The Simple Economics of Extortion: Evidence from Trucking in Aceh

This paper tests whether the behavior of corrupt officials is consistent with standard industrial organization theory. We designed a study in which surveyors accompanied truck drivers on 304 trips along their regular routes in two Indonesian provinces, during which we directly observed over 6,000 illegal payments to traffic police, military officers, and attendants at weigh stations. Using plausibly exogenous changes in the number of police and military checkpoints, we show that market structure affects the level of illegal payments, finding evidence consistent with double-marginalization and hold-up along a chain of vertical monopolies. Furthermore, we document that the illegal nature of these payments does not prevent corrupt officials from extracting additional revenue using complex pricing schemes, including third-degree price discrimination and a menu of two-part tariffs. Our findings illustrate the importance of considering the market structure for bribes when designing anti-corruption policy.

Local conflict and development projects in Indonesia : part of the problem or part of a solution ?

Drawing on an integrated mixed methods research design, the authors explore the dynamics of the development-conflict nexus in rural Indonesia, and the specific role of development projects in shaping the nature, extent, and trajectories of"everyday"conflicts. They find that projects that give inadequate attention to dispute resolution mechanisms in many cases stimulate local conflict, either through the injection of development resources themselves or less directly by exacerbating preexisting tensions in target communities. But projects that have explicit and accessible procedures for managing disputes arising from the development process are much less likely to lead to violent outcomes. The authors argue that such projects are more successful in addressing project-related conflicts because they establish direct procedures (such as forums, facilitators, and complaints mechanisms) for dealing with tensions as they arise. These direct mechanisms are less successful in addressing broader social tensions elicited by, or external to, the development process, though program mechanisms can ameliorate conflict indirectly through changing norms and networks of interaction.Post Conflict Reintegration,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Education and Society,Rural Poverty Reduction,Population Policies

Local conflict in Indonesia : Measuring incidence and identifying patterns

The widespread presence of local conflict characterizes many developing countries such as Indonesia. Outbreaks of violent conflict not only have direct costs for lives, livelihoods, and material property, but may also have the potential to escalate further. Recent studies on large-scale"headline"conflicts have tended to exclude the systematic consideration of local conflict, in large part due to the absence of representative data at low levels of geographic specification. This paper is a first attempt to correct for that. We evaluate a unique dataset compiled by the Indonesian government, the periodic Village Potential Statistics (PODES), which seeks to map conflict across all of Indonesia's 69,000 villages/neighborhoods. The data confirm that conflict is prevalent beyond well publicized"conflict regions,"and that it can be observed across the archipelago. The data report largely violent conflict in 7.1 percent of Indonesia's lowest administrative tier (rural desa and urban kelurahan). Integrating examples from qualitative fieldwork, we assess issues in the measurement of local conflict for quantitative analysis, and adopt an empirical framework to examine potential associations with poverty, inequality, shocks, ethnic and religious diversity/inequality, and community-level associational and security arrangements. The quantitative analysis shows positive correlations between local conflict and unemployment, inequality, natural disasters, changes in sources of incomes, and clustering of ethnic groups within villages. The institutional variables indicate that the presence of places of worship is associated with less conflict, while the presence of religious groups and traditional culture (adat) institutions are associated with conflict. We conclude by suggesting future areas of research, notably on the role of group inequality and inference, and suggest ways to improve the measurement of conflict in the village census.Services&Transfers to Poor,Post Conflict Reconstruction,Public Health Promotion,Education and Society,Peace&Peacekeeping,Post Conflict Reconstruction,Education and Society,Social Conflict and Violence,Rural Poverty Reduction,Services&Transfers to Poor

Alien Registration- Barron, Patrick (Farmingdale, Kennebec County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/29129/thumbnail.jp

Palynological Interpretations of Deep Sea Drilling Projects Cores in the Gulf of Mexico and Bahamian Platform

