ELECTORAL CONTRIBUTIONS AND THE COST OF UNPOPULARITY

When considering electoral campaigns, candidates receiving contributions from relatively unpopular industries should be regarded less favorably by voters that have information on the sources of funding. To offset this unpopularity effect, politicians may either demand more money for campaign advertising from these industries in order to persuade less informed voters, or shy away from unpopular contributors to avoid losing the support of the informed electorate. Our model predicts that the first effect dominates, and electoral contributions are increasing in industry unpopularity. By using U.S. House elections data and different identification strategies, we provide robust evidence in favor of our predictions

Trust in the Helth System and Covid-19 Treatment

COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe at an exponential speed, infecting millions and overwhelming even the most prepared healthcare systems. Concerns are looming that the healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are mostly unprepared to combat the virus because of limited resources. The problems in LMICs are exacerbated by the fact that citizens in these countries generally exhibit low trust in the healthcare system because of its low quality, which could trigger a number of uncooperative behaviors. In this paper, we focus on one such behavior and investigate the relationship between trust in the healthcare system and the probability of potential treatment-seeking behavior upon the appearance of the first symptoms of COVID-19. First, we provide motivating evidence from a unique national online survey administered in Armenia–a post-Soviet LMIC country. We then present results from a large-scale survey experiment in Armenia that provides causal evidence supporting the investigated relationship. Our main finding is that a more trustworthy healthcare system enhances the probability of potential treatment-seeking behavior when observing the initial symptoms

Political Narratives and the US Partisan Gender Gap

Social scientists have devoted considerable research effort to investigate the determinants of the Partisan Gender Gap (PGG), whereby US women (men) tend to exhibit more liberal (conservative) political preferences over time. Results of a survey experiment run during the COVID-19 emergency and involving 3,086 US residents show that exposing subjects to alternative narratives on the causes of the pandemic increases the PGG: relative to a baseline treatment in which no narrative manipulation is implemented, exposing subjects to either the Lab narrative (claiming that COVID-19 was caused by a lab accident in Wuhan) or the Nature narrative (according to which COVID-19 originated in the wildlife) makes women more liberal. The polarization effect documented in our experiment is magnified by the political orientation of participants' state of residence: the largest PGG effect is between men residing in Republican-leaning states and women living in Democratic-leaning states

Getting to the Roots of Long-Term Care Needs: A Regression Tree Analysis

This paper investigates the effects of individual and environmental determinants on physical and cognitive impairment of Europeans aged 50 and older using data drawn from the Survey of Health Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The aim is to understand the different paths that need-related determinants of long-term care might take across individuals. As dependent variables, we consider several measures of physical and cognitive disability which are regressed on a list of covariates which includes biological, health, behavioural, socio-demographic and early-life conditions of individuals. We adopt a methodology that combines the structure of random effects models for longitudinal data with the flexibility of a tree regression method. We show the existence of clusters in the main determinants of functional decline (physical and cognitive). Our findings are in line with the existing literature, but, at the same time, we further characterize previous evidence: 1) cognitive impairment, measured by the results of a memory test, strongly depends on educational attainments, age and respondents’ country of residence; 2) physical impairment, measured through the loss of handgrip strength, basic and instrumental activities of daily living (ADLs, IADLs) and mobility, strongly depends on health and behavioural factors

A growth model with time allocation and social participation

In this article we propose a model of growth with human capital accumulation, in which individuals allocate their time among work, education and socio-political participation. Socio-political participation, while subtracting time to education, positively affects individual’s utility; the utility function depends on both consumption and time allocated to socio-political participation. The model is expanded to include two social groups, specifically women and men, whose values and targets are different; every individual engages in socio-political activities to socially establish the values of the group she/he belongs to and his utility will be greater the more the society has values similar to those of the belonging group. The model predicts that economies with a more egualitarian presence of females and males in employment and higher population growth rates converge to a stationary state where time allocated to working activities is lower and time for education is higher. We simulate the model on some European countries with different female/male employment rates, population growth rates and capital shares. Simulations confirm the empirical evidence: European countries with a more equal presence of women and men in the labour market experience higher education attainment rates, allocate a higher proportion of time to social participation, and work, on average, a lower number of hours than countries with a lower relative proportion of females in employment

A growth model with gender inequality in employment, human capital, and socio-political participation

This paper proposes an endogenous growth model in which gender inequality in employment has an important role in explaining different development dimensions such as socio-political participation, educational attainments, and working hours, in developed countries. Our model’s predictions are in line with some stylized facts observed across European countries: more equal societies have higher socio-political participation, devote less time to work, and present higher educational attainments and rates of economic growth than less equal ones. Our model suggests that promoting female employment must be accompanied by pro-family policies in order to sustain economic growth and improve quality of life

A growth model with gender inequality in employment, human capital, and socio-political participation

This paper proposes an endogenous growth model in which gender inequality in employment has an important role in explaining different development dimensions such as socio-political participation, educational attainments, and working hours, in developed countries. Our model’s predictions are in line with some stylized facts observed across European countries: more equal societies have higher socio-political participation, devote less time to work, and present higher educational attainments and rates of economic growth than less equal ones. Our model suggests that promoting female employment must be accompanied by pro-family policies in order to sustain economic growth and improve quality of life

A growth model with time allocation and social participation

In this article we propose a model of growth with human capital accumulation, in which individuals allocate their time among work, education and socio-political participation. Socio-political participation, while subtracting time to education, positively affects individual’s utility; the utility function depends on both consumption and time allocated to socio-political participation. The model is expanded to include two social groups, specifically women and men, whose values and targets are different; every individual engages in socio-political activities to socially establish the values of the group she/he belongs to and his utility will be greater the more the society has values similar to those of the belonging group. The model predicts that economies with a more egualitarian presence of females and males in employment and higher population growth rates converge to a stationary state where time allocated to working activities is lower and time for education is higher. We simulate the model on some European countries with different female/male employment rates, population growth rates and capital shares. Simulations confirm the empirical evidence: European countries with a more equal presence of women and men in the labour market experience higher education attainment rates, allocate a higher proportion of time to social participation, and work, on average, a lower number of hours than countries with a lower relative proportion of females in employment

Narcolepsy: autoimmunity, effector T cell activation due to infection, or T cell independent, major histocompatibility complex class II induced neuronal loss?

Human narcolepsy with cataplexy is a neurological disorder, which develops due to a deficiency in hypocretin producing neurons in the hypothalamus. There is a strong association with human leucocyte antigens HLA-DR2 and HLA-DQB1*0602. The disease typically starts in adolescence. Recent developments in narcolepsy research support the hypothesis of narcolepsy being an immune-mediated disease. Narcolepsy is associated with polymorphisms of the genes encoding T cell receptor alpha chain, tumour necrosis factor alpha and tumour necrosis factor receptor II. Moreover the rate of streptococcal infection is increased at onset of narcolepsy. The hallmarks of anti-self reactions in the tissue—namely upregulation of major histocompatibility antigens and lymphocyte infiltrates—are missing in the hypothalamus. These findings are questionable because they were obtained by analyses performed many years after onset of disease. In some patients with narcolepsy autoantibodies to Tribbles homolog 2, which is expressed by hypocretin neurons, have been detected recently. Immune-mediated destruction of hypocretin producing neurons may be mediated by microglia/macrophages that become activated either by autoantigen specific CD4+ T cells or superantigen stimulated CD8+ T cells, or independent of T cells by activation of DQB1*0602 signalling. Activation of microglia and macrophages may lead to the release of neurotoxic molecules such as quinolinic acid, which has been shown to cause selective destruction of hypocretin neurons in the hypothalamu