bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The influence of neighbourhood disadvantage on smoking cessation and its contribution to inequalities in smoking status
Authors: TURRELL GAVIN , HEWITT BELINDA A. , MILLER SOPHIE A. 
Published: April 2012

AbstractIntroduction and Aims. Individual smokers from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to quit, which contributes to widening inequalities in smoking. Residents of disadvantaged neighbourhoods are more likely to smoke, and neighbourhood inequalities in smoking may also be widening because of neighbourhood differences in rates of cessation. This study examined the association between neighbourhood disadvantage and smoking cessation and its relationship with neighbourhood inequalities in smoking.Design and Methods. A multilevel longitudinal study of mid‐aged (40–67 years) residents (n = 6915) of Brisbane, Australia, who lived in the same neighbourhoods (n = 200) in 2007 and 2009. Neighbourhood inequalities in cessation and smoking were analysed using multilevel logistic regression and Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation.Results. After adjustment for individual‐level socioeconomic factors, the probability of quitting smoking between 2007 and 2009 was lower for residents of disadvantaged neighbourhoods (9.0–12.8%) than their counterparts in more advantaged neighbourhoods (20.7–22.5%). These inequalities in cessation manifested in widening inequalities in smoking: in 2007 the between‐neighbourhood variance in rates of smoking was 0.242 (P ≤ 0.001) and in 2009 it was 0.260 (P ≤ 0.001). In 2007, residents of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods were 88% (OR 1.88, 95% credible intervals (CrI) 1.41–2.49) more likely to smoke than residents in the least disadvantaged neighbourhoods: the corresponding difference in 2009 was 98% (OR 1.98, 95% CrI 1.48–2.66).Conclusion. Fundamentally, social and economic inequalities at the neighbourhood and individual levels cause smoking and cessation inequalities. Reducing these inequalities will require comprehensive, well‐funded and targeted tobacco control efforts and equity‐based policies that address the social and economic determinants of smoking. [Turrell G, Hewitt BA, Miller SA. The influence of neighbourhood disadvantage on smoking cessation and its contribution to inequalities in smoking status. Drug Alcohol Rev 2012;31:645–652]
ON THE PLAUSIBILITY OF HOMEOPATHIC ‘SIMILITUDE’
Authors: BELLAVITE PAOLO 
Published: April 2012

ABSTRACTThe homeopathic principle of similitude is not based on the principle of vaccination but on the more general principle of inversion of effects, a widespread medical phenomenon. Based on the systemic networks which play an important role in response to stress, this principle concerns the reorganization of regulation systems, through a coherent response to the medicine. This model is backed by a large number of published studies from our laboratory and others, by toxicological evidence such as the emerging fields of ‘hormesis’, of neuropharmacology, and of systems biology. The immune system is just one example of the possible application of this law of similitude, which constitutes the true ‘heart’ of the homeopathic idea, and again ethically justifies the attempt to apply it to experimental pharmacology.
IS HOMEOPATHY REALLY ‘MORALLY AND ETHICALLY UNACCEPTABLE’? A CRITIQUE OF PURE SCIENTISM
Authors: MILGROM LIONEL , CHATFIELD KATE 
Published: April 2012

ABSTRACTIn this short response we show that Kevin Smith's moral and ethical rejections of homeopathy1 are fallacious and rest on questionable epistemology. Further, we suggest Smith's presumption of a utilitarian stance is an example of scientism encroaching into medicine.
HOMEOPATHY AND EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS – A RESPONSE TO SMITH'S UTILITARIAN ARGUMENT
Authors: SEBASTIAN IRENE 
Published: April 2012

ABSTRACTKevin Smith's utilitarian argument against homeopathy1 is flawed because he did not review and refute the relevant basic science literature on ultra‐high dilutions. He also failed to appreciate that allopathic medicine is based on a deductive‐nomothetic method and that homeopathic medicine is based on an inductive‐idiographic method, and thus that the implications for clinical research are very different. His misunderstanding of provings and of the holism of homeopathic medicine also demonstrated his failure to understand the history, philosophy and method of homeopathy. Finally, I questioned the value of introducing ethical judgment into an ongoing scientific debate.
Development Aid to Agriculture and Economic Growth
Authors: Kaya Ozgur , Kaya Ilker , Gunter Lewell 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThe link between foreign aid and economic growth has been a controversial issue with no strong consensus so far. This paper argues that a possible reason why some studies may conclude that aid is ineffective in promoting economic growth might be that not all aid is given for development purposes (i.e. aid given for strategic considerations, humanitarian reasons or emergency relief). This study classifies foreign aid into four subcategories: agricultural aid, social infrastructure aid, investment aid, and non‐investment aid. Using the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation technique on a Barro type growth regression with panel data from the aid recipient economies, this paper finds that when aid is directed to the agricultural sector of the developing countries, it is positively and significantly related to growth and can affect economic growth in the short run.
A Spatial Econometric Analysis of Cultural Dimensions, Technology Knowledge and Economic Growth
Authors: Barboza Gustavo A. , Pede Valerien O. 
Published: April 2012

