсидирование приобретения элитных семян, закупки сырья) она работает прямо противоположным образом. Практически везде финансирование урезано настолько, что не понятно, почему эти отрасли объявили приоритетными и как выполнять целевые показатели. Все это свидетельствует о необходимости доработки аграрной политики РФ.

This study considers the anti-competitive effect of fixed-fee pricing, such as the one seen in a recent antitrust case in Japan. We show that fixed-fee pricing has stronger exclusionary effect than the per-use pricing's exclusionary effect. However, the restriction on usage of fixed-fee pricing may have a welfare-decreasing effect, although the restriction promotes entry.

Te paper analyses the recent changes to the rules on jurisdiction and the rec-ognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters ad-opted by Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012. Te introductory part gives a brief overview of the Regulation and analyses the most important changes, whereas the second part deals with the segment of the Regulation regulating or “not regulating” arbitration ; the exclusion of arbitration from the scope of the Regu-lation, the relationship of the courts (of Member States) and the arbitration agreement, arbitration as an incidental question in a dispute, the relationship between the Regulation and the 1958 New York Convention.

Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, particularly as interpreted in the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities General Comment No. 1, presents a significant challenge to all jurisdictions that equate interventions permitted under their mental health and incapacity laws with mental capacity. This is most notable in terms of the General Comment’s requirement that substitute decision-making regimes must be abolished. Notwithstanding this, it also offers the opportunity to revisit conceptions about the exercise of legal capacity and how this might be better supported and extended through supported decision-making. This article will offer some preliminary observations on this using Scottish mental health and incapacity legislation as an illustration although this may also have relevance to other jurisdictions.

This paper looks at the notary public service in general and its scope of activities. In addition, it deals with the Notarial Code of Conduct (Code of Ethics) written by Vladimir Pappafava in 1896 and, in a certain way, provides a historical overview and comparison of public notary service in respect of the powers now and then. It is indicated that the notary public service, in terms of powers, has not changed much to the present time. Nowadays, when the development of computer science and technology has reached the point when it is almost impossible to follow it, the question is how and to what extent the notary public service should take advantage of such a wide range of technological capabilities. Along its development, information technology has been penetrating more and more into every segment of human life - both business and private. In addition to many benefits provided by information technology (acceleration of business, communications, etc.), it has also brought some technical problems that can lead to complete interruption of business. The contribution and role of information technology in the notary public service in the European Union Member States including the Republic of Croatia, as well as certain ideas regarding the use of opportunities afforded by information and communication technologies are also discussed.

Neuroscientific endeavours to uncover the causes of severe mental impairments may be viewed as supporting arguments for capacity-based mental health laws that enable compulsory detention and treatment. This article explores the tensions between clinical, human rights and legal concepts of “capacity”. It is argued that capacity-based mental health laws, rather than providing a progressive approach to law reform, may simply reinforce presumptions that those with mental impairments completely lack decision-making capacity and thereby should not be afforded legal capacity. A better approach may be to shift the current focus on notions of capacity to socio-economic obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Keywords: legal capacity; mental capacity; decision-making; mental health laws; neuroscience 1. Introduction Laws that enable the compulsory detention and treatment of individuals with severe mental impairments [1] have been enacted in many countries, including recently in China [2]. While the criteria for compulsory detention and treatment differ across jurisdictions, in general, there must be evidence of “mental illness”, generally defined according to certain symptoms, a need for treatment and some form of risk of harm to self or others [3]. Such mental health laws place decision-making about treatment primarily in the hands of clinicians, rather than the individual concerned, thereby enabling what is generally termed “substituted” decision-making. Some jurisdictions have mental health laws which also require evidence that the person concerned is unable or lacks “capacity” to consent to admission and/or treatment [4]. There have been calls by

Adequate cognitive and emotional capacity is essential to autonomous decision making by adult medical patients. Society often attaches legal consequences to decisional capacity evaluations. Even when the legal system is not formally involved in the competency evaluation of a particular individual, clinical practice and ethical conduct occur within and are informed by legal parameters. Using relevant statutory, court rule, and judicial opinion examples from a representative jurisdiction within the United States, this article argues that the law seldom provides much meaningful guidance to health care and human services providers to assist them regarding the content of capacity evaluation. The article concludes by asking how society ought to respond to the paucity of helpful guidance provided by the law in the decisional capacity evaluation context.

