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A review of Enda Brophy's study of call centre work in global capitalism. Language put to work. Published in 2018

Supply-side peacekeeping: theories and new evidence from a panel data analysis

Why do nations with heterogeneous economies, geographic positions and institutions agree to dispatch their troops to remote conflict areas? This paper explores the domestic and international determinants of countries' contribution to peacekeeping operations from 1999 to 2009. Individual nations make their decision about where, when and how to send their military personnel as well as the justifications on which they base their involvement in sovereign states. Moral imperative for peacekeeping may be universally accepted but a country decision to participate is also based on self-interest combined to the geo-strategic dimension and finally constrained by political and technical considerations. Empirical results suggest that at the domestic level technical forces, such as the sustainability of multiple missions and military capabilities, all play a role. At the international level peacekeeping contributions are driven by the security threat that a conflict poses and the number of displaced people

The demand for military expenditure in authoritarian regimes

We investigate how the influence of the military differs across authoritarian regimes and verify whether there are actually systematic differences in military expenditures amongst different forms of dictatorships. We argue that public choices in autocracies result from a struggle for power between the leader and the elite. Elites matter because they control the fates of dictators, since most dictators are overthrown by members of their inner circle. Both actors want to ensure their continued political influence through a favourable allocation of the government budget. Moreover, the control over the security forces gives access to troops and weaponry, and affects the ease with which elites can unseat dictators. Autocratic rulers employ different bundles of co-option and repression for staying in power, and thus differ in the extent that they are required to buy off the military. Therefore, the institutional makeup of dictatorships affects the nature of leader-elite interaction, and in turn the share of the government budget allocated to military spending. Drawing on a new data set that sorts dictatorships into 5 categories from 1960 to 2000, our empirical results suggest that while military and personalist regimes have respectively the highest and lowest level of military spending among authoritarian regimes, monarchies and single-party regimes display intermediate patterns of spending

Identifying the Key Issues Measuring Loyalty

In the past researchers have chosen to measure loyalty using purely behavioural or attitudinal measures or attitude-behaviour combinations. The authors recommend that both attitudinal and behavioural loyalty should be measured to gain an appreciation of the loyalty make-up of the firm's customer base. Knowing the proportion of each type of loyalty is important as customer reactions to marketing efforts will differ depending on the factors underlying consistent purchase behaviour

Economic Determinants of Third-Party Intervention in Civil Conflict

Our paper explores the economic conditions that lead third parties to intervene in ongoing internal wars. We develop a formal model that ties together some of the main forces driving the decision to interfere in a civil war, including the economic benefits accruing from the intervention and the potential costs associated with such choice. We predict that third party interventions are most likely in civil conflicts where the country at war harbors a profitable industry as a consequence of its high levels of peace-time production and state strength, while the opposition forces’ strength reduces the likelihood of intervention. We also present novel empirical results on the role of valuable goods, i.e. oil, in prompting third party military intervention in contexts of high state stability, by using a dataset on intrastate conflicts on the period 1960-1999.Intrastate Conflict; Third party intervention

Does the Removal of Textbook Reading from Emergency Medicine Resident Education Negatively Affect In-Service Scores?

Introduction: In-service exam scores are used by residency programs as a marker for progress and success on board exams. Conference curriculum helps residents prepare for these exams. At our institution, due to resident feedback a change in curriculum was initiated. Our objective was to determine whether assigned Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) articles and Rosh Review questions were non-inferior to Tintinalli textbook readings. We further hypothesized that the non-textbook assigned curriculum would lead to higher resident satisfaction, greater utilization, and a preference over the old curriculum.Methods: We collected scores from both the allopathic In-training Examination (ITE) and osteopathic Emergency Medicine Residency In-service Exam (RISE) scores taken by our program’s residents from both the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 residency years. We compared scores pre-curriculum change (pre-CC) to scores post-curriculum change (post-CC). A five-question survey was sent to the residents regarding their satisfaction, preference, and utilization of the two curricula.Results: Resident scores post-CC were shown to be non-inferior to their scores pre-CC for both exams. There was also no significant difference when we compared scores from each class post-CC to their respective class year pre-CC for both exams. Our survey showed significantly more satisfaction, utilization, and preference for this new curriculum among residents.Conclusion: We found question-based learning and Evidence-Based Medicine articles non-inferior to textbook readings. This study provides evidence to support a move away from textbook readings without sacrificing scores on examinations