The Misplaced Trust in the DOJ\u27s Expertise on Criminal Justice Policy

As should be clear, this is less a book review and more an in-depth exploration of a key point Professor Barkow makes in Prisoners of Politics as applied to the federal criminal justice system. Sure, we need expertise in order to make data-driven criminal justice policy decisions--as Barkow puts it, “[t]he key is to create and foster an institutional framework that prioritizes data” and “expertise” so as to “create incentives for key decisionmakers to be accountable for real results” (pp. 14-15). But in creating reforms, the kindof expertise is also important. Many federal policymakers currently view the DOJ and NAAUSA as possessing the most salient expertise on all criminal justice matters. This Review, I hope, calls that premise into serious doubt. In Part I of this Review, I explain how the DOJ and NAAUSA have had a vise-like grip on federal policymakers when deciding criminal justice issues. In Part II, I detail their lobbying efforts in favor of longer sentences and against any reforms that would reduce sentences, and I explain why their claims against reform are flawed. Part III addresses the DOJ\u27s and the NAAUSA\u27s active opposition to criminal justice policies set by the presidents whom they serve because federal prosecutors seek to retain power to the exclusion of all other policy goals. If we want a federal criminal justice system that reflects the goals of public safety, fairness, and equal enforcement, then federal policymakers should give less deference to the views of federal prosecutors because they do not possess the requisite expertise or will to move our policies toward those ends

Endogenous Product Differentiation, Market Size and Prices

Recent empirical evidence suggests that prices for some goods and services are higher in larger markets. This paper provides a demand-side explanation for this phenomenon when firms can choose how much to differentiate their products in a model of monopolistic competition with horizontal product differentiation. The model proposes that consumers’ love of variety makes them more sensitive to product differentiation efforts by firms, which leads to higher prices in larger markets. At the same time, endogenous product differentiation modeled in this way can lead to a positive and concave relationship between market size and entry.Endogenous Technology; Entry; Market Size Effect; International Trade; Monopolistic Competition

Institution-Driven Comparative Advantage, Complex Goods and Organizational Choice

The theory of the rm suggests that firms can respond to poor contract enforcement by vertically integrating their production process. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms' integration opportunities affect the way institutions determine international trade patterns. We find that vertical integration lessens the impact of a country's ability to enforce contracts on the comparative advantage of complex goods. We also find that countries with good financial institutions export disproportionately more in sectors that produce complex goods and that have a high propensity for vertical integration. In doing so we use a new outcome-based measure of vertical integration propensity and we employ several empirical strategies: cross section, panel and event study analysis. Our results confirm the role of institutions as source of comparative advantage and suggest that this depends not only on the technological characteristics of the goods produced but also on the way firms are able to organize the production process.International Trade; Comparative Advantage; Contract Enforcement; Financial Institutions; Vertical Integration

Institution-Driven Comparative Advantage, Complex Goods and Organizational Choice

The theory of the firm suggests that firms can respond to poor contract enforcement by vertically integrating their production process. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms' integration opportunities affect the way institutions determine international trade patterns. We find that vertical integration lessens the impact of a country's ability to enforce contracts on the comparative advantage of complex goods. We also find that countries with good financial institutions export disproportionately more in sectors that produce complex goods and that have a high propensity for vertical integration. In doing so we use a new outcome-based measure of vertical integration propensity and we employ several empirical strategies: cross section, panel and event study analysis. Our results confirm the role of institutions as source of comparative advantage and suggest that this depends not only on the technological characteristics of the goods produced but also on the way firms are able to organize the production process.International Trade; Comparative Advantage; Contract Enforcement; Financial Institutions; Vertical Integration

Antipsychotic medication for people with first episode schizophrenia: an exploratory economic analysis of alternative treatment algorithms

