CONCEPTS OF RISK AND SAFETY IN TOXIC SUBSTANCES REGULATION: A COMPARISON OF FRANCE AND THE U.S.

The notions of risk and safety which play a conspicuous role in the regulation of toxic substances have shown a markedly different evolution in France and the United States. American law has moved toward the development of statutory criteria of risk assessment, balancing both the costs and benefits of regulation, while the French legislator has consistently avoided a substantive elaboration of safety concepts through legal texts. This contrast is documented and its implications for the discretionary authority of regulating agencies discussed. Divergent national patterns are explained with reference to four factors distinguishing the legal and political systems of the two countries.     

REAL ESTATE SALESMEN AND RESIDENTIAL RELOCATION DECISIONS

A decade ago Simmons (1968) reviewed studies in "an important, but relatively neglected, aspect of migration, namely changes in residence that take place within a city." Since the appearance of Simmons' review intra-urban residential mobility has generated a burgeoning literature underpinned by the assumption that it is a significant mechanism contributing to the structuring of urban space. The literature focuses principally on residential relocation and its identification as a process rather than as a set of events to be explained. Central to the process orientation is the assumption that changes of residence are the expression of a set of decisions made by households. The major deficiency of the literature to date is its failure to specify an appropriate context within which to analyse such decisions.     

Speaking for the dead: the memorial politics of genocide in Namibia and Germany

This paper discusses the politics of the material commemoration of mass crime, with a focus on the Ovaherero and Nama descendants of the victims of a 1904–1908 mass ethnic killing in German Southwest Africa. My approach to monuments emphasises their place as artefacts that mark changes of regime after war or revolution, and as focal points of resistance to state regimes of commemoration. Tracing the material forms of memorialisation in Germany reveals the significance of both a ‘remembrance culture’ of the Holocaust and, at the same time, resistance to recognition of the Ovaherero/Nama genocide. In Namibia, the success of the Ovaherero/Nama activist campaign in Germany prompted the government to shift positions and take up the cause of genocide remembrance, asking Germany to officially recognise that its actions constituted genocide, to issue a formal apology and to pay reparations. By framing the mass violence of imperial Germany in terms of its enduring legacy in heritage, Ovaherero and Nama activists and their supporters were able to cross into different geographies of commemoration and bring distant wrongs, without living witnesses, into the present.     

INTERREGIONAL FEEDBACKS IN INPUT-OUTPUT MODELS: THE LEAST UPPER BOUND*

ABSTRACT. The least upper bound to the overall percentage error resulting from the omission of interregional feedbacks in input-output analysis is defined. This limiting value is the most informative of all upper bounds. A procedure for its computation is outlined and a number of experiments, using U.S. data, are discussed.