bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Raptorial phantom midges
Authors: Schneeberg Katharina , Förster (first author) Maria
Published: April 2015

The predaceous larvae of phantom midges (Chaoboridae) are almost completely unpigmented and weakly sclerotized. They live exclusively in standing water and feed on copepods and water fleas. They capture the prey with raptorial antennae; a unique mechanism within Diptera. This unusual feature and the unclear homology of different larval head structures induced us to investigate the mouthparts and the internal cephalic structures of the larvae of Chaoborus crystallinus De Geer 1776. The head is strongly compressed laterally. The closely adjacent antennae have a similar function as the mantid raptorial forelegs. They are 1-segmented; elongated and strongly sclerotized. Their location in front of the compound eyes ensures a good coordination in the prey-catching process. The abduction is caused indirectly: the hemolymph pressure is increased by the contraction of the M. transversi rostralis. The two pairs of labral retractors also contribute by stabilizing the membranous mouth region. The mouthparts are located on the ventral side. The labrum is a very narrow; strongly elongated and largely sclerotized on the ventral side of the head. It is inserted on a small trapezoid ventral clypeus. Its unsclerotized parts are equipped with brushes. The elongated dorsal sclerite previously addressed as clypeofrons is in fact only the frons. The labium and the maxillae are largely reduced. The function of the mandibles (abducted by M. abductor mandibulae) and the labrum (depressed by M. adductor epipharyngis) is to hold down the prey. During the capturing process; M. retractor antennae accomplishes the adduction of the antennae. The labrum is elevated by M. abductor epipharyngis and the mandibles adducted by M. adductor mandibulae. The laciniae mobilis form a rake confining the prey in the space between them. A close relationship of Chaoboridae and Dixidae is confirmed. A sisiergroup relationship with the former family is more likely.
Charge and Energy Transport through Quantum Dots
Authors: Schiegg Christian , Dzierzawa Michael
Published: April 2015

We consider a model of interacting spinless fermions coupled to non-interacting leads.
Initially a non-equilibrium situation is imposed by applying a bias voltage and temper-
ature gradient across the system. The time-evolution of the density matrix leads to a
quasi-stationary state from which charge and energy currents can be extracted. Numeri-
cal results based on the time-dependent Hartree-Fock approximation are compared with
exact currents obtained from discrete Hubbard-Stratonovich decoupling of the interac-
tion for small systems. For a wide range of parameters the time-evolution of the currents
is reasonably well described within the Hartree-Fock approach.
Interactivity online and on-campus: Data Analysis and Statistical Inference
Authors: Cetinkaya-Rundel Mine
Published: April 2015

In this talk we will share experiences from the development, delivery, and assessment of the Data Analysis and Statistical Inference course both on Coursera and on-campus at Duke University, with an emphasis on interactivity.

For the MOOC we will discuss the motivation and development of computational data analysis labs in DataCamp, a web-based interactive platform for learning R. This platform was presented to MOOC students as an alternative to following static instructions posted on Coursera to emulate the brick-and-mortar classroom experience where the instructor can help the student identify errors in their code in real time. Having provided both options, and having collected data from both platforms, allows us to investigate questions such as what types of student chooses which approach to learning R, how well do they persist and learn, etc. During this talk we will also present findings from this data analyses that aim to answer these questions. In addition, having click-through data from DataCamp has allowed us to evaluate our learning materials and identify those that might be particularly difficult or confusing for students. We will also discuss findings from this analysis as well as how this information has been used to improve the learning materials for the next iteration of the course.

In addition, we will discuss how the materials created for the MOOC (including the videos) have been used to flip the on-campus class and make that course more interactive and engaging for the students as well. We will also present findings on comparisons of student attitude, engagement, and learning before and after flipping the class.
Foreign trade intensities’ development of Ottoman 45 Countries with Turkey and Neo Ottomanism
Osmanlı 45 Ülkelerinin Türkiye ile dış ticaret yoğunlukları gelişimi ve Yeni Osmanlılık
Authors: Akal Mustafa , Ersoy Ahmet Yağmur
Published: April 2015

This study aims to calculate international trade density indexes of Ottoman 45 countries with Turkey or vice versa and outline the developments in these indexes between 1996-2013. Based upon these calculations it also aims whether the applicability of Neo Ottomanism goal of Turkey with Ottoman 45 countries, which used to share the same civilization with Turkey during Ottoman Empire. Theoretically, it is expected that neighborhood, cultural shares, common civilization etc. all lead to increases in trade concentrations to promote New Ottomanism in view of parameters of gravity model and economic geography. Our calculations show that there have been declines in total export, total import and total trade volume densities indexes of Turkey with those countries, which unfavor Neo Ottomanism since 1996. On the other hand, the bilateral indexes show that more than half of Ottoman 45 countries have showed trade diversion in favor of Neo Ottomanism and the else favors Neo Ottomanism since 1996.  It is suggested that the governments shall define new strategies based on favorable country specific findings to improve foreign trade densities of Turkey with Ottoman 45.

