Economic Determinants of Third Party Intervention in Civil Conflict

Our paper explores the economic conditions that lead third parties to intervene in ongoing internal wars. We develop a formal model that ties together some of the main forces driving the decision to interfere in a civil war, including the economic benefits accruing from the intervention and the potential costs associated with such choice. We predict that third party interventions are most likely in civil conflicts where the country at war harbors a profitable industry as a consequence of its high levels of peace-time production and state strength, while the opposition forces’ strength reduces the likelihood of intervention. We also present novel empirical results on the role of valuable goods, i.e. oil, in prompting third party military intervention in contexts of high state stability, by using a dataset on intrastate conflicts on the period 1960-1999.Intrastate Conflict; Third party intervention

Pressure-induced transformations in LiCl–H2O at 77 K

A systematic study of the properties of high-density amorphous ice (HDA) in the presence of increasing amounts of salt is missing, especially because it is challenging to avoid ice crystallization upon cooling the pressurized liquid. In order to be able to study HDA also in the presence of small amounts of salt, we have investigated the transformation behaviour of quenched aqueous LiCl solutions (mole fraction x 1 GPa. The observed densification is consistent with the idea that a freeze concentrated LiCl solution of x = 0.14 (R = 6) segregates, which transforms to the glassy state upon cooling, and that the densification is only due to the Ih → HDA transition. Also the XRD patterns and DSC scans are almost unaffected by the presence of the segregated glassy LiCl solution. Upon heating at ambient pressure HDA experiences the polyamorphic transition to low-density amorphous ice (LDA) at ∼120 K, even at x ∼ 0.10. Based on the latent heat evolved in the transition we suggest that almost all water in the sample transforms to an LDA-like state, even the water in the vicinity of the ions. The glassy LiCl solution acts as a spectator that does not shift the transformation temperature significantly and experiences a glass-to-liquid transition at ∼140 K prior to the crystallization to cubic ice. By contrast, at x > 0.12 the phenomenology completely changes and is now dominated by the salt. Hexagonal ice no longer forms upon quenching the LiCl solution, but instead LDA forms. A broad pressure-induced transformation at >0.6 GPa can be attributed to the densification of LDA, the glassy LiCl solution and/or glassy hydrates.Fil: Ruiz, G. N.. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química, Física de los Materiales, Medioambiente y Energía. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química, Física de los Materiales, Medioambiente y Energía; Argentina. Universidad de Innsbruck; AustriaFil: Bove, L. E.. Universite Pierre et Marie Curie; Francia. Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne; SuizaFil: Corti, Horacio Roberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química, Física de los Materiales, Medioambiente y Energía. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química, Física de los Materiales, Medioambiente y Energía; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica; ArgentinaFil: Loerting, T.. Universidad de Innsbruck; Austri

Observation of a nanophase segregation in LiCl aqueous solutions from Transient Grating Experiments

Transient Grating experiments performed on supercooled LiCl, RH2O solutions with R>6 reveal the existence of a strong, short time, extra signal which superposes to the normal signal observed for the R=6 solution and other glass forming systems. This extra signal shows up below 190 K, its shape and the associated timescale depend only on temperature, while its intensity increases with R. We show that the origin of this signal is a phase separation between clusters with a low solute concentration and the remaining, more concentrated, solution. Our analysis demonstrates that these clusters have a nanometer size and a composition which are rather temperature independent, while increasing R simply increases the number of these clusters.Comment: 19 pages+ 8 figures+ 2 table

Government ideology and international migration

We provide the first empirical evidence that differences in government ideology play an important role in the choice of cross-border migration destinations. In absence of first-hand experience, immigrants rely on information about the political landscape of the origin and host countries to form expectations about the context of reception in the host society. We use data on bilateral migration and government ideology for 36 OECD countries between 1990 and 2016. Our analysis shows that bilateral migration flows are higher when the government at the destination is more left-wing than the government at the origin, especially when we consider proximate countries

Classification of professional values based on motivational content: An exploratory study on Italian Adolescents

This study applies a multidimensional scaling (MSD) technique to investigate the structural validity of the Work Values Inventory for Adolescents with a sample of Italian students. The MSD results indicated the presence of two underlying orthogonal dimensions: individuality versus sociality and conservation versus exploration. Implications for future research are also discussed. © 2011 The Author(s)

US security strategy and the gains from bilateral trade

We explore the geo-strategic determinants of bilateral trade flows between the USA and the rest of the world. We develop a three-party model of security and trade patterns and use data on military assistance and troop deployments over the 1950–2009 period to validate its predictions. We find that security assistance has significant, positive impacts on the shares of bilateral trade between the USA and the recipient country, results that are robust to issues of reverse causality and hold across different sectors

"Oil above water" : economic interdependence and third-party intervention

We explore economic incentives for third parties to intervene in ongoing internal wars. We develop a three-party model of the decision to intervene in conflict that highlights the role of the economic benefits accruing from the intervention and the potential costs. We present novel empirical results on the role of oil in motivating third-party military intervention. We find that the likelihood of a third-party intervention increases when (a) the country at war has large reserves of oil, (b) the relative competition in the sector is limited, and (c) the potential intervener has a higher demand for oil

Cell-scale biophysical determinants of cell competition in epithelia

How cells with different genetic makeups compete in tissues is an outstanding question in developmental biology and cancer research. Studies in recent years have revealed that cell competition can either be driven by short-range biochemical signalling or by long-range mechanical stresses in the tissue. To date, cell competition has generally been characterised at the population scale, leaving the single-cell-level mechanisms of competition elusive. Here, we use high time-resolution experimental data to construct a multi-scale agent-based model for epithelial cell competition and use it to gain a conceptual understanding of the cellular factors that governs competition in cell populations within tissues. We find that a key determinant of mechanical competition is the difference in homeostatic density between winners and losers, while differences in growth rates and tissue organisation do not affect competition end result. In contrast, the outcome and kinetics of biochemical competition is strongly influenced by local tissue organisation. Indeed, when loser cells are homogenously mixed with winners at the onset of competition, they are eradicated; however, when they are spatially separated, winner and loser cells coexist for long times. These findings suggest distinct biophysical origins for mechanical and biochemical modes of cell competition