Does respondent reticence affect the results of corruption surveys ? evidence from the world bank enterprise survey for Nigeria

A potential concern with survey-based data on corruption is that respondents may not be fully candid in their responses to sensitive questions. If reticent respondents are less likely to admit to involvement in corrupt acts, and if the proportion of reticent respondents varies across groups of interest, comparisons of reported corruption across those groups can be misleading. This paper implements a variant on random response techniques that allows for identification of reticent respondents in the World Bank’s Enterprise Survey for Nigeria fielded in 2008 and 2009. The authors find that 13.1 percent of respondents are highly likely to be reticent, and that these reticent respondents admit to sensitive acts at a significantly lower rate than possibly candid respondents when survey questions are worded in a way that implies personal wrongdoing on the part of the respondent.Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,E-Business,Social Analysis,Social Accountability,Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress

Institutions and Firms in Transition Economies

Prepared for the Handbook Of New Institutional Economics, this chapter focuses on how the NIE has been used to understand transition and how the experience of transition can help inform the NIE. It first shows that the NIE, as an analytical tool, hardly played any role at all in early transition, but that strategies of transition might have been very different had they embodied the lessons of the NIE. Institutional lacunae are now presumed to underlie the deep recessions in the first post-communist years. Subsequently, however, institutional construction has been quick. This chapter presents evidence on the speed of construction and on variations across different types of institutions. It also examines the reactions of firms to the new institutions. Firm adjustment is slower than institutional construction. The contrast between law's use in transactions and problems in corporate governance suggests that complementarities between institutions are important and that new institutions cannot quickly negate the effects of past privatization policies. These conclusions reverberate with the process of Chinese reforms, which relied on transitional institutions and which had characteristics that would seem familiar to a practitioner of the NIE. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the lessons from transition for the NIE. The destruction of even very poor institutions can be costly. Institutional construction can proceed very quickly when there is consensus on change and the process of institutional development is supply driven. At the same time, increases in national income can lag institutional development, if firms are slow to react, which will especially be the case if the new institutions are far removed from existing ones, as is likely when changes are supply driven.At present, there is no generally accepted accounting of the institutional strengths and weaknesses of the transition economies. The first goal of the paper is to fill this gap by assessing current levels of institutional development. The second is to examine which types of institutional mechanisms make relatively strong contributions. Extensive empirical evidence shows that institutional quality in transition countries is roughly as expected given per capita incomes. Institutions are improving continuously. Given prevailing assumptions that the institutional situation is dismal, the developments giving rise to this surprising finding must be investigated more fully. This investigation begins by cataloging the mechanisms that could have improved institutional indexes. Then, evidence is examined on the relative strengths of each of these mechanisms. Formal institutions have contributed more than informal ones. The largest contributions have come from formal institutions separate from the state administrative structure. Political institutions, legal systems, and independent governmental agencies have been important.Institutions, transition, enterprises, firm boundaries, legal systems, transactional governance, corporate governance, China

Collective migration of epithelial sheets

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Biological Engineering, 2009.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-234).The varied movements of the epithelium play vital roles in the development and renewal of complex tissues, from the separation of tissues in the early embryo, to homeostasis in the adult. Their movement is intricately connected to their proper functioning as selective barriers of the intestinal mucosae, as well re-epithelialization in the healing of wounds. Yet, considering their ubiquity and relevance, the basic origin of the collective motion of sheets has eluded a clear and quantitative interpretation in physical terms, prohibited by the lack of understanding of the relationship between motility, cell-cell contact, and their mediation by the mechanical properties of the substratum to which they adhere. Therefore, within this context, this thesis defines the prerequisites for both equilibrium and non-equilibrium coordinated cell motion. The timescales and lengthscales of the in vitro migration of an epithelial monolayer were calculated and compared under imposed constraints designed to mimic various states of in vivo epithelia. These constraints include assays that recreate the wound response of the epithelium such as what is seen in the cornea and epidermis, by unequivocally separating the influence of free space from cell damage in the induction of coordinated motion. The motion of the epithelium was further explored by the generation of gradients that reproduce asymmetry in the capacity for cells to migrate, divide, or undergo apoptosis, such as what is found along the crypt-villus axis of the intestine. Finally, as the epithelium adheres and migrates against the basal lamina, a substrate of uncertain in vivo mechanical properties, we explored the contribution of substrate viscoelasticity to the dynamics of coordinated migration. Parameterized this way, multiple modes of motility emerge, each distinct dynamically, phenotypically, and in their dependence on cell-cell contact.by Michael Peter Murrell.Ph.D