Özet:

Çalışmamız Türkiye’nin Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun sınırları içerisinde bulunmuş Osmanlı 45 ülkeleri ile 1996-2013 döneminde dış ticaret yoğunlaşmasını ve gelişimini ortaya koymak ve Türkiye’nin Yeni Osmanlılık hedefinin uygulanabilirliğini dış ticaret boyutunda ele alma amacını gütmektedir. Ekonomik Coğrafya ve Çekim Modeli parametreleri doğrultusunda teorik olarak komşuluk, din ve kültürel bağların; ortak medeniyetin Türkiye’nin bu ülkelerle olan dış ticaretinde artan bir yoğunlaşma sağlamalı ve Yeni Osmanlılığı motive ediyor olmalıdır.  Türkiye’nin Osmanlı 45 ile olan toplam dış ticaret hacmi, toplam ihracat ve toplam ithalat değerlerinde Yeni Osmanlılığın aleyhinde bir dış ticaret sapması bulunmuştur. Diğer taraftan, Türkiye ile bireysel ülkeler açısından endeks hesaplarına bakıldığında ise ülkelerin yarısından fazlası ile Yeni Osmanlılığı destekler mahiyette dış ticaret yoğunluklarında artışlar görülmüş, diğerlerinde ise dış ticarette yoğunluk azalması bulunmuştur. Türkiye ile Osmanlı 45 ülkelerinin ticaret yoğunluğunu artırmak için her bir ülkenin Türkiye ile olan dış ticaret yoğunluğunu artıran ve azaltan faktörlerin açıklığa kavuşturulması ve bu doğrultuda stratejiler izlenmesi önerilir.
Optimal Taxation with Cournot Oligopoly
Authors: Reinhorn Leslie J.
Published: April 2015

This paper studies optimal linear taxation in a general equilibrium model with Cournot oligopoly. The main result is the following. With imperfect competition the tendency toward "inverse elasticities" tax rules will be weakened and may even be reversed. That is, an upward sloping relationship may exist between an industry's optimal tax rate and its own-price elasticity of demand, unlike the perfectly competitive case.
Regulatory Incentives and Consolidation: The Case of Commercial Bank Mergers and the Community Reinvestment Act
Authors: Bostic Raphael , Paulson Anna L , Mehran Hamid , Saidenberg Marc
Published: April 2015

Bank regulators are required to consider a bank’s record of providing credit to low- and moderate-income neighborhoods and individuals in approving bank applications for mergers and acquisitions. We provide evidence that banks self-regulate by strategically increasing their lending to these populations prior to acquiring another institution in anticipation of the regulatory and public scrutiny associated with a merger or acquisition. In particular, we show that the higher the percentage of the institution’s mortgage originations in a given year that are directed to low- and moderate-income individuals or neighborhoods, the greater the probability that the institution will acquire another bank in the following year. Further investigation bolsters the view that this correlation is due to banks’ anticipation of the public and regulatory scrutiny during the merger review process: (1) the effect cannot be explained by regulator behavior or by unobserved bank characteristics; (2) the relationship is observed for acquiring banks, which are the primary focus of scrutiny, but not for the banks that are being acquired; (3) the positive effect increases over the 1991 to 1995 time frame, a period when scrutiny of an institution’s community lending record increased; and (4) the effect is largest for big banks, who face particularly intense scrutiny.
Religious Market Structure, Religious Participation, and Outcomes: Is Religion Good for You?
Authors: Gruber Jonathan H
Published: April 2015

Religion plays an important role in the lives of many Americans, but there is relatively little study by economists of the implications of religiosity for economic outcomes. This likely reflects the enormous difficulty inherent in separating the causal effects of religiosity from other factors that are correlated with outcomes. In this paper, I propose a potential solution to this long standing problem, by noting that a major determinant of religious participation is religious market density, or the share of the population in an area which is of an individual’s religion. I make use of the fact that exogenous predictions of market density can be formed based on area ancestral mix. That is, I relate religious participation and economic outcomes to the correlation of the religious preference of one’s own heritage with the religious preference of other heritages that share one’s area. I use the General Social Survey (GSS) to model the impact of market density on church attendance, and micro-data from the 1990 Census to model the impact on economic outcomes. I find that a higher market density leads to a significantly increased level of religious participation, and as well to better outcomes according to several key economic indicators: higher levels of education and income, lower levels of welfare receipt and disability, higher levels of marriage, and lower levels of divorce.
Wages and Learning in Internal Labor Markets: Evidence From a Taiwanese Company
Authors: Lin Ming-Jen
Published: April 2015

