Brain Drain and Institutions of Governance: Educational Attainment of Immigrants to the US 1988-1998

We investigate the impact of home country institutions on the skill level of immigrants to the United States over 1988-1998. Specifically, we explore the hypothesis that institutions are multidimensional and that the different dimensions have conflicting impacts on the migration of skilled labor. Using an exploratory factor analysis on fifteen institutional variables, we identify the following dimensions of institutional character: credibility; transparency; democracy; and the security of civil society. We find that credibility and transparency increase the magnitude of brain drain; security reduces it; and democracy has no significant impact.immigration, institutions, political instability, brain drain

Civil war risk in democratic and non-democratic neighborhoods

This study questions the extent to which domestic conflict is influenced by national, regional, and international relationships. It is designed to answer specific questions relating to the effects of neighboring characteristics on a state's risk of conflict and instability: What is the interaction between neighboring conflict and political disorder? Do democratic neighborhoods have different conflict trajectories than non-democratic neighborhoods and if so, where and why? Given that most poor countries are located in poor and conflictual neighborhoods, to what extent is there a relationship between poverty and political disorder in different regime neighborhoods? Using spatial lag terms to specify neighboring regime characteristics and multilevel models to differentiate between explanatory levels, this study reiterates the importance of domestic and neighboring factors in promoting or diminishing the risk of instability and conflict. However, the pronounced negative effects of autocratic and anocratic neighborhoods are mitigated by a growing domestic GDP. This study also finds that democratic neighborhoods are more stable, regardless of income level. Research presented here is unique in its contribution on how regime type is a significant development indicator, which in turn is salient in determining the risks of civil war across states.Peace&Peacekeeping,Population Policies,Services&Transfers to Poor,Social Conflict and Violence,Post Conflict Reintegration

Educating for Indigenous health equity: An international consensus statement

The determinants of health inequities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations include factors amenable to medical education’s influence, for example, the competence of the medical workforce to provide effective and equitable care to Indigenous populations. Medical education institutions have an important role to play in eliminating these inequities. However, there is evidence that medical education is not adequately fulfilling this role, and in fact may be complicit in perpetuating inequities. This article seeks to examine the factors underpinning medical education’s role in Indigenous health inequity, in order to inform interventions to address these factors. The authors developed a consensus statement that synthesizes evidence from research, evaluation, and the collective experience of an international research collaboration including experts in Indigenous medical education. The statement describes foundational processes that limit Indigenous health development in medical education and articulates key principles that can be applied at multiple levels to advance Indigenous health equity. The authors recognize colonization, racism, and privilege as fundamental determinants of Indigenous health that are also deeply embedded in Western medical education. In order to contribute effectively to Indigenous health development, medical education institutions must engage in decolonization processes and address racism and privilege at curricular and institutional levels. Indigenous health curricula must be formalized and comprehensive, and must be consistently reinforced in all educational environments. Institutions’ responsibilities extend to advocacy for health system and broader societal reform to reduce and eliminate health inequities. These activities must be adequately resourced and underpinned by investment in infrastructure and Indigenous leadership

The Art of Compromise

Policy is modeled as the outcome of negotiations between two three-party parliamentary states. An election in jurisdiction A determines the composition of the legislature that selects a representative to negotiate an intergovernmental policy agreement with the representative from the legislature of jurisdiction B. Negotiations are modeled using Nash’s (1950) bargaining framework, modified to account for a simultaneous legislative ratification vote. Though agreements favor the legislative representative least willing to compromise, agreements between the bargainers may not follow the ordering of the parties’ ideal policies. An electoral outcome where support for the center party comes from extreme voters may emerge.Vote balancing; intergovernmental bargaining; legislative ratification; willingness to compromise

Comparing knowledge, accessibility, and use of evidence-based chronic disease prevention processes across four countries

