Book review: policing at the top: the roles, values and attitudes of Chief Police Officers

As the Police Service of England and Wales navigates its way through a period of flux across organizational, cultural, and performance management lines, Bryn Caless’s new book is a timely addition to the discourse on policing culture and practice. Tony Murphy finds that in many respects this book dispels some myths about the nature of policing at the top, but also lays bare the macho culture, suspicion, and dislike affecting officers at all levels

The Rise of the Austrian Freedom Party in the 1990s: A Culturalist Approach

NoDer Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über unterschiedliche wissenschaftliche Erklärungsansätze zum bemerkenswerten Aufstieg der FPÖ Jörg Haiders in den 1990er Jahren. Daran anschließend werden einige kulturelle und historische Aspekte, die von anderen Ansätzen nicht beachtet wurden, welche aber einen wesentlichen politischen Hintergrund für Haiders Erfolg bildeten, beleuchtet. Es wird argumentiert, dass die FPÖ eine ausgesprochen erfolgreiche Strategie verfolgte, indem sie ein auf traditionellen und antimodernen Werten basierendes österreichisches Identitätskonzept (re-)konstruierte. Besonders deutlich wurde dies im aggressiven ¿Kulturkampf¿, den die FPÖ gegen KünstlerInnen und Personen des kulturellen Lebens Mitte der neunziger Jahre führte. Haiders Version des rechten Populismus erwies sich deswegen als besonders erfolgreich, weil sie einen in der österreichischen Gesellschaft nach 1945 stark verankerten Parochialismus politisch zu instrumentalisieren vermochte

Order Flow, Transaction Clock, and Normality of Asset Returns: A Comment on Ané and Geman (2000)

We investigate the procedure used by Ané and Geman (2000) to recover the moments of information flow from high frequency data in a model which generalizes the subordinated / mixture of distributions process in Clark (1973). Using Monte Carlo experiments we show that the third and higher moments of the latent information flow cannot be accurately recovered using their univariate procedure. We explain why this happens. In our data, returns conditioned on the recentered number of trades are not Gaussian.Subordinated process; Normality

Sounding the alarm: terrorism threat communications with the Australian public

Overview: On 12 September last year, the national terrorism advisory was raised by Prime Minister Abbott from medium to high on the advice of outgoing ASIO Director-General, David Irvine. Since September 12, 2001, we’d been on a medium level alert. This paper suggests five immediate changes which could help make our terrorism warning system better meet the public’s expectation that the government will provide useful information on terrorist threats and advice about required changes to behaviour. In the campaign against homegrown violent extremism, the government’s responsibility isn\u27t just to produce advisories; it’s to ensure that our terrorism alert system is understood by the community

Bootstrapping the Small Sample Critical Values of the Rescaled Range Statistic

Finite sample critical values of the rescaled range or R/S statistic may be obtained by bootstrapping. The empirical size and power performance of these critical values is good. Using the post blackened, moving block bootstrap helps to replicate the time dependencies in the original data. The Monte Carlo results show that the asymptotic critical values in Lo (1991) should not be used.

The impact of hurricanes on housing prices: evidence from U.S. coastal cities

We investigate the effect of hurricane strikes on housing prices in U.S. coastal cities. To this end, we construct a new index of hurricane destruction which varies over time and space. Using this index and an annual, two equation, dynamic equilibrium correction panel model with area and time fixed effects, we model the effects of hurricanes on real house process and real incomes. In our model hurricanes have a direct effect on house prices and an indirect effect via a fall in local incomes. Our results show that the typical hurricane strike raises real house prices for a number of years, with a maximum effect of between 3 % to 4 % three years after occurrence. There is also a small negative effect on real incomes. These results are stable across models and subsamples.Econometric models ; Housing - Prices

Housing wealth, credit conditions and consumption

There is widespread disagreement about the role of housing wealth in explaining consumption. Much of the empirical literature is marred by poor controls for the common drivers both of house prices and consumption, including income, income growth expectations, interest rates, credit supply conditions, other assets and indicators of income uncertainty (such as changes in the unemployment rate). For instance, while the easing of credit supply conditions is usually followed by a house price boom, failure to control for the direct effect of credit liberalization on consumption can over-estimate the effect of housing wealth or collateral on consumption. This paper suggests an empirical model grounded in theory with more complete controls than hitherto used. It is applied to modeling consumption in the UK and South Africa. Both countries experienced substantial credit market liberalization and rising consumption to income ratios. However, South Africa’s circumstances in the 1980s prevented an asset price boom, thus allowing the illumination of the direct role of credit liberalization. The paper incorporates methodological improvements in the measurement of credit conditions, and also clarifies the multi-faceted effects of credit liberalization on consumption.Consumption, credit liberalization, housing wealth, housing collateral

Rape myths as a challenge to objective policing: exploring attitudinal antecedents of rape myth acceptance and police officers' judgements of rape scenarios

Background: Rape cases are chronically under-reported to police at around 20%, and suffer from worrying levels of attrition (Lea, Lanvers & Shaw, 2003). Attitudes held by police officers representing acceptance of rape myths (among others) may contribute to this, by influencing decisions taken when dealing with victims. Indeed, research has demonstrated that, despite changes in practice in the UK, rape myth acceptance, and specifically victim blaming, is still present in police officers (Page, 2010; Sleath & Bull, 2012; 2015), may affect decision making (O’Keeffe, Brown, & Lyons, 2009), and may discourage woman from reporting sexual violence (Jordan, 2001, 2004; Page, 2010). This study investigated how levels of these attitudes differ between officers with and without specialist training, compared to undergraduate students, as well as how they relate to each other in an attitudinal framework. In addition, varying rape scenarios were presented to assess differences in victim and perpetrator blame between these groups. Methods: An anticipated (current) 100 (40) undergraduates, 250 (60) police officers, and 250 (50) specialist officers in sexual offences will complete measures of Ambivalent Sexism (Glick & Fiske, 1996), Hostility Towards Women (Lonsway & Fitzgerald, 1995), Power and Sex (Chapleau & Oswald, 2010), and Acceptance of Modern Myths about Sexual Aggression (Gerger, Kley, Bohner, & Siebler, 2007). Participants will also make victim blame judgements on rape scenarios that vary on victim reputation, relationship to perpetrator and point of initial resistance. Statistical analysis will explore the relationship between the attitudes, and their relation to victim blame judgements, across groups

Booms, Busts and Ripples in British Regional Housing Markets

We present and discuss an annual econometric model of regional house prices in Britain estimated over the period 1972 to 2003. The model, which consists of a system of inverted housing demand equations, is data consistent, incorporates spatial lags and errors, has some spatial coefficient heterogeneity, has a plausible long run solution and includes a full range of explanatory variables. We use our results to explain the periods of boom and bust and the ripple effect from London house prices to house prices elsewhere. We also address the issue of whether there has been a bubble in the British housing marketHouse Prices; Ripple Effect; Bubble