This paper analyses the personnel records of a Taiwanese auto dealer employing three distinct internal labor markets (ILMs), adding new evidence that builds upon recent empirical and theoretical works on ILMs. We show that the public learning model proposed by Farber and Gibbons (1996) is not supported in general by our data because the behaviors of empirical wage residuals covariance matrix contradict the martingale predictions derived from the their model. However, “public learning” may not be unrealistic once individual specific learning speed is introduced. Furthermore, we find that the positive effects of levels, on both salary and bonus equations, are smaller under a fixed effects model than under an OLS (combined) model. However, part of the wage variations is contributed by individual heterogeneity rather than the hierarchy itself. Evidence also shows that education plays an important role in the determination of levels.
Consumer Product Labels, Child Labor and Educational Attainment
Authors: Brown Drusilla K
Published: April 2015

Child labor-free product labels are efficiency-enhancing when child welfare is a public good only if resources are generated to enhance the well-being of children. However, for a small price-taking economy with at least as many goods as factors and competitively supplied labels, the premium paid by consumers is dissipated by a production inefficiency associated with the adult-only technology. Child labor will decline if labeling firms bid the adult wage above the threshold at which families begin to withdraw their children from the workforce. Alternatively, monitoring agencies may offer consumers a donation label, which claims that some fraction of the purchase price will be donated to a child-welfare fund. A donation label is more efficient than the child labor-free label as it eliminates the production inefficiency and the inefficient competition among certification agencies. The standard contract offered in the child labor free labeling sector has elements of a donation label.
Can Supply Restrictions Lower Price? Violence, Drug Dealing and Positional Advantage
Authors: Caulkins Jonathan P , Reuter Peter , Taylor Lowell J
Published: April 2015

The standard model of markets for illicit drugs predicts that tougher enforcement against sellers will raise prices; yet cocaine and heroin prices have fallen substantially during a period of massive increases in enforcement. We present a model in which the basic mechanisms at work in the textbook model may be substantially altered by an important feature of illegal markets—violence that creates inheritable heterogeneity along a dimension that both determines relevant production cost and imposes externalities on other suppliers. Dealers frequently make use of violence and threat of violence in the normal course of trade. A seller who is particularly effective in the use of violence may face lower enforcement costs than other dealers and generate an external cost borne by those sellers. Together these features generate a number of counter-intuitive policy implications. For example the arrest of a particularly violent dealer reduces external costs borne by other dealers. The net effect is a possible reduction in costs for the marginal dealer and hence a reduction in price.
Catholic Schools and Bad Behavior: A Propensity Score Matching Analysis
Authors: Mocan Naci H. , Tekin Erdal
Published: April 2015

Although there is a sizeable literature on the effect of private school attendance on academic student outcomes, the number of studies that investigate the impact of school sector on non-academic outcomes is limited. Using a rich data set, we analyze the impact of Catholic school attendance on the likelihood that teenagers use or sell drugs, commit property crime, have sex, join gangs, attempt suicide, or run away from home. We employ propensity score matching methods to control for the endogeneity of school choice. Catholic school attendance reduces the propensity to use cocaine and to have sex for female students. However, it increases the propensity to use and sell drugs for male students.
Do Lower Student to Counselor Ratios Reduce School Disciplinary Problems?
Authors: Carrell Scott E , Carrell Susan A
Published: April 2015

The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends that there be no more than 250 students to each school counselor. Although numerous studies in the education literature show that school counselors play a positive role in educating children, to our knowledge, this is the first study answering the question of whether lower student to counselor ratios, all else equal, improve student outcomes. Using data provided to us by Florida's Alachua County School District and the University of Florida Counselor Education Department, we show that lower student to counselor ratios decrease both the recurrence of student disciplinary problems and the share of students involved in a disciplinary incident. These effects are greater for minority and low-income students. The fixed-effect models used, control for all unobserved heterogeneity across schools, isolating the effects on discipline from the within-school changes in the student-to-counselor ratio. The empirical methodologies employed produce unbiased estimates as long as the variation in the student to counselor ratio is not driven by unobserved factors that affect disciplinary outcomes.
Social Interactions and the Digital Divide: Identification and Policy Implications
Authors: Miniaci Raffaele , Parisi Maria Laura
Published: April 2015

In the light of recent policies aiming at raising the computer literacy of young generations and at reducing the digital divide, this paper analyzes to what extent the probability of an individual having computer abilities is affected by the computer skills of her household's other members, i.e. if there are significant within household peer effects. We show how peer effects can be identified when skills are measured with a continuous variable and the learning costs are increasing and convex. Our application on a sample of Italian households indicates that peer abilities within a family significantly increase the individual probability of being skilled.
Modeling Addictive Consumption as an Infectious Disease
Authors: Alamar Benjamin , Glantz Stanton A.
Published: April 2015

