Trust and accountability in times of pandemics

La pandemia de COVID-19 llegó en un contexto de creciente polarización política y desconfianza en las instituciones políticas en muchos países. ¿Pudieron las deficiencias en la gestión de la pandemia erosionar la confianza en las instituciones públicas? ¿Interfirió la ideología de los ciudadanos en la forma en que procesaban la información sobre el desempeño de los Gobiernos? Para investigar ambas cuestiones, en noviembre de 2020 llevamos a cabo en España un experimento online prerregistrado. A los encuestados del grupo de tratamiento les proporcionamos información sobre el número de rastreadores de contactos en su comunidad autónoma, una política clave bajo el control de los Gobiernos autonómicos. Encontramos que las personas sobrestiman en gran medida el número de rastreadores de su región. Cuando proporcionamos el número real de rastreadores, encontramos lo siguiente: una pérdida de la confianza en los Gobiernos; una reducción en la voluntad de financiar instituciones públicas, y una disminución de la aceptación de la vacuna contra el COVID-19. También encontramos que los individuos cambian endógenamente su atribución de responsabilidades al recibir el tratamiento. En las regiones donde los Gobiernos regionales y central están gobernados por diferentes partidos, los simpatizantes del Gobierno regional reaccionan a las malas noticias sobre la gestión del Gobierno atribuyendo una mayor responsabilidad al Gobierno central. A esto lo llamamos «efecto de blame-shifting». En estas regiones, la información negativa no se traduce en una menor intención de voto para el Gobierno regional. Estos resultados sugieren que la rendición de cuentas puede ser particularmente difícil en entornos con alta polarización política y donde las áreas de responsabilidad no están claramente delimitadas.The COVID-19 pandemic took place against the backdrop of growing political polarization and distrust in political institutions in many countries. Did deficiencies in government performance further erode trust in public institutions? Did citizens’ ideology interfere with the way they processed information on government performance? To investigate these two questions, we conducted a pre-registered online experiment in Spain in November 2020. Respondents in the treatment group were provided information on the number of contact tracers in their region, a key policy variable under the control of regional governments. We find that individuals greatly over-estimate the number of contact tracers in their region. When we provide the actual number of contact tracers, we find a decline in trust in governments, a reduction in willingness to fund public institutions and a decrease in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. We also find that individuals endogenously change their attribution of responsibilities when receiving the treatment. In regions where the regional and central governments are controlled by different parties, sympathizers of the regional incumbent react to the negative news on performance by attributing greater responsibility for it to the central government. We call this the blame shifting effect. In those regions, the negative information does not translate into lower voting intentions for the regional incumbent government. These results suggest that the exercise of political accountability may be particularly difficult in settings with high political polarization and areas of responsibility that are not clearly delineated

The Non-Democratic Roots of Elite Capture: Evidence From Soeharto Mayors in Indonesia

Democracies widely differ in the extent to which powerful elites and interest groups retain influence over politics. While a large literature argues that elite capture is rooted in a country\u27s history, our understanding of the determinants of elite persistence is limited. In this paper, we show that allowing old-regime agents to remain in office during democratic transitions is a key determinant of the extent of elite capture. We exploit quasi-random from Indonesia: Soeharto-regime mayors were allowed to finish their terms before being replaced by new leaders. Since mayors\u27 political cycles were not synchronized, this event generated exogenous variation in how long old-regime mayors remained in their position during the democratic transition. Districts with longer exposure to old-regime mayors experience worse governance outcomes, higher elite persistence, and lower political competition in the medium run. The results suggest that slower transitions towards democracy allow the old-regime elites to capture democracy

Social fragmentation, public goods, and local elections: evidence from China

This study examines how the economic effects of local elections in rural China depend on voter heterogeneity, as captured by religious fractionalisation. We first document religious composition and the introduction of village-level elections for a nearly nationally representative sample of over 200 villages. Then, we examine the interaction effect of heterogeneity and the introduction of elections on village government provision of public goods. The interaction effect is robustly negative. We interpret this as evidence that voter heterogeneity constrains the potential benefits of local elections for public goods provision

Do Local Elections in Non-Democracies Increase Accountability? Evidence from Rural China

We use unique survey data to study whether the introduction of local elections in China made local leaders more accountable towards local constituents. We develop a simple model to predict the effects on different policies of increasing local leader accountability, taking into account that there is an autocratic upper government. We exploit variation in the timing of the top-down introduction of elections across villages to estimate the causal effects of elections and find that elections affected policy outcomes in a way that is consistent with the predicted effects of increased local leader accountability.

Sediment source fingerprinting: benchmarking recent outputs, remaining challenges and emerging themes

Abstract: Purpose: This review of sediment source fingerprinting assesses the current state-of-the-art, remaining challenges and emerging themes. It combines inputs from international scientists either with track records in the approach or with expertise relevant to progressing the science. Methods: Web of Science and Google Scholar were used to review published papers spanning the period 2013–2019, inclusive, to confirm publication trends in quantities of papers by study area country and the types of tracers used. The most recent (2018–2019, inclusive) papers were also benchmarked using a methodological decision-tree published in 2017. Scope: Areas requiring further research and international consensus on methodological detail are reviewed, and these comprise spatial variability in tracers and corresponding sampling implications for end-members, temporal variability in tracers and sampling implications for end-members and target sediment, tracer conservation and knowledge-based pre-selection, the physico-chemical basis for source discrimination and dissemination of fingerprinting results to stakeholders. Emerging themes are also discussed: novel tracers, concentration-dependence for biomarkers, combining sediment fingerprinting and age-dating, applications to sediment-bound pollutants, incorporation of supportive spatial information to augment discrimination and modelling, aeolian sediment source fingerprinting, integration with process-based models and development of open-access software tools for data processing. Conclusions: The popularity of sediment source fingerprinting continues on an upward trend globally, but with this growth comes issues surrounding lack of standardisation and procedural diversity. Nonetheless, the last 2 years have also evidenced growing uptake of critical requirements for robust applications and this review is intended to signpost investigators, both old and new, towards these benchmarks and remaining research challenges for, and emerging options for different applications of, the fingerprinting approach

