International Price-Fixing Cartels and Developing Countries: A Discussion of Effects and Policy Remedies

The U.S. Department of Justice, the European Commission, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have all recently voiced concern about international price- fixing cartels. The U.S. and European Union have increased prosecution of international cartels in the past decade, but very few developing countries have made similar enforcement efforts. If these cartels have significant effects on developing country consumers and producers, the lack of antitrust prosecutions by developing countries against these cartels is an important problem. Geographically limited prosecut ions may not provide sufficient disincentives to deter collusion that has worldwide benefits for colluding firms. Ongoing prosecutions of international cartels by industrialized countries may open up markets for entry by developing country producers, but these efforts may be undermined if cartels create durable barriers to entry. Western governments are also susceptible to manipulation by domestic producers using tariff barriers and anti- dumping duties to protect the home market, both during and after the price- fixing conspiracy. Thus, developing countries may need to develop their own antitrust laws and enforcement capabilities to help deter international cartel activity. A recent ruling of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals also opens up the possibility that developing country consumers may be able to exact remedies in U.S. courts. In this paper we examine the possible effects of private international cartels on developing countries by looking in detail at three recent cartel cases, as well as at a broader cross- section of forty- two recently prosecuted international cartels. We discuss the indirect effects on developing country producers, either as competitors or co- conspirators, as well the direct effects of cartels on developing country consumers. By combining trade data with a sample of US and European prosecutions of international cartels in the 1990s, we are able to make a first attempt at quantifying the order of magnitude of the consequences of these cartels on developing countries as consumers. In 1997, the latest year for which we have trade data, developing countries imported $54.7 billion of goods from a sub - sample of 19 industries that had seen a price- fixing conspiracy during the 1990s. These imports represented 5.2% of total imports and 1.2% of GDP in developing countries.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39923/2/wp538.pd

Longitudinal evidence for a midlife nadir in human well-being : results from four data sets

There is a large amount of cross-sectional evidence for a midlife low in the life cycle of human happiness and well-being (a ‘U shape’). Yet no genuinely longitudinal inquiry has uncovered evidence for a U-shaped pattern. Thus some researchers believe the U is a statistical artefact. We re-examine this fundamental cross-disciplinary question. We suggest a new test. Drawing on four data sets, and only within-person changes in well-being, we document powerful support for a U-shape in unadjusted longitudinal data without the need for regression equations. The paper’s methodological contribution is to exploit the first-derivative properties of a well-being equation

A Comparison of the Views of Plato and Paul on the Immortality of the Soul

Of all the conflicts which Christianity passed through in the early stages of its history, that with philosophy seems to have been the most severe and the most far-reaching in its effects. Judaism was firm and self-reliant, because it was in a sense supernatural; Gentilism was pliable, because it was ignorant and weary of itself; but philosophy was obstinate, because, regarding religions as superstitions, it recognized no special merit in Christianity, and attempted to ridicule it out of existence when its unprepared defenders first announced it. With the representatives of the Epicurean, Stoic and New Academic schools, or with the cultured classes throughout the Roman Empire, Paul came into contact, and was required to defend his religion, not by an appeal to prophecy, as was his wont among the Jews, nor by merely showing the worthlessness of prevailing religions and the adequacy of the new religion, as he did to the Gentiles, but by a rational exposition of the truth, and a demonstration of the facts on which his religion rested. For such a conflict Paul was prepared; for he was familiar with the philosophical thought of the times, and was the man to preach to Epicureans, Stoics, Platonists, or others wherever he found them

The happiness - suicide paradox

Suicide is an important scientific phenomenon. Yet its causes remain poorly understood. This study documents a paradox: the happiest places have the highest suicide rates. The study combines findings from two large and rich individual-level data sets—one on life satisfaction and another on suicide deaths—to establish the paradox in a consistent way across U.S. states. It replicates the finding in data on Western industrialized nations and checks that the paradox is not an artifact of population composition or confounding factors. The study concludes with the conjecture that people may find it particularly painful to be unhappy in a happy place, so that the decision to commit suicide is influenced by relative comparisons.Happiness ; Suicide