Available clinical evidence suggests that the newer antipsychotics are similar to conventional antipsychotics for positive symptom control. It has been suggested that they may also be superior for negative symptoms and side effects, but the evidence for this is unclear (Duggan et al, 1999, Kennedy et al, 1999, Srisurapanont et al, 1999, Thornley et al, 1999, Tuunainen and Gilbody, 1999, Wahlbeck et al, 1999). These differences if they exist, may lead to improvements in quality of life and patient satisfaction and subsequent rates of compliance with therapy. If the latter occurs, there may also be improvements in the overall level of symptom control and rate of relapse. Economic evaluations of risperidone suggest that these differences could lead to savings in the use of hospital inpatient care compared to conventional antipsychotics (Guest et al, 1996, Glennie, 1997). The available economic evidence suggests that the use of clozapine has the potential to improve the efficient use of health and social service resources in some patients (Revicki et al, 1990, Davies & Drummond, 1993, Meltzer et al, 1993, Aitchison & Kerwin, 1997, Glennie, 1997, Rosenheck et al, 1997). All of these studies indicate that overall, clozapine is associated with lower rates of hospital inpatient admissions and lower duration of inpatient stay. These are due to earlier discharge from the index inpatient admission and lower rates of relapse. These differences in the use of inpatient care are sufficient to offset the additional costs of purchasing clozapine. However, the designs of all the economic studies raise several issues of concern, such as control for biases, sources of data and methods of data collection, measurement of outcomes, the type and dose regimes of comparator drugs. In addition, the clinical and economic data for these evaluations were collected for a patient population with a long duration of illness and/or who are treatment resistant or intolerant of typical antipsychotic therapy. It is not clear that these are applicable to people with early schizophrenia or those who have not had problems with previous antipsychotics. Patients currently categorised as treatment resistant or treatment intolerant are likely to have a long history of schizophrenia. This is partly due to historical factors, such as the limited number of antipsychotics available, concerns about the safety of clozapine and the restricted use of expensive atypical antipsychotics. These factors may be associated with a relatively poor quality of life and more intensive use of health care services in patients with a longer duration of illness. Any improvements in clinical outcome as a result of a change in antipsychotic may also result in relatively important changes in health status and intensity of ealth service utilisation, compared to those with a recent diagnosis of schizophrenia. In addition, there is some limited evidence that the use of services following entry to a clinical trial is related to the level of resource use prior to entry (Rosenheck et al, 1999). Furthermore, there is a trend to reduce reliance on inpatient or institutional care for people with acute or chronic mental illness. The total number of commissioned hospital bed days for people with mental illness decreased from 14 million to 11.5 million between 1992-3 and 1997-8 and the number of ward attendees fell from 124000 to 93000 (Department of Health, 1998a). Over the same period the number of daily available hospital beds for people with mental illness declined from 47000 to 37000, while the number of outpatient attendances rose from 1.8 million to 2.1 million (HPSS, 1998). Creed et al (1997) suggest that approximately 40% of people with acute episodes of mental illness (including schizophrenia) can be treated by attending psychiatric day hospitals rather then with hospital inpatient admissions. These factors may over estimate the likely value for money of the atypical antipsychotics, in cohorts of people with first episode schizophrenia in the current UK mental health service (Rosenheck et al, 1999). Given the constraints on health and social care budgets, purchasers and providers need to ensure that resources are used efficiently. A variety of guidelines and treatment protocols have been published, or developed for use at a local level to support decisions about the choice of antipsychotic for people with a first episode of schizophrenia. In addition, there are wide variations in the availability and use of the atypical antipsychotics in the UK. Current published literature is not sufficient to address all the economic issues of concern and there is a need for evaluation of the relative efficiency of clozapine and the new antipsychotics. The NHS R&D HTA has funded primary research to assess the relative costs and utility of typical and atypical antipsychotics for people who are resistant to or intolerant of at least two antipsychotics. However, the results of the research will not be available for at least 3 years. In addition, it is also important to assess the value of the new drugs in the context of alternative prescribing guidelines, and for people with a first episode of schizophrenia. This paper presents the results of secondary research to explore the potential economic impact of atypical antipsychotics for people in the context of current clinical guidelines.schizophrenia, QALYs