AbstractUsing data from 65 countries over the period 1980–2003, this paper investigates the role that cultural dimensions play in the process of technological change, innovation and adoption and consequently on the steady state level of output per worker and its growth, using spatial econometrics techniques to account for spatial dependence between countries. Initial findings indicate that differences across cultural dimensions act as a leveling effect but not as long run growth determinants. In addition, when controlling for physical and human capital accumulation, culture plays a much smaller role in explaining differences in income per capita than initially thought, with little effect on output per worker growth along the transitional dynamics path. Spatial econometric considerations are relevant in explaining differences across rates of growth of per worker output, but not in terms of steady‐state levels of income.
Has the Program 3×1 for Migrants Contributed to Community Development in Mexico? Evidence from Panel Data of 2000 and 2005
Authors: Kijima Yoko , Gonzalez‐Ramirez Horacio 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThis paper examines how collective remittances contribute to regional development by using the community‐level two‐year panel data for the states of Jalisco and Zacatecas in Mexico, which have received the higher amounts of the budget of the Program 3×1 for Migrants. The results from empirical analyses show that the communities that received this program became better‐off between 2000 and 2005, according to the marginalization level. Further analyses suggest that specifically investment in roads, water supply, and non‐agricultural productive projects by the 3×1 program improved community welfare. The regression results on access to the program show, however, that neither the marginalization level nor the migration level determined the access to the program. This suggests that the 3×1 program was not necessarily targeted at the communities with higher marginalization and migration levels.
Reducing Tariffs According to WTO Accession Rules: The Case of Vietnam
Authors: Fosse Henrik Barslund , Raimondos‐Møller Pascalis 
Published: April 2012

