bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Ameliorating effects of exogenous Ca2+ on foxtail millet seedlings under salt stress
Authors: Han Fei , Sun Mingjie , He Wei , Cui Xiumin , Pan Hong , Wang Hui , Song Fupeng , Lou Yanhong , Zhuge Yuping
Published: February 2019

In the present study, we investigated whether Ca2+ application alleviates salinity-induced damage in foxtail millet (Setaria italica L.). We evaluated the stress-related ion balance, physiological activity and gene expression involved in plant defences against salinity exposure. Twenty-one-day-old foxtail millet was maintained in sand culture for 7 days and subjected to one of seven treatments: half-strength modified Hoagland solution (the control), 1.0% NaCl, 1.0% NaCl+2.5mM Ca2+, 1.0% NaCl+5.0mM Ca2+, 1.0% NaCl+7.5mM Ca2+, 1.0% NaCl+10.0mM Ca2+, 1.0% NaCl+12.5mM Ca2+. The addition of Ca2+ significantly increased shoot and root height and weight relative to calcium absent treatment and corrected the ion imbalance by increasing Ca2+, Mg2+ and K+, and decreasing Na+ in the leaves and roots. It increased chlorophyll content and root activity and decreased the relative electrolyte leakage in the roots and leaves. Calcium application significantly upregulated superoxide dismutase and catalase, increased total protein, and decreased malondialdehyde and H2O2. Finally, the addition of Ca2+ upregulated the expression of APX, SOD and CAT. It was found that 10.0mM Ca2+ was the optimal concentration for alleviating salt stress injury in foxtail millet.
Pastures and drought: a review of processes and implications for nitrogen and phosphorus cycling in grassland systems
Authors: Lucci Gina M.
Published: February 2019

The incidence and extent of drought is predicted to increase and therefore understanding the effects on the plant–soil system is important. The objective of this review is to report on the fundamental processes involved in the effects of drought on pasture, soil, and soil microorganisms in grassland systems and evaluate the consequences of drought to determine whether management decisions could mitigate the impact of drought. There are associations within the plant–soil system affecting the flows and cycling of nutrients. Drought conditions often create a flush of nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorus upon rewetting that is at risk of loss to the environment. Prediction of the flush magnitude is difficult because it is influenced by drought characteristics such as duration, soil temperature, degree of drying, and rate at which the rewetting occurs post-drought. Response to drought is also affected by the microbial community population and structure of the soil-related flora and fauna. Increasing pasture diversity and soil organic matter may help to mitigate the effects of drought in grassland systems. More research is needed that incorporates all the components of the plant–soil system to examine the net effects of drought on grassland systems. Better measures are also needed to estimate the consequences for future climate change on nutrient stocks and flows.
Aerial VHF tracking of wildlife using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV): comparing efficiency of yellow-eyed penguin (Megadyptes antipodes) nest location methods
Authors: Muller Chris G. , Chilvers B. Louise , Barker Zane , Barnsdale Kelvin P. , Battley Phil F. , French Rebecca K. , McCullough Josh , Samandari Fred
Published: February 2019

Context
Locating cryptic animals is an important aspect of many wildlife management programs and research studies. However, this process can be inefficient, time-consuming and expensive. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) or drones fitted with a camera are increasingly being used for counting and monitoring wildlife; however, these are often not suitable for cryptic species. Very high-frequency (VHF) radio-tracking is commonplace; however, single-channel VHF receivers mean that animals must be tracked individually, or scanning receivers must be used; but this raises the possibility of signals being missed.

Aims
We aimed to test the effectiveness of aerial VHF tracking using a multi-channel receiver for locating wildlife.

Methods
We tracked wildlife fitted with VHF transmitters operating on individual frequencies, by means of a UAV with a multi-channel VHF receiver to simultaneously monitor all frequencies. This offered distinct advantages over traditional single-channel scanning receivers. To test and compare this novel method, yellow-eyed penguins (Megadyptes antipodes) were located on nests hidden under vegetation on Enderby Island in the New Zealand subantarctic, using manual ground searching, unassisted ground VHF tracking, as well as using location flights by the UAV Drone Ranger system.

Key results
The UAV system allowed for faster nest location than did all other methods, with a higher cumulative success (number of nests found each day) and lower search effort required (person hours per nest).

Conclusions
Aerial VHF tracking can greatly extend the search range and minimise search effort compared with ground VHF tracking or manual searching.