On Organizations and Oligarchies: Michels in the Twenty-First Century

[Excerpt] A central problem for those interested in studying and explaining the actions of organizations is how to conceptualize these social phenomena. In particular, because organizations are constituted by individuals, each of whom may seek to achieve his or her interests through the organization, questions of how decisions are made in organizations and whose preferences drive those decisions are critical to explaining organizational actions. Although early organizational scholars spent much time wrestling with these questions (e.g. Barnard 1938; Simon 1947; Parsons 1956; March and Simon 1958), more recent work in organizational studies has tended to elide them, adopting an implicit view of organizations as unitary actors, much like individuals, and in particular, like individuals who operate with a coherent utility function that they seek to maximize (e.g. Porter 1985; Baum et al. 2005; Casciaro and Piskorski 2005; Mezias and Boyle 2005; Jensen 2006). Thus, organizational behavior is seen as reflecting efforts to achieve a specific goal, which is, presumably, that of enhancing the organizations interests. While this may be the dominant conceptualization underlying much contemporary research, other work sharply questions the validity and usefulness of this approach to organizational analysis (March and Simon 1958; Cohen, March, and Olsen 1972; Jackall 1988). Studies in this tradition suggest that it is more appropriate in most instances to conceive of organizations as battlefields, constituted by shifting factions with differing interests that vie for control of the organization; hence, organizational actions should be viewed as reflecting the preferences of a victorious coalition at a given point in time. We suspect that, although most people’s experience in organizations may make them sympathetic to the coalitional view and skeptical of the unitary actor view, the continuing predilection for the latter stems at least in part from problems of deriving systematic predictions of organizational behavior from a more chaotic, coalitional kaleidoscope perspective. A different model of organizations is represented in the work of Robert Michels (1876-1936), who, nearly a century ago, offered his now-famous, pithy summary of the fundamental nature of organizations ([1911] 1962: 365): ‘Who says organization, says oligarchy.’ Drawing on his own experiences with early twentieth-century German political party organizations, Michels presented the drift to oligarchy as an ‘iron law’, inevitably resulting in the division of even the most expressly democratic organizations into two parts: a small stable set of elites and all the other members. His analysis offered a catalog of the processes and forces that produced such a division, and he postulated that the directives of the elite, while nominally reflecting the set of interests shared by all members, in actuality are driven by their own personal interests in the organization. His provocative (and very pessimistic) arguments have served as the basis for many studies over the years, particularly of organizations specifically formed to represent the interests of groups seeking to promote change in political arenas. Much of this work has been focused on assessing the purported inevitability of the emergence of oligarchies and defining the conditions of the iron law—i.e. those that affect the realization (or suppression) of oligarchic tendencies. In this chapter, we argue that Michels’s core arguments about the nature of oligarchies in organizations, and research generated in response to his work, are not only relevant to understanding the dynamics of political organizations but can be extended as a useful framework for thinking about important aspects of contemporary economic corporations as well. In making this argument, we highlight the parallels between Berle and Means’s analysis (1932) of modern, publicly held corporations and that of Michels. Both analyses address the general organizational problem of ensuring representation of members’ interests. In political organizations, it is the rank-and-file members’ interests that leaders are charged with representing; in publicly held organizations, leaders are primarily responsible for representing the interests of stockholders, as the nominal owners’ of the firm. In this context, we consider evidence and research on problematic corporate behavior to show how Michels’s work provides a useful framework for understanding these problems and for formulating ways of addressing them

MCE 2018: The 1st Multi-target Speaker Detection and Identification Challenge Evaluation

The Multi-target Challenge aims to assess how well current speech technology is able to determine whether or not a recorded utterance was spoken by one of a large number of blacklisted speakers. It is a form of multi-target speaker detection based on real-world telephone conversations. Data recordings are generated from call center customer-agent conversations. The task is to measure how accurately one can detect 1) whether a test recording is spoken by a blacklisted speaker, and 2) which specific blacklisted speaker was talking. This paper outlines the challenge and provides its baselines, results, and discussions.Comment: http://mce.csail.mit.edu . arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1807.0666