The Political Economy of International Migration in a Ricardo-Viner Model

Determinants of national policies towards immigration are analysed in the context of an economy open to international trade. Arguments for the existence of an "immigration surplus" are reviewed and followed by an interpretation of the principal contributions of the political economy literature in a Ricardo-Viner model in a direct democracy framework. A median voter model is grafted on several variants of the specific-factor open-economy model to discuss several recent changes in attitudes towards immigration (a stiffened stance, especially towards the unskilled) and in national policies ("melting-pot" vs. guest-worker programs, coexistence of legal and illegal immigrants, lax enforcement towards illegals).

Hierarchical modelling of species sensitivity distribution: development and application to the case of diatoms exposed to several herbicides

The Species Sensitivity Distribution (SSD) is a key tool to assess the ecotoxicological threat of contaminant to biodiversity. It predicts safe concentrations for a contaminant in a community. Widely used, this approach suffers from several drawbacks: i)summarizing the sensitivity of each species by a single value entails a loss of valuable information about the other parameters characterizing the concentration-effect curves; ii)it does not propagate the uncertainty on the critical effect concentration into the SSD; iii)the hazardous concentration estimated with SSD only indicates the threat to biodiversity, without any insight about a global response of the community related to the measured endpoint. We revisited the current SSD approach to account for all the sources of variability and uncertainty into the prediction and to assess a global response for the community. For this purpose, we built a global hierarchical model including the concentration-response model together with the distribution law for the SSD. Working within a Bayesian framework, we were able to compute an SSD taking into account all the uncertainty from the original raw data. From model simulations, it is also possible to extract a quantitative indicator of a global response of the community to the contaminant. We applied this methodology to study the toxicity of 6 herbicides to benthic diatoms from Lake Geneva, measured from biomass reduction

Developmental toxic effects of ethylbenzene or toluene alone and in combination with butyl acetate in rats after inhalation exposure

First, the developmental toxic potential of n-butyl acetate (BA) was examined in Sprague-Dawley rats following whole body inhalation exposure, 6 h day-1, from day 6 to 20 of gestation, at concentrations of 0, 500, 1000, 2000 and 3000 ppm. Maternal toxicity was evidenced by significant decreases in body weight gain at 2000 and 3000 ppm, and by reduced food consumption at 1000 ppm and higher concentrations. The effects on prenatal development were limited to a significant decrease in fetal weight at 3000 ppm. Thus, inhaled BA was not a selective developmental toxicant. In the second part of this study, the developmental toxic effects of simultaneous exposures to ethylbenzene (EB) and BA, or to toluene (TOL) and BA were evaluated. Pregnant rats were administered EB (0, 250 or 1000 ppm) and BA (0, 500 or 1500 ppm), or TOL (0, 500 or 1500 ppm) and BA (0, 500, 1500 ppm), separately and in combinations, using a 2 × 2 factorial design. The maternal weight gain was reduced after exposure to 1000 ppm EB, to 1500 ppm BA, or to 1500 ppm TOL, either alone or in binary combinations. A significant reduction of fetal weight was associated with exposure to 1000 ppm EB alone, to either mixtures of EB with BA, or to 1500 ppm TOL alone or combined with BA at either concentration. No embryolethal or teratogenic effects were observed whatever the exposure. There was no evidence of interaction between EB and BA or between TOL and BA in causing maternal or developmental effects. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd