The solution to the dilemma presented by the guilty plea discount : the qualified guilty plea - I'm pleading guilty only because of the discount..."

The guilty plea sentencing discount is arguably a triumph of expediency over principle. Strong utilitarian reasons favour providing less severe sentences to defendants who plead guilty. However, an unsavoury by-product of the guilty plea discount is that some innocent people are pressured into pleading guilty. This article suggests that a possible solution to the problems caused by the discount is to permit defendants to enter a ‘qualified guilty plea’. While formally amounting to a guilty of plea, the defendant would be permitted to advance submissions consistent with innocence as part of the plea in mitigation. If the sentencer is persuaded that the defendant had a tenable chance of an acquittal a penalty discount in excess of that available for merely pleading guilty would be conferred.

Measuring offender discount rates : an overview of the issues and a suggested methodology

Criminologists assert that some offenders exhibit impulsive behaviour. If this is correct then this impulsiveness will manifest itself through high discount rates. However discount rates are difficult to observe and measure. In this paper a methodology is proposed, which considerably reduces the complexity of this task, through observing the offender’s actual plea decision. This is a valuable exercise because the results can be usefully utilised in formulating policy as well as providing insights into offender psychology.

The diversification discount and takeovers : some Australian evidence

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the existence of a diversification discount in the Australian takeover market. A sample of 446 Australian publicly-listed firms involved in the market for corporate control was observed between 2000 and 2007. The authors examined two pre-announcement and four post-announcement periods, predominantly around the immediate event date, but also examined activity out to one year following the announcement.
Design/methodology/approach – An event study, in this case, is used to examine abnormal returns around the announcement of a merger or acquisition. The timeframe this study intends to focus on is the period from announcement date to a time one year down the track which, although some studies may deem it “long-term”, is still a relatively short-term measure of performance.While many variables in acquisitions have been looked at in depth over the years, such as outcome, nature, payment method and size of deal, one area which has had considerably less attention is the area of specialisation and diversification. That is, do focus increasing (or non-diversification) deals have different return patterns relative to focus decreasing (or diversification) deals?
Findings – The overall findings of this paper are fairly mixed, barring a few exceptions, and there does not appear to be a great deal of variation in return patterns based purely on whether the announced acquisition is non-diversifying or diversifying in nature.
Originality/value – The paper is of particular value in Australia. Most of the research of diversification to date has taken place in the USA. Australia is similar to the USA in that it has a well-developed economy based on common law principles and an active equity market, however, the existence of institutional and regulatory differences suggests that US results may not hold in Australia.

Some empirical evidence on offender time discount rates

The conventional wisdom is that offenders have very high discount rates not only with respect to income and fines but also with respect to time incarcerated. These rates are difficult to measure objectively and the usual approach is to ask subjects hypothetical questions and infer time preference from their answers. In this article, we propose estimating rates at which offenders discount time incarcerated by specifying their equilibrium plea, defined as the discount rate, which equates the time and expected time spent in jail following a guilty plea and a trial. Offenders are assumed to exhibit positive time preference and discount time spent in jail at a constant rate. Our choice of sample is interesting because the offenders are not on bail, punishment is not delayed and the offences are planned therefore conforming to Becker’s model of the decision to commit a crime. Contrary to the discussion in the literature, we do not find evidence of consistently high time discount rates, and therefore cannot unequivocally infer that the prison experience always results in low levels of specific deterrence.

Assessing cost-effectiveness in mental health : family interventions for schizophrenia and related conditions

Objective: Existing evidence suggests that family interventions can be effective in reducing relapse rates in schizophrenia and related conditions. Despite this, such interventions are not routinely delivered in Australian mental health services. The objective of the current study is to investigate the incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) of introducing three types of family interventions, namely: behavioural family management (BFM); behavioural intervention for families (BIF); and multiple family groups (MFG) into current mental health services in Australia.

Method: The ICER of each of the family interventions is assessed from a health sector perspective, including the government, persons with schizophrenia and their families/carers using a standardized methodology. A two-stage approach is taken to the assessment of benefit. The first stage involves a quantitative analysis based on disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) averted. The second stage involves application of 'second filter' criteria (including equity, strength of evidence, feasibility and acceptability to stakeholders) to results. The robustness of results is tested using multivariate probabilistic sensitivity analysis.

Results: The most cost-effective intervention, in order of magnitude, is BIF (A$8000 per DALY averted), followed by MFG (A$21 000 per DALY averted) and lastly BFM (A$28 000 per DALY averted). The inclusion of time costs makes BFM more cost-effective than MFG. Variation of discount rate has no effect on conclusions.

Conclusions: All three interventions are considered 'value-for-money' within an Australian context. This conclusion needs to be tempered against the methodological challenge of converting clinical outcomes into a generic economic outcome measure (DALY). Issues surrounding the feasibility of routinely implementing such interventions need to be addressed.

Determination of yield and erosion damage functions using subjectively elicited data: application to small holder tea in Sri Lanka

Tea has been Sri Lanka's major export earner for several decades. However, soil erosion on tea-producing land has had considerable on-site and off-site effects. This study quantifies soil erosion impacts for smallholder tea farms in Sri Lanka by estimating a yield damage function and an erosion damage function using a subjective elicitation technique. The Mitscherlich-Spillman type of function was found to yield acceptable results. The study indicates that high rates of soil erosion require earlier adoption of soil conservation measures than do low rates of erosion. Sensitivity analysis shows the optimum year to change to a conservation practice is very sensitive to the discount rate but less sensitive to the cost of production and price of tea.

Homophobia and the production of shame: young people and same sex attraction

Research among same-sex attracted young people in Western cultures has described a minority group of adolescents whose sexuality is negated by the significant institutions and people in their lives. Very often, there is a silence in the family and at school about same-sex sexuality and when a young person's homosexuality is suspected or disclosed s/he suffers from denial, discrimination and abuse. Not surprisingly, living in hostile environments leaves such young people at high-risk of drug abuse, depression and suicide. This paper describes some of the ways young people resist being positioned in these negative ways. Using autobiographical stories from 200 same-sex attracted young Australians, we document the discursive field of sexuality in which these young people struggle to construct positive identities. Young people were well aware of dominant discourses which characterized homosexuality as 'evil, diseased and unnatural'. Yet they use different strategies to fault, deflect and discount these negative understandings and to highlight other discourse which positions them positively.

Cost-effectiveness analysis of screening for lung cancer with low dose spiral CT (computed tomography) in the Australian setting

Introduction:
Low dose spiral computed tomography (CT) is a sensitive screening tool for lung cancer that is currently being evaluated in both non-randomised studies and randomised controlled trials.
Methods:
We conducted a quantitative decision analysis using a Markov model to determine whether, in the Australian setting, offering spiral CT screening for lung cancer to high risk individuals would be cost-effective compared with current practice. This exploratory analysis was undertaken predominantly from the perspective of the government as third-party funder. In the base-case analysis, the costs and health outcomes (life-years saved and quality-adjusted life years) were calculated in a hypothetical cohort of 10,000 male current smokers for two alternatives: (1) screen for lung cancer with annual CT for 5 years starting at age 60 year and treat those diagnosed with cancer or (2) no screening and treat only those who present with symptomatic cancer.
Results:
For male smokers aged 60–64 years, with an annual incidence of lung cancer of 552 per 100,000, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was $57,325 per life-year saved and $105,090 per QALY saved. For females aged 60–64 years with the same annual incidence of lung cancer, the cost-effectiveness ratio was $51,001 per life-year saved and $88,583 per QALY saved. The model was used to examine the relationship between efficacy in terms of the expected reduction in lung cancer mortality at 7 years and cost-effectiveness. In the base-case analysis lung cancer mortality was reduced by 27% and all cause mortality by 2.1%. Changes in the estimated proportion of stage I cancers detected by screening had the greatest impact on the efficacy of the intervention and the cost-effectiveness. The results were also sensitive to assumptions about the test performance characteristics of CT scanning, the proportion of lung cancer cases overdiagnosed by screening, intervention rates for benign disease, the discount rate, the cost of CT, the quality of life in individuals with early stage screen-detected cancer and disutility associated with false positive diagnoses. Given current knowledge and practice, even under favourable assumptions, reductions in lung cancer mortality of less than 20% are unlikely to be cost-effective, using a value of $50,000 per life-year saved as the threshold to define a “cost-effective” intervention.
Conclusion:
The most feasible scenario under which CT screening for lung cancer could be cost-effective would be if very high-risk individuals are targeted and screening is either highly effective or CT screening costs fall substantially.

Consumer responses to free service trial offers

Consumers find it difficult to evaluate services they have not previously used, especially where these services have high experience or credence properties (Mittal 2002, 2004). A frequent promotional strategy used by marketers is to offer a free trial, such as a free brake check on cars or a free session at a new gym. While there is extensive literature on product trials, very little research has been conducted on free service trial offers. This led the researchers to undertake preliminary content analysis and qualitative interviews and ultimately to develop a comprehensive model of consumer evaluations of these offers. The model takes account of the type of service on offer, the manner in which it is offered and the pricing mechanism used (free versus discounted). It also characterizes the cognitive and emotional evaluations consumers make in response to these offers and how these contribute to trial and purchase propensity. Individual characteristics of consumers, such as deal proneness, were also incorporated into the model. The current study reports an experiment where the model was systematically tested among groups of male and female consumers (in total 400) who varied by age group and service experience. The research indicated that a free trial offer operated rather differently from a discount, inducing a sense of obligation which motivated some people to adopt the trial and subsequent full service offer. Traditional trial-cognition-evaluation models (e.g. Smith and Swinyard, 1983) are not sufficient to explain the phenomena uncovered by this research.

Costs of raising equity capital by renounceable rights issues in Australia

Rights issues remain a common method for raising equity capital in Australia for companies listed on me Australian Stock Exchange. This study investigates the capital raising costs of Anstralian renounceable equity rights issues from 2001 to 2006. Both direct and indirect costs are investigated and the explanatory power of potential influencing factors is analyzed. The total direct costs averaged nearly 4% of gross proceeds raised and the mean offer price was discounted around 17% from the current market price. Issue size, percentage underwritten, concentration of ownership and issuer risk significantly influence the percentage direct costs of the rights issue. The age of the issuer, the average historical volume of shares traded and the offer price appear to influence the percentage discount.