One hundred drill core samples were from Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Sites 94, 98, and 540 were investigated for their palynological contents (pollen, spores, acritarchs, dinoflagellate cysts, and dispersed organic matter) to infer the paleoenvironmental and paleoceanographic history of the Gulf of Mexico and the Bahamian Platform during the middle Eocene to middle Miocene interval. At Sites 94 and 540, abundant dinoflagellate cysts (chiefly Operculodinium centrocarpum, Lingulodinium machaerophorum, Impagidinium sp., Nematosphaeropsis sp., and Spiniferites spp.) were used as paleoenvironmental indicators. Two alternating palynofacies assemblages were identified from dispersed organic matter analysis: terrestrially influenced assemblage A and marine dominated assemblage B. The palynofacies and dinoflagellate cyst data indicated shallowing from oceanic to inner neritic environment from the Eocene to early Oligocene as global sea level dropped. Alternating neritic and oceanic depositional conditions prevailed during the late Oligocene and the Miocene. Palynomorphs recovered from these deep-water DSDP Sites were evaluated against 11 published studies of the Gulf coastal region and northern Colombia to infer the paleovegetation and/or depositional conditions on the adjacent landmasses. The drill core samples from Site 98 on the Atlantic side of the Bahamian Platform yielded a low diversity palynomorph assemblage. Terrestrially derived palynomorphs were extremely rare, and the dominance of amorphous organic matter indicated is consistent with deposition in marine environments. --Abstract, page iv

Building Excellence in Scientific Teaching: How Important Is the Evidence for Evidence-Based Teaching when Training STEM TAs?

Evidence-based teaching practices (EBTP)—like inquiry-based learning, inclusive teaching, and active learning (AL)—have been shown to benefit all students, especially women, first-generation, and traditionally minoritized students in science fields. However, little research has focused on how best to train teaching assistants (TAs) to use EBTP or on which components of professional development are most important. We designed and experimentally manipulated a series of presemester workshops on AL, dividing subjects into two groups. The Activity group worked in teams to learn an AL technique with a workshop facilitator. These teams then modeled the activity, with their peers acting as students. In the Evidence group, facilitators modeled the activities with all TAs acting as students. We used a mixed-methods research design (specifically, concurrent triangulation) to interpret pre- and postworkshop and postsemester survey responses. We found that Evidence group participants reported greater knowledge of AL after the workshop than Activity group participants. Activity group participants, on the other hand, found all of the AL techniques more useful than Evidence group participants. These results suggest that actually modeling AL techniques made them more useful to TAs than simply experiencing the same techniques as students—even with the accompanying evidence. This outcome has broad implications for how we provide professional development sessions to TAs and potentially to faculty

Assessing Public Health Burden Associated with Exposure to Ambient Black Carbon in the United States

Black carbon (BC) is a significant component of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution, which has been linked to a series of adverse health effects, in particular premature mortality. Recent scientific research indicates that BC also plays an important role in climate change. Therefore, controlling black carbon emissions provides an opportunity for a double dividend. This study quantifies the national burden of mortality and morbidity attributable to exposure to ambient BC in the United States (US). We use GEOS–Chem, a global 3-D model of atmospheric composition to estimate the 2010 annual average BC levels at 0.5 x 0.667° resolution, and then re-grid to 12-km grid resolution across the continental US. Using PM2.5 mortality risk coefficient drawn from the American Cancer Society cohort study, the numbers of deaths due to BC exposure were estimated for each 12-km grid, and then aggregated to the county, state and national level. Given evidence that BC particles may pose a greater risk on human health than other components of PM2.5, we also conducted sensitivity analysis using BC-specific risk coefficients drawn from recent literature. We estimated approximately 14,000 deaths to result from the 2010 BC levels, and hundreds of thousands of illness cases, ranging from hospitalizations and emergency department visits to minor respiratory symptoms. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the total BC-related mortality could be even significantly larger than the above mortality estimate. Our findings indicate that controlling BC emissions would have substantial benefits for public health in the US