Incentives for Spatially Coordinated Land Conservation: A Conditional Agglomeration Bonus

Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use,

Cluster-Robust Variance Estimation for Dyadic Data

Dyadic data are common in the social sciences, although inference for such settings involves accounting for a complex clustering structure. Many analyses in the social sciences fail to account for the fact that multiple dyads share a member, and that errors are thus likely correlated across these dyads. We propose a nonparametric sandwich-type robust variance estimator for linear regression to account for such clustering in dyadic data. We enumerate conditions for estimator consistency. We also extend our results to repeated and weighted observations, including directed dyads and longitudinal data, and provide an implementation for generalized linear models such as logistic regression. We examine empirical performance with simulations and applications to international relations and speed dating

Trade and Growth in East Asian Countries: Cause and Effect?

Estimates of growth equations have found a role for openness, particularly in explaining rapid growth among East Asian countries. But major concerns of simultaneous causality between growth and trade have been expressed. This study aims to deal with the endogeneity of trade by using as instrumental variables the exogenous determinants from the gravity model of bilateral trade, such as proximity to trading partners. We find that the effect of openness on growth is even stronger when we correct for the endogeneity of openness than in standard OLS estimates. We conclude with estimates of how much has been contributed to East Asian growth both by the exogenous or geographical component of openness and by the residual or policy component.

Cellular Blood Flow

The fluid dynamics video that is presented here outlines recent advances in the simulation of multiphase cellular blood flow through the direct numerical simulations of deformable red blood cells (RBCs) demonstrated through several numerical experiments. Videos show particle deformation, shear stress on the particle surface, and the formation of particle clusters in both Hagen-Poiseuille and shear flow.Comment: 2 pages, one hyperlink to 2 video

Fabricated History and False Feminism: How Disney Reimagined and Reshaped the Story of Pocahontas

This paper seeks to unpack the representation of women and Native Americans in the 1995 Disney film Pocahontas and how Disney took a historical event and blended the elements of a true story and the elements of typical Disney films to create a fictional story of Pocahontas and John Smith. The paper seeks to critically view the ideas of feminism in the film and how the Powhatan tribe was portrayed in the film as well and how both subjects make the Disney film dangerous for viewers as it distorts history

The Gaze and a Sufi Ethics of Vision in Majidi’s The Willow Tree: Form, Meaning, and the Real

In his 2005 film The Willow Tree (Bīd-i Majnūn), Majid Majidi offers a complex moral commentary on the faculty of sight. To do so, the filmmaker draws from Sufi theories of gazing, in which desire must be for ultimate meaning (maʿnā), as conveyed through the vehicle of perceivable form (ṣūra), a distinction with both metaphysical and ethical implications. Majidi presents sight, when devoid of contemplation, as a sort of voyeurism, especially in contrast to the privacy and immediacy of speech and especially within the context of the modern city. Moreover, his use of a blind protagonist whose sight is suddenly restored makes Jacques Lacan’s (d. 1981) psychoanalysis an especially useful tool for understanding the implications of Majidi’s film: In Majidi, much as in Lacan, the gaze undoes barriers and a sense of self-mastery, arousing the protagonist’s obsession with the void and an insatiable desire. Through references to Sufi ethical writings and a protagonist morally defeated by the image-centric media of contemporary urban Iran, The Willow Tree explores problems of representation and commodity fetishism. The resolution is a response to what might be called “moral voyeurism” that highlights and laments the artificiality of modernity’s objects of desire

WAS FAIR FAIR TO U.S. CORN GROWERS? AN ANALYSIS OF THE PAYMENTS OFFERED TO CORN GROWERS UNDER THE 1996 FEDERAL AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENT AND REFORM ACT

The 1996 Farm Bill (FAIR) dramatically changed agricultural policy for producers of many commodities. A series of 7 annual decoupled payments replaced the deficiency-payment program. Option-pricing techniques are used to determine whether program benefits to corn producers are smaller or larger under the new program than the old.Agricultural and Food Policy,