A Dynamic Model of Mesh Size Regulatory Compliance in Fisheries

The violation of fishing regulations is a criminal activity that leads to depleting fish stock levels across the world. This paper focuses on fishing violations in developing countries. In particular, the paper analyses the use of a fishing net with illegal mesh size in a two regimes, namely a management regime where each community claims a territorial use right over the fishery and a regulated open access regime. This paper employs a dynamic model for fishery crimes that involve time and punishment to analyse the use of a net with illegal mesh size in the different regimes. We found that if the community has territorial use right, the illegal activity in addition to decreasing the intrinsic growth rate and the cost of fishing would increase the community’s effective discount rate and consequently result in a much lower equilibrium stock and harvest relative to the situation where the community only use nets with the legal mesh size. Furthermore, under a regulated open access management the equilibrium stock will be lower if a community violates the regulation and the proportionate change in the risk of punishment is higher than the proportionate change in the harvest potential. Moreover, the optimum penalty for violation must be set higher in the open access fishery relative to the complete territorial use right management regime.Crime; Dynamic Model; Fishery; Regulation

A Dynamic Model of Mesh Size Regulatory Compliance

This paper employs a dynamic model for crimes that involve time and punishment to analyze the use of a net with illegal mesh size in a management regime where each community claims territorial use right over a fishery but has a discount rate that may differ from the social discount rate. The equilibrium stock and harvest levels are found to be much lower if the regulation is violated. Moreover, the optimal penalty for violation must be decreasing in the shadow cost of taking the risk to fish illegally, and increasing the risk of punishment increases the equilibrium stock level.crime, dynamic model, fishery, regulation, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

On the Economics of Rational Self-Medication

It has been established in the medical literature that self-medicating with imperfect information about either the use of a genuine or counterfeit drug or based on wrong self-diagnosis of ailment, which is predominant especially in developing countries, is a risky investment in health capital. This paper models the decision to self-medicate and the demand for self-medicated drugs. We suppose that investment in self-medication depends on the perception of its effectiveness. The results obtained show that the decision to self-medicate depends on the relative price and perceived effectiveness of self-medication, the elasticity of the shadow value of health with respect to the quantity of health capital, and the relative effectiveness of self-medication in reducing the unpredictable changes in health capital. Furthermore, if an individual self-medicates, self-medication becomes a normal good: it increases if income increases; and it obeys the law of demand (i.e. it increases if its price, relative to that of the risk-free medication, decreases). Moreover, we have shown that some optimum subsidy can discourage self-medication.Health Production, Self-Medication, Risky Investment, Government Policy, Dynamic Analysis

Philosophical Foundations of Wisdom

Practical wisdom (hereafter simply ‘wisdom’), which is the understanding required to make reliably good decisions about how we ought to live, is something we all have reason to care about. The importance of wisdom gives rise to questions about its nature: what kind of state is wisdom, how can we develop it, and what is a wise person like? These questions about the nature of wisdom give rise to further questions about proper methods for studying wisdom. Is the study of wisdom the proper subject of philosophy or psychology? How, exactly, can we determine what wisdom is and how we can get it? In this chapter, we give an overview of some prominent philosophical answers to these questions. We begin by distinguishing practical wisdom from theoretical wisdom and wisdom as epistemic humility. Once we have a clearer sense of the target, we address questions of method and argue that producing a plausible and complete account of wisdom will require the tools of both philosophy and empirical psychology. We also discuss the implications this has for prominent wisdom research methods in empirical psychology. We then survey prominent philosophical accounts of the nature of wisdom and end with reflections on the prospects for further interdisciplinary research

The Media, Accountability and Civic Engagement in Africa

human development, democracy

A proof that tidal heating in a synchronous rotation is always larger than in an asymptotic nonsynchronous rotation state

In a recent paper, Wisdom (2007, Icarus, in press) derived concise expressions for the rate of tidal dissipation in a synchronously rotating body for arbitrary orbital eccentricity and obliquity. He provided numerical evidence than the derived rate is always larger than in an asymptotic nonsynchronous rotation state at any obliquity and eccentricity. Here, I present a simple mathematical proof of this conclusion and show that this result still holds for any spin-orbit resonance.Comment: 10 pages, 0 figure. accepted for publication in "Icarus

Conceptualising managerial and leadership wisdom - how many wise managers and leaders do you know?

The term ‘wisdom’ is used frequently in terms of managerial and leadership functioning and development. However, when asked ‘How many wise managers and leaders do you know?’ most people struggle to firstly name people and secondly, to explain what ‘wise or wisdom’ means because they tend to consider wisdom from a particular paradigm – philosophical, spiritual, cultural, psychological or ethical. This conceptual paper raises different perceptions of the meaning of ‘wisdom’ before broadly critiquing literature that deals with wisdom in terms of philosophical, spiritual, cultural, psychological and ethical constructs. This leads to summations that wisdom is largely contextual –someone might be considered wise in one context but not in another – and that a knowledgeable person is not necessarily a wise person. However, wisdom appears to comprise elements of knowledge, integrity and compassion. The paper then discusses wisdom as an ethical construct in management and leadership and concludes with a conceptual discussion of the vexed question ‘can wisdom be developed?

A Fast and Accurate Universal Kepler Solver without Stumpff Series

We derive and present a fast and accurate solution of the initial value problem for Keplerian motion in universal variables that does not use the Stumpff series. We find that it performs better than methods based on the Stumpff series.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures. Accepted by MNRAS, resubmitted because of a typo in the title, added author affiliation

What Is Wisdom? Cross-Cultural and Cross-Disciplinary Syntheses

This article explores the nature of wisdom using an integrative cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary approach by drawing on contemporary research as well as the philosophical and contemplative disciplines of both East and West. To do this the article first analyzes definitional issues. These issues include difficulties of definition in general, and of wisdom in particular, the common elements and limitations of current definitions, as well as possible varieties or subtypes of wisdom. It then uses integrative definitions of wisdom and its major subtypes as a framework to investigate the characteristics, capacities, and components of wisdom; the varieties of self-knowledge that foster and constitute it; the perceptual, cognitive, and developmental processes essential to it; and the existential issues—for example, meaning, mystery, suffering, and death—that wisdom ponders and responds to. The article then examines wisdom's intimate link with other virtues, especially ethics and benevolence, and questions the claim that emotional regulation is an inherent element of wisdom, arguing instead that emotional regulation and wisdom are distinct, yet mutually facilitating virtues. Finally, the article provides evidence for the “self-demanding” nature of wisdom which implies that to understand it fully we may need to cultivate it ourselves

The Bioeconomics of Conservation Agriculture and Soil Carbon Sequestration in Developing Countries

Improving soil carbon through conservation agriculture in developing countries may generate some private benefits to farmers, as well as sequester carbon emissions, which is a positive externality to society. Leaving crop residue on the farm has become an important option in conservation agriculture practice. However, in developing countries, using crop residue for conservation agriculture has the opportunity cost of feed for livestock. In this paper, we model and develop an expression for an optimum economic incentive that is necessary to internalize the positive externality. A crude value of the tax is calculated using data from Kenya. We also empirically investigated the determinants of the crop residue left on the farm and found that it depends on the cation exchange capacity (CEC) of the soil, the prices of maize, whether extension officers visit the plot or not, household size, the level of education of the household head, and alternative cost of soil conservation.conservation agriculture, soil carbon, climate change, bioeconomics, Kenya