The dominant model of addictive consumption in economics is the theory of rational addiction. The addict in this model chooses how much they are going to consume based upon their level of addiction (past consumption), the current benefits and all future costs. Several empirical studies of cigarette sales and price data have found a correlation between future prices and consumption and current consumption. These studies have argued that the correlation validates the rational addiction model and invalidates any model in which future consumption is not considered. An alternative to the rational addiction model is one in which addiction spreads through a population as if it were an infectious disease, as supported by the large body of empirical research of addictive behaviors. In this model an individual's probability of becoming addicted to a substance is linked to the behavior of their parents, friends and society. In the infectious disease model current consumption is based only on the level of addiction and current costs. Price and consumption data from a simulation of the infectious disease model showed a qualitative match to the results of the rational addiction model. The infectious disease model can explain all of the theoretical results of the rational addiction model with the addition of explaining initial consumption of the addictive good.
The Role of Segregation and Pay Structure on the Gender Wage Gap: Evidence from Matched Employer-Employee Data for Spain
Authors: Amuedo-Dorantes Catalina , De la Rica Sara
Published: April 2015

This paper presents new evidence on the role of gender segregation and pay structure in explaining gender wage differentials of full-time salaried workers in Spain. Data from the 1995 and 2002 Wage Structure Surveys reveal that raw gender wage gaps decreased from 0.24 to 0.14 over the seven-year period. Average differences in the base wage and wage complements decreased from 0.09 to 0.05 and from 0.59 to 0.40, respectively. However, the gender wage gap is still large after accounting for workers’ human capital, job and pay structure characteristics, and female segregation into low-paying industries, occupations, establishments, and occupations within establishments.
Administrative Delays as Barriers to Trade
Authors: Regibeau Pierre M , Rockett Katharine E
Published: April 2015

We study a two-country model where two firms, one domestic and the other foreign, must decide when to introduce their new product into a market. The home government may apply an import tariff, an administrative delay, or both to the product of the foreign firm. An administrative delay imposes a waiting period between the time when the quality of the foreign product is determined and the time when the product can actually be sold. Our main interest is the differential effect of the tariff and the administrative delay on the timing of new product introductions and the resulting change in home, foreign and world welfare. We show that administrative delays are less efficient instruments for maximizing home welfare than tariffs. With a tariff, the home government can affect the timing of entry to ensure that the domestic firm moves first at the socially optimal date. Although an optimally chosen delay can achieve the same pattern of introduction, it does not yield any tariff revenues. As a result, if the tariff may be set optimally, administrative delays are not used in a discriminatory manner. If trade liberalization constrains the import tariff to be below its domestically optimal level, discriminatory administrative delays may become part of the optimal policy of the home country. As the optimal delay policy leads to lower levels of world welfare than the optimal tariff, trade liberalization can be welfare decreasing.
The Value of Broadband and the Deadweight Loss of Taxing New Technology
Authors: Goolsbee Austan
Published: April 2015

With fixed costs of developing technology, taxes can generate large efficiency costs by slowing the rate of diffusion and these costs are not accounted for in conventional analyses. This paper illustrates the potential importance of this idea in the context of taxes on broadband Internet access at an early stage of its existence by combining data on individual demand by area with data on supplier entry into those markets. Applying a tax to broadband in 1998 would have reduced the quantity and generated a large deadweight loss in the conventional model but when the analysis accounts for the fixed costs of entering new markets, taxes lead to delayed entry in several markets. In these places, the lost consumer surplus is additional deadweight loss and it more than doubles the true efficiency costs from taxation. The conventional model also dramatically understates the share of the tax burden borne by consumers.
Indirect Costs and Discounting in Health Care Decision-Making: The Role of Distortionary Taxation
Authors: Liu Liqun , Rettenmaier Andrew J , Saving Thomas R
Published: April 2015

Two important unresolved issues in the evaluation of health care programs are the treatment of indirect costs and the selection of the appropriate discount rate. This paper emphasizes the role of distortionary taxation in addressing these issues. It establishes that: (i) indirect government-paid costs should be treated differently from indirect privately-paid costs; (ii) direct and indirect government costs of a health program should be discounted by the gross rate of return, while consumers' monetary valuations of the program's effects, less direct private costs, should be discounted at the net rate of return; and (iii) the present value of total government costs should be multiplied by a marginal cost of funds before it is comparable to the present value of net private benefits.
New Approaches to Ranking Economics Journals
Authors: Kodrzycki Yolanda K. , Yu Pingkang
Published: April 2015

We develop a flexible, citations- and reference-intensity-adjusted ranking technique that allows a specified set of journals to be evaluated using a range of alternative criteria. We also distinguish between the influence of a journal and that of a journal article, with the latter concept arguably being more relevant for measuring research productivity. The list of top economics journals can (but does not necessarily) change noticeably when one examines citations in the social science and policy literatures, and when one measures citations on a per-article basis. The changes in rankings are due to the broad interest in applied microeconomics and economic development, to differences in citation norms and in the relative importance assigned to theoretical and empirical contributions, and to the lack of a systematic effect of journal size on influence per article. We also find that economics is comparatively self-contained but nevertheless draws knowledge from a range of other disciplines.
Life-Cycle Consumption and the Age-Adjusted Value of Life
Authors: Kniesner Thomas J , Viscusi W. Kip , Ziliak James P
Published: April 2015

