Crime, Corruption and Institutions

This paper explores the link between crime and corruption, compares their magnitudes, determinants and their effects on growth rates. The study uses a large cross country data set containing individual responses to questions on crime and corruption along with information on the respondents’ characteristics. This data set is supplemented by country level indicators from a variety of sources on a range of macro variables and on institutions in the respondent’s country of residence. A methodological contribution of this study is the estimation of an ordered probit model based on outcomes defined as combinations of crime and bribe victimisation. The principal results include the evidence that while a male is more likely to be a corruption victim, a female is more exposed to crime, especially, serious crime. Older individuals and those living in the smaller towns and cities are less exposed to crime and corruption due presumably to their ability to form informal networks that act as protective mechanisms. With increasing levels of income and education, an individual is more likely to report both crime and bribe victimisation. A crime victim is more likely than a non victim to report receiving demands for a bribe. The results suggest that variables such as inequality, unemployment rate and population size have a strong effect on the country’s crime and corruption statistics though the sign and significance of the country effects are not always robust. However, the paper does provide robust evidence that a stronger legal system and a happier society result in a reduction in both crime and corruption. While the study finds that both crime and corruption rates decline as a country becomes more affluent, as measured by its per capita GNP at PPP, there is no evidence of a strong and uniformly negative impact of either crime or corruption on a country’s growth rate. There is limited OLS based evidence of a non linear relationship between growth and corruption rates, though the significance of the corruption effect on growth disappears on the use of IV estimation. The paper also provides evidence that there has been a decline in both crime and corruption during the latter half of the 1990s. This is true even after controlling for the individual and country characteristics.Crime Victimisation, Institutions, Happiness, Ordered Probit, Rule of Law.

On the Impact of Piracy on Innovation in the Presence of Technological and Market Uncertainty

This paper analyses the effect of piracy on innovation in the presence of R&D competition with technological and market uncertainty. With a single innovating firm facing technological uncertainty, piracy unambiguously retards innovation. However, with R&D competition where firms face market and technological uncertainties, we show that piracy may enhance overall innovation. We also show that if the difference between the probabilities of success of the innovating firms is relatively large then piracy enhances the R&D investment and profit of the less efficient firm.Innovation, market uncertainty, R&D race, technological uncertainty

Does the Evidence on Corruption Depend on how it is measured? Results from a Cross Country Study on Micro Data sets

This study compares the evidence on corruption between alternative data sets. These include the Corruption Perceptions Indices (CPI) that are conventionally used and the micro data sets from the International Crime Victim Surveys (ICVS) and the World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES) that have been used in recent applications. While a comparison between the evidence from the CPI and WBES constitutes a comparison of perception versus reality, the comparison of evidence from ICVS and WBES can be construed as a comparison of individual with business corruption. The study finds several similarities and differences between the pictures on corruption yielded by the alternative data sets. For example, while in case of low income countries, perception of business corruption seems to be worse than that based on firms’ actual experience of doing business there, the reverse is true for high income countries. The magnitude of individual corruption is consistently lower than that of business corruption, with the gap between the two forms of corruption closing only for high income countries. As a country develops and commercial transactions increase, the mix of corruption changes in favour of business corruption. While the study finds evidence of a negative association between per capita GNP and corruption rates, none of the three data sets provides any evidence of negative association between growth and corruption rates. The study also finds that while improvement in human development indicators such as literacy are effective instruments in controlling individual corruption, the strengthening of institutions such as the legal system and the regulatory mechanism are likely to be more effective in combating business corruption. The strengthening of trust, whether via improved literacy and development of social networks or via a strong legal system, and an effective and transparent regulatory mechanism is the key to combating both forms of corruption. A methodological contribution of this study is the combination of the information of the characteristics of the respondent with the country level indicators in analysing the determinants of corruption. A significant difference between the two forms of corruption is that, after controlling for the respondent’s attributes and the country indicators, while individual corruption showed an increase over time, this was not the case with business corruption. The importance of introducing the country effects is seen from the sign reversal of the time coefficient estimate that occurs in case of both individual and business corruption once we control for the effects of the country of residence of the respondent. The overall message of this study is that the authorities need to distinguish between different forms of corruption in devising policy intervention. As the mix of individual and business corruption changes with economic development, so should the mix of policy instruments in tackling corruption. The results also underline the need to undertake more studies that investigate the sensitivity of the evidence on corruption to alternative data sets.Business Corruption, Kernel density graphs, Social Network, Human Development Indicator, Regulatory Mechanism