<p>Background: Evidence-based chronic disease prevention (EBCDP) effectively reduces incidence rates of many chronic diseases, but contextual factors influence the implementation of EBCDP worldwide. This study aims to examine the following contextual factors across four countries: knowledge, access, and use of chronic disease prevention processes.</p><p>Methods: In this cross-sectional study, public health practitioners (N = 400) from Australia (n = 121), Brazil (n = 76), China (n = 102), and the United States (n = 101) completed a 26-question survey on EBCDP. One-way ANOVA and Pearson's Chi-Square tests were used to assess differences in contextual factors of interest by country.</p><p>Results: Practitioners in China reported less knowledge of EBCDP processes (p < 0.001) and less use of repositories of evidence-based interventions, than those from other countries (p < 0.001). Academic journals were the most frequently used method for accessing information about evidence-based interventions across countries. When selecting interventions, Brazilian and Chinese practitioners were more likely to consider implementation ease while the Australian and United States practitioners were more likely to consider effectiveness (p < 0.001).</p><p>Conclusions: These findings can help inform and improve within and across country strategies for implementing EBCDP interventions.</p

Ears of the Armadillo: Global Health Research and Neglected Diseases in Texas

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) have\ud been recently identified as significant public\ud health problems in Texas and elsewhere in\ud the American South. A one-day forum on the\ud landscape of research and development and\ud the hidden burden of NTDs in Texas\ud explored the next steps to coordinate advocacy,\ud public health, and research into a\ud cogent health policy framework for the\ud American NTDs. It also highlighted how\ud U.S.-funded global health research can serve\ud to combat these health disparities in the\ud United States, in addition to benefiting\ud communities abroad

Institutions and Economic Outcomes: A Dominance Based Analysis of Causality and Multivariate Welfare With Discrete and Continuous Variables

One of the central issues in welfare economics is the measurement of overall wellbeing and, to this end, the interaction between institutions (polity) and growth is paramount. Individual welfare depends on both economic and political factors but the continuous nature of economic variables combined with the discrete nature of political ones renders conventional multivariate techniques problematic. In this paper, we propose a multivariate dominance test based on the comparison of mixtures of continuous and discrete distributions to examine changes in welfare. Our results suggest that, while economic growth exerted a positive impact from 1960 to 2000, declines in polity over the earlier part of this period were sufficient to produce a decline in overall wellbeing until the mid-1970s. Subsequent increases in polity then reversed the trend and, ultimately, wellbeing in 2000 was higher than that in 1960. To be sure, economic and political variables are correlated and, based on the dominance of polity in our multivariate results, we conjecture that this correlation is predominantly due to a causal link from polity to growth. While the development literature is rife with debates over whether it is institutions that cause growth or growth that causes institutions, we argue that the relevant question is not which hypothesis is correct but, rather, which hypothesis dominates. Since standard regression techniques have difficulty capturing non-linear dependence, especially when one of the variables is an index with limited variation, we propose a causality dominance test to examine this aspect of the growth-institutions nexus and indeed find evidence that the causal effects of polity on growth dominate those of growth on polity, particularly when the data are population weighted.Growth, Polity, Causality, Multivariate Wellbeing

Globalization, Growth and Poverty in India

globalization, economic growth, poverty, inequality, population shift effect, decomposition, India

Export margins and export barriers: uncovering market entry costs of exporters in the Netherlands

Even though the Netherlands was the worldââ¬â¢s sixth largest exporter in 2009, the majority of Dutch firms does not engage in international trade at all, possibly because they are unable to cover the costs to enter specific foreign markets. What are these costs that limited the internationalisation of Dutch firms? Using detailed and unique transaction-level data on export patterns of about 1,200 large Dutch firms in the years 2006-2007, this research opens the black box of market entry costs. First, we find that more productive firms are both more likely to engage in exports (extensive margin) and to export larger volumes abroad (intensive margin). Second, next to the common determinants of export volumes, such as market size, transport and trade costs, we find that poorly developed foreign institutions and regulations form important impediments to firms’ export decisions, but not to their subsequent export volume decisions. We also find some evidence that such effects on the export decision are relatively large in small markets, whereas export volumes react more to changes in trade and transport costs in large markets.

John F. Sonnett Memorial Lecture Series: Legal Remedies Against the Council\u27s Failure to Act

Lecture by President Ole Due of the European Court of Justice (1988-1994), regarding judicial activism in Europe and the United States. Includes biography and speaker introduction.https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/events_programs_sonnet_lectures/1004/thumbnail.jp