Fiscal Policy: Lessons from the Global Crisis

The global crisis interacted heavily with fiscal policy in the run-up to the crisis, during the crisis and now in the recovery phase. Contrary to the general consensus, the paper argues that in the run-up to the crisis, fiscal policy in the advanced economies and China substantially contributed to the propagation of the global imbalances, while at the same time it reduced the fiscal space that was available to the advanced countries when the crisis occurred. On the policy response during the crisis, the paper suggests that the discretionary relaxation was a mixed blessing at best: appropriate to some extent in countries that entered the crisis with solid fiscal and current account positions, but much less, if at all, in other countries, particularly those that faced problems of public debt sustainability. Even letting the automatic stabilizers operate fully was not an option for countries in a weak fiscal position, particularly in light of the substantial downward revisions in the potential GDP level and growth rates. Looking ahead, the large deterioration in the public debt ratios resulting from the crisis will slow down output growth in the advanced economies, while also requiring painful fiscal adjustment. Emerging market economies, in general, did better in the crisis than the advanced economies, but in most of the post-transition European economies, the effects of the crisis were amplified by the pronounced external imbalances at the outset of the crisis. A majority of European post-transition countries will, therefore, also face substantial fiscal challenges in the period ahead.fiscal policy, global crisis, structural fiscal balances

Scarcity of female mates predicts regional variation in men’s and women’s sociosexual orientation across US states

Previous studies have linked regional variation in willingness to engage in uncommitted sexual relationships (i.e., sociosexual orientation) to many different socio-ecological measures, such as adult sex ratio, life expectancy, and gross domestic product. However, these studies share a number of potentially serious limitations, including reliance on a single dataset of responses aggregated by country and a failure to properly consider intercorrelations among different socio-ecological measures. We address these limitations by (1) collecting a new dataset of 4,453 American men’s and women’s sociosexual orientation scores, (2) using multilevel analyses to avoid aggregation, and (3) deriving orthogonal factors reflecting US state-level differences in the scarcity of female mates, environmental demands, and wealth. Analyses showed that the scarcity of female mates factor, but not the environmental demand or wealth factors, predicted men’s and women’s sociosexual orientation. Participants reported being less willing to engage in uncommitted sexual relationships when female mates were scarce. These results highlight the importance of scarcity of female mates for regional differences in men’s and women’s mating strategies. They also suggest that effects of wealth-related measures and environmental demands reported in previous research may be artifacts of intercorrelations among socio-ecological measures or, alternatively, do not necessarily generalize well to new datasets

Do partnered women discriminate men's faces less along the attractiveness dimension?

Romantic relationships can have positive effects on health and reproductive fitness. Given that attractive potential alternative mates can pose a threat to romantic relationships, some researchers have proposed that partnered individuals discriminate opposite-sex individuals less along the physical attractiveness dimension than do unpartnered individuals. This effect is proposed to devalue attractive (i.e., high quality) alternative mates and help maintain romantic relationships. Here we investigated this issue by comparing the effects of men's attractiveness on partnered and unpartnered women's performance on two response measures for which attractiveness is known to be important: memory for face photographs (Study 1) and the reward value of faces (Study 2). Consistent with previous research, women's memory was poorer for face photographs of more attractive men (Study 1) and more attractive men's faces were more rewarding (Study 2). However, in neither study were these effects of attractiveness modulated by women's partnership status or partnered women's reported commitment to or happiness with their romantic relationship. These results do not support the proposal that partnered women discriminate potential alternative mates along the physical attractiveness dimension less than do unpartnered women

Parasitized mates increase infection risk for partners

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Sex ratio influences the motivational salience of facial attractiveness

The sex ratio of the local population influences mating-related behaviours in many species. Recent experiments show that male-biased sex ratios increase the amount of financial resources men will invest in potential mates, suggesting that sex ratios influence allocation of mating effort in humans. To investigate this issue further, we tested for effects of cues to the sex ratio of the local population on the motivational salience of attractiveness in own-sex and opposite-sex faces. We did this using an effort-based key-press task, in which the motivational salience of facial attractiveness was assessed in samples of faces in which the ratio of male to female images was manipulated. The motivational salience of attractive opposite-sex, but not own-sex, faces was greater in the own-sex-biased (high competition for mates) than in the opposite-sex-biased (low competition for mates) condition. Moreover, this effect was not modulated by participant sex. These results present new evidence that sex ratio influences human mating-related behaviours. They also present the first evidence that the perceived sex ratio of the local population may modulate allocation of mating effort in women, as well as men

Age and Huddling as Determinants of Metabolic Rate in Grasshopper Mice (Onychomys leucogaster)

The metabolic rates of grasshopper mice (Onychomys leucogaster) were determined every third day from birth to adulthood. Metabolic rates were quantitated by measuring oxygen consumption in an open circuit system. There was a rapid fall in oxygen consumption from the third day after birth until the ninth day. Mice which were housed separately assumed a constant metabolic rate at an earlier age than mice which were kept with litter-mates. The greatest increases in metabolism occurred when immature mice were separated from litter-mates for oxygen consumption determinations. It is concluded that huddling plays an important role in reducing the metabolic rate of young grasshopper mice

Stable Matchings for the Room-mates Problem

We show that, given two matchings for a room-mates problem of which say the second is stable, and given a non-empty subset of agents S if (a) no agent in S prefers the first matching to the second, and (b) no agent in S and his room-mate in S under the second matching prefer each other to their respective room-mates in the first matching, then no room-mate of an agent in S prefers the second matching to the first. This result is a strengthening of a result originally due to Knuth (1976). In a paper by Sasaki and Toda (1992) it is shown that if a marriage problem has more than one stable matchings, then given any one stable matching, it is possible to add agents and thereby obtain exactly one stable matching, whose restriction over the original set of agents, coincides with the given stable matching. We are able to extend this result here to the domain of room-mates problems. We also extend a result due to Roth and Sotomayor (1990) originally established for two-sided matching problems in the following manner: If in a room-mates problem, the number of agents increases, then given any stable matching for the old problem and any stable matching for the new one, there is at least one agent who is acceptable to this new agent who prefers the new matching to the old one and his room-mate under the new matching prefers the old matching to the new one. Sasaki and Toda (1992) shows that the solution correspondence which selects the set of all stable matchings, satisfies Pareto Optimality, Anonymity, Consistency and Converse Consistency on the domain of marriage problems. We show here that if a solution correspondence satisfying Consistency and Converse Consistency agrees with the solution correspondence comprising stable matchings for all room-mates problems involving four or fewer agents, then it must agree with the solution correspondence comprising stable matchings for all room-mates problems.Stable matchings, Room-mate problem