ECONOMIC GANGSTERS: CORRUPTION, VIOLENCE, AND POVERTY OF NATIONS by Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2008, 250 pages, ISBN 978-1-4008-2875-3.

The world of developmental economics is very much like trying to find your way through a maze in the dark. This maze however consists of dead ends, like: poverty, stagnant growth, war, violence and cultural diversity. When successfully navigated economists could discover why some nations stay poor and others become financial giants. Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel’s new book “Economic Gangsters” explores some of the developing world’s most persistent problems. ...

Asymmetries arising from the space-filling nature of vascular networks

Cardiovascular networks span the body by branching across many generations of vessels. The resulting structure delivers blood over long distances to supply all cells with oxygen via the relatively short-range process of diffusion at the capillary level. The structural features of the network that accomplish this density and ubiquity of capillaries are often called space-filling. There are multiple strategies to fill a space, but some strategies do not lead to biologically adaptive structures by requiring too much construction material or space, delivering resources too slowly, or using too much power to move blood through the system. We empirically measure the structure of real networks (18 humans and 1 mouse) and compare these observations with predictions of model networks that are space-filling and constrained by a few guiding biological principles. We devise a numerical method that enables the investigation of space-filling strategies and determination of which biological principles influence network structure. Optimization for only a single principle creates unrealistic networks that represent an extreme limit of the possible structures that could be observed in nature. We first study these extreme limits for two competing principles, minimal total material and minimal path lengths. We combine these two principles and enforce various thresholds for balance in the network hierarchy, which provides a novel approach that highlights the trade-offs faced by biological networks and yields predictions that better match our empirical data.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figure

Forecasting the public finances in the Treasury

This article describes the methods used by the Treasury and other government departments for making forecasts of the public finances. A highly detailed approach is required because of the Treasury’s budgetary role, but the aggregated results are subjected to careful ‘top-down’ checks. Forecasts have a necessary role in fiscal policy. But they are subject to large margins of error, and should be presented and used with caution.

Nerves of Steel? Stress, Work Performance and Elite Athletes

There is a notable shortage of empirical research directed at measuring the magnitude and direction of stress effects on performance in a controlled environment. One reason for this is the inherent difficulties in identifying and isolating direct performance measures for individuals. Additionally most traditional work environments contain a multitude of exogenous factors impacting individual performance, but controlling for all such factors is generally unfeasible (omitted variable bias). Moreover, instead of asking individuals about their self-reported stress levels we observe workers’ behavior in situations that can be classified as stressful. For this reason we have stepped outside the traditional workplace in an attempt to gain greater controllability of these factors using the sports environment as our experimental space. We empirically investigate the relationship between stress and performance, in an extreme pressure situation (football penalty kicks) in a winner take all sporting environment (FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Cup competitions). Specifically, we examine all the penalty shootouts between 1976 and 2008 covering in total 16 events. The results indicate that extreme stressors can have a positive or negative impact on individuals’ performance. On the other hand, more commonly experienced stressors do not affect professionals’ performances.Performance, Stressors, Sport, Behavioural Economics, Work-related stress

Perceptions of Fairness and Allocation Systems

This paper explores the conditions of acceptability of differing allocation systems under scarcity and evaluates what makes a price system more or less fair. We find that fairness in an allocation arrangement depend on the institutional settings inherent in the situation, such as information, transparency and competition and the perceived institutional quality (e.g., fiscal exchange and institutional trust). Results also indicate that the solution “weak people first” is seen as the fairest approach to an excess demand situation, followed by “first come, first serve”, the price system and an auction system. On the other hand, a random procedure or an allocation through the government is not perceived to be fair. Moreover, economics students seemed to be less sceptical towards the price system than other subjects although we observe that female students are more sceptical than male students.Fairness, Allocation System, Excess Demand, Price System, Institutions

The emergence of emotions and pro-social and religious sentiments during the September 11 disaster

Analysing emotional states under duress or during heightened, life-and-death situations is extremely difficult, especially given the inability of laboratory experiments to adequately replicate the environment and the inherent biases of post event surveys. It is in this area that natural experiments come to the fore by combining the randomization that comes from natural data with an experimentally realistic event. The pager communications from September 11th, made publicly available by Wiki Leaks (Wiki Leaks, 2009), provide exactly the kind of natural experiment emotion researchers have been seeking. We have analysed the pager messages by applying an absolute count methodology and by presenting both positive and negative emotive categories as well as the development of pro-social and religious sentiment. Providing behavioural evidence on how people communicate under extreme circumstances and offers valuable insights into human nature. We demonstrate that positive and pro-social communications are the first to emerge followed by the slower and lower negative communications. Religious sentiment is the last to emerge, as individual attempt to make sense of event.Content Analysis, Positive Emotion, Negative Emotion, Religiosity, Disaster Communications, 9/11

The Relationship between Stress and Social Capital among Police Officers

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of social capital in reducing the negative externalities associated with stress, as well as the physical and psychological indicators of stress among police officers. Despite the fact that there is a large multidisciplinary literature on stress or on social capital, the link between both factors is still underexplored. In this empirical paper we therefore aim at reducing such a shortcoming. We focus on a strategically important work environment, namely law enforcement agents, that is not only characterized as physically and emotionally demanding, but also as an essential part for a well-functioning society due to the fact that inefficiencies in the police force can induce large negative externalities. Using a multivariate regression analysis focusing on nine different proxies for stress and two proxies for social capital and conducting several robustness checks, we find strong evidence that an increased level of social capital is correlated with a lower level of stress. From a policy perspective, our findings suggest that stress reduction programs should actively engage employees to build stronger social networks.Social Capital, Trust, Stress, Police Officers

A New Expansion for Nucleon-Nucleon Interactions

We introduce a new and well defined power counting for the effective field theory describing nucleon-nucleon interactions. Because of the large NN scattering lengths it differs from other applications of chiral perturbation theory and is facilitated by introducing an unusual subtraction scheme and renormalization group analysis. Calculation to subleading order in the expansion can be done analytically, and we present the results for both the 1S0 and 3S1-3D1 channels.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, latex. Corrected typo, small change to tex

What lipodystrophies teach us about the metabolic syndrome

Lipodystrophies are the result of a range of inherited and acquired causes, but all are characterized by perturbations in white adipose tissue function and, in many instances, its mass or distribution. Though patients are often non-obese, they typically manifest a severe form of the metabolic syndrome, highlighting the importance of white fat in the ‘safe’ storage of surplus energy. Understanding the molecular pathophysiology of congenital lipodystrophies has yielded useful insights into the biology of adipocytes and informed therapeutic strategies. More recently, genome-wide association studies focused on insulin resistance have linked common variants to genes implicated in adipose biology and suggested that subtle forms of lipodystrophy contribute to cardio-metabolic disease risk at a population level. These observations underpin the use of aligned treatment strategies in insulin-resistant obese and lipodystrophic patients, the major goal being to alleviate the energetic burden on adipose tissue