Voting in Cartels: Theory and Evidence from the Shipping Industry

We examine the choice of voting rules by legal cartels with enforcement capabilities in the presence of uncertainty about demand and costs. We show that cartels face a trade-off between the commitment advantages of more stringent majority requirements and the loss of flexibility resulting from them. Expected heterogeneity in costs or demand conditions leads away from simple majority toward more stringent rules, while larger membership to the cartel leads away from unanimity toward less restrictive rules. Evidence from the shipping conferences of the late 1950s largely supports our model. With few firms, the rule favored by heterogeneous conferences is unanimity. In larger cartels, the favored rule is either 2/3 or 3/4-majority rule.

War and Foreign Debt Settlement in Early Republican Spanish America

Upon gaining independence, most Spanish American countries had accumulated a substantial external debt, and by 1829 each defaulted. It took decades for these countries to settle their debts and even longer for them to access new loans. We argue that a major factor influencing the pattern of debt service was the incidence of war. War created incentives for governments to channel scarce resources to «emergency» spending and domestic debt service, rather than to the repayment of the foreign debt. Interestingly, we detect an asymmetry between countries long in good standing with creditors and those that had only recently settled. Countries that had established a longer record of continuous debt service were far less likely to default in times of war. We also find that international wars were responsible for the largest effects.En este artículo sugerimos que un factor que determinò en buena medida la trayectoria del pago de la deuda externa de los países hispanoamericanos en las primeras décadas de su vida independiente, fue la enorme incidencia de conflictos armados en la región. Las frecuentes guerras crearon incentives para que éstos dirigieran sus escasos recursos a gastos militares y al servicio de la deuda interna en vez de a la deuda exterior. Un resultado interesante es la asimetría que se registra entre los países que llegaron a renegociar su deuda exitosamente y mantuvieron su servicio por largos períodos de tiempo, y la de aquellos que no tuvieron mayor éxito en sus renegociaciones. En el caso de estos Ultimos, las guerras registraron efectos negativos mayores. También demostramos que las guerras internacionales tuvieron los efectos más dramáticos

Recensiones [Revista de Historia Económica Año XVII Primavera-Verano 1999 n. 2 pp. 465-494]

Editada en la Fundación Empresa PúblicaE. Torres Villanueva. Ramón de la Sota, 1857-1936. Un empresario vasco (Por Mercedes Cabrera).-- S. López García y J. M. Valdaliso (eds). ¿Que inventen ellos? Tecnología, empresa y cambio económico en la España contemporánea (Por José M.Ortiz-Villajes).-- J. M. Zaratiegui. Caballeros y empresarios. El hombre de negocios Victoriano (Por Juan Manuel Mates Barco).-- M. Arroyo Huguet. La industria del gas en Barcelona, 1841-1933 (Por Carlos Larrinaga Rodríguez).-- M. Seoane. El burgués maldito. La historia secreta de José Ber Gelbard (Por Raúl García Heras).-- J. A. Miranda Encarnación. La industria del calzado en España (1860-1959) (Por Mar Cebrián).-- J. M. Valdaliso. La navegación regular de cabotaje en España en los siglos XIX y XX (Por Richard Sicotte).-- J. R. Modesto Alapont. A ús i costum de bon llamador L'arrendament de terres a l'Horta de Valencia, 1780-1860 (Por Ricardo Robledo).-- I. Iriarte Goñi. Bienes comunales y capitalismo agrario en Navarra, 1855-1935 (Por Antonio Miguel Linares).-- T. Tortella. Los primeros billetes españoles: las «cédulas» del Banco de San Carlos (1782-1829) (Por Pablo Martín Aceña)Publicad

Milestones in the Observations of Cosmic Magnetic Fields

Magnetic fields are observed everywhere in the universe. In this review, we concentrate on the observational aspects of the magnetic fields of Galactic and extragalactic objects. Readers can follow the milestones in the observations of cosmic magnetic fields obtained from the most important tracers of magnetic fields, namely, the star-light polarization, the Zeeman effect, the rotation measures (RMs, hereafter) of extragalactic radio sources, the pulsar RMs, radio polarization observations, as well as the newly implemented sub-mm and mm polarization capabilities. (Another long paragraph is omitted due to the limited space here)Comment: Invited Review (ChJA&A); 32 pages. Sorry if your significant contributions in this area were not mentioned. Published pdf & ps files (with high quality figures) now availble at http://www.chjaa.org/2002_2_4.ht

Hippocampal neuroinflammation, functional connectivity, and depressive symptoms in multiple sclerosis

Depression, a condition commonly comorbid with multiple sclerosis (MS), is associated more generally with elevated inflammatory markers and hippocampal pathology. We hypothesized that neuroinflammation in the hippocampus is responsible for depression associated with MS. We characterized the relationship between depressive symptoms and hippocampal microglial activation in patients with MS using the 18-kDa translocator protein radioligand [18F]PBR111. To evaluate pathophysiologic mechanisms, we explored the relationships between hippocampal neuroinflammation, depressive symptoms, and hippocampal functional connectivities defined by resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Methods The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was administered to 11 patients with MS and 22 healthy control subjects before scanning with positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging. We tested for higher [18F]PBR111 uptake in the hippocampus of patients with MS relative to healthy control subjects and examined the correlations between [18F]PBR111 uptake, BDI scores, and hippocampal functional connectivities in the patients with MS. Results Patients with MS had an increased hippocampal [18F]PBR111 distribution volume ratio relative to healthy control subjects (p = .024), and the hippocampal distribution volume ratio was strongly correlated with the BDI score in patients with MS (r = .86, p = .006). Hippocampal functional connectivities to the subgenual cingulate and prefrontal and parietal regions correlated with BDI scores and [18F]PBR111 distribution volume ratio. Conclusions Our results provide evidence that hippocampal microglial activation in MS impairs the brain functional connectivities in regions contributing to maintenance of a normal affective state. Our results suggest a rationale for the responsiveness of depression in some patients with MS to effective control of brain neuroinflammation. Our findings also lend support to further investigation of the role of inflammatory processes in the pathogenesis of depression more generally

Integrated genomic characterization of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

We performed integrated genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic profiling of 150 pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) specimens, including samples with characteristic low neoplastic cellularity. Deep whole-exome sequencing revealed recurrent somatic mutations in KRAS, TP53, CDKN2A, SMAD4, RNF43, ARID1A, TGFβR2, GNAS, RREB1, and PBRM1. KRAS wild-type tumors harbored alterations in other oncogenic drivers, including GNAS, BRAF, CTNNB1, and additional RAS pathway genes. A subset of tumors harbored multiple KRAS mutations, with some showing evidence of biallelic mutations. Protein profiling identified a favorable prognosis subset with low epithelial-mesenchymal transition and high MTOR pathway scores. Associations of non-coding RNAs with tumor-specific mRNA subtypes were also identified. Our integrated multi-platform analysis reveals a complex molecular landscape of PDAC and provides a roadmap for precision medicine