Preface, Volume 1, Numbers 1 & 2, 2002

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Pierce Law Review. You may notice that a number of the articles in this edition are not typical for a law review. This is because the articles in this edition were held over from our predecessor publication, a scientific journal entitled RISK: Health, Safety & Environment. As a result. the articles in this volume are rather atypical for a traditional law review. and not all of them entirely legally-related in nature. Nonetheless, we hope you enjoy having the opportunity to read articles on topics you would not have reviewed otherwise

06-05 Can Climate Change Save Lives? A comment on “Economy-wide estimates of the implications of climate change: Human health”

In a recent article in this journal, Francesco Bosello, Roberto Roson, and Richard Tol make the surprising prediction that the first stages of global warming will, on balance, save a large number of lives. Bosello et al. fail to substantiate this remarkable estimate, and they make multiple mistaken or misleading assumptions. They rely on research that identifies a simple empirical relationship between temperature and mortality, but ignores the countervailing effect of human adaptation to gradual changes in average temperature. While focusing on small changes in average temperatures, they ignore the important health impacts of extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts, floods, and hurricanes. They extrapolate this pattern far beyond the level that is apparently supported by their principal sources, and introduce an arbitrary assumption that may bias the result toward finding benefits from warming.

06-06 “European Chemical Policy and the United States: The Impacts of REACH”

The European Union is moving toward adoption of its new Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH) policy, an innovative system of chemicals regulation that will provide crucial information on the safety profile of chemicals used in industry. Chemicals produced elsewhere, such as in the United States, and exported to Europe will have to meet the same standards as chemicals produced within the European Union. What is at stake for the U.S. is substantial: we estimate that chemical exports to Europe that are subject to REACH amount to about $14 billion per year, and are directly and indirectly responsible for 54,000 jobs. Revenues and employment of this magnitude dwarf the costs of compliance with REACH, which will amount to no more than$14 million per year. Even if, as the U.S. chemicals industry has argued, REACH is a needless mistake, it will be far more profitable to pay the modest compliance costs than to lose access to the enormous European market.

CRED: A New Model of Climate and Development

This paper describes a new model, Climate and Regional Economics of Development (CRED), which is designed to analyze the economics of climate and development choices. Its principal innovations are the treatment of global equity, calculation of the optimum interregional flows of resources, and use of McKinsey marginal abatement cost curves to project the cost of mitigation. The model shows more equitable scenarios have better climate outcomes; the challenge of climate policy is to persuade high-income countries to accept the need for both international equity and climate protection.climate economics, development, global equity, abatement costs, integrated assessment models

Florida and Climate Change: The Costs of Inaction

Provides a detailed analysis of the potential consequences of continued climate change for Florida's economy

Chinese Porcelain and the Material Taxonomies of Medieval Rabbinic Law: Encounters with Disruptive Substances in Twelfth-Century Yemen

This article focuses on a set of legal questions about ṣīnī vessels (literally, “Chinese” vessels) sent from the Jewish community in Aden to Fustat (Old Cairo) in the mid-1130s CE and now preserved among the Cairo Geniza holdings in Cambridge University Library. This is the earliest dated and localized query about the status of ṣīnī vessels with respect to the Jewish law of vessels used for food consumption. Our analysis of these queries suggests that their phrasing and timing can be linked to the contemporaneous appearance in the Yemen of a new type of Chinese ceramic ware, qingbai, which confounded and destabilized the material taxonomies underpinning rabbinic Judaism. Marshalling evidence from contemporary Jewish legal compendia and other writings produced in this milieu, our discussion substantially advances interpretive angles first suggested by S. D. Goitein and Mordechai A. Friedman to examine the efforts of Adeni Jews to place this Chinese ceramic fabric among already legislated substances, notably the “neighboring” substances of glass and earthenware, in order to derive clear rules for the proper use and purification of vessels manufactured from it

Where Do Men and Women Give? Gender Differences in the Motivations and Purposes for Charitable Giving

This study seeks to explore gender differences in the purpose and motivations for charitable giving. We analyze new waves of data from the Philanthropy Panel Study, the Bank of America/U.S. Trust Studies of High Net Worth Philanthropy, and the Million Dollar List to investigate where men and women direct their charitable gifts, the influence of charitable decision making on giving, and why men’s and women’s priorities may differ. We find that generally, women are more likely than men to give to every charitable subsector except neighborhoods and communities and tend to spread their giving out. However, high net worth women exhibit fewer differences in their giving as compared to high net worth men. Women prioritize issues and areas such as women’s rights, human rights, and the environment, while men favor the economy and national security. Finally, we find that women are generally motivated to give by their political or philosophical beliefs or their involvement in an organization

How and Why Women Give: Current and Future Directions for Research on Women’s Philanthropy

The purpose of this literature review is to summarize the existing academic research on women, gender, and philanthropy and create a comprehensive picture of what we know about women’s giving and gender differences in giving today. We draw from studies in various academic disciplines that cover more than four decades of research. This research uses a variety of methods, such as surveys, experiments, and institutional data, which can impact study results and may contribute to differences among the findings. An important limitation is that the majority of these studies are U.S.-based, and results may not be generalizable internationally. Additionally, a review such as this also raises questions, debates, and gaps in knowledge, which will help researchers identify crucial questions for future study

Do Women Give More? Findings from Three Unique Data Sets on Charitable Giving

This study seeks to explore gender differences in the incidence and amount of charitable giving. We analyze data from three unique data sets: the Philanthropy Panel Study, the Bank of America/U.S. Trust Studies of High Net Worth Philanthropy, and the Million Dollar List to investigate the intra-household factors of income and education on charitable giving overall, and to religious and secular causes. We confirm prior studies finding that single women have a higher likelihood of giving and give a higher average dollar amount than single men, but find no gender differences among high net worth single men and women. Being married increases the likelihood and amount of charitable giving for both men and women. Within married couples, differences in the husbands’ or wives; earned and unearned income influences the likelihood and amount of giving along with where charitable giving is directed. This study uses new waves of data to examine previous, sometimes conflicting findings about gender differences in philanthropy in order to provide a more nuanced view of how women and men give