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Effects of hospital facilities on patient outcomes after cancer surgery: an international, prospective, observational study

Background Early death after cancer surgery is higher in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) compared with in high-income countries, yet the impact of facility characteristics on early postoperative outcomes is unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the association between hospital infrastructure, resource availability, and processes on early outcomes after cancer surgery worldwide.Methods A multimethods analysis was performed as part of the GlobalSurg 3 study-a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study of patients who had surgery for breast, colorectal, or gastric cancer. The primary outcomes were 30-day mortality and 30-day major complication rates. Potentially beneficial hospital facilities were identified by variable selection to select those associated with 30-day mortality. Adjusted outcomes were determined using generalised estimating equations to account for patient characteristics and country-income group, with population stratification by hospital.Findings Between April 1, 2018, and April 23, 2019, facility-level data were collected for 9685 patients across 238 hospitals in 66 countries (91 hospitals in 20 high-income countries; 57 hospitals in 19 upper-middle-income countries; and 90 hospitals in 27 low-income to lower-middle-income countries). The availability of five hospital facilities was inversely associated with mortality: ultrasound, CT scanner, critical care unit, opioid analgesia, and oncologist. After adjustment for case-mix and country income group, hospitals with three or fewer of these facilities (62 hospitals, 1294 patients) had higher mortality compared with those with four or five (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 3.85 [95% CI 2.58-5.75]; p<0.0001), with excess mortality predominantly explained by a limited capacity to rescue following the development of major complications (63.0% vs 82.7%; OR 0.35 [0.23-0.53]; p<0.0001). Across LMICs, improvements in hospital facilities would prevent one to three deaths for every 100 patients undergoing surgery for cancer.Interpretation Hospitals with higher levels of infrastructure and resources have better outcomes after cancer surgery, independent of country income. Without urgent strengthening of hospital infrastructure and resources, the reductions in cancer-associated mortality associated with improved access will not be realised

Measurement of the Splitting Function in &ITpp &ITand Pb-Pb Collisions at root&ITsNN&IT=5.02 TeV

Data from heavy ion collisions suggest that the evolution of a parton shower is modified by interactions with the color charges in the dense partonic medium created in these collisions, but it is not known where in the shower evolution the modifications occur. The momentum ratio of the two leading partons, resolved as subjets, provides information about the parton shower evolution. This substructure observable, known as the splitting function, reflects the process of a parton splitting into two other partons and has been measured for jets with transverse momentum between 140 and 500 GeV, in pp and PbPb collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV per nucleon pair. In central PbPb collisions, the splitting function indicates a more unbalanced momentum ratio, compared to peripheral PbPb and pp collisions.. The measurements are compared to various predictions from event generators and analytical calculations.Peer reviewe

Measurement of nuclear modification factors of gamma(1S)), gamma(2S), and gamma(3S) mesons in PbPb collisions at root s(NN)=5.02 TeV

The cross sections for ϒ(1S), ϒ(2S), and ϒ(3S) production in lead-lead (PbPb) and proton-proton (pp) collisions at √sNN = 5.02 TeV have been measured using the CMS detector at the LHC. The nuclear modification factors, RAA, derived from the PbPb-to-pp ratio of yields for each state, are studied as functions of meson rapidity and transverse momentum, as well as PbPb collision centrality. The yields of all three states are found to be significantly suppressed, and compatible with a sequential ordering of the suppression, RAA(ϒ(1S)) > RAA(ϒ(2S)) > RAA(ϒ(3S)). The suppression of ϒ(1S) is larger than that seen at √sNN = 2.76 TeV, although the two are compatible within uncertainties. The upper limit on the RAA of ϒ(3S) integrated over pT, rapidity and centrality is 0.096 at 95% confidence level, which is the strongest suppression observed for a quarkonium state in heavy ion collisions to date. © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP3.Peer reviewe

Electroweak production of two jets in association with a Z boson in proton-proton collisions root s =13 TeV

A measurement of the electroweak (EW) production of two jets in association with a Z boson in proton-proton collisions at root s = 13 TeV is presented, based on data recorded in 2016 by the CMS experiment at the LHC corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb(-1). The measurement is performed in the lljj final state with l including electrons and muons, and the jets j corresponding to the quarks produced in the hard interaction. The measured cross section in a kinematic region defined by invariant masses m(ll) > 50 GeV, m(jj) > 120 GeV, and transverse momenta P-Tj > 25 GeV is sigma(EW) (lljj) = 534 +/- 20 (stat) fb (syst) fb, in agreement with leading-order standard model predictions. The final state is also used to perform a search for anomalous trilinear gauge couplings. No evidence is found and limits on anomalous trilinear gauge couplings associated with dimension-six operators are given in the framework of an effective field theory. The corresponding 95% confidence level intervals are -2.6 <cwww/Lambda(2) <2.6 TeV-2 and -8.4 <cw/Lambda(2) <10.1 TeV-2. The additional jet activity of events in a signal-enriched region is also studied, and the measurements are in agreement with predictions.Peer reviewe