Ethics, organ donation and tax: a proposal

Five arguments are presented in favour of the proposal that people who opt in as organ donors should receive a tax break. These arguments appeal to welfare, autonomy, fairness, distributive justice and self-ownership, respectively. Eight worries about the proposal are considered in this paper. These objections focus upon no-effect and counter-productiveness, the Titmuss concern about social meaning, exploitation of the poor, commodification, inequality and unequal status, the notion that there are better alternatives, unacceptable expense, and concerns about the veto of relatives. The paper argues that none of the objections to the proposal is very telling

Trade unions, employee share ownership and wage setting: A supply-side approach to the share economy

Employee share ownership is growing increasingly important. This paper studies employee share ownership in an economy with one monopoly union for each firm. We modify an implicit contra t model by adding dividend income to the usual wage income. Union members differ in exogenous stock endowments and choose wages under majority rule. As a result, wages are decreasing in stock endowments and a skewed distribution of stoc k-capital leads to higher wages and lower employment. Switching to a more equal distribution can increase employment and production. An optimal portfolio rule suggests that macroeconomic gains can be made from limiting the diversification of portfolios. Last, we show how the transfer of shares to employees can be made economically feasible.Trade unions; profit sharing; distribuion; voting; portfolio choice

A transition in the Dutch wastewater system? : The struggle between discourses and with lock-ins

Recently, calls have increased for a paradigm shift or transition towards resource recovery and a circular economy in the Dutch wastewater system. However, we have observed diverging interpretations on the nature of the transition. This reflects the political environment of sustainability transitions: political struggle emerges over the definition of problems, futures and strategies to be used. In order to help clarify the emerging debate and identify political choices, we conducted a discourse analysis. We identified three discourses that reveal some of the political choices to be made. One discourse is becoming dominant and focusses on optimising the large-scale infrastructure, market development and legislative changes. The discourse draws on the existing infrastructure and current political-economic institutions, which gives it an advantage in becoming dominant. Our findings also suggest that this discourse shapes a transition pathway that is characterised by lock-in effects and, at most, incremental changes instead of a fundamental shift in the established Dutch wastewater system

Private Contracting and Corporate Governance: Evidence from the Provision of Tag-Along Rights in an Emerging Market

We analyse controlling owners incentive to provide non-controlling owners with better protection against self-dealing through offering new shares with tag-along rights, - the private contracting alternative to equal price provision in takeover legislation. Our model identifies two counteracting effects: The benefit of offering tag-along rights is the anti-expropriation effect which makes it harder for new owners to finance a takeover through expropriation of minority owners. The cost is the rent transfer effect which implies that there is a wealth transfer from controlling owners to existing minority owners. Empirically we test the implications of the model using data on equity offerings in Brazil. Consistent with the theoretical predictions we find that offering tag-along rights increases market value of a firm and that companies offering shares with tag-along rights offer larger claims, have less disproportional ownership structure, have a smaller group of existing minority shareholders and are more likely to issue new shares. The paper, thus, find strong support for private contracting being an important alternative governance mechanism to legal protection of investors.Private contracting, Corporate governance, Emerging markets, Tag-along rights

The predicted secondary structure of the G-type glutamineamidotransferase is compatible with TEM-barrel topology

Glutamine amidotransferase (GAT) subunits or domains catalyze an important partial reaction in many complex biosynthetic reactions. The structure of one member of the F-type GATs is known, but the structure of the unrelated G-type is still unknown. Because many protein sequences are available for anthranilate synthase component II (product of the trpG gene), we have predicted its average secondary structure by a joint prediction method [Niermann and Kirschner (1991a) Protein Engng, 4, 359-370]. The predicted eight β-strands and seven α-helices follow an 8-fold cyclic repetition of a β-strand-loop-α-helix-loop module with helix α7 missing. This pattern of secondary structure suggests that the G-type GAT domain has an 8-fold βα-barrel topology, as found first in triose phosphate isomerase (TIM-barrel). This model is supported by the location of known catalytically essential residues in loops between (β-strands and α-helices. Evidence from published sequencing and mutational studies on selected members of the GAT superfamily (carbamoyl phosphate, imidazoleglycerol phosphate, GMP and CTP synthases) support both the secondary structure prediction and the TIM-barrel topolog

Improving the prediction of secondary structure of -TIM-barrel— enzymes

The information contained in aligned sets of homologous protein sequences should improve the score of secondary structure prediction. Seven different enzymes having the (β/α)8 or TIM-barrel fold were used to optimize the prediction with regard to this class of enzymes. The α-helix, β-strand and loop propensities of the Garnier—Osguthorpe—Robson method were averaged at aligned residue positions, leading to a significant improvement over the average score obtained from single sequences. The increased accuracy correlates with the average sequence variability of the aligned set. Further improvements were obtained by using the following averaged properties as weights for the averaged state propensities: amphipathic moment and α-helix; hydropathy and β-strand; chain flexibility and loop. The clustering of conserved residues at the C-terminal ends of the 13-strands was used as an additional positive weight for β-strand propensity and increased the prediction of otherwise unpredicted β-strands decisively. The automatic weighted prediction method identifies >95% of the secondary structure elements of the set of seven TIM-barrel enzyme

Forms of stateness in the JSRP’s research sites

Tom Kirk and Kasper Hoffmann draw on the JSRP’s research to argue that calls to tackle the root causes of conflict and insecurity in many ‘fragile’ and ‘failing’ regions require understanding the multiple ways the state is often present as both an idea and a power-broker

From symmetry-protected topological order to Landau order

Focusing on the particular case of the discrete symmetry group Z_N x Z_N, we establish a mapping between symmetry protected topological phases and symmetry broken phases for one-dimensional spin systems. It is realized in terms of a non-local unitary transformation which preserves the locality of the Hamiltonian. We derive the image of the mapping for various phases involved, including those with a mixture of symmetry breaking and topological protection. Our analysis also applies to topological phases in spin systems with arbitrary continuous symmetries of unitary, orthogonal and symplectic type. This is achieved by identifying suitable subgroups Z_N x Z_N in all these groups, together with a bijection between the individual classes of projective representations.Comment: 8 pages, 1 table. Version v2 corresponds to the published version. It includes minor revisions and additional reference