Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: While tobacco-related media content, both pro- and anti-smoking content, is widely believed to have a significant direct influence on adolescent decisions about smoking, the processes that may underlie this influence are neither well documented nor well understood. Particularly notable is the absence of evidence that anti-smoking campaigns achieve their intended effect. However, what does have a significant and well-documented effect on smoking adoption are adolescent perceptions of peer norms.
This study examined the role of peer norms and mass media in a test of the presumed influence hypothesis, a theoretical model suggesting that smoking-related media content may have a significant indirect influence on adolescent smoking via its effect on perceived peer norms. That is, adolescents may assume that smoking-related content in mass media will influence the attitudes and behaviors of their peers (even if not their own). These peer perceptions in turn can influence adolescents' own smoking behaviors.
Results of a pilot study of 129 middle-school students showed no direct effect of either pro- or anti-smoking promotions. But pro-smoking messages had a significant indirect influence through their perceived effect on peers. Most interestingly, anti-smoking campaigns were associated with perceptions of increased pro-smoking attitudes and behaviors among peers, thus compounding, rather than counteracting, the substantial influence of peer norms on smoking adoption.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study examines direct and indirect impacts of anti-smoking media messages on adolescents’ smoking attitudes and behavioral intentions. Built on the influence-of-presumed-influence model, this study adds the moderating role of peer proximity – i.e., close friends versus general peers. Analyzing direct effects in a survey of 1687 middle-school students, we found that anti-smoking media message had boomerang effects among ever-smokers (experimenters and established smokers) and never-smokers. However, analysis of indirect paths revealed significant effects in the opposite (intended) direction – effects also moderated by peer proximity. Respondents’ perception that close friends, but not general peers, are more influenced by such messages led to a significant decrease in their favorable thoughts toward smoking and intention to smoke. The data suggest that antismoking messages may only achieve their desired effect via the indirect-influence path.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: There are three spheres of transfer pricing analysis – income tax, customs and VAT – and the rules among these spheres are not harmonized. Because these rules intersect far more in practice than in theory businesses frequently face inconsistent treatment among these taxes, a three-way, potentially no-win situation whenever they structure cross-border related party transactions.

The world’s largest multinational enterprises transfer goods, services and intangible properties in cross-border related party transactions on a daily basis. Although income tax, customs and VAT authorities each demand an accurate valuation of these supplies, the reality is (with very few exceptions) that the applicable transfer pricing rules are not harmonized among the tax types within jurisdictions (vertical harmonization). There is however, considerable harmonization of transfer pricing norms within a single tax type across multiple jurisdictions (horizontal harmonization).

Horizontal harmonies are largely attributable to the influence of supra-national standard setting organizations: the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in income tax, the World Trade Organization (WTO) in customs, and various regional economic unions, like the European Union (EU) in VAT. The time has come for a concerted effort to be made in the vertical harmonization of transfer pricing regimes, one that maintains the horizontal linkages of the current system. In other words, what is needed is a single global transfer pricing standard.

This paper considers the barriers to international trade caused by the partial harmonization of transfer pricing rules.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper attempts to answer the question: What is the effect of a Supreme Court Opinion outside the judicial system?. Using Southern White reaction Brown v. Board of Education as a detailed case study, this paper develops and tests a theory of how the Court can effect politics outside the realm of lower courts and compliance or non-compliance with judicial rulings. I argue that not only do landmark cases like Brown increase the importance and salience of issues outside of courts, but they stimulate political action along the lines of the adversarial judicial system.

In this paper I outline a theory of judicialization of political conflict, arguing that Supreme Court decisions influence extra-judicial politics by remaking political conflict along the lines of the adversarial legal system. Politics after Court action is characterized by increased polarization and groups making arguments in terms of constitutionality and legal interpretation. I test this theory in a self-compiled data set consisting of all editorials and letters to the editor discussing race or segregation, from four Southern newspaper publishing from 1950-1956. I find that after Brown, participants in political debate were more likely to make arguments from legal principle, and to attempt to create alternative constitutional doctrine to the Court’s expressed doctrine. I supplement newspaper data with discussion of the electoral and interest group politics stimulated by Brown among white southerners.

This paper will contribute to scholarship on court impact, presenting a critique of scholars like Gerald Rosenberg that argue for limited Court effect. By focusing on particular kinds of indirect effects of an opinion, I illuminate the connection between extra-judicial effects and later policy change in civil rights. This project also speaks to the research agenda of American Political Development Scholars, particularly those like Julie Novkov that work at the intersection of law and political history. This paper also speaks to the general conference theme of “mobilizing democracy” by describing and explaining how mass and elites react to a Supreme Court decision in particular ways, channeled by the decision into a “judicialized” debate on public policy and political values.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Social service practitioners record data every day as they provide direct services to needy clients and report those services to funders. However, with the right resources and point of view, such providers can move further, towards that data to inform their practice on a higher level (program development), and inform others about that population and what works. Drawing from experience within the Analysis and Client Information Systems Department of the Women's Prison Association (WPA), this paper reviews the ways in which data collection from within a service provision context can be done in a way that serves both purposes.