The Politics of Foreign Aid.

Why do donor countries give foreign aid? The answers found in the literature are: (i) because donor countries care for recipient countries (e.g. altruism), and/or (ii) because there exist distortions that make the indirect gains from foreign aid (e.g. terms of trade effects) to be larger than the direct losses. This paper proposes a third answer to the above question, namely that aid is determined through the domestic political process of the donor country. The paper demonstrates how foreign aid affects the donor country’s income distribution and how, in a direct democracy, the majority of voters might benefit from foreign aid giving even though the country’s social welfare is reduced.

The Viability of Economic Reform Programs Supported by the International Financial Institutions

In seeking to make programs of economic reform supported by the IFIs more successful it is important to ensure that they are viable. Will governments be persuaded to participate? Will they complete the programs they negotiate? And will the IFIs be prepared to provide the resources? This paper formally analyses the factors influencing viability. It examines the constraints on participation and the need for incentive compatibility. The analysis identifies the threats to viability and the direction that reform should take. It places the effectiveness of programs firmly within a political economy framework and extends recent theories of program implementation by examining participation from the viewpoint of both the governments that demand assistance and the IFIs that supply it.

Multiple H-Rearrangements in 10-Benzylthio-dithranol Radical Cations

10-Alkylthio- and 10-arylthio-derivatives of dithranol (anthralin; 1,8-dihydroxy-9-anthrone) are of interest in search for new anti-psoriatic agents2 , 3 ). By working out ms procedures for unequivocal identification of trace amounts of these compounds4 ) it was established that in case of 10-phenylthio-dithranol putative by-products, especially one giving rise to ions at m/z = 226 (dithranol), are artefacts of thermal reaction in the mass spectrometer1). In the EI-MS of those 10-substituted dithranols containing a S-CH2R chain, however, these ions (m/z = 226) arise from M + * as well. Scope and mechanism of their formation was examined by analyzing compound 1 and its D-labelled derivatives 2 and 3

Disentangeling gut feeling: Assessing the integrity of social entrepreneurs

This paper analyzes how social investors evaluate the integrity of social entrepreneurs. Based on an experiment with 40 professionals and 40 students, we investigate how five attributes of the entrepreneur contribute to the assessment of integrity. These attributes are the entrepreneur's personal experience, professional background, voluntary accountability efforts, reputation and awards/fellowships granted to the entrepreneur. We find that social investors focus largely on voluntary accountability efforts of the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur's reputation when judging integrity. For an overall positive judgment of integrity, it was sufficient if either reputation or voluntary accountability efforts of the entrepreneur were high. By comparing professionals with students, we show that experience leads to a simpler decision model focusing on key attributes. --social entrepreneur,social investor,integrity,conjoint analysis,venture philanthropy

Visualizing differences in phylogenetic information content of alignments and distinction of three classes of long-branch effects

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Published molecular phylogenies are usually based on data whose quality has not been explored prior to tree inference. This leads to errors because trees obtained with conventional methods suppress conflicting evidence, and because support values may be high even if there is no distinct phylogenetic signal. Tools that allow an a priori examination of data quality are rarely applied.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using data from published molecular analyses on the phylogeny of crustaceans it is shown that tree topologies and popular support values do not show existing differences in data quality. To visualize variations in signal distinctness, we use network analyses based on split decomposition and split support spectra. Both methods show the same differences in data quality and the same clade-supporting patterns. Both methods are useful to discover long-branch effects.</p> <p>We discern three classes of long branch effects. Class I effects consist of attraction of terminal taxa caused by symplesiomorphies, which results in a false monophyly of paraphyletic groups. Addition of carefully selected taxa can fix this effect. Class II effects are caused by drastic signal erosion. Long branches affected by this phenomenon usually slip down the tree to form false clades that in reality are polyphyletic. To recover the correct phylogeny, more conservative genes must be used. Class III effects consist of attraction due to accumulated chance similarities or convergent character states. This sort of noise can be reduced by selecting less variable portions of the data set, avoiding biases, and adding slower genes.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>To increase confidence in molecular phylogenies an exploratory analysis of the signal to noise ratio can be conducted with split decomposition methods. If long-branch effects are detected, it is necessary to discern between three classes of effects to find the best approach for an improvement of the raw data.</p