Our research presents new evidence on the age pattern of the implicit value of life revealed from workers' differential wages and job safety pairings. Although aging reduces the number of years of life expectancy, aging can affect the value of life through an effect on planned life-cycle consumption. The elderly could, a priori, have the highest implicit value of life if there is a life-cycle plan to defer consumption until old age. We find that largely due to the age pattern of consumption, which is non-constant, the implicit value of life rises and falls over the lifetime in a way that the value for the elderly is higher than the average over all ages or for the young. There are important health policy implications of our empirical results. Because there may be age-specific benefits of programs to save statistical lives, instead of valuing the lives of the elderly at less than the young, health policymakers should more correctly value the lives of the elderly at as much as twice the young because of relatively greater consumption lost when accidental death occurs.
Trade and Contract Enforcement
Authors: Anderson James E , Young Leslie
Published: April 2015

We model imperfect contract enforcement when the victims of default resort to spot trading because the act of repudiation reveals a favorable outside option. We show that enforcement imperfection is essentially distinct from the contract incompleteness analyzed in the previous literature. Improved contract execution benefits traders on the excess side of the spot market by attracting potential counter-parties, but harms them by impeding their exit from unfavorable contracts. Multiple optima are possible, with anarchy a local optimum, perfect enforcement a local minimum and imperfect enforcement a global optimum. LDCs exhibit parameter combinations such that imperfect enforcement may often be optimal.
Commercial Development of University Research: The Role of Patents
Authors: Bhole Bharat
Published: April 2015

This paper analyzes how university patents encourage university-firm collaboration for technology transfer. Focusing on factors other than competition, I find that the two may not collaborate either because the firm finds in-house development cheaper, or because of a disagreement about the potential product's profitability. In both cases, university patents can encourage collaboration by increasing the invention's diffusion time, and therefore play a role even in the absence of any competition. The model also suggests instances in which we can expect to see a greater impact of university patents on collaboration. Even when patents increase collaboration, they do not necessarily increase welfare. The findings are relevant for the debates on the Bayh-Dole Act, which gave universities a blanket right to patent and license inventions resulting from federally funded research.
The Effects of Fiscal Competition on Local Property and Income Tax Reliance
Authors: Spry John Arthur
Published: April 2015

This paper examines why local governments rely heavily on the property tax, even when they have access to another revenue source, using data from Ohio’s recent experience of permitting local school districts to use both property taxes and residence-based income taxes. Nechyba’s (1997) theory that local governments’ reliance on the property tax instead of the income tax is due to fiscal competition for relatively high-income residents is tested using data from 610 Ohio school districts. The Ohio residence-based school district income tax is used by only 119 school districts, at low tax rates, to supplement the traditional property tax. The use of a local income tax declines sharply as fiscal competition increases, as measured by the number of nearby school districts. School districts with greater opportunities to export the burden of the property tax to non-residential property owners are less likely to adopt a local income tax.
Nonpoint Source Pollution When Polluters Might Cooperate
Authors: Millock Katrin , Salanié François
Published: April 2015

In a model of nonpoint source pollution, we extend the theory of ambient taxes to the case when polluters might cooperate. We show that regulation through ambient taxes is severely constrained when the degree of cooperation among polluters is unknown to the regulator. On the other hand, if the regulator can invest in costly monitoring of emissions, then the optimal regulation offers a low ambient tax to cooperative groups and an optimal but costly individual emission tax to non-cooperative groups. This mechanism also has attractive properties when risk-aversion is introduced.
Voting on Tariff and Retaliation
Authors: van Ypersele Tanguy
Published: April 2015

In this paper, we analyze the trade war between two large countries when the trade policy is decided through majority voting. We show how the distributive aspect of trade policy interacts with the strategic aspect. It is shown that the voting equilibrium depends on the distribution of the factor endowment. If median voters in each country own relatively more (less) than the aggregate economy of the factor used intensively in the production of the imported good, the tariffs outcome of the trade war at home (abroad) is larger (lower) than the Johnson-Mayer one. This is to say that the strategic effects from trade policy can be isolated from the distributive aspect. Moreover, an increase of the median of the scarce/abundant factor distribution in one country leads to a larger tariff in this country and a lower tariff in the other. This implies that the political situation in one country affects the outcome of the trade war for both.
Quality and Consumer Choice in Healthcare: Evidence from Kidney Transplantation
Authors: Howard David H
Published: April 2015

Most studies of competition in health care focus on prices and costs, but concerns about quality play a central role in policy debates. If demand is inelastic to quality, then competition may reduce patient welfare. This study uses a dataset of patient registrations for kidney transplantation in conjunction with a mixed logit model to gauge consumers’ responsiveness to quality when choosing hospitals. Results indicate that at the hospital level, a one-standard deviation increase in the graft-failure rate is associated with a 6% decline in patient registrations. Privately-insured patients are more responsive to quality than Medicare patients, suggesting that insurers consider quality when contracting with providers.
The Origins of Anti-Immigrant Sentiments: Evidence from the Heartland in the Age of Mass Migration
Authors: Richardson Gary
Published: April 2015