Being active in both the insurance sector and the banking sector, financial conglomerates intrinsically increase the interconnections between the banking sector and the insurance sector. We address two main concerns about financial conglomerates using a unique database on bilateral exposures between 21 French financial institutions. First, we investigate to what extent to which the insurers that are part of financial conglomerates differ from pure insurers. Second, we show that in the presence of sovereign risk, the components of a financial conglomerate are better off than if they were distinct entities. Our empirical findings bring a new perspective to the previous results of the literature based on using different types of data.

USP Marion is the first supermax federal penitentiary. Marionization refers to the experimental control program used at this prison. The prisoners speaking in this article suffered many years of solitary confinement. This research brief discusses some of what they experienced in their own words. These are the recollections of a few Marion prisoners that have summoned the courage to speak out and share their darkest memories.

This article explores the practice of gamete donation in the U.S. having in mind the larger question of what do we as a society owe children born as a result (donor-conceived children). Do recipient-parents have a duty to tell their donor-conceived child about his/her genetic origins? Should the identity of the donor be disclosed or remain anonymous? Does the child have a right to know her conception story and to receive information, including identifying information, about the donor? Furthermore, if a donor-conceived child has a right to know, who has the duty to tell her/him about it? The Article underscores the ethical, legal and social dilemmas that arise, comparing and contrasting with international developments in this arena. It highlights the market-based and more specific medical justifications for regulating this field, explores the emerging so-called right of the child to know his/her genetic origins (“the right to know”), and considers the challenges such a right evokes to existing legal culture and principles of medical ethics in the U.S. as well as other broader societal implications of such a right.

Canada recognizes young people’s constitutionally protected freedom of expression and consequently their right to engage in a narrow subset of consensual sexually expressive practices without being prosecuted as child pornographers. Nevertheless, numerous anti-sexting campaigns decry the possibility of voluntary and “safe sexting” let alone the affordances of adolescents’ self-produced and consensually shared sexual imagery. In this article, we argue that these actors have erred in their construction of youths’ risque imagery as inherently risky and thus governable. We propose that anti-sexting frameworks—which conflate consensual and nonconsensual sexting and which equate both with negative risks that purportedly outweigh the value and benefits of the practice—rely on a calculus that is fundamentally flawed. This article consists of two main parts. In Part I, we map and trouble the ways in which responses to consensual teenage sexting emphasize the practice’s relationship to embodied, financial, intimate and legal risks. In Part II, we suggest that research examining consensual adolescent sexting and young people’s rights to freedom of expression consider alternative theoretical frameworks, such as queer theories of temporality, when calculating the risk of harm of adolescent sexual imagery.

Можно выделить три наиболее существенные проблемы, характерные для инфраструктурных от- раслей российской экономики: определение контуров рынков отраслей естественных монополий, кратное сокращение объемов перекрестного субсидирования и привлечение государственного и част- ного капитала в инфраструктурные отрасли. В этой связи последние инициативы Правительства по созданию единого регулятора естественномонопольных секторов выглядят опережающими раз- витие рынков. Именно обозначенные проблемы, а не вопросы о том, какое из ведомств должно при- нимать решения в области регулирования отраслей естественных монополий, должны быть перво- степенными при формировании государственной политики в отношении естественных монополий.

In this paper we will examine the meaning and scope of the nature of the obligation arising from accidents at work. In addition, we wish to clarify that the purpose of this research is not to resolve any issues that may arise from civil liability for accidents, but to offer a comprehensive, holistic and systematic view of this responsibility, with particular emphasis on those issues that have been poorly treated by the doctrine.

Why does torture persist despite its prohibition? Scholars, policymakers, and the public have heavily debated this topic in the past decade. Yet, many puzzles remain about the practice of torture. Scholarship on torture spans academic disciplines, which adds diversity in perspectives brought to these questions but also can lead to redundancy and stunted progress in research on the issue as a whole. This article assesses the state of the multidisciplinary literature on torture in counterterrorism with specific focus on why democracies torture despite prohibiting it, how public perception of torture is malleable, and why so few countries are able to move from commitment to compliance in the prohibition of torture. In each section, the article also identifies underexplored areas in the research and suggests avenues for future investigation.