Age of Majority and Women’s Early Human Capital Accumulation in Australia

Past research has suggested that Common Law restrictions may have prevented minors from obtaining oral contraceptives (the pill) without parental consent and that, thus, reductions in the age at which a woman became a legal adult could work through access to the pill to increase incomes, educational attainment, and participation in occupations previously dominated by men, but these age of majority changes are often confounded with other relevant legal changes. Because Australian states had similar reasons for lowering their ages of majority around the same time as US states did but did not enact other youth consent or pill access measures around the same time, we use state-specific variation in Australian age of majority laws and estimate effects on schooling attainment and life-cycle incomes, finding that living under an age of majority of 18 rather than 21 decreased women's weekly earnings slightly in their 20s and increased their earnings at later ages and increased their probability of bachelor degree attainment by around 1.5 percentage points (from a baseline of 14%)

Mothers-in-law and son preference in India

In India, the mothers-in-law are often portrayed as the most powerful entity in the household in Indian popular culture and media. Similarly, in the literature, the influence of the Indian mothers-in-law is often taken for granted. However, most of the empirical evidence relies on qualitative data or on small samples. Looking at stated son preference and using the third nationally representative National Family and Health Survey dataset, we show that mothers-in-law do indeed have an influence on their daughter-in-law, everything else constant. Given the stronger son preference among mothers-in-law, this contributes to the high imbalance in the male to female sex-ratio observed among children in India

COVID-19 reveals unequal urban citizenship in Manila, Dhaka and Delhi

The urban poor in the Global South have suffered special hardship as a result of the pandemic. Redento B Recio, Ishita Chatterjee (University of Melbourne) and Lutfun Nahar Lata (University of Queensland) describe the situation in Manila, Delhi and Dhaka, where abrupt lockdowns, mass movements to the countryside and woefully inadequate support have widened existing inequalities

Lipid phosphate phosphatase-3 regulates tumor growth via β-catenin and Cyclin-D1 signaling

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The acquisition of proliferative and invasive phenotypes is considered a hallmark of neoplastic transformation; however, the underlying mechanisms are less well known. Lipid phosphate phosphatase-3 (LPP3) not only catalyzes the dephosphorylation of the bioactive lipid sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) to generate sphingosine but also may regulate embryonic development and angiogenesis <it>via </it>the Wnt pathway. The goal of this study was to determine the role of LPP3 in tumor cells.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We observed increased expression of LPP3 in glioblastoma primary tumors and in U87 and U118 glioblastoma cell lines. We demonstrate that <it>LPP3</it>-knockdown inhibited both U87 and U118 glioblastoma cell proliferation in culture and tumor growth in xenograft assays. Biochemical experiments provided evidence that <it>LPP3</it>-knockdown reduced β-catenin, CYCLIN-D1, and CD133 expression, with a concomitant increase in phosphorylated β-catenin. In a converse experiment, the forced expression of LPP3 in human colon tumor (SW480) cells potentiated tumor growth <it>via </it>increased β-catenin stability and CYCLIN-D1 synthesis. In contrast, elevated expression of LPP3 had no tumorigenic effects on primary cells.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These results demonstrate for the first time an unexpected role of LPP3 in regulating glioblastoma progression by amplifying β-catenin and CYCLIN-D1 activities.</p

Sex-selective abortions and infant mortality in India: the role of parents’ stated son preference

In India, millions of female foetuses have been aborted since the 1980s alongside an abnormally high infant girl mortality rate; this has generated a vast literature exploring the root causes of son preference. The literature is sparse, however, on how the decisions to abort or neglect girls are made. This paper examines mothers’ and fathers’ respective roles behind those decisions. Using NFHS-3 data, we show that sex- selective abortions are most commonly used if both spouses or if only the fathers prefer sons, while sex-selective neglect is used if only the mothers prefer sons

Vitamin D receptor protects against dysbiosis and tumorigenesis via the JAK/STAT pathway in intestine

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Vitamin D exerts regulatory roles via vitamin D receptor (VDR) in mucosal immunity, host defense, and inflammation involving host factors and microbiome. Human Vdr gene variation shapes the microbiome and VDR deletion leads to dysbiosis. Low VDR expression and diminished vitamin D/VDR signaling are observed in colon cancer. Nevertheless, how intestinal epithelial VDR is involved in tumorigenesis through gut microbiota remains unknown. We hypothesized that intestinal VDR protects mice against dysbiosis via modulating the Janus kinase (JAK)/signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) pathway in tumorigenesis. METHODS: To test our hypothesis, we used an azoxymethane/dextran sulfate sodium-induced cancer model in intestinal VDR conditional knockout (VDR RESULTS: VDR CONCLUSIONS: We provide insights into the mechanism of VDR dysfunction leading to dysbiosis and tumorigenesis. It indicates a new target: microbiome and VDR for the prevention of cancer