Decentralization as a disincentive for transnational terror? System stability versus government efficiency: an empirical test

Using panel data for a maximum of 109 countries over the years 1976-2000, we empirically analyze the impact of decentralization on the occurrence of transnational terror. Our results show that expenditure decentralization robustly reduces the number of terror events in a country, while political decentralization has no impact. The effects of decentralization do not transmit through government efficiency and effectiveness, in line with the system stability hypothesis of Frey and Luechinger (2004).Terrorism, Decentralization, Democracy, Governance quality, Government effectiveness

Government Decentralization as a Disincentive for Transnational Terror? An Empirical Analysis

Using panel data for a maximum of 109 countries over the years 1976-2000, we empirically analyze the impact of decentralization on the occurrence of transnational terror. Our results show that expenditure decentralization reduces the number of transnational terror events in a country, while political decentralization has no impact. These results are robust to the choice of control variables and method of estimation.terrorism, decentralization, federalism, governance quality, government effectiveness

Government decentralization as a disincentive for transnational terror? An empirical analysis

Using panel data for a maximum of 109 countries over the years 1976-2000, we empirically analyze the impact of decentralization on the occurrence of transnational terror. Our results show that expenditure decentralization reduces the number of transnational terror events in a country, while political decentralization has no impact. These results are robust to the choice of control variables and method of estimation.Terrorism; Decentralization; Federalism; Governance quality; Government effectiveness

Formal Institutions and Subjective Well-Being: Revisiting the Cross-Country Evidence

A long tradition in economics explores the association between the quality of formal institutions and economic performance. The literature on the relationship between such institutions and happiness is, however, rather limited, and inconclusive. In this paper, we revisit the findings from recent cross-country studies on the institutions-happiness association. Our findings suggest that their conclusions are qualitatively rather insensitive to the specific measure of ‘happiness’ used, while the associations between formal institutions and subjective well-being differ among poor and rich countries. Separating different types of institutional quality, we find that in developing countries the effects of economic-judicial institutions on happiness dominate those of political institutions, while analyses restricted to middle- and high-income countries show strong support for an additional beneficial effect of political institutions. Our results bear important implications which we discuss in the concluding section of the paper. This paper is the 2010-update of Bjørnskov, Dreher, Fischer (2008), Formal Institutions and Subjective Well-Being: Revisiting the Cross-Country Evidence, Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 699, Stockholm School of Economics.Happiness; life satisfaction; well-being; quality of life; institutions; democracy; rule of law; political constraints; policy implications

Formal Institutions and Subjective Well-Being: Revisiting the Cross-Country Evidence.

A long tradition in economics explores the association between the quality of formal institutions and economic performance. The literature on the relationship between such institutions and happiness is, however, rather limited. In this paper, we revisit the findings from recent cross-country studies on the institutions-happiness association. Our findings suggest that the conclusions reached by previous studies are fairly sensitive to the specific measure of ‘happiness’ used. In addition, the results indicate that the welfare effects of policies may differ across phases of a country’s economic development. This bears important policy implications which we discuss in the concluding section of the paper.Happiness; Well-Being; institutions; policy implications; democracy; rule of law; government efficiency

Cross-Country Determinants of Life Satisfaction:Exploring Different Determinants across Groups inSociety

This paper explores a wide range of cross-country determinants of life satisfaction exploiting adatabase of 90,000 observations in 70 countries. We distinguish four groups of aggregate variablesas potential determinants of satisfaction: political, economic, institutional, and human developmentand culture. We use ordered probit to investigate the importance of these variables on individual lifesatisfaction and test the robustness of our results with Extreme Bounds Analysis. The results showthat only a small number of factors, such as openness, business climate, postcommunism, thenumber of chambers in parliament, Christian majority, and infant mortality robustly influence lifesatisfaction across countries while the importance of many variables suggested in the previousliterature is not confirmed. This remains largely true when the analysis splits national populationsaccording to gender, income and political orientation also.Life Satisfaction, Happiness, Institutions, Extreme Bounds Analysis

The bigger the better? Evidence of the effect of government size on life satisfaction around the world

