J.T. Jutson and the Work of the Wind in Shaping the Landscape

For a brief period about a century ago, reputable scientists gave credence to the idea that wind was capable of regional planation. Among them was J.T. Jutson, whose publications exerted considerable influence both in Australia and overseas. He differentiated between deflation and corrasion (sand‐blasting) and in 1914 attributed major as well as minor landscape features to their activity. He ascribed the westward migration of salinas and the shaping of associated rock platforms to the wind as well as to the extension of valleys that were incised into the lateritised Old Plateau and that coalesced to form the New Plateau of Western Australia. But local and overseas colleagues drew his attention to the primacy of rivers in shaping even desert landscapes, and by 1934 Jutson had realised that running water was almost solely responsible for the New Plateau.     

Social construction and the diffusion of anti-trafficking laws in the U.S.

Human trafficking is a compelling and persistent problem that has attracted a great amount of attention among political leaders, government institutions, NGOs, and nonprofit organizations. While there is consensus that trafficking necessitates a multipronged policy response commonly known as the “3Ps” (prosecution, protection, and prevention), anti-trafficking policies diffused across U.S. states in a piecemeal fashion. In this paper, we explore the fragmented diffusion of the different types of anti-trafficking laws. Drawing from social constructivist approaches, we posit that the differential diffusion rates depend on the social construction of the target population and policy intention of the law. Using event history analysis, we examine the diffusion of 14 types of human trafficking laws throughout the U.S. during 2003–2013. We find strong support for our hypotheses and show substantial differences in the rates at which prosecution, protection, and prevention-related laws diffuse.     

Environmental Compliance Costs and the Distribution of Emissions in the U.S.

Using the properties of the Gini coefficient, a structural model is developed to assess the impact of uniform changes in environmental compliance costs on the distribution of per capita emissions across U.S. counties and states, a distribution that places a larger burden on minorities. Using data from the U.S. EPA's Toxic Release Inventory and three state-specific measures of environmental compliance costs, we find that uniform increases in federal environmental standards have little impact on the distribution of environmental hazards, and may actually exacerbate spatial inequality. As a result, Federal standards that target specific high pollution locations are necessary to redress current inequities.