The government often provides relief against large risks, such as disasters. A simple, general rationale for this role of government is considered here that applies even when private contracting to share risks is not subject to market imperfections. Specifically, the optimal private sharing of risks will not result in complete coverage against them when they are sufficiently large. Hence, when such risks eventuate, the marginal utility to individuals of governmental relief may exceed the marginal value of public goods. Consequently, social welfare may be raised if the government reduces public goods expenditures and directs these freed resources toward individuals who have suffered losses.

Previous research suggests that social relations, in particular the forming of family ties and employment (social factors), self-efficacy (personal factors), and therapeutic interventions (institutional factors) constitute main contributors in post-release success. These studies, however, have largely been based on general delinquents serving relatively short prison terms. This study aims to shed light on the influence of social, personal, and institutional factors on post-release success versus failure among paroled lifers. We conducted in-depth life-history interviews with 64 individuals who had served a life sentence, who were either re-incarcerated for another crime or parole violation, or were currently out on parole. The role of social factors in desistance among long-term incarcerated offenders was minimal. Rather, self-efficacy appeared to be a key element in post-release success. These findings suggest that research based on short-term incarcerated offenders cannot be directly translated to long-term incarcerated offenders. This group does not experience the same traditional turning points, such as establishing family ties and employment. Accordingly, long-term prisoners may go through a different process post-release that determines their success versus failure compared to general delinquents who serve shorter sentences.

We introduce a bivariate Markov chain counting process with contagion for modelling the clustering arrival of loss claims with delayed settlement for an insurance company. It is a general continuous-time model framework that also has the potential to be applicable to modelling the clustering arrival of events, such as jumps, bankruptcies, crises and catastrophes in finance, insurance and economics with both internal contagion risk and external common risk. Key distributional properties, such as the moments and probability generating functions, for this process are derived. Some special cases with explicit results and numerical examples and the motivation for further actuarial applications are also discussed. The model can be considered a generalisation of the dynamic contagion process introduced by Dassios and Zhao (2011).

This article uses the debates surrounding the age of consent as a broad umbrella to question the continued usefulness of Queer Theory. The debates surrounding the age of consent illustrate that Queer Theory has not fulfilled its original promise and that it is not (and possibly never been), “fit for purpose”. Towards the end of 2013, the topic of lowering the age of consent in England and Wales was once again much in the news. This article suggests that much of that debate focused expressly or impliedly on the age of which men and boys have sexual intercourse (whether gay or straight), rather than when people have sexual intercourse. Queer Theory (originating from feminism), was intended to be a liberating phenomenon, but contrary to these hopes and intentions, Queer Theory evolved to become synonymous with white gay men, thus denying its origins and becoming distinctly anti-feminist. Those who argue for a reduction in the age of consent have used (whether knowingly or not) an approach which is consistent with this evolved version of Queer Theory. Consequently, the debate on the age of consent has ignored, or given insufficient attention to, the effect(s) a lowering of the age of consent will have on girls and women. This article, therefore, seeks to question, disrupt and unsettle, what Queer Theory has become, suggesting that, in several significant aspects, it fails to fully acknowledge patriarchy, render (lesbian) women visible, acknowledge and accommodate the lived experiences of women.

Over the last 40 years a number of scholars have called upon fellow criminologists to rethink the field’s priorities and methods, as well as the American criminal justice system and current punishment practices. Drawing on alternative criminologies, including constitutive and peacemaking criminologies, as well as the practice of reintegrative shaming, this paper presents a new model of criminal justice that combines aspects of adversarial, restorative, social, and transformative justice frameworks. The resulting “intersectional criminal justice” offers a holistic harm-reduction model that moves the focus of our criminal justice system away from “rough justice” and towards collective restorative healing and positive social change.

We show that the results of ArXiv:1305.6008 on the Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing and the super-hedging theorem can be extended to the case in which the options available for static hedging (\emph{hedging options}) are quoted with bid-ask spreads. In this set-up, we need to work with the notion of \emph{robust no-arbitrage} which turns out to be equivalent to no-arbitrage under the additional assumption that hedging options with non-zero spread are \emph{non-redundant}. A key result is the closedness of the set of attainable claims, which requires a new proof in our setting., Comment: Final version. To appear in Risks