Early Childhood Educators’ Perceptions of Using Conscious Discipline to Promote Executive Function Development in Preschool Students: A Case Study

This applied dissertation was designed to explore teacher perceptions of the use of Conscious Discipline in the classroom to promote desirable behaviors and influence the development of EF skills in children. Using self-assessment surveys, qualitative interviews, and direct observations, the researcher explored teacher perceptions of the use of Conscious Discipline as a behavioral management system to develop EF in preschool children. Conscious Discipline is an emotional intelligence behavior-management system that promotes desirable behaviors in children, embracing those skills found in the prefrontal lobes of the brain, which control the mechanism for self-regulation and problem-solving skills. Conscious Discipline promotes the development of self-regulation in preschool students, a key element in developing EF. The goal of this study was to add to the research literature on the usefulness and importance of using Conscious Discipline to promote EF in children at an early age. Participants were 5 teachers in a private preschool center in South Florida serviced by the state college’s institute in early care. Overall, four themes emerged. Teachers learned the importance of the development of self-regulation in students. Internalization of the teacher’s journey in Conscious Discipline afforded implementation. Teachers increased their awareness of self and lifelong skills. Reaching executive state in Conscious Discipline affords academic successes. An implication is the importance of professional development in brain-based Conscious Development to help preschool teachers develop EF in their students

The interaction of cartoonist's gender and formal features of cartoons

The present study investigates gender differences in the use of formal features of cartoons, like the amount of text, the number of panels, or the application of color. For the analysis, 300 cartoons (150 each by female and male cartoonists) were selected randomly from the works of 1519 cartoonists. Twenty-one formal features were analyzed. On average, female cartoonists use more text, include text more frequently, and also draw more panels. These differences were expected, because Differential Psychology has shown for a long time in a variety of cultures that, on average, women tend to perform better in tasks testing verbal intelligence whereas men perform significantly better in tasks that require spatial intelligence. We also found a difference in the type of joke: Women more frequently draw cartoons with incongruity-resolution humor, whereas men prefer to draw cartoons with nonsense humor. The results are discussed in relation to gender differences in humor processing and gender differences in genera

Organic sulfur: a spatially variable and understudied component of marine organic matter

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Longnecker, K., Oswald, L., Soule, M. C. K., Cutter, G. A., & Kujawinski, E. B. Organic sulfur: a spatially variable and understudied component of marine organic matter. Limnology and Oceanography Letters, (2020), doi:10.1002/lol2.10149.Sulfur (S) is a major heteroatom in organic matter. This project evaluated spatial variability in the concentration and molecular‐level composition of organic sulfur along gradients of depth and latitude. We measured the concentration of total organic sulfur (TOS) directly from whole seawater. Our data reveal high variability in organic sulfur, relative to established variability in total organic carbon or nitrogen. The deep ocean contained significant amounts of organic sulfur, and the concentration of TOS in North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) decreased with increasing age while total organic carbon remained stable. Analysis of dissolved organic matter extracts by ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry revealed that 6% of elemental formulas contained sulfur. The sulfur‐containing compounds were structurally diverse, and showed higher numbers of sulfur‐containing elemental formulas as NADW moved southward. These measurements of organic sulfur in seawater provide the foundation needed to define the factors controlling organic sulfur in the global ocean.We thank Catherine Carmichael, Winifred Johnson, and Gretchen Swarr for assistance with sample collection and processing, and Joe Jennings for the analysis of inorganic nutrients. The help of the captain and crew of the R/V Knorr and the other cruise participants during the “DeepDOM” cruise is appreciated. Two anonymous reviewers and Patricia Soranno provided thorough comments that greatly improved the manuscript. The ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry samples were analyzed at the WHOI FT‐MS Users' Facility that is funded by the National Science Foundation (grant OCE‐0619608) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GMBF1214). This project was funded by NSF grants OCE‐1154320 (to EBK and KL), the W.M. Marquet Award (to KL), and OCE‐1435708 (to GAC). The authors declare no conflicts of interest

Control of endogenous gene expression timing by introns

Comparison of gene expression from transgenes and endogenous genes with or without introns reveals a time-regulating role of introns in natural biological systems