Canada-Wheat : discrimination, non-commercial considerations, and state trading enterprises

Statutory marketing boards that have exclusive authority to purchase domestic production, sell for export, and set purchase and sales prices of commodities are a type of state trading enterprise that is subject to World Trade Organization disciplines. This paper assesses a recent dispute brought by the United States against Canada, alleging that WTO rules require state trading enterprises to operate solely in accordance with commercial considerations and that the Canadian government did not require the Canadian Wheat Board to do so. The panel and Appellate Body found that the primary discipline of the WTO regarding state trading enterprises was nondiscrimination, and that operating on the basis of"commercial considerations"was not an independent obligation. Instead, WTO disciplines regarding the pricing behavior of state trading enterprises use a"commercial considerations"test as a possible indicator of discrimination. Although a significant degree of price discrimination is observed in the case of Canadian wheat exports, there are economic arguments why this might also be pursued by a private, profit maximizing firm.Trade Law,Markets and Market Access,Economic Theory&Research,Access to Markets,Access to Finance

The Customary International Law Supergame: Order and Law

Customary international law is an enigma. It is produced by the decentralized actions of states, and it generally lacks centralized enforcement mechanisms. Political science realists and some rationalist legal scholars argue that customary international law cannot affect state behavior: that it is “epiphenomenal.” This article develops a model of an n-player prisoner’s dilemma in the customary international law context that shows that it is plausible that states would comply with customary international law under certain circumstances. These circumstances relate to: (i) the relative value of cooperation versus defection, (ii) the number of states effectively involved, (iii) the extent to which increasing the number of states involved increases the value of cooperation or the detriments of defection, including whether the particular issue has characteristics of a commons problem, a public good, or a network, (iv) the information available to the states involved regarding compliance and defection, (v) the relative patience of states in valuing the benefits of long-term cooperation compared to short-term defection, (vi) the expected duration of interaction, (vii) the frequency of interaction, and (viii) whether there are also bilateral relationships or other multilateral relationships between the involved states. One implication of this model is to lend credence to customary international law. From a research standpoint, this model identifies a number of parameters for which data may be developed in order to test the model. From a policy standpoint, this model shows what types of contexts, including malleable institutional features, may affect the ability of states to reach stable and efficient equilibria in their customary international law relations.

Who Owns the Past? Rapanui Points of View

The Mayor of Rapa Nuj, Petero Edmund, sticks his fingers in his ears. "They're like this!" he how me, describing the Chilean government's refusal to listen. If Chilean officials Iistened, they would hear the Mayor telling them to stop parceling out Rapa Nui land. "The land is part of our culture," he says. It is to preserve and build upon the culture that he wants Rapanui control of the land to be kept as a park, not broken up into individual homesteads. This is only one point of view on the island, but everyone is talking about the land. As the Mayor put it, "Yes, even the Council of Elders is fighting among themselves , which is proper to our spirit around the island there is always some kind of fight. But if you ask any native on the island, what is your objective, what is your point of view about strengthening your position as a native, everyone will agree on the land. No land, no culture. No land, no identity."</p

An Empirical Assessment of the Performance and Competitive Effects of Los Angeles County Charter Schools

This paper evaluates the performance of charter elementary schools in Los Angeles County in three ways. First, I compare charter school performance to public school performance, controlling for a number of key characteristics. Second, I study the characteristics that appear to influence charter school success as compared to public school success. Third, I study the “competitive effect” of charter schools, examining how geographical proximity to charter schools affects the performance of traditional public schools. I find evidence that, ceteris paribus, traditional public schools score higher than charter schools, except in majority African American schools. Further, I find that the opening of charter schools affects nearby traditional public schools negatively

Understanding the Influence of Brand Information in Online Purchase Decisions for Health Products

In 2016, over 6% of all retail spending at health and personal care firms was done through an electronic medium. Purchasing health products online provides an interesting challenge to consumers, as not only do consumers often have limited knowledge about which health goods that will best suit their needs (as these tend to be experience goods bought infrequently), but they also face the additional challenge of having to discern the quality of a good only based on its online listing. Hence in this context, a signal, such as the brand information of a good, may be useful in identifying its quality. Additionally, given that online purchasing decisions occur in private, we can rule out some other explanations for consumers choosing branded products, such as reputational concerns. Using data from a health goods retailer operating through Amazon.com from 2013 and 2014, we test whether brand information in the product’s listing influences the demand for health-related goods. We find that having branded information displayed in the product’s listing photo significantly increases the probability consumers consider a health good in their choice set (measured as page views) but not the demand for the goods, except for the case of bandages and dressings

Avoiding The Ask: A Field Experiment on Altruism, Empathy, and Charitable Giving

What triggers giving? We explore this in a randomized natural field experiment during the Salvation Army's annual campaign. Solicitors were at one or both of two main entrances to a supermarket, making the solicitation either easy or difficult to avoid. Additionally, solicitors were either silent, or asked "please give" to passersby. We observed over 17,000 passings over four days, and found dramatic avoidance of the solicitors, but only during a direct ask. Furthermore, asking increased donations 75%. Across all conditions, seeking the solicitor was exceedingly rare. The results do not support static views of altruism, such as inequity aversion, and instead highlight the importance of social cues and psychological features of the giver-receiver interaction. We argue that avoidance could evidence a lack of altruism or self-control strategy to deal with empathic reflexes to give.

suPAR and Team Nephrology

Primary focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) accounts for nearly 10 % of patients who require renal replacement therapy. Elevated circulating levels of soluble urokinase receptor (suPAR) have been identified as a biomarker to discriminate primary FSGS from other glomerulopathies. Subsequent reports have questioned the diagnostic utility of this test. In a study in BMC Medicine, Huang et al. demonstrate that urinary soluble urokinase receptor (suPAR) excretion assists in distinguishing primary FSGS from other glomerular diseases, and that high plasma suPAR concentrations are not directly linked to a decline in glomerular filtration rate (GFR). This observation suggests that further investigation of suPAR is warranted in patients with FSGS. It should be interpreted in light of a recent report that B7-1 is expressed in the podocytes of a subset of patients with FSGS, and that blocking this molecule may represent the first successful targeted intervention for this disease. These advances highlight the rapid pace of scientific progress in the field of nephrology. Nephrologists should work together, share resources, and expedite the design of protocols to evaluate these novel biomarkers in a comprehensive and scientifically valid manner. Please see related article http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/12/81