While boys who offend have been a dominant majority and primary concern of the juvenile court since its earliest days, the population of delinquent girls has increased in recent years at a far higher rate in the U.S. The special challenges presented by females, however, continue to be generally overlooked by the justice system. Moreover, while a few specialized programs now serve these girls, the field tends to view young female offenders as a homogeneous group, what distinguishes particular female subpopulations and the characteristics associated with different criminal trajectories have gone largely unexplored. Employing data from the state of Missouri, this study examines girls who offend, identifying models that predict subsequent violent behavior that include indicators such as parental substance abuse and incarceration, and offender substance abuse, mental health, and school behavior. Special attention is given to the effects of child maltreatment, which we find significantly, but weakly correlated with violent behavior. The authors conclude by considering the possibility that maltreatment may be correlated with other criminogenic factors, and by discussing the implications of findings for future research and practice, especially services that take into account the trauma experienced by young women who come to the attention of state authorities.

Revolts in Tunisia and Egypt have led many observers to speak of the “first digital revolution” in the Arab world. Social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, are now recognised as the important tools that facilitated the “Jasmine Revolution”. In fact, the willingness of the Mubarak government to block all internet connection in Egypt has demonstrated the concern over the power of new technologies in facilitating political change. The tenacity of the social movements that are still on-going in the Arab world continues to demonstrate the important role that networked technologies—such as the internet, satellite channels and social networking sites—play in revolutions. The revolutions demonstrate an effective use of social media and other network technologies as an organisational tool, and as a means of asserting pressure on current rulers and future governments. Accordingly, this article seeks to expose freedom of expression as a fundamental democratic principle and the internet network as a vehicle driving the demonstrations in the Arab countries of Tunisia and Egypt.

The aim of the present study was threefold: to examine (1) the relation between both cognitive and affective empathy and prosocial behavior, (2) the relation between both cognitive and affective empathy and offending, and (3) the role of cognitive distortions in the relation between cognitive empathy, affective empathy and offending in a sample of adolescent girls with lower SES and education (N = 264). Results showed that both cognitive and affective empathy were positively related to prosocial behavior. Furthermore, cognitive empathy was positively related to offending, whereas affective empathy was not related to offending. Finally, no support was found for our hypothesis that cognitive distortions play a moderating role in the relation between empathy and offending.

We present some new evidence on the tail distribution of commercial property losses based on a recently constructed dataset on large commercial risks. The dataset is based on contributions from Lloyd's of London syndicates, and provides information on over three thousand claims occurred during the period 2000 - 2012, including detailed information on exposures. We use occupancy characteristics to compare the tail risk profiles of different commercial property exposures, and find evidence of substantial heterogeneity in tail behavior. The results demonstrate the benefits of aggregating granular information on both claims and exposures from different data sources, and provide warning against the use of reserving and capital modeling approaches that are not robust to heavy tails.

The first tribunal in Mexico was established in the central state of San Luis Potosi in 1926. The Law Regarding Social Prevention and Juvenile Delinquency for the Federal District and Mexican territories was promulgated in 1928. In 2005, Article 18 of the Mexican Constitution was modified to establish a comprehensive system (“Sistema Integral de justicia” in Spanish) of justice for juveniles between 12 and 18 years old who had committed a crime punishable under criminal law. Its objective was to guarantee juveniles all the due process rights established for adults, in addition to the special ones recognized for minors. The constitutional reform also provides a framework that includes special tribunals as well as alternative justice options for juveniles. With these reforms, institutionalization of minors was to be considered an extreme measure applicable only to felonies and to juveniles older than 14. In 2006, all states within the Mexican federation enacted the “Law of justice for adolescents”. This system, at both the federal and state levels, formalizes a new global paradigm with regard to the triangular relationship between children, the State and the Law. It recognizes that children are also bearers of the inherent human rights recognized for all individuals, instead of simply objects in need of protection. However, despite formally aligning Mexican juvenile justice law with the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), issues of actual substantive rights remained and new ones have appeared. For example, juveniles younger than 14 who have not committed a felony are released from institutions without any rehabilitation or treatment options, and alternative forms of justice were included without evaluating their possibilities of application or their conditions for success. In addition, the economic status of most juvenile detainees continues to be one of the most important determining factors in the administration of justice. Juveniles lack real access to an adequate defense because they cannot afford to pay lawyers. This disconnection between rights and reality undermines the new system, raising the question of whether recent modifications to bring laws in line with international norms are in fact advancing juvenile justice. By approaching the Mexican juvenile justice systems as a single, multilayered system combining international, federal and local laws and procedures, we can better describe some of the substantive inconsistencies that continue to prevail, even as new ones develop in terms of children’s rights.