The Kansas Bureau of Labor and Industry surveyed attitudes towards immigration during the 1890s. The surveys reveal that individuals opposed immigration for cultural and economic reasons. Key correlates were the position in the labor market, the business cycle, and immigrant status. The magnitudes of the effects indicate that economic factors explain twice the variation in opinions across individuals than cultural factors explain. In addition, changes in economic conditions from 1880 to 1920 explain a substantial share of the rise in anti-immigrant sentiments at the end of the nineteenth and during the early twentieth centuries, but other factors, such as the rise of the eugenics movement, must have had at least as large a role.
Gains from Trade in Government Revenue and Pareto-Efficient International Taxation
Authors: Edwards Jeremy
Published: April 2015

This paper uses the concept of gains from trade in government revenue to clarify and extend the analysis of Keen and Wildasin (2004). It shows that their results derive from the use of trade taxes to achieve gains from trade in revenue in circumstances when direct international transfers cannot be used for this purpose. The paper shows that, in such circumstances, Pareto-efficient international equilibria are globally production-inefficient only in special cases, but origin-based commodity taxes, source-based capital taxes, and taxes on trade are nevertheless typically part of a Pareto-efficient international tax system. However, this conclusion depends on ruling out the use of international transfers to trade revenue, the case for which is not compelling.
Trade Potentials in Gravity Panel Data Models
Authors: De Benedictis Luca , Vicarelli Claudio
Published: April 2015

The paper shows how - using as an example the trade flows between eleven European countries and 31 OECD `reporting' countries - the result of a gravity model, in terms of potential trade, changes substantially when country heterogeneity and dynamics are taken into account.

Comparing the in-sample trade potential index derived from various estimators yields three different results: (a) the average trade potential index poorly represents the distribution of yearly trade potentials; (b) the index converges towards the demarcation value corresponding to the equality between observed and predicted trade flows when country heterogeneity and dynamics are taken into account; (c) the sign of its yearly average is not the right statistic with which to determine the (in)existence of unrealized trade potentials.

Finally, the index derived from a dynamic specification with multilateral fixed-effects is better able to reflect the role played by the time-variant country-specific unobservable element associated with the possible presence of positive or negative trade potentials.
Do People Value Racial Diversity? Evidence from Nielsen Ratings
Authors: Aldrich Eric M , Arcidiacono Peter S. , Vigdor Jacob L
Published: April 2015

Nielsen ratings for ABC's Monday Night Football are significantly higher when the game involves a black quarterback. In this paper, we consider competing explanations for this effect. First, quarterback race might proxy for other player or team attributes. Second, black viewership patterns might be sensitive to quarterback race. Third, viewers of all races might be exhibiting a taste for diversity. We use both ratings data and evidence on racial attitudes from the General Social Survey to test these hypotheses empirically. The evidence strongly supports the taste-for-diversity hypothesis, while suggesting some role for black own-race preferences as well.
Price Discrimination and Smuggling of AIDS Drugs
Authors: Hornbeck Richard A.
Published: April 2015

Patent-holding pharmaceutical companies are shown to be imperfectly able to charge differential prices for AIDS drugs due to the potential for black market exchange. Thus, greater segmentation in the international market through additional barriers to smuggling would induce firms to charge lower prices for AIDS drugs in poorer countries. Without these additional barriers, widespread drug distribution through mandated lower prices or weakened patent protection in the developing world would result in smuggling, undercutting demand in developed markets and reducing firms’ research incentives. By contrast, further market segmentation would allow policy makers to go beyond the induced price cuts and remove patent protection in many markets where the benefits to increased distribution would likely outweigh the losses to research incentives.
The Payment of Hospital Services: a Waiting Lists Model
Authors: Ferrari Dr. Alessandra
Published: April 2015

This paper analyses the incentive properties of prospective payment systems for hospital contracts, a key feature in many health systems’ reforms. Building on current literature, the model explicitly allows for the existence of waiting time, modelled as adversely affecting patients’ utility and therefore reducing social welfare. The model shows that rewarding hospitals for their demand leads to the first best solution, identified with respect to the relevant quality and quantity variables. The additional separate payment of a price per case is instead required when the social cost of waiting is introduced alongside the private costs.
The Impact of Voluntary Youth Service on Future Outcomes: Evidence from Teach For America
Authors: Dobbie Will , Fryer, Jr. Roland G.
Published: April 2015

This paper provides causal estimates of the impact of service programs on those who serve, using data from a web-based survey of former Teach For America (TFA) applicants. We estimate the effect of voluntary youth service using a discontinuity in the TFA application process. Participating in TFA increases racial tolerance, makes individuals more optimistic about the life prospects of poor children, and makes them more likely to work in education.
Longevity: epigenetic and biomolecular aspects
Authors: Taormina Giusi , Mirisola Mario G.
Published: April 2015