Implications
This technology has applications for locating and tracking a wide range of wildlife, particularly cryptic species that may be difficult to find using other methods.
Capturing slip band formation in Ni3Al nanocubes during compression
Authors: Konstantinidis Avraam A. , Aifantis Katerina E.
Published: February 2019

The intermittent plasticity, and stochastic size effect, observed experimentally during the compression of fibbed Ni3Al nanocubes are modelled by implementing gradient plasticity within a cellular automaton simulation. The simulation results are in agreement with the experimentally observed stress–displacement curves and can capture both their serrated and stochastic response. Analysing the simulation data allows for additional information to be obtained regarding the deformation mechanisms and microstructural changes during compression, such as the thickness of the individual localised slip zones that formed, as well as the total volume percentage that deformed plastically. Both of these length scales are shown to follow a size-dependent behaviour, suggesting that although the overall deformation may appear to be stochastic, the evolution of deformation still depends on the cube size.
Quantum computational supremacy in the sampling of bosonic random walkers on a one-dimensional lattice
Authors: Muraleedharan Gopikrishnan , Miyake Akimasa , Deutsch Ivan H
Published: February 2019

We study the sampling complexity of a probability distribution associated with an ensemble of identical noninteracting bosons undergoing a quantum random walk on a one-dimensional lattice. With uniform nearest-neighbor hopping we show that one can efficiently sample the distribution for times logarithmic in the size of the system, while for longer times there is no known efficient sampling algorithm. With time-dependent hopping and optimal control, we design the time evolution to approximate an arbitrary Haar-random unitary map analogous to that designed for photons in a linear optical network. This approach highlights a route to generating quantum complexity by optimal control only of a single-body unitary matrix. We study this in the context of two potential experimental realizations: a spinor optical lattice of ultracold atoms and a quantum gas microscope.
A high-throughput method for unbiased quantitation and categorization of nuclear morphology
Authors: Skinner Benjamin Matthew , Rathje Claudia Cattoni , Bacon Joanne , Johnson Emma Elizabeth Philippa , Larson Erica Lee , Kopania Emily E K , Good Jeffrey Martin , Yousafzai Gullalaii , Affara Nabeel Ahmed , Ellis Peter James Ivor
Published: February 2019

The physical arrangement of chromatin in the nucleus is cell type and species-specific, a fact particularly evident in sperm, in which most of the cytoplasm has been lost. Analysis of the characteristic falciform (“hook shaped”) sperm in mice is important in studies of sperm development, hybrid sterility, infertility, and toxicology. However, quantification of sperm shape differences typically relies on subjective manual assessment, rendering comparisons within and between samples difficult.

We have developed an analysis program for morphometric analysis of asymmetric nuclei and characterized the sperm of mice from a range of inbred, outbred, and wild-derived mouse strains. We find that laboratory strains have elevated sperm shape variability both within and between samples in comparison to wild-derived inbred strains, and that sperm shape in F1 offspring from a cross between CBA and C57Bl6J strains is subtly affected by the direction of the cross. We further show that hierarchical clustering can discriminate distinct sperm shapes with greater efficiency and reproducibility than even experienced manual assessors, and is useful both to distinguish between samples and also to identify different morphological classes within a single sample.

Our approach allows for the analysis of nuclear shape with unprecedented precision and scale and will be widely applicable to different species and different areas of biology.
The intestinal environment as an evolutionary adaptation to mouthbrooding in the Astatotilapia burtoni cichlid
Authors: Faber-Hammond Josh J , Coyle Kaitlin P , Bacheller Shannon K , Roberts Cameron G , Mellies Jay L , Roberts Reade B , Renn Suzy C P
Published: February 2019

Many of the various parental care strategies displayed by animals are accompanied by a significant reduction in food intake that imposes a substantial energy trade-off. Mouthbrooding, as seen in several species of fish in which the parent holds the developing eggs and fry in the buccal cavity, represents an extreme example of reduced food intake during parental investment and is accompanied by a range of physiological adaptations. In this study we use 16S sequencing to characterize the gut microbiota of female Astatotilapia burtoni cichlid fish throughout the obligatory phase of self-induced starvation during the brooding cycle in comparison to stage-matched females that have been denied food for the same duration. In addition to a reduction of gut epithelial turnover, we find a dramatic reduction in species diversity in brooding stages that recovers upon release of fry and refeeding that is not seen in females that are simply starved. Based on overall species diversity as well as differential abundance of specific bacterial taxa, we suggest that rather than reflecting a simple deprivation of caloric intake, the gut microbiota is more strongly influenced by physiological changes specific to mouthbrooding including the reduced epithelial turnover and possible production of antimicrobial agents.
Targeting malaria parasite invasion of red blood cells as an antimalarial strategy
Authors: Burns Amy L , Dans Madeline G , Balbin Juan M , de Koning-Ward Tania F , Gilson Paul R , Beeson James G , Boyle Michelle J , Wilson Danny W
Published: February 2019