Swimming in Deep Waters. A Response to A Review of \u3cem\u3eTeaching as a Moral Practice\u3c/em\u3e

The authors respond to a review of their book, Teaching as a Moral Practice: Defining, Developing, and Assessing Dispositions. The authors emphasize a vision of shared commitments for quality teaching whereby teacher-educators instill and nurture the wisdom and virtue that a moral teacher must possess in order to teach in a variety of circumstances where clear-cut answers do not exist. In addition, teacher-educators help teachers discern how, in that context, they should enact particular knowledge, skills, and commitments to reach desired ends. The key to enact this vision of teaching as a shared, moral practice is critical colleagueship

Law, Relationship, and Private Enforcement: Transactional Strategies of Russian Enterprise

We examine how Russian enterprises do business with one another, focusing on the strategies used to obtain efficiency and predictability in their transactions. Using survey data, the paper analyzes the relative importance of relational contracting, self-enforcement, enterprise networks, private security firms, administrative institutions, and courts. Enterprise-to-enterprise negotiations are preferred, but courts are used when disputes resist resolution through negotiation. Consistently, little evidence suggests enterprises resort to private enforcement, indicating overstatement in the supposed connection between weakness in law and the mafia's rise. Legacies of the old administrative enforcement mechanisms are few, although enterprise networks from Soviet days remain resilient.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39462/3/wp72.pd

Draft genome sequence of Methyloferula stellata AR4, an obligate methanotroph possessing only a soluble methane monooxygenase

Methyloferula stellata AR4 is an aerobic acidophilic methanotroph, which, in contrast to most known methanotrophs but similar to Methylocella spp., possesses only a soluble methane monooxygenase. However, it differs from Methylocella spp. by its inability to grow on multicarbon substrates. Here, we report the draft genome sequence of this bacterium

End of the Tunnel? The Effects of Financial Stabilization in Russia

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39440/3/wp50.pd

Human cytomegalovirus: taking the strain

In celebrating the 60th anniversary of the first isolation of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), we reflect on the merits and limitations of the viral strains currently being used to develop urgently needed treatments. HCMV research has been dependent for decades on the high-passage strains AD169 and Towne, heavily exploiting their capacity to replicate efficiently in fibroblasts. However, the genetic integrity of these strains is so severely compromised that great caution needs to be exercised when considering their past and future use. It is now evident that wild-type HCMV strains are not readily propagated in vitro. HCMV mutants are rapidly selected during isolation in fibroblasts, reproducibly affecting gene RL13, the UL128 locus (which includes genes UL128, UL130 and UL131A) and often the UL/b′ region. As a result, the virus becomes less cell associated, altered in tropism and less pathogenic. This problem is not restricted to high-passage strains, as even low-passage strains can harbour biologically significant mutations. Cloning and manipulation of the HCMV genome as a bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) offers a means of working with stable, genetically defined strains. To this end, the low-passage strain Merlin genome was cloned as a BAC and sequentially repaired to match the viral sequence in the original clinical sample from which Merlin was derived. Restoration of UL128L to wild type was detrimental to growth in fibroblasts, whereas restoration of RL13 impaired growth in all cell types tested. Stable propagation of phenotypically wild-type virus could be achieved only by placing both regions under conditional expression. In addition to the development of these tools, the Merlin transcriptome and proteome have been characterized in unparalleled detail. Although Merlin may be representative of the clinical agent, high-throughput whole-genome deep sequencing studies have highlighted the remarkable high level of interstrain variation present in circulating virus. There is a need to develop systems capable of addressing the significance of this diversity, free from the confounding effects of genetic changes associated with in vitro adaptation. The generation of a set of BAC clones, each containing the genome of a different HCMV strain repaired to match the sequence in the clinical sample, would provide a pathway to address the biological and clinical effects of natural variation in wild-type HCMV