The Economic Cost of Corruption: A Survey and New Evidence

This paper reviews the empirical literature on the economic costs of corruption. Corruption affects economic growth, the level of GDP per capita, investment activity, international trade and price stability negatively. Additionally, it biases the composition of government expenditures. The second part of the paper estimates the effect of corruption on economic growth and GDP per capita as well as on six possible transmission channels. The results of this analysis allows to calculate the total effect of corruption: An increase of corruption by about one index point reduces GDP growth by 0.13 percentage points and GDP per capita by 425 US$

VOLUNTARY CERTIFICATION SCHEMES AND LEGAL MINIMUM STANDARDS

EU farmers face increasing requests to comply with legal as well as private agribusiness and retail standards. Both requests potentially raise farmer’s administrative burden. This paper discusses the potential synergies between cross-compliance and third-party certification schemes. In selected aspects cross-compliance and several certification schemes ask similar measures. However, both regulatory approaches differ considerably in other areas. The heterogeneous nature of the various certification schemes in place prevent a general conclusion. As a tendency systemic standards like organic agriculture provide the largest overlap with cross-compliance. Certificates of origin, on the opposite side, have no relation with cross-compliance.Cross-compliance, certification schemes, institutional economics, Common Agricultural Policy, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance, Financial Economics,

Jizz and the joy of pattern recognition:virtuosity, discipline and the agency of insight in UK naturalists’ arts of seeing

Approaches to visual skilling from anthropology and STS have tended to highlight the forces of discipline and control in understanding how shared visual accounts of the world are created in the face of potential differences brought about by multi-sensorial perception. Drawing upon a range of observational and interview material from an immersion in naturalist training and biological recording activities between 2003 and 2009, I focus upon jizz, a distinct form of gestalt perception much coveted by naturalist communities in the UK. Jizz is described as a tacit and embodied way of seeing that instantaneously reveals the identity of a species, relying upon but simultaneously suspending the arduous and meticulous study of an organism’s diagnostic characteristics. I explore the potential and limitations of jizz to allow for both visual precision and an enchanted and varied form of encounter with nature. In so doing, I explore how the specific characteristics of wild, intangible and irreverent virtuoso performance work closely together with disciplining taxonomic standards. As such, discipline and irreverence work together, are mutually enabling, and allow for an accommodation rather than a segregation of potential difference brought about by perceptual variety

Philanthropy or solidarity? Ethical dilemmas about humanitarianism in crisis afflicted Greece

That philanthropy perpetuates the conditions that cause inequality is an old argument shared by thinkers such as Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde and Slavoj Zizek. I recorded the same argument in conversations regarding a growing humanitarian concern in austerity-ridden Greece. At the local level a number of solidarity initiatives provide the most impoverished families with humanitarian help. Some citizens participate in such initiatives wholeheartedly, while some other citizens criticize solidarity movements drawing primarily from Marxist-inspired arguments, such as, for example, that humanitarianism rationalises state inaction. The local narratives presented in this article bring forward two parallel possibilities engendered by the humanitarian face of social solidarity: first, its empowering potential (where solidarity initiatives enhance local social awareness), and second, the de-politicisation of the crisis and the experience of suffering (a liability that stems from the effectiveness of humanitarianism in ameliorating only temporarily the superficial consequences of the crisis). These two overlapping possibilities can help us problematise the contextual specificity and strategic employment of humanitarian solidarity in times of austerity

Vibrational origin of the fast relaxation processes in molecular glass-formers

We study the interaction of the relaxation processes with the density fluctuations by molecular dynamics simulation of a flexible molecule model for o-terphenyl (oTP) in the liquid and supercooled phases. We find evidence, besides the structural relaxation, of a secondary vibrational relaxation whose characteristic time, few ps, is slightly temperature dependent. This i) confirms the result by Monaco et al. [Phys. Rev, E 62, 7595 (2000)] of the vibrational nature of the fast relaxation observed in Brillouin Light Scattering (BLS) experiments in oTP; and ii) poses a caveat on the interpretation of the BLS spectra of molecular systems in terms of a purely center of mass dynamics.Comment: RevTeX, 5 pages, 4 eps figure

Statistical-mechanical theory of ultrasonic absorption in molecular liquids

We present results of theoretical description of ultrasonic phenomena in molecular liquids. In particular, we are interested in the development of microscopical, i.e., statistical-mechanical framework capable to explain the long living puzzle of the excess ultrasonic absorption in liquids. Typically, ultrasonic wave in a liquid can be generated by applying the periodically alternating external pressure with the angular frequency that corresponds to the ultrasound. If the perturbation introduced by such process is weak - its statistical-mechanical treatment can be done with the use of the linear response theory. We treat the liquid as a system of interacting sites, so that all the response/aftereffect functions as well as the energy dissipation and generalized (wave-vector and frequency dependent) ultrasonic absorption coefficient are obtained in terms of familiar site-site static and time correlation functions such as static structure factors or intermediate scattering functions. To express the site-site intermediate scattering functions we refer to the site-site memory equations in the mode-coupling approximation for the first-order memory kernels, while equilibrium properties such as site-site static structure factors, direct and total correlation functions are deduced from the integral equation theory of molecular liquids known as RISM or one of its generalizations. All the formalism is phrased in a general manner, hence the obtained results are expected to work for arbitrary type of molecular liquid including simple, ionic, polar, and non-polar liquids.Comment: 14 pages, 1 eps-figure, RevTeX4-forma

Dipole Interactions and Electrical Polarity in Nanosystems -- the Clausius-Mossotti and Related Models

Point polarizable molecules at fixed spatial positions have solvable electrostatic properties in classical approximation, the most familiar being the Clausius-Mossotti (CM) formula. This paper generalizes the model and imagines various applications to nanosystems. The behavior is worked out for a sequence of octahedral fragments of simple cubic crystals, and the crossover to the bulk CM law is found. Some relations to fixed moment systems are discussed and exploited. The one-dimensional dipole stack is introduced as an important model system. The energy of interaction of parallel stacks is worked out, and clarifies the diverse behavior found in different crystal structures. It also suggests patterns of self-organization which polar molecules in solution might adopt. A sum rule on the stack interaction is found and tested. Stability of polarized states under thermal fluctuations is discussed, using the one-dimensional domain wall as an example. Possible structures for polar hard ellipsoids are considered. An idea is formulated for enhancing polarity of nanosystems by intentionally adding metallic coatings.Comment: 18 pages (includes 6 embedded figures and 3 tables). New references, and other small improvements. Scheduled for publication by J. Chem. Phys., Jan. 200