Plasmodium spp. parasites that cause malaria disease remain a significant global-health burden. With the spread of parasites resistant to artemisinin combination therapies in Southeast Asia, there is a growing need to develop new antimalarials with novel targets. Invasion of the red blood cell by Plasmodium merozoites is essential for parasite survival and proliferation, thus representing an attractive target for therapeutic development. Red blood cell invasion requires a co-ordinated series of protein/protein interactions, protease cleavage events, intracellular signals, organelle release and engagement of an actin-myosin motor, which provide many potential targets for drug development. As these steps occur in the bloodstream, they are directly susceptible and exposed to drugs. A number of invasion inhibitors against a diverse range of parasite proteins involved in these different processes of invasion have been identified, with several showing potential to be optimised for improved drug-like properties. In this review, we discuss red blood cell invasion as a drug target and highlight a number of approaches for developing antimalarials with invasion inhibitory activity to use in future combination therapies.
The prediction of rotation curves in gas-dominated dwarf galaxies with modified dynamics
Authors: Sanders R H
Published: February 2019

I consider the observed rotation curves of 12 gas-dominated low-surface-brightness galaxies – objects in which the mass of gas ranges between 2.2 and 27 times the mass of the stellar disc (mean = 9.4). This means that, in the usual decomposition of rotation curves into those resulting from various mass components, the mass-to-light ratio of the luminous stellar disc effectively vanishes as an additional adjustable parameter. It is seen that the observed rotation curves reflect the observed structure in gas surface density distribution often in detail. This fact is difficult to comprehend in the context of the dark matter paradigm where the dark halo completely dominates the gravitational potential in the low surface density systems; however it is an expected result in the context of modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) in which the baryonic matter is the only component. With MOND the calculated rotation curves are effectively parameter-free predictions.
An Overview of the Ethics of Health Systems
Authors: Merritt Maria W. , Hyder Adnan A.
Published: February 2019

This chapter relates public health ethics to selected questions regarding health systems ethics and provides overviews of chapters in the section of The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics dedicated to health systems. National and subnational health systems aim chiefly to improve population health. Public health is a collective good whose promotion takes government action, raising ethical issues in stewardship, governance, and accountability. Moral justifications for public health activities, including overall benefit, collective efficiency, distributive fairness, and harm prevention, are considered by way of examining global human resources for health, with an eye to efficiency, equity, rights, and other ethical issues. Worldwide interest in health systems strengthening has boosted investment in health systems research, taking traditional research ethics to the population level in the field of health systems research ethics. The idea of a learning health care system (LHCS) represents a dynamic interface where health care delivery can be continuously improved through systemic data collection undertaken in conjunction with clinical care, posing new system-level ethical opportunities and ethical challenges.
Health Systems Stewardship, Governance, and Accountability: Issues of Public Health Ethics
Authors: DiStefano Michael J. , Ruger Jennifer Prah
Published: February 2019

This chapter argues that stewardship ought to be conceived as a particular form of governance that is the role of both governments and intergovernmental and extragovernmental bodies to carry out. Stewardship as ethically conscientious governance is grounded in an explicit normative commitment to the promotion of justice, including both consequentialist and deontological claims, as part of public health policy and practice. The justification of trade-offs and resolution of tensions among various objectives requires robust accountability mechanisms tied to ethical questions about defining the public good. This chapter describes a range of accountability mechanisms that can function for a variety of governmental and nongovernmental actors. It then explores issues of public health ethics regarding the ways in which specific health systems stewards—including states, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization (WHO)—are held accountable.
Global Human Resources for Health: Ethical Aspects
Authors: Pariyo George W. , Lucas Henry
Published: February 2019

This chapter highlights the main ethical issues that arise in addressing the challenges of global human resources for health (HRH). It includes a brief overview of global HRH problems including shortages and poor working conditions that lead to pressures on the international labor market for health workers, as well as strategies that countries and the global community have taken to mitigate them. The main ethical issues that arise in dealing with global HRH are presented. These include equity of access to quality health care, implications of public versus private health care provision, privacy and confidentiality, fairness to health workers in personnel policies and practices, and managing the push and pull factors in the labor market that lead to the pressure for international migration of health personnel. The chapter highlights existing global conventions that could help governments and other policymakers to alleviate these challenges in a more ethically responsible way.
The Learning Health Care System and Ethics: Challenges and Opportunities
Authors: Morain Stephanie , Kass Nancy E. , Faden Ruth R.
Published: February 2019

