Side-Payments and the Costs of Conflict

Conflict and competition often impose costs on both winners and losers, and conflicting parties may prefer to resolve the dispute before it occurs. The equilibrium of a conflict game with side-payments predicts that with binding offers, proposers make and responders accept side-payments, generating settlements that strongly favor proposers. When side-payments are non-binding, proposers offer nothing and conflicts always arise. Laboratory experiments confirm that binding side-payments reduce conflicts. However, 30 % of responders reject binding offers, and offers are more egalitarian than predicted. Surprisingly, non-binding side-payments also improve efficiency, although less than binding. With binding side-payments, 87 % of efficiency gains come from avoided conflicts. However, with non-binding side-payments, only 39 % of gains come from avoided conflicts and 61 % from reduced conflict expenditures

Applying Principles from Complex Systems to Studying the Efficacy of CAM Therapies

In October 2007, a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM)–sponsored workshop, entitled “Applying Principles from Complex Systems to Studying the Efficacy of CAM Therapies,” was held at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Over a 2-day period, the workshop engaged a small group of experts from the fields of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) research and complexity science to discuss and examine ways in which complexity science can be applied to CAM research. After didactic presentations and small-group discussions, a number of salient themes and ideas emerged. This paper article describes the workshop program and summarizes these emergent ideas, which are divided into five broad categories: (1) introduction to complexity; (2) challenges to CAM research; (3) applications of complexity science to CAM; (4) CAM as a model of complexity applied to medicine; and (5) future directions. This discusses possible benefits and challenges associated with applying complexity science to CAM research. By providing an introductory framework for this collaboration and exchange, it is hoped that this article may stimulate further inquiry into this largely unexplored area of research

Agreement between clinical examination and parental morbidity histories for children in Nepal

Parental histories are often used to estimate the prevalence and the impact of interventions on child morbidity, but few studies have examined the agreement between parental histories and clinical examination. We compared clinical findings with a same-day parental morbidity history for preschool-age children in rural Nepal. A 15 per cent sample of children from 40 wards in Sarlahi district, Nepal, was selected for participation and 814 same day morbidity histories were obtained from parents. A clinician, masked to the parent\u27s history, visited the household 2-4 h later and examined the child for signs of morbidity symptoms about which the parent had previously been questioned. Signs included measurement of temperature, respiratory rate, examination of stools, ear discharge, and presence of persistent cough. Agreement between the history and clinical examination was excellent for ear infection (κ = 0.75) and history of measles rash (κ = 0.74), moderate to poor for diarrhoea (κ = 0.21) and fever (κ = 0.31), and there was no evidence of agreement for dysentery (κ = -0.01), rapid breathing (κ = 0.06), and cough (κ = 0.09). The prevalence of dysentery, fever, cough, and rapid breathing was lower if clinical signs rather than histories were used. The prevalence of diarrhoea was higher if the presence of a loose stool in a cup rather than a history was used. The prevalence of ear infections and measles was comparable with both methods. The agreement between histories and clinical examination varies by morbidity type, as does the prevalence of morbidity estimated by one or other method