Trust in justice and the legitimacy of legal authorities: topline findings from a European comparative study

Issues of public trust in justice and institutional legitimacy are becoming increasingly salient in debate about criminal justice across Europe. Legitimate authority can be defined as having three interlinked elements: (a) legality (acting according to the law); (b) shared values (values that are shared by those with authority and those subject to that authority); and (c) consent (the sense amongst the policed of a moral obligation to obey the authority). According to this definition, legitimacy is present not only when individuals recognise the authority of institutions and feel a corresponding duty of deference to them (consent); it is also present when individuals believe that justice institutions have a proper moral purpose (shared values), and that justice institutions follow their own rules as well as the rules that govern everyone in society (legality). With this definition in mind, we analyse in this chapter data from the fifth European Social Survey on relationships between public trust in justice institutions and public perceptions of the legitimacy of these institutions

The Deaths of Manufacturing Plants

This paper examines the causes of manufacturing plant deaths within and across industries in the U.S. from 1977-1997. The effects of international competition from low wage countries, exporting, ownership structure, product diversity, productivity, geography, and plant characteristics are considered. The probability of shutdowns is higher in industries that face increased competition from low-income countries, especially for low-wage, labor-intensive plants within those industries. Conditional on industry and plant characteristics, closures occur more often at plants that are part of a multi-plant firm and at plants that have recently experienced a change in ownership. Plants owned by U.S. multinationals are more likely to close than similar plants at non-multinational firms. Exits occur less frequently at multi-product plants, at exporters, at plants that pay above average wages, and at large, older, more productive and more capital-intensive plants.

Firm Structure, Multinationals, and Manufacturing Plant Deaths

Plant shutdowns shape industry productivity, the dynamics of employment, and industrial restructuring. Plant closures account for more than half of gross job destruction in US manufacturing. This paper examines the effects of firm structure on US manufacturing plant closures. Plants belonging to multi-plant firms and those owned by US multinationals are less likely to exit. However, the superior survival chances are due to the characteristics of the plants rather than the nature of the firms. Controlling for plant and industry attributes, we find that plants owned by multi-unit firms and US multinationals are much more likely to close.Exit, shutdown, closure, multi-plant firms, multinational firms, takeovers, entry costs, agglomeration, specialization

Understanding the U.S. Export Boom

U.S. exports grew at a rate of 8.2% per year from 1987-1994, far faster than the economy as a whole or even the manufacturing sector. This paper examines the source of this export boom and argues that the boom itself has been less remarkable for the rate of growth of exports than for the striking increase in export intensity. This increase in export intensity has occurred both in the aggregate and for individual plants across a wide range of industries. Competing explanations for the rise in exports are tested with a comprehensive plant level data set. Changes in exchange rates and rises in foreign income are the dominant sources for the export increase, while productivity increases in U.S. plants play a relatively small role. The results suggest that slower growth rates of U.S. trading partners and an appreciation of the dollar will have strong negative effects on the growth rate of U.S. manufacturing exports.

Who Dies? International Trade, Market Structure, and Industrial Restructuring

This paper examines the role of changing factor endowments in the growth and decline of industries and regions. The implications of an endowment-based Heckscher-Ohlin trade model for plant entry and exit are tested on 20 years of data for the entire US manufacturing sector. The trade model provides predictions for which industries will see growth through the positive net entry of plants. A multi-region version of the same model has predictions for which regions will see high turnover and net entry of plants. In a country such as the U.S. that is augmenting both its physical and human capital, the least capital-intensive, least skill-intensive industries are correctly predicted to have the lowest rate of net entry. In addition, increases in regional capital and skill intensity are associated with higher probabilities of shutdown, especially for plants in industries with low initial capital and skill intensities.

How Do Complainants Experience the Ombuds Procedure? Detecting cultural patterns of disputing behavior: A comparative analysis of users that complain about financial services

Are systems we use for resolving disputes designed in a user-friendly manner? What motivates us to accept a decision handed down by an ombuds? There is scant empirical evidence to help understand what users of ombuds expect from them and what informs these expectations. Yet, in a recent wide-ranging study Creutzfeldt (2016) asked people who had just been through an ombuds procedure about precisely these issues. Exploring the importance of fairness perceptions for ombuds procedures, one of the findings of the project was that decision-acceptance (and trust) was linked to users being heard, having a voice, and especially their “first impressions” of the ombuds. Does this finding hold true across different jurisdictions, though? By focusing on users of the German insurance ombuds (Versicherungsombudsmann) and the Financial Ombudsman Services (FOS) in the UK, this chapter will explore how procedural justice matters in different ways in different legal cultures. The data reveal culturally distinct narratives about expectations towards ombuds, which we suggest is partially a result of the different legal socialization experiences of people in Germany and the UK. Having identified patterns within the private sector, lessons learned for the public sector are discussed. We conclude this chapter with some thoughts as to how this study might direct future understandings of user experience and future research

Procedural justice in Alternative Dispute Resolution: Fairness judgments among users of Financial Ombudsman services in Germany and the United Kingdom

This article uses the lens of procedural justice theory to explore peoples’ experiences of an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) model: ombudsman services. We focus on two specific services that deal with complaints about financial services in Germany and the UK. Using and expanding upon procedural justice theory we ask two key questions: is the complaints process more important than its outcome; and does the importance of process and outcome vary between countries? In both countries we find a strong association between perceptions of procedural justice and outcomes such as overall perceptions of fairness, confidence in the ombudsman service, and decision acceptance. Against expectations, these associations are broadly invariant across the German and UK samples; but, despite this, all else equal German respondents expressed consistently more positive views. Our data add some nuance to the existing literature on procedural justice and suggest that the national context also plays a role in people’s decision-acceptance of ombudsmen. We suggest that national legal cultures provide for a framework of rules that guide people’s perceptions and behaviors in legal, quasi-legal and related environments

Police legitimacy among immigrants in Europe: Institutional frames and group position

Recent research has begun to explore the extent to which factors beyond behaviour and performance shape the empirical legitimacy of the police. In this paper, data from the European Social Survey are used to explore the association between immigration and legitimacy. Starting from the assumption that police legitimacy will vary between immigrant and non-immigrant populations, we consider three distinct sets of variable that might explain such variation: contact with the police, group position and the change in frames of reference that the act of migration engenders. Findings suggest, first, that variables from all three groups predict legitimacy, with police contact emerging as the most important. Second, conditional on these factors there is no difference in the views of recent immigrants and their non-immigrant peers. However, other groups of immigrants – particularly those who migrated as children – tend to grant the police somewhat less legitimacy

Forecasting Pre-World War I Inflation: The Fisher Effect Revisited

We consider the puzzling behavior of interest rates and inflation in the United States and the United Kingdom between 1879 and 1913. A deflationary regime prior to 1896 was followed by an inflationary one from 1896 until the beginning of World War I; the average inflation rate was 3.8 percentage points higher in the second period than in the first. Yet nominal interest rates were no higher after 1896 than they had been before. This nonadjustment of nominal interest rates would be consistent with rational expectations if inflation were not forecastable, and indeed univariate tests show little sign of serial correlation in inflation. However, inflation was forecastable on the basis of lagged gold production. Investors' expectations of inflation should have risen by at least three percentage points in the United States between 1890 and 1910. We consider in an information processing context alternative ways of accounting for this failure of interest rates to adjust, for example the possible beliefs that increases in gold production might be transitory. We conclude that the failure of investors to exhibit foresight with regard to the shift in the trend inflation rate after 1896 is not persuasive evidence that investors were negligent or naive in processing information.