Political Yardstick Competition, Economic Integration, and Constitutional Choice in a Federation

This paper investigates the behavior of rent-seeking politicians in an environment of increasing economic integration. The focus of the paper is on the implications of globalization-induced political yardstick competition for constitutional design with a view to the current discussion in the European Union. In contrast to the established literature, we carefully portray the double-tiered government structure in federal systems. The number of lower-tier governments and the allocation of policy responsibilities to the two levels of government are subject to constitutional choice.Economic Integration, Federalism, Political Economy, Yardstick Competition

Social Distancing and Supply Disruptions in a Pandemic

Drastic public health measures such as social distancing or lockdowns can reduce the loss of human life by keeping the number of infected individuals from exceeding the capacity of the health care system but are often criticized because of the social and the economic cost they entail. We question this view by combining an epidemiological model, calibrated to capture the spread of the COVID-19 virus, with a multisector model, designed to capture key characteristics of the U.S. Input Output Tables. Our two-sector model features a core sector that produces intermediate inputs not easily replaced by inputs from the other sector, subject to minimum-scale requirements. We show that, by affecting workers in this core sector, the high peak of an infection not mitigated by social distancing may cause very large upfront economic costs in terms of output, consumption and investment. Social distancing measures can reduce these costs, especially if skewed towards non-core industries and occupations with tasks that can be performed from home, helping to smooth the surge in infections among workers in the core sector.</jats:p

The elusive gains from nationally oriented monetary policy

The gains from monetary policy cooperation depend on real and financial distortions in the economy and evolve dynamically with prevailing economic conditions. We show that, with international trade in assets, these gains are driven by asymmetric cross-border developments in productivity and savings, and can reach multiples of the cost of economic fluctuations. When financial flows are restricted to non-state-contingent bonds, the gains from cooperation grow with the size of global imbalances, i.e., net-foreign-asset positions

Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor-Related Tumor Markers and Clinical Outcomes with Erlotinib in Non-small Cell Lung Cancer: An Analysis of Patients from German Centers in the TRUST Study

IntroductionRelationships between clinical outcomes and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-related tumor markers were investigated in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer.MethodsPatients with stage IIIB/IV non-small cell lung cancer (0–2 prior regimens) received erlotinib (150 mg PO per day). Response and survival were evaluated, and tumor samples were assessed by immunohistochemistry (EGFR, phosphorylated mitogen-activated protein kinase, and phosphorylated AKT protein expression), fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH; EGFR gene copy number), and DNA sequencing (EGFR, KRAS gene mutations).ResultsAmong 311 patients, 8% had a complete/partial response; the disease control rate was 66%. Median Overall survival (OS) was 6.1 months; 1-year survival rate was 27.2%. Two of 4 patients with EGFR mutations had tumor responses, versus 2/68 with wild-type EGFR (p = 0.014). Progression-free survival (PFS) (HR = 0.31) and OS (HR = 0.33) were significantly prolonged in patients with EGFR mutations. Response rate was significantly higher in patients with EGFR FISH-positive (17%) than FISH-negative tumors (6%), and both PFS (HR = 0.58) and OS (HR = 0.63) significantly favored patients with EGFR FISH-positive tumors; median OS was 8.6 months in the EGFR FISH-positive group. None of 17 patients with a KRAS mutation had a tumor response, but the impact of KRAS mutation status on survival outcomes was of borderline statistical significance. Neither phosphorylated mitogen-activated protein kinase nor phosphorylated AKT immunohistochemistry status had a significant effect on PFS and OS with erlotinib.ConclusionsThe presence of EGFR mutations and EGFR FISH-positive tumors may predispose patients to achieving better outcomes on erlotinib, but may have a beneficial impact on prognosis (irrespective of treatment). Prospective, placebo-controlled studies are needed to determine the predictive value of the putative biomarkers

Higgs and non-universal gaugino masses: no SUSY signal expected yet?

So far, no supersymmetric particles have been detected at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). However, the recent Higgs results have interesting implications for the SUSY parameter space. In this paper, we study the consequences of an LHC Higgs signal for a model with non-universal gaugino masses in the context of SU(5) unification. The gaugino mass ratios associated with the higher representations produce viable spectra that are largely inaccessible to the current LHC and direct dark matter detection experiments. Thus, in light of the Higgs results, the non-observation of SUSY is no surprise.Comment: supplementary file containing plots with log priors in ancillary files. v2: added some comments on more general settings and references, accepted for publication in JHE

The Human Phenotype Ontology in 2024: phenotypes around the world.

The Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) is a widely used resource that comprehensively organizes and defines the phenotypic features of human disease, enabling computational inference and supporting genomic and phenotypic analyses through semantic similarity and machine learning algorithms. The HPO has widespread applications in clinical diagnostics and translational research, including genomic diagnostics, gene-disease discovery, and cohort analytics. In recent years, groups around the world have developed translations of the HPO from English to other languages, and the HPO browser has been internationalized, allowing users to view HPO term labels and in many cases synonyms and definitions in ten languages in addition to English. Since our last report, a total of 2239 new HPO terms and 49235 new HPO annotations were developed, many in collaboration with external groups in the fields of psychiatry, arthrogryposis, immunology and cardiology. The Medical Action Ontology (MAxO) is a new effort to model treatments and other measures taken for clinical management. Finally, the HPO consortium is contributing to efforts to integrate the HPO and the GA4GH Phenopacket Schema into electronic health records (EHRs) with the goal of more standardized and computable integration of rare disease data in EHRs