This paper empirically analyzes the question whether government involvement in the economy is conducive or detrimental to life satisfaction in a cross-section of 74 countries. This provides a test of a longstanding dispute between standard neoclassical economic theory, which predicts that government plays an unambiguously positive role for individuals’ quality of life, and public choice theory, that was developed to understand why governments often choose excessive involvement and regulation, thereby harming voters’ quality of life. Our results show that life satisfaction decreases with higher government spending. This negative impact of the government is stronger in countries with a leftwing median voter. It is alleviated by government effectiveness – but only in countries where the state sector is already small.Life satisfaction, Government

Chronic cough due to occupational factors

Within the large variety of subtypes of chronic cough, either defined by their clinical or pathogenetic causes, occupational chronic cough may be regarded as one of the most preventable forms of the disease. Next to obstructive airway diseases such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which are sometimes concomitant with chronic cough, this chronic airway disease gains importance in the field of occupational medicine since classic fiber-related occupational airway diseases will decrease in the future. Apart from acute accidents and incidental exposures which may lead to an acute form of cough, there are numerous sources for the development of chronic cough within the workplace. Over the last years, a large number of studies has focused on occupational causes of respiratory diseases and it has emerged that chronic cough is one of the most prevalent work-related airway diseases. Best-known examples of occupations related to the development of cough are coal miners, hard-rock miners, tunnel workers, or concrete manufacturing workers. As chronic cough is often based on a variety of non-occupational factors such as tobacco smoke, a distinct separation into either occupational or personally -evoked can be difficult. However, revealing the occupational contribution to chronic cough and to the symptom cough in general, which is the commonest cause for the consultation of a physician, can significantly lead to a reduction of the socioeconomic burden of the disease

Dissolution Kinetics of Iron Carbonate, Illite and Labradorite – CO2-Saline Fluid-mineral Experiments within the GaMin’11 Inter-laboratory Comparison Exercise

AbstractExperiments to investigate individual CO2-brine-mineral interactions were designed to provide dissolution kinetics for rock-forming minerals. Separates of an iron carbonate, a clay mineral and a feldspar mineral were stored in flexible Titanium Grade-2 cells together with 2M NaCl brine and pure CO2 at 80°C and 20 (30) MPa for one (iron carbonate), two (clay) and three (feldspar) weeks, respectively. The carbonate separate consists of 96.3±3.2 wt% iron carbonate and 3.7±0.8 wt% quartz with the iron carbonate phase being composed of 72.3±1.4 wt% siderite and 27.7±1.2 wt% ankerite. During the experiments, siderite abundance increased to 83.3±1.5 wt%, while that of ankerite decreased to 16.7±1.4 wt%. The average empirical formula of untreated and treated siderite is Fe0.8Mg0.1Mn0.1CO3, that of untreated ankerite changed slightly from (Ca1.0Mg0.2Mn0.1Fe0.7)(CO3)2 to (Ca0.9Mg0.3Mn0.1Fe0.7)(CO3)2 during CO2 exposure. Fluid data obtained during these experiments show similar behavior for Ca2+ and Mg2+, as well as Fe2+ and Mn2+, respectively. The clay separate initially consists of 84.2±6.9 wt% illite, 11.9±0.4 wt% orthoclase and 3.9±0.2 wt% quartz with untreated illite actually being an illite-smectite mixed-layer mineral composed of 87.2±1.5 wt% illite and 12.8±1.5 wt% Ca-smectite. During the experiments using the clay separate it was found that the composition changed to 88.3±7.8 wt% illite, 9.2±0.5 wt% orthoclase, and 2.5±0.2 wt% quartz, with CO2-treated illite now consisting of 89.0±1.7 wt% illite and 10.5±1.6 wt% Ca-smectite.Fluid data show, besides others, increase Ca2+ concentrations over time. Analyses of the feldspar separate reveal pure labradorite with a stoichiometric composition of Na0.5-0.6Ca0.4-0.5Al1.3-1.6Si2.4-2.6O8. During labradorite exposure experiments cation brine concentrations (e.g. Ca2+, Ba2+ and Al3+) increased. Based on the acquired geochemical data sets, the experiments using individual mineral separates indicate (i) dissolution of ankerite and stable siderite, (ii) preferred dissolution of the Ca-smectite component out of the illite-smectite mixed-layer mineral, and (iii) dissolution of labradorite