This chapter introduces the concept of a learning health care system (LHCS) and discusses the ethical issues that arise within the LHCS context. The LHCS has gained attention as an organizational innovation to improve the quality and efficiency of health care. In an LHCS, knowledge generation is built into the ongoing practice of clinical care, and findings based on this knowledge are continuously fed back to improve care delivery. The goals of an LHCS are arguably consistent with the moral obligation of health systems to improve quality, safety, and justice in health. However, the LHCS model also presents potential ethical challenges. This article discusses challenges related to continuous data generation, including maintaining privacy and confidentiality; obligations related to data on cost and quality; transparency to patients and other stakeholders; and data interoperability. It also describes issues related to the continued appropriateness of the research-practice distinction and implications for ethical oversight.
Measuring Health Inequity: A Public Health Ethics Inquiry
Authors: Asada Yukiko
Published: February 2019

This chapter discusses ethical considerations that arise in three essential tasks for measuring health inequity in public health: defining health inequity, empirically operationalizing the chosen definition of health inequity, and quantifying the magnitude of health inequity. The first section introduces some of the definitions of health inequity and health inequality proposed in relevant literatures. The second section discusses some of the important strategies used to incorporate, explicitly and transparently, these various perspectives of health inequity into its measurement. The third section outlines some of the key ethical considerations that arise in choosing indices to quantify the magnitude of health inequity. Measurement of health inequity requires consideration of ethics, methods, and policy. Interdisciplinary integration of these three considerations is critical for its further advance.
An Overview of Ethics, Public Health, and Communicable Diseases
Authors: Taylor Holly A.
Published: February 2019

This chapter provides an overview of the Ethics, Public Health, and Communicable Diseases section of The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics. Ethical issues relevant to the prevention and treatment of communicable diseases vary based on multiple factors, including ease of disease transmission, the severity of disease, and the availability of effective approaches to the prevention and treatment of disease. One chapter in this section is devoted to immunization, reflecting its crucial role in the prevention of and near eradication of multiple infectious diseases. Other chapters focus on different communicable diseases. The chapter on tuberculosis highlights ethical challenges of combatting an airborne, infectious disease. The chapter on mosquito-borne illnesses examines another context where impoverished living conditions contribute both to the spread of disease and to ethics challenges of disease management. Lastly, the chapter on HIV/AIDS highlights how ethical analysis of public health interventions can shift with the advancement of science and the development of effective methods of prevention and treatment regimens.
Control of Mosquito-Borne Illnesses: A Challenge to Public Health Ethics
Authors: Greisman Laura , Koenig Barbara , Barry Michele
Published: February 2019

This chapter delves into the ethical issues surrounding the implementation of public health interventions for control of mosquito-borne illnesses. Emerging and reemerging mosquito-borne infections remain a public health threat worldwide, prompting public health agencies to strengthen individual and population-wide measures for mosquito control. Ethical issues surrounding surveillance activities and key public health interventions for mosquito control are discussed, including provision of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs), the spraying of aerial pesticides, and the introduction of genetically modified mosquitoes. A case study of Zika virus disease highlights specific ethical challenges surrounding the safety of insect repellent use in pregnancy and the complex issue of women’s reproductive rights arising in a fast-moving epidemic. The chapter emphasizes the need for community engagement at all levels of mosquito control interventions, and it highlights the disproportionate impact of mosquito-borne disease on the poor, calling to action the need to strengthen health systems in low- and middle-income countries.
An Overview of Ethics, Public Health, and Noncommunicable Diseases
Authors: Saloner Brendan
Published: February 2019

This chapter provides an overview of the ethics of noncommunicable diseases, one of the areas of focus in The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics. Key areas of ethics attention include tobacco, alcohol and other drugs, and cancer, which affect populations in higher- and lower-income societies alike. The ability of society to respond to these challenges will have major implications for future gains in global life expectancy. While there exists a strong evidence base for public health intervention, the ability to respond is hindered by political constraints and limited progress on addressing the social inequalities that are often root causes of noncommunicable diseases. A commitment to reducing noncommunicable diseases is likely to advance social equity, and vice versa.
Tobacco as a Matter of Public Health: Ethical Issues
Authors: Voigt Kristin
Published: February 2019

This chapter considers normative issues that tobacco raises at the population level, particularly with respect to the anti-smoking strategies policymakers might pursue and the reasons and justifications underlying these strategies. After setting out several background factors that shape the debate, the chapter discusses different grounds on which state and public health actors might seek to restrict tobacco use, considering in turn those justifications that focus on protecting smokers and those that seek to protect third parties. The chapter then considers normative problems arising in relation to specific anti-smoking strategies, such as restrictions on the sale, use, and marketing of cigarettes; taxation; incentives for cessation; and denormalization strategies. Issues of paternalism and the stigma associated with smoking are also discussed.
Alcohol and Other Drugs: Public Health Ethics Issues
Authors: Saloner Brendan
Published: February 2019