Many aging theories and their related molecular mechanisms have been proposed. Simple model organisms such as yeasts, worms, fruit flies and others have massively contributed to their clarification, and many genes and pathways have been associated with longevity regulation. Among them, insulin/IGF-1 plays a key and evolutionary conserved role. Interestingly, dietary interventions can modulate this pathway. Calorie restriction (CR), intermittent fasting, and protein and amino acid restriction prolong the lifespan of mammals by IGF-1 regulation. However, some recent findings support the hypothesis that the long-term effects of diet also involve epigenetic mechanisms. In this review, we describe the best characterized aging pathways and highlight the role of epigenetics in diet-mediated longevity.
Faecal leukocyte esterase activity is an alternative biomarker in inflammatory bowel disease
Authors: Dumoulin Els N. , Van Biervliet Stephanie , De Vos Martine , Himpe Jonas , Speeckaert Marijn M. , Delanghe Joris R.
Published: April 2015

Leukocyte cytosolic proteins (e.g., calprotectin) are emerging biomarkers for inflammatory bowel disease. Leukocyte aryl esterase activity has been commonly used for sensitive detection of leukocytes in human body fluids such as urine. Urine test strip results are generally reported in categories. As automated strip readers allow quantitative data to be reported, sensitive quantitative detection of leukocytes in body fluids has become possible. Here, we explored the use of leukocyte esterase as a potential alternative faecal biomarker for inflammatory bowel disease.

We evaluated leukocyte esterase activity in faecal extracts and compared Cobas u 411 (Roche) quantitative reflectance data with calprotectin concentration for 107 routine samples. Stability of leukocyte esterase for trypsin digestion was carried out by adding trypsin to the extract. Incubation occurred at 37 °C for 24 h or 48 h.

Reproducibility of the reflectance signal was good (within-run imprecision: 6.1%; between-run imprecision: 6.2%). Results were linear in the range 10

Quantitative leukocyte esterase activity of faecal extracts provides information about the leukocyte count in the gut lumen. Leukocyte esterase is a promising and affordable alternative biomarker for monitoring inflammatory bowel disease.
Using the parameters of the Zipf–Mandelbrot law to measure diachronic lexical, syntactical and stylistic changes – a large-scale corpus analysis
Authors: Koplenig Alexander
Published: April 2015

Using the Google Ngram Corpora for six different languages (including two varieties of English), a large-scale time series analysis is conducted. It is demonstrated that diachronic changes of the parameters of the Zipf–Mandelbrot law (and the parameter of the Zipf law, all estimated by maximum likelihood) can be used to quantify and visualize important aspects of linguistic change (as represented in the Google Ngram Corpora). The analysis also reveals that there are important cross-linguistic differences. It is argued that the Zipf–Mandelbrot parameters can be used as a first indicator of diachronic linguistic change, but more thorough analyses should make use of the full spectrum of different lexical, syntactical and stylometric measures to fully understand the factors that actually drive those changes.
Transesterification of Castor Oil with Methanol – Kinetic Modelling
Authors: Chaudhary Payal , Kumar Brajesh , Kumar Surendra , Gupta V. K.
Published: April 2015

In this research work, transesterification of castor oil with methanol and sulphuric acid catalyst has been carried out in a lab reactor of capacity 500 mL at various operating conditions (reaction temperature=35–65°C, pressure=1 atm, methanol/oil ratio=6:1 and 600 rpm). The effect of reaction temperature is considered, followed by the determination of kinetics of the production of biodiesel. Experimental results have been analysed with respect to three types of reaction kinetics, namely first-order irreversible reaction, second-order irreversible reaction and reversible reaction. For each of the schemes, the activation energy and Arrhenius constants were determined. The experimental data fits very well to second-order reversible reaction kinetics. Properties of fatty acid methyl ester (biodiesel) produced from castor oil have been experimentally determined and compared with standard values as given in EN 14214 norms.
Overdiagnosis and overtreatment over time
Authors: Martin Stephen A. , Podolsky Scott H. , Greene Jeremy A.
Published: April 2015

Overdiagnosis and overtreatment are often thought of as relatively recent phenomena, influenced by a contemporary combination of technology, specialization, payment models, marketing, and supply-related demand. Yet a quick glance at the historical record reveals that physicians and medical manufacturers have been accused of iatrogenic excess for centuries, if not millennia. Medicine has long had therapeutic solutions that search for ever-increasing diagnostic problems. Whether the intervention at hand has been leeches and lancets, calomel and cathartics, aspirins and amphetamines, or statins and SSRIs, medical history is replete with skeptical critiques of diagnostic and therapeutic enthusiasm. The opportunity cost of this profusion shapes the other side of the coin: chronic persistence of underdiagnosis and undertreatment. Drawing from key controversies of the 19th and 20th centuries, we chart the enduring challenges of inter-related diagnostic and therapeutic excess. As the present critique of overdiagnosis and overtreatment seeks to mobilize resources from inside and outside of medicine to rein in these impulses, we provide an instructive historical context from which to act.
Investigation of BaCO3 Powders Synthesized by Microwave Homogeneous Precipitation
Authors: Chen Guo , Chang Xiaodong , Chen Jin , Zhao Wei , Peng Jinhui
Published: April 2015

