Suchergebnisse

We analyze the design of legal principles and procedures for court decision-making in civil litigation. The objective is the provision of appropriate incentives for potential tort-feasors to exert care, when evidence about care is imperfect and may be distorted by the parties. Efficiency is shown to be consistent with courts adjudicating on the basis of the preponderance of evidence standard of proof together with common law exclusionary rules. Inefficient equilibria may nevertheless also arise under these rules. Directing courts as to the assignment of the burden of proof is then useful as a coordination device. Alternatively, burden of proof guidelines are unnecessary if courts are allowed a more active or inquisitorial role, by contrast with that of passive adjudicator.

In 2015, the newly elected government of Finland introduced austerity measures designed to improve the public economy, which had not recovered from the financial crisis of 2007–2008. The article examines how the government sought to secure acceptance for austerity by appealing to citizens' emotions. We analyse how the measures were emotionally motivated and how, according to the parties in power, citizens should and should not have felt about them. The article shows how the politics of austerity produces various and contradictory feeling rules. These seek to temper citizens' negative emotions towards austerity, such as dissatisfaction over unfair sharing of pain and distrust towards political authority. Interestingly, the rules evoke hope that a better future lies ahead if citizens follow the proposed measures, yet prompt fears of what will happen if they do not. The government also emphasised its transparency and honesty to prompt empathy and trust from the population.

This study uses experimental economic methods to examine the efficacy of reverse auctions to generate efficient nutrient abatement from livestock operations. The experimental parameters were benchmarked to a specific beneficial management practice in a Manitoba watershed and were used to examine three bid-selection rules and two pricing rules. The results suggest that targeting livestock with the practice performed almost as well as targeting specific abatement levels at the farm level. Auctions that maximized participation of producers fared poorly on both environmental and economic outcome measures. The uniform-price rule was found to be superior to the discriminative-pricing rule.

Sport has historically furthered the myth of female frailty by making it the basis for women's exclusion from early participation, and hitherto, for inclusion on restricted conditions. The article focuses on the gendered rules of play in cricket which manifest materially by altering an object, the space and temporality of play translating into the use of a smaller ball within a shorter boundary and lesser hours of playtime for women in comparison to men. While the historical and existing justifications for each of the differences in rules revolve around varied meanings of what 'being frail' entails for women, the supposed easing of conditions is also expected to encourage and enable women to emulate men's style of play, and hence, make their game 'exciting'. Drawing from fieldwork and interviews of women cricketers who represent the state of Rajasthan (India) in the Board of Control for Cricket in India domestic tournaments, the article unpacks the on-ground manifestation of the three gendered rules to argue that the altered nature of play makes the women's version more challenging and hence, distinct and separate from the men's version and its valuations. Foregrounding women's layered experiences, the article shows the way women play sport cannot be captured within the imposed binary logic of frail and non-frail.

In its first 'Plan on Building the Rule of Law in China (2020-2025)', the leadership in Beijing has set out its vision for a coherent and genuinely Chinese legal system. The focus here is on the term 'socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics'. It should 'basically take shape' by 2035. Marxist-Leninist legal concepts remain fundamental. The aim is to use the law as a political instrument to make the state more efficient and to reduce the arbitrariness of how the law is applied for the majority of the popu­lation, among other things, with the help of advanced technology. In some areas, for example on procedural issues, Beijing continues to draw inspiration from the West in establishing its Chinese 'rule of law'. However, the party-state leadership rejects an independent judiciary and the principle of separation of powers as 'erroneous west­ern thought'. Beijing is explicitly interested in propagating China's conception of law and legal practice internationally, establishing new legal standards and enforcing its interests through the law. Berlin and Brussels should, therefore, pay special attention to the Chinese leadership's concept of the law. In-depth knowledge on this topic will be imperative in order to grasp the strategic implications of China's legal policy, to better understand the logic of their actions and respond appropriately.

We evaluate the monetary determinants of inflation in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia by using the McCallum rule for money supply. The deviation of actual money growth from the rule is included in the estimation of Phillips curves for the four economies by Bayesian model averaging. We find that money provides information about price developments over a horizon of ten quarters ahead, albeit the estimates are in most cases rather imprecise. Moreover, the effect of excessive monetary growth on inflation is mixed: It is positive for Poland and Slovakia, but negative for the Czech Republic and Hungary. Nevertheless, these results suggest that money does provide information about future inflation and that a McCallum rule could potentially be used in the future as an additional indicator of the monetary policy stance once the precision of the estimation improves with more data available.

In dynamic settings with public capital, it is common to assume that the government claims a constant fraction of public investment to total output each period, which is clearly a restrictive assumption. The goal of the paper is twofold: first, to find out a more reasonable rule for public investment, consistent with US data, than the constant-ratio rule; second, to analyze the impact of that rule on welfare and judge the public investment downsizing process held in US since the end of the sixties. Calibrating for US, the model simulation captures the public investment downsizing process held during 1960-2001, as well as the post-1970 slowdown in private factors productivity. Downsizing would be optimal whenever the public capital elasticity is approximately smaller than 0.09, a lower level than the general consensus in the literature. Thus, it is more likely that our result be consistent to Aschauer (1989) and Munnell (1990), which put forth that policymakers would have reduced the stock of public capital below its optimum level along this time.

This essay analyzes the property tax system in New York State. Based on historical and comparative analyses of three critical factors in property tax administration-assessment standards, revaluation, and assessing units-this study reveals that the current property tax administration structure has deep roots in the "home rule" tradition in New York State, making it hard to achieve intradistrict equity in property tax burden for some assessing units. The study concludes that the state's lack of active role undermines public faith in the property tax system and in local governments. The state should not be overruled by the local government politics based on home rule.

Josephus refers explicitly to Alexander Janneus in his narratives in both War and Antiquities only as king. Janneus&rsquo ; s high priestly office is only implied, and that in a context that is hostile to him (War 1.88//Ant. 13.372). If one looks at Josephus&rsquo ; s list of high priests in Ant. 20.242, there he reports that Janneus acted both as king and priest for &ldquo ; twenty-seven years&rdquo ; . Was it Josephus who did not want to refer explicitly to Janneus as high priest in his narratives, was this dictated by his source/s, or by some other reason/s? More specifically, why is there a contrast between the narratives and the list? This study adopts source-critical, comparative, and interdisciplinary approach. It also compares Janneus with other rulers from the Hellenistic world with whom he shared many characteristics. However, certain aspects make the Hasmonean high priestly monarchy unique, dictated mainly by theological reasons. Josephus was aware of the complexity and controversial aspects surrounding the institution of Hasmonean kingship and its combination with the high priesthood. For various reasons he chose not to identify Janneus explicitly as high priest in his narratives, but rather focus mainly on the royal policy. As an alternative, the Flavian historian drafted an idealized list of high priests in Ant. 20.225&ndash ; 245 that became the basis for developing his theocratic model of government, which&mdash ; he probably hoped&mdash ; could co-exist under the Roman emperor.