“Pre-columbian moulages”. Huacos, mummies and photographs in the controversy over precolumbian diseases, 1894-1910

By the late nineteenth century an international controversy arose referred to the probable existence of certain diseases such as leprosy, syphilis and lupus in pre-Columbian America. Led by the American physician Albert Sidney Ashmead (1850-1911), it brought together scholars from Europe and the Americas. In this context, certain types of Peruvian archaeological pottery and mummies, along with series of photographs illustrating the effects of these diseases in contemporary patients, met a prominent role as comparative evidence. In this article we analyze how this type of collections were used as evidence in the debates about pathologies of the past, an issue that from a historical standpoint have received considerably little attention.Fil: Farro, Máximo Ezequiel. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Archivo Histórico; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Podgorny, Irina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Archivo Histórico; Argentina. Università degli studi di Roma ; Itali

A cross-country analysis of the risk factors for depression at the micro and macro level

Past research has provided evidence of the role of personal characteristics as risk factors for depression. However, few researches examined jointly the impact of each characteristic and whether country attributes change the probability of being depressed. This is due to the use of single-country databases. Our aim is to extend previous findings by employing a much larger dataset and including the above-mentioned country effects. We estimate probit models with country effects and we also explore linkages between specific environmental factors and depression. The dataset for this research comes from the 2007 GALLUP Public Opinion Poll that allows us to consider a large and widely heterogeneous set of micro-data. Findings indicate that depression is positively related to being a woman, adulthood, divorce, widowhood, unemployment and low income. Moreover, we provide evidence of the significant association between economic performance and depression. Inequality raises the probability of being depressed, specially, for those living in urban areas. Finally, some population’s characteristics facilitate depression (age distribution and religious affiliation).depression, health, well-being, cross-country research

Learning about one’s relative position and subjective well-being

In this paper we show evidence which suggests that changes in an individual’s relative position affects his subjective well-being. In this sense, our findings are in line with those who argue that a felicity function should take into account both, absolute and relative position. Our result are based on a simple experimental design to discuss whether learning about one’s relative position affects subjective well-being. Additionally, using nonexperimental data we find a significant association between subjective well-being and relative wage.relative income, subjective well-being

Permissiveness toward illegal actions in Uruguay Are Belief in God, income and education relevant?

This paper assesses the willingness to justify illegal actions and whether this attitude has changed between 1995 and 2005. Our dataset are 1995 and 2005 waves of World Values Survey. Permissiveness or the willingness to justify illegal actions is a cultural phenomenon that can be defined in several ways depending on societies and people. Hence, we consider firstly the four dimensions available (accepting bribes, evading taxes, etc.), and we estimated multivariate regressions. Secondly, from principal component analysis, we generated a new variable "willingness to justify” as a weighted average of the previous dimensions. We find that socio-demographic variables such as age and education reduce permissiveness, political affiliation with the Center hikes it, being employed full time reduces permissiveness while income has the opposite effect, even when religiosity reduces permissiveness, beliefs in God do not matter, living in Montevideo reduces permissiveness and finally, between 1995 and 2005 the permissiveness among Uruguayans has changed, the model show that the probability of being permissive is significantly higher in 2005 than in 1995permissiveness, illegal action, microeconomic behavior, Uruguay.

Perception of corruption in Uruguay: the effects of the sector of employment, life-course adjustments and education

In 2004, Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index ranks Uruguay at 28, seven positions higher than in 2001, scores changed from 5.1 to 6.2 (a higher score means less perceived corruption). In addition, there were no relevant corruption scandals in that period. Hence, we should ask: what are the foundations of corruption perception? We assess this at the micro-level. Our dataset is the module on Citizenship of the International Social Survey Program (that was carried out in 2004) and we estimate ordered a probit model. We find that some economic variables are significant. In particular we show that those who work in private enterprises tend to perceive higher levels of corruption as do unemployed people. Hence those who may be on the supply side of the bribe “market” perceive a higher level of corruption than those on the demand side (civil servants). In addition, our main contribution to the existence literature is showing that socio-demographic variables play a relevant role. We show that those who belong to the youngest group, who took, at least, high school studies and those who belong to a religious group are more likely to perceive a higher level of corruption.corruption, public opinion, microeconomic behavior, ISSP, Uruguay.