This chapter examines ethical principles that guide public health intervention to reduce the harms of alcohol and other drugs, including justice-based concerns regarding intervention. While many egalitarian moral theories support public health measures to reduce these harms, and thereby protect individual capability and opportunity, there are opposing arguments to limit public health intervention based on either individual liberty or personal responsibility. The chapter also reviews ethical issues related to prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and decriminalization/legalization. Prevention through education is politically appealing, but is not always evidence-based and can be stigmatizing. Treatment can be highly cost-effective, but some approaches are controversial, such as legally coerced treatment. Harm reduction approaches, such as needle exchange, can reduce many of the negative health consequences of alcohol and drug use, but they require a more direct government role in illicit behaviors. Marijuana legalization is a growing movement in the United States, but it poses complex regulatory challenges.
An Overview of the Ethics of Injury in Public Health
Authors: Hyder Adnan A.
Published: February 2019

This chapter briefly introduces ethics issues in injury prevention and control in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), using a series of examples that prompt attention to the ethical principles of autonomy and justice. The chapter also introduces the section of The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics dedicated to an examination of injury and public health ethics, with attention given to the complex ethical challenges arising in injury prevention and control in LMICs. The section’s two chapters discuss public health ethics issues arising in the prevention and control of unintentional injuries and intentional injuries, respectively. Those chapters define a set of ethics issues within international injury work and provide an initial analysis of the nature of those ethics issues, their specificity, and potential pathways for addressing them.
Preventing Unintentional Injuries: Ethical Considerations in Public Health
Authors: Ameratunga Shanthi , Jonas Monique , Blank Danilo
Published: February 2019

Injury, which originates from the Latin word for injustice, is a global health problem that imposes a disproportionately high burden on people in fragile economies. This chapter examines the ethical implications of public health actions to prevent unintentional injuries. The concepts of social justice and autonomy are at the core of common debates about the roles of the state, communities, and individuals in controlling injury. Distinguishing unintentional injuries from violence can undermine an integrated preventive approach. Viewing unintended injuries as resulting from accidents fosters a reluctance to apply principles of justice to them and supports risk acceptance and nonintervention. This chapter first critiques arguments relating to concepts such as responsibility, risk compensation, equity in access to the social determinants of health and the so-called normal opportunity range, personal freedom, health-promoting choices, collective health interests, and the avoidance of third-party harm. This is followed by an exploration of how an ethics framework for public health could assist injury prevention.
Violence and Public Health Ethics
Authors: Pasha Omrana , Hyder Myra F. , Hyder Adnan A.
Published: February 2019

This chapter discusses the ethical issues and impact of interpersonal and self-directed violence on the health of the global population. Interpersonal and self-directed violence (self-harm) are leading causes of death and disability globally, and international guidelines recommend provision of services to those affected by violence, research into the prevalence of violence, and advocacy and training to prevent violence. Importantly, public health practice and research on violence present both global and context-specific ethical challenges. This chapter describes the impact of violence on public health, the role of public health practitioners in addressing violence, fundamental ethical principles and guidelines for public health workers to address violence, and ethical challenges for research and programs dealing with violence, including fair approaches to violence screening and response, safe means of collecting data about violence, reducing risks when resources are limited, and autonomy versus paternalism in suicide management. The chapter concludes by suggesting strategies for the ethical practice of public health in the context of violence.
Spatial Social Choice
Authors: Schofield Norman
Published: February 2019

A key concept of social choice is the idea of the Condorcet point or core. For example, consider a voting game with four participants so any three will win. If voters have Euclidean preferences, then the point at the center will be unbeaten. Earlier spatial models of social choice focused on deterministic voter choice. However, it is clear that voter choice is intrinsically stochastic. This chapter employs a stochastic model based on multinomial logit to examine whether parties in electoral competition tend to converge toward the electoral center or respond to activist pressure to adopt more polarized policies. The chapter discusses experimental results of the idea of the core explores empirical analyses of elections in Israel and the United States.
Social Embeddedness and Rational Turnout
Authors: Uhlaner Carole Jean
Published: February 2019

Models that embed people in social groups provide solutions to the paradox of voting. This chapter summarizes several approaches that use group identities and loyalties to generate substantial turnout even within rational choice models of participation (whether voting or collective action more broadly). One theoretical move introduces leaders acting instrumentally to mobilize individuals who belong to some group, thereby integrating the individual citizen’s consumption term into an instrumental calculus. Other, complementary, theoretical developments introduce relational goods, which exist only with interaction among specific people, as part of the mobilizing arsenal, or more generally develop relational motivations for collective action. The chapter briefly discusses some empirical findings, notably including experiments that show that shame, pride, and digital social networks increase turnout, and argues that these results provide support for the social embeddedness models.
Choosing among Governments
Authors: Hamlin Alan
Published: February 2019