AbstractWhen Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2007 it was granted an accession period up to 2014. During this period tariffs would have to fall according to the accession agreement. This paper evaluates this 2007–2014 trade liberalization by building an applied general equilibrium model and calibrating it to the Vietnamese data. The model pays careful attention to the fact that Vietnam has many state‐owned enterprises. The model simulations show that the WTO tariff reductions will reduce overall welfare. Moreover, the biggest loss will take place among the poor rural households in Vietnam. This paper proposes other tariff reforms that will both raise overall welfare and reduce income inequality.
Regional Economic Disparity, Financial Disparity, and National Economic Growth: Evidence from China
Authors: Lee Bong‐Soo , Peng Jiangang , Li Guanzheng , He Jing 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThe dynamic relations among national economic growth, economic disparity, and financial disparity in China are examined. Specifically, the focus is on whether economic disparity or financial disparity affects national economic growth. As measures of economic and financial disparity across regions and provinces, the Williamson coefficient of disparity is employed using both regional data (eastern, central, and western) and provincial data (from 31 provinces). Overall, it is found that both provincial financial disparity and, to a lesser degree, economic disparity have a negative effect on national economic growth. In addition, financial disparity appears to be exogenous, suggesting that financial disparity is not influenced by either economic disparity or national economic growth.
China's Outward Direct Investment in Africa
Authors: Cheung Yin‐Wong , de Haan Jakob , Qian Xingwang , Yu Shu 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThe empirical determinants of China's outward direct investment (ODI) in Africa are examined using an officially approved ODI dataset and a relatively new OECD–IMF format ODI dataset. China's ODI is found responding to the canonical economic determinants that include the market seeking motive, the risk factor, and the resources seeking motive. It is also affected by the intensity of trade ties and the presence of China's contracted projects. A host country's natural resources have an impact on China's decision on how much to invest in the country rather than on whether to invest in the country or not. China's drive for Africa's natural resources is mainly a recent phenomenon and, probably, became prominent after the “Going Global” policy adopted in 2002.
Quality Assurance and the Home Market Effect
Authors: Goh Ai‐Ting , Michalski Tomasz K. 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThe home market effect is considered as a distinguishing feature of models of trade with increasing returns to scale in production and imperfect competition. However, some empirical studies found the existence of home market effect even in constant returns to scale industries. This paper builds a model of intra‐industry trade based upon quality assurance and shows the existence of the home market effect without increasing returns in the production technology. This throws into question the rationale of empirical studies attempting to validate the increasing returns model of trade based upon testing the existence of the home market effect.
Product Market Imperfection and the Two‐sector Harris–Todaro Economy
Authors: Choi Jai‐Young , Yu Eden S. H. 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThis paper examines the ramifications of market imperfection for a dual economy in the context of the two‐sector Harris–Todaro model with the agricultural (manufacturing) sector under perfect competition (monopoly). Based on a utility function of constant elasticity of substitution variety, it demonstrates (i) existence of a unique equilibrium at which the consumer price ratio and the producer price ratio are synchronized; (ii) several fundamental properties of the model (crucial to extended research on this subject area); (iii) contrary to an earlier result obtained under an oligopolistic manufacturing sector, trade liberalization for a small economy may be immiserizing.
Importing, Exporting, and Innovation in Developing Countries
Authors: Şeker Murat 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThis study shows the persistent differences in evolution of firms when they are grouped according to their trade orientation as: two‐way traders (both importing and exporting), “exporters‐only”, “importers‐only”, and nontraders. Extending the existing models of firm evolution into an open economy setup by incorporating the importing decision, a simple model is presented and it is empirically shown that: (i) globally engaged firms are larger, more productive, and grow faster than nontraders; (ii) two‐way traders are the fastest growing and most innovative group who are followed by exporter‐only firms; and (iii) estimating the export premium without controlling for import status is likely to overestimate the actual value by capturing the import premium. Robustness of the results is shown by providing evidence from the panel data constructed from the original dataset and controlling for variables that are likely to affect firm evolution.
Technology Adoption, Export Status, and Skill Upgrading: Theory and Evidence
Authors: Bas Maria 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThis paper develops a model of trade that features heterogeneous firms, technology choice and different types of skilled labor in a general equilibrium framework to explain within‐industry increase in the relative demand for skilled workers. Its main contribution is to investigate the impact of firms' export and technology choice decisions on skill upgrading. Only firms in the upper range of the productivity distribution produce for the foreign market using high‐technology. Since this technology is skilled‐biased, exporters that resort to modern technologies are more skill intensive. Empirical evidence is also provided to support the model's main predictions using plant‐level panel data from Chile's manufacturing sector (1990–1999).
Real and Financial Integration in East Asia
Authors: Kim Soyoung , Lee Jong‐Wha 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThis paper examines the real and financial integration of East Asian economies, by comparing the degree of real vs financial and global vs regional integration, before vs after the Asian crisis. First, price and quantity measures such as the size of intra‐ and inter‐regional trade, cross‐border financial assets, stock return correlation, and interest rate differentials are investigated. Second, the structural panel vector autoregression (VAR) model is constructed to analyze macroeconomic consequences of real and financial integration such as cross‐country output and consumption relation. The results suggest that (i) the degree of real integration significantly increased after the crisis, both regionally and globally; (iii) quantity and price measures showed an increased financial integration after the crisis, but the consumption relation did not; (iv) the degree of regional financial integration is smaller than that of global financial integration, based on the consumption relation; and (v) financial integration lags real integration, especially for regional integration.
China Bashing: Does Trade Drive the “Bad” News about China in the USA?
Authors: Ramirez Carlos D. , Rong Rong 
Published: April 2012

AbstractA monthly index of “bad” news about China as reported in the USA from January 1990 to December 2008 is developed in this paper. “Bad” is defined as news touching on the following issues: human rights, Tibet, child labor, democracy, and repression. Using this bad news index, this paper documents a peculiar finding: 3–4 months after a trade deficit shock to the US–China bilateral trade balance, the frequency of bad news published about China by US media outlets rises sharply, then dies off slowly. Statistical analysis reveals that the likelihood that this finding is just a coincidence is relatively small—about 1%. In addition, this paper finds a robust association between the annual number of Congressional hearings on China and the US–China bilateral trade deficit. These results suggest that “China bashing” may be endogenous to fluctuations in the US–China bilateral trade balance.
How Does Foreign Direct Investment Really Affect Developing Countries' Growth?
Authors: Herzer Dierk 
Published: April 2012

AbstractTwo main contributions to literature on foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth are made in this paper. First, the paper examines the effect of FDI on economic growth for 44 developing countries using heterogeneous panel cointegration techniques that are robust to omitted variables and endogenous regressors. The main result is that FDI has, on average, a negative