BaCO3 powders have been successfully synthesized by the microwave homogeneous precipitation method, using BaCl2 · 2H2O, NaOH and (NH2)2CO as raw materials with variety of different guide reagents. The phases and morphologies of raw materials after microwave homogeneous precipitation were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), respectively. The results showed that 85°C of reaction temperature, 2 h of reaction time, 0.8 mol/L of Ba2+ concentration, 2.5 of amount of sodium hydroxide and 6 of amount of urea were used in the further research work, and the optimum conditions for preparation of BaCO3 powders were obtained. The XRD results show that the well-crystallized BaCO3 powder synthesized has an orthorhombic unit cell. The characterization results show that different guide reagents play a significant role in determining uniform morphology of products. Based on the mentioned results, microwave homogeneous precipitation method can be applied effectively and efficiently for preparing BaCO3 powders.
High-Temperature Oxidation Behavior of Fe-Si-Ce Alloys
Authors: Su Yong , Zhang Shunke , Fu Guangyan , Liu Qun , Tang Yuanze
Published: April 2015

The oxidation behavior of Fe-Si-Ce alloys with different Ce content at 1,173 and 1,273 K has been studied by means of optical microscope (OM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). Results show that the Ce addition refines the grain size of Fe-Si alloys, and correspondingly the grain size of the oxides decreases, which increases the grain boundary concentration and promotes the short-path diffusion of the alloying elements and oxygen. During oxidation, the positive effect of the grain refinement on the oxidation behavior of the alloy is more obvious than negative effect, so the Ce addition improves the oxidation resistances of the Fe-3Si alloys. Compared to Fe-3Si-0.5Ce alloy, Fe-3Si-5.0Ce alloy has the larger mass gain for the preferential oxidation of the excessive content of Ce exceeding its beneficial effects. The rare earth Ce changes the oxidation mechanism of Fe-Si alloys. Oxygen penetrates the oxide scales and reacts preferentially with Ce-rich phases, which results in the pinning effect and improves the adhesion of the oxide scales.
Risky health-related behaviours among school-aged adolescents: a rational ‘consumer’ choice?
Authors: Hartley Jane E.K.
Published: April 2015

Within the contemporary culture of consumption, school-aged adolescents, though neither waged nor salaried producers, are nevertheless treated by the media and the advertisers as if they are active consumers who are engaged in the project of the self. For those adolescents who lack the financial resources to ‘buy into’ this culture, anxiety may ensue. In order to ease this anxiety, and to acquire social status, some – not all – may make the ‘rational’ ‘consumer’ choice to engage in risky health-related behaviour. In situ ethnographic research is needed in order to complement and inform the existing survey-based evidence on the relationship between economic status and health-related behaviour among school-aged adolescents as they deal with the pressures of consumerism.
Use of New Regeneration Processes for Thermolabile Amines
Authors: Gómez-Díaz Diego
Published: April 2015

Present work analyses the regeneration of aqueous solutions of glucosamine employed in carbon dioxide capture by gas–liquid absorption by using new methodologies. The aim of the development of these methods is to avoid the aggressiveness shown by the most common one: stripping (e.g. corrosion or degradation). This latest produces an important amine loss and also involves a high energetic cost. This research work has checked the behavior of two new regeneration processes when a thermolabile amine is employed in the chemical solvent for carbon dioxide absorption. These methods are based on the removal of bicarbonate ion and amine deprotonation showing suitable results in comparison with thermal treatment.
Pasting, Textural and Sensory Characteristics of the Kofter, A Fruit-Based Dessert: Effect of Molasses and Water Concentration
Authors: Yildiz Onder , Yurt Bayram , Toker Omer Said , Ceylan Mehmet Murat , Yilmaz Mustafa Tahsin , Bastürk Ayhan
Published: April 2015

Kofter is a traditional product which is composed of water, molasses and starch. The quality of Kofter depends on many factors involving concentration of the ingredients, starch concentration and type, composition and type of the molasses and drying temperature and time. In the present study, the effect of molasses concentration (75–25%) on the pasting and textural properties of the Kofter samples was investigated. All pasting properties (peak viscosity, trough viscosity, breakdown viscosity, final viscosity, setback viscosity, peak time, pasting temperature) were significantly affected by molasses concentration used in the formula. The increase in water concentration generally caused increase in hardness, adhesiveness, gumminess and chewiness value of the Kofter samples. Sensory analysis was also performed to determine mostly preferred sample regarding appearance, color, texture, taste, odor and overall preference. According to the sensory results, Kofter sample including 40% molasses and 60% water was found to be mostly preferred sample.