Review: Douglas Gwyn, The Anti-War (San Francisco: Inner Light Books, 2016)

Excerpt: The Anti-War is a challenge to Friends everywhere because it is a call to be renewed by immersion in our tradition that will reveal our captivity to cultural and religious forces we must resist. Doug Gwyn has been an itinerant witness for peacemaking within the family of Friends and for Friends’ peacemaking in the world. In his introductory “Personal Testimony” we see his long effort to have Friends seek together the grounding for peacemaking by deeper study and meditation on Quaker and Christian witness. The Anti-War, a summary of Gwyn’s work, would be a fine way for Friends to enter into discussions of what the biblical tradition and Friends’ history can mean for Quaker renewal today: “The purpose here is to portray the overall structural dynamics of the anti-war, with the hope that a vision of the whole may help inspire renewed discernment and action among Friends” (92 of the “Militant Peacemaking”)

The Relationship Among African American Male Earnings, Employment, Incarceration and Immigration: A Time Series Approach

The advent of rising immigration has spurred research into a number of important issues insofar as the indigenous labor market is concerned. Some of these issues regarding the nature of the effect on native workers have been studied extensively. Others, like the interrelationships among immigration flows, African-American male earnings, employment, and incarceration rates have not been widely examined. In this paper, the association among these non-stationary variables is studied in the framework of a Vector Error Correction model and the associated cointegrating relationship. We find no statistically significant association among immigration, Black male employment rates, and Black male incarceration rates over the period 1962-2006, ceteris paribus.immigration; Vector Error Correction; cointegration; incarceration rates; Black male employment rates

The Effect of Right-to-Work Laws on Business and Economic Conditions: A Multivariate Approach

The 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act (1935) authorized a state's right to prohibit unions from requiring a worker to pay dues, even when the worker is covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Within a short time of the amendment's passage, twelve (12) states passed "right-to-work" laws, as did ten (10) more states in the intervening years. Although there has been considerable research on the influence of right-to-work laws on union density, organizing efforts, industrial development and some study of wage differences, there has been no examination of the legislations’ effect on business and economic conditions across states. In this paper, the average differences in business conditions, personal income, and employment across states that have enacted right-to-work laws versus those that do not have this legislation are examined using a Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). Our most notable result is the finding that although right-to-work states may be more attractive to business, this does not necessarily translate into enhanced economic viability for all sectors in the right-to-work state. Not only are personal income and employment lower, but there are no significant differences in the number of firms and business formations between right-to-work and non-right-to-work states.right-to-work laws; business formation; employment; Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA)

ISSUES IN AGRICULTURAL LAND MARKETS: AN EMPIRICAL PERSPECTIVE

Land Economics/Use,

INPUT-OUTPUT MODELING AND RESOURCE USE PROJECTION

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

DISCUSSION: PROTECTION OF AGRICULTURAL LAND: AN INSTITUTIONALIST PERSPECTIVE

Land Economics/Use,

Crassulacean acid metabolism as a continuous trait: variability in the contribution of Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) in populations of Portulacaria afra

Portulacaria afra L. is a dominant facultative CAM species growing in the Southeastern Cape of South Africa. P. afra is well adapted to regions of the Spekboom thicket in areas of limited and sporadic rainfall. P. afra populations occur in isolated drainages. We hypothesized the utilization of CAM would vary in the different populations in response to rainfall and temperature gradients. Carbon isotope composition can be used to determine the contribution of CAM in leaf tissue. P. afra leaves of populations were analyzed in transects running south to north and east to west in locations from the coast to elevations of 1400 m. Carbon isotope values ranged from -16.1‰ in Plutosvale to -21.0‰ to -22.7‰ in Port Alfred and Grahamstown populations respectively with some values reaching -25.2‰. These values indicated an estimated variable contribution of the CAM pathway ranging from 23% to almost 60%. The results indicate a much greater range of variability than previously reported. The carbon isotope values showed no direct correlation with rainfall or maximum or minimum day/night temperatures in the summer or winter for the different locations. The results indicated the microclimate may play a more significant role in determining CAM utilization. We present evidence that CAM is a continuous trait in P. afra and CAM is operating continuously at low levels during C3 photosynthesis which may explain the high variability in its carbon isotope composition. P. afra populations illustrate a large phenotypic plasticity and further studies may indicate genotypic differences between populations. This may be valuable in ascertaining the genetic contribution to its water use efficiency and possible use in engineering higher water use efficiency in C3 plants. The results revealed here may explain P. afra\u27s ability to sequester carbon at high rates compared to more mesic species

An Empirical Investigation into the Effect of Music Downloading on the Consumer Expenditure of Recorded Music: A Time Series Approach

The downloading of music from the internet has been proliferating over the past three years. The recording industry believes that this phenomenon is responsible for the decline in recorded music sales since the year 2000 and to a certain extent; this is supported by consumer surveys and previous studies that have used panel or cross-sectional data. In this analysis, an econometric, time-series model of consumer spending on tapes, LPs, and CDs is estimated which takes into account factors that are posited as effecting the consumption of recorded music, but not used in previous studies. The most significant finding is that music downloading, subsequent to 2000, affects consumer spending on tapes, LPs, and CDs through the price elasticity of demand. Falling DVD prices have also served to reduce the demand of recorded music during this same period.