Online copyright infringement is one of the toughest challenges the content industry has faced in the twenty first century. Article 8(3) of the Information Society Directive, implemented under section 97A of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, provides an injunctive remedy in response to such online infringement. Given the elusive nature of the website operators and the sheer number of their users, rights owners have turned to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to implement the injunctions granted under section 97A to block websites with infringing content. In their battle to keep pace with online infringers, the UK courts have permitted significant compromises to the procedures while granting these injunctive blocking orders. One of the pioneers in this line of cases in the UK is the Pirate Bay case (TPB case), which ruled as a matter of law that the procedure under Section 97A does not require the alleged infringers to be made parties to those proceedings. TPB case also marks the trend of the ISPs consenting to an order of injunction, and not defending the proceedings. This has resulted in the absence of any adverse party in the proceedings under section 97A. This threatens the basic tenets of procedural fairness and propriety, having adverse consequences on both the substantive and procedural aspects, evident in the cases that followed TPB case. This article examines the aspects of the judgment in TPB case that led to these procedural compromises, whether it had any basis in the pre-existing case law, what the nature of an injunction under section 97A is and how the subsequent line of cases have followed TPB case as a precedent. It further explores the adverse consequences of the procedural compromises and whether any safeguards are available against such compromises.

This paper analyzes the criminal offence of the non-consensual distribution of intimate images (frequently called “revenge porn”). Focussing on the debate currently underway in Canada surrounding Bill C-13 (Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act), it notes that such an offence would fill a grey area in that country’s criminal law. Arguing, more broadly, that the criminal law has an important expressive function, the paper posits that the offence targets the same general type of wrongdoing — sexual objectification — that undergirds sexual assault. While not all objectification merits criminal sanction, the paper explains why the non-consensual distribution of intimate images does, and why a specific offence is legitimate.

International audience; Abstract. Assume that claims in a portfolio of insurance contracts are described by independent and identically distributed random variables with regularly varying tails and occur according to a near mixed Poisson process. We provide a collection of results pertaining to the joint asymptotic Laplace transforms of the normalized sums of the smallest and largest claims, when the length of the considered time interval tends to infinity. The results crucially depend on the value of the tail index of the claim distribution, as well as on the number of largest claims under consideration.

This article explores the challenges posed by an archival interest in the broad palimpsest of daily life left on social networks that are controlled by private corporations. It addresses whether social networks should be archived for the benefit of future generations and proposes a policy thought experiment to help grapple with these questions, namely, the proposal for the formation of the public interest-oriented Networked Memory Project by the Library of Congress for the archiving of social networks. My discussion of the challenges posed by this thought experiment will focus on the U.S. legal framework within which the Library of Congress operates and take Facebook. To the extent that social networks have user-generated contents that range from the highly “private” to “public” as opposed to other networked platforms that contain materials that are considered “public”, the bar for the historical archival of social networks is much higher. Almost every archival effort must contend with the legal hurdle of copyright, but the archiving of social networks must also address how to handle the potentially sensitive nature of materials that are considered “private” from the perspective of the social and legal constructions of privacy. My theoretical exercise of proposing the formation of the Networked Memory Project by the Library of Congress responds to the need to consider the benefits of a public interest-oriented archive of social networks that can counter the drawbacks of the incidental corporate archiving taking place on social networks.

The task of this paper is to identify the causes of juvenile delinquency and juvenile offending. The French proverb chosen for its title ( Step back in order to jump better ) reflects the inherent challenge in this task; that is, how far back must we step in order to gain a complete understanding of these causes? Do we commence with adolescence, childhood, birth, pregnancy, conception, or the young person’s parents and their life experiences? How wide a net do we cast? Should we focus primarily on intra-individual factors, or the social ecologies in which young delinquents are found? Every story must have a beginning. In this story about young people who fall off the prosocial developmental trajectory, all sign posts point to attachment and the quality of the child’s first attachment experiences. This review will examine, from attachment and other developmental perspectives, how many of the more proximal causes of delinquency and youth offending have their origins in the emotional deficits suffered in early life. We will argue that delinquent and offending behavior represent attempts to redress these deficits. Consequently, interventions that attempt to prevent offending and reduce recidivism that do not address attachment ruptures and other early deficits cannot expect satisfactory outcomes.