While public choice theory is generally skeptical about government, challenging the assumptions that often underpin arguments for government or for governmental action in particular circumstances, it is also generally supportive of a particular form of government: constitutionally limited democracy. Public choice theory emphasizes choice and agreement in relation to constitutional government at several levels: the choice of government over anarchy, the choice of constitutional arrangements and rules, the choice of particular government administrations under democracy, and the choice of policy by governments acting within the constitution. This chapter sketches out these various levels discussing the relevant sense of “choice” at each level and identifying the key procedural and substantive issues involved in democratic constitutional design.
Campaign Finance
Authors: Stratmann Thomas
Published: February 2019

The role of money in politics has long been a contentious issue. Over the last decade the amount of money given in contributions to political campaigns has grown substantially. This chapter provides an overview of both theoretical and empirical studies and the scholarly literature that has emerged on this topic over the last forty years. Further, the chapter describes the history of US campaign finance laws. Then, it documents what has been learned from the several literatures that have emerged on campaign expenditures, campaign contributions, and campaign finance regulations. This chapter also suggests shortcomings in the current literature and points to potential avenues for future research.
The Political Economy of Rent Creation and Rent Extraction
Authors: Congleton Roger D.
Published: February 2019

Rent Creation, Rent Extraction, and Rent Seeking are closely related concepts whose relationships are often misunderstood. For example, neither rent extraction nor rent seeking are possible until rents are created. Both rent extraction and rent seeking thus begin with the creation of rents. If one begins with the Hobbesian perspective on anarchy, all rents are ultimately the creation of government policies. Civil law determines what it means to own something, which includes an owner’s claims on the rents associated with his or her property and private activities. One in place, civil law also allows the possibility that rents can be created through private actions. Public policy may alter those claims through changes in use and rent-extraction rights associated with ownership. Such policies may create new rents or redistribute existing rents. In doing so, such policies induce rent-seeking efforts (or not) depending on the policies adopted and the manner in which rents are distributed. The welfare gains and losses associated with the various procedures for rent creation, rent seeking, and rent extraction imply that prohibitions against many, but not all, forms of rent extraction are warranted.
Interest Groups and Regulatory Capture
Authors: Shughart William F. , Thomas Diana W.
Published: February 2019

Economic orthodoxy before 1971 suggested that regulatory intervention could improve on market outcomes in cases of market power, negative spillover effects, or asymmetric information. That orthodoxy was overturned in 1971 with the publication of George Stigler’s “Theory of Economic Regulation,” which concludes that regulatory agencies are vulnerable to capture by special interest groups who shape regulatory outcomes in ways that benefit the regulated industry itself at consumers’ expense. Many empirical studies have since then confirmed Stigler’s theoretical insights. This chapter summarizes the major theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature on economic regulation, provides an overview of the various groups that can capture the regulatory process, and summarizes more recent contributions highlighting regulation’s regressive effects and the “revolving door” between regulatory agencies and regulated firms.
Contested Political Persuasion
Authors: Skaperdas Stergios , Vaidya Samarth
Published: February 2019

This chapter shows how contest and rent-seeking functions can be thought of as persuasion functions that can be derived in a Bayesian setting. Two contestants (such as lobbyists or politicians) produce evidence for a decision maker (such as an agency head or a voter) who has prior beliefs and possibly other biases and engages in Bayesian updating. The probability of each contestant winning depends on the resources and organization of the contestant, on the biases of the decision maker, and on the truth, as well as other factors. This chapter discusses how this approach can be applied to lobbying government at its three branches (legislative, executive, and judicial, the latter in terms of litigation), political campaigning, general policy formulation and advocacy in the wider media, and ideological struggles.
Direct Democracy and Public Policy
Authors: Matsusaka John
Published: February 2019

An extensive literature seeks to measure the effect of the initiative and referendum on public policies. Several conclusions emerge: The initiative and referendum have different effects on policy. Requiring popular approval of fiscal policies (mandatory referendums) results in lower expenditure, taxes, and debt. The initiative process gives voters more power and results in policies closer to the median voter preference; this often has reduced spending (American states, Swiss cantons), but sometimes has increased spending (cities). The initiative is associated with more socially conservative policy choices. Spurious correlation is a concern in many studies, and more research on causality is needed.
The Politics of Central Bank Independence
Authors: de Haan Jakob , Eijffinger Sylvester
Published: February 2019

This chapter reviews recent research on the political economy of monetary policymaking, both by economists and by political scientists. The traditional argument for central bank independence is the desire to counter inflationary biases. However, studies in political science suggest that governments may delegate monetary policy in order to detach it from political debates and power struggles. The recent financial crisis has changed the role of central banks, as evidenced by unconventional monetary and macro-prudential policy measures. Financial stability and unconventional monetary policies have stronger distributional consequences than conventional monetary policies, with implications for central bank independence. However, the authors’ results do not suggest that that has happened in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis, nor has there been higher turnover of central bank governors.
The Political Economy of Redistribution Policy
Authors: Bellani Luna , Ursprung Heinrich
Published: February 2019

The authors review the literature on the public-choice analysis of redistribution policies. They restrict the discussion to redistribution in democracies and focus on policies that are pursued with the sole objective of redistributing initial endowments. Since generic models of redistribution in democracies lack equilibria, one needs to introduce structure-inducing rules to arrive at a models whose behavior realistically portrays observed redistribution patterns. These rules may relate to the economic relationships, political institutions, or to firmly established preferences, beliefs, and attitudes of voters. The chapter surveys the respective lines of argument in turn and then present the related empirical evidence.
The Politics of International Trade
Authors: Ethier Wilfred J. , Hillman Arye L.
Published: February 2019

Traditional international trade models explain the sources of comparative advantage and show how a country as a whole gains from trade and from terms-of-trade improvement. The traditional models assumed competitive market-determined outcomes with passive or benevolent government. Income-distribution consequences of trade policy were noted. The models did not address the politics of trade policy, the study of which requires two premises consistent with public-choice principles: (1) that political self-interest underlies policy decisions rather than benevolent-government social-welfare objectives, and (2) political decision makers prefer creation of politically assignable rents to non-assignable budgetary revenue or aggregate country-wide gains from free trade or terms-of-trade improvement. These two premises are acknowledged in the first-generation of models of politicized trade policy. A second generation of models includes the first but not the second premise. It is documented that public-choice premises have not always been included in mainstream economic models. The second-generation models devoid of the primacy of rents in trade-policy determination are mainstream for many members of the academic international trade community. The chapter explains how, by not including the political preference for rents over budgetary revenue, the second-generation models are at variance with the actual conduct of trade policy. Public-choice concepts are also used to re-evaluate a wide range of traditional trade-policy conclusions and recommendations. Empirical evidence is reviewed and interpreted.
Ancient Greece
Authors: Fleck Robert K. , Hanssen F. Andrew
Published: February 2019

Although ancient Greece has long fascinated scholars, only recently have public-choice models and social science methods been applied in an effort to understand the unique political institutions for which Greece is so famous. This emerging research provides new insights into Greek history and, more generally, into the nature of democracy, autocracy, and institutional development. In this chapter, we will review public choice-related literature on the emergence of democracy in ancient Greece, on why all of ancient Greece was so anomalously democratic, and on why some Greek poleis were more democratic than others. We will finish by discussing the institutional underpinnings of ancient Greek democracy and ancient Greek tyranny, both of which were peculiarly Greek inventions.
Bicameralism
Authors: Testa Cecilia
Published: February 2019

In modern democracies, the legislative power is vested in parliaments with diverse organizational structures. Bicameral legislatures, requiring concurrent deliberation by two bodies, are present in about one-third of the world’s countries. Bicameralism typically serves the important purpose of accommodating the representation of heterogeneous interests from distinct social cleavages or geographic entities, but it is also associated with advantages such as greater stability of policies, increased accountability, and better quality of legislation. These benefits, however, only arise under specific circumstances, and the greater procedural complexity brought about by two chambers is not without costs. Disagreement between the two chambers often leads to costly legislative gridlock. Bicameralism can also open the door to pressure groups advancing their requests for favorable legislation when the chambers do not have time to carefully consider its consequences. The constitutional choice of bicameralism and its optimality ultimately rest on the subtle balance between its costs and benefits.
Voting and Popularity
Authors: Kirchgässner Gebhard
Published: February 2019

For about 45 years, vote and popularity functions have been estimated for many countries, indicating that both voting intentions and actual votes are influenced by economic development. The economy is, of course, not the only and probably not always the most important factor, but there is no doubt anymore that it is an important factor. The most relevant variables are still unemployment and/or real growth, and inflation. The estimated coefficients vary considerably between countries and time periods. In studies done, retrospective sociotropic voting dominates. However, the evidence is not so univocal; rather, it tells that voting has egotropic as well as sociotropic aspects, and it is prospective as well as retrospective. It is still open what roles self-interest and altruism play in voting.
Federalism
Authors: Kantorowicz Jaroslaw
Published: February 2019

Federalism is a governance structure that enables the aggregation of mass areas under one government. Federalism is a more complex form of governance than a unitary system. Under a federal structure of government, the activities are constitutionally divided (or shared) between constituent governments and a central government, implying a permanent coexistence and bargaining between participating governments and the center or among participating governments themselves. This chapter delineates the current state of knowledge regarding federalism and its twin concept of decentralization from the public-choice perspective. First, the chapter looks at federalism as an explanatory variable by examining how it shapes various outcomes ranging from economic growth to incidence of terrorism. Second, it deals with endogenous federalism and thus factors that explain how it emerges, survives, and changes. In the last part, the chapter summarizes several potential avenues for future research on federalism.
Electoral Systems in the Making
Authors: Bochsler Daniel
Published: February 2019

Most research on electoral systems deals with the effects of institutions on political representation. However, political parties design the electoral systems, and thereby navigate between self-interest and multiple, often nonreconcilable normative ideals. This chapter reviews the growing literature on the choice of electoral systems from different perspectives. Structural theories explain that the choice of electoral systems is closely linked to the history of suffrage extensions, cultural heterogeneity and the organization of the economy. Agency-based theories highlight how parliamentary majorities strategically pass electoral reforms in order to consolidate their power in the long run—for instance, in order to avoid future losses in elections. However, often lawmakers fail to predict their electoral fortunes and therefore pass reforms that turn out not to be in their favor, or they even contribute to undermining their own reforms later with strategic maneuvers. Finally, the chapter analyzes the choice of electoral system in the context of transitions toward democracies and in former colonies.
Criminal Process in the Dual Penal State
Authors: Dubber Markus D.
Published: February 2019

This chapter uses comparative-historical analysis to discuss criminal process in the context of penal power in the modern liberal state as penal law and penal police—the dual penal state. Focusing on Germany and the United States, it considers two ways of thinking about criminal process, from parallel perspectives that correspond to two modes of state governance: law and police. The first is characteristic of the law state (Rechtsstaat) and the second, of the police state (Polizeistaat). The emphasis is on the criminal process that is consistent with the pursuit of the ideal of liberal law to which states that regard themselves—or wish to be regarded by others—as participants in the modern liberal legal-political project are committed.
Rights and Duties of Experts
Authors: Vuille Joëlle
Published: February 2019

This chapter examines the rights and duties of experts, with emphasis on the rules governing the use of expert evidence in the non-adversary criminal justice systems most commonly found in Europe. It first provides an overview of relevant concepts and definitions relating to the position and role of the expert in criminal investigations and trials before discussing the process of hiring non-adversary experts and defining the questions put to them, the duties that befall the expert, and the issue of defense rights in connection with expert evidence. It also reviews the empirical literature about the evaluation of expert evidence by jurors and professional judges before proceeding with an analysis of what sanctions can be imposed when an expert commits a gross negligence or willfully misleads the court. Finally, it explores several issues that have arisen lately with regards to the use of expert evidence in criminal proceedings.
Interrogation Law and Practice in Common Law Jurisdictions
Authors: Dixon David
Published: February 2019

This chapter examines police interrogation law and practice in common law jurisdictions. It begins with an overview of police interrogation myths, with the objective of dispelling them by showing that interrogation law and practice are located in the broader fields of criminal process and investigative activity. It then reviews the literature on interrogation law and practice, along with the purposes, uses, and functions of interrogation. It also explores interrogation by other state agents and private parties operating at the edges of criminal process or beyond; the impact of miscarriages of justice, coerced confessions, wrongful convictions, and failed prosecutions on interrogation law and practice; electronic recording as a means of improving investigative performance; the Reid Technique of interviewing suspects; the use of the PEACE model in investigative interviewing; and the work of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) with respect to intelligence interrogation.
Special Procedures for White-Collar and Corporate Wrongdoing
Authors: Tricot Juliette
Published: February 2019

This chapter examines special procedures applicable to white-collar and corporate crimes from a European perspective. It first considers the different procedures applicable to corporate crime, focusing on special procedures aimed at preserving sovereign powers, regulatory powers, and co-regulation powers. In each case, tax crime, anticompetitive practices, and anticorruption policies are used as examples, respectively. The chapter proceeds by discussing the distinctive characteristics of special procedures, with emphasis on how confusion of powers prevails over the separation of powers in these procedures, how the search to restore the equilibrium disrupted by misconduct prevails over condemnation and punishment and thus guides enforcement in a direction that is principally prospective rather than retrospective, and why balance of power is an important issue. Finally, the chapter analyzes the possible impact of special procedures on the criminal justice system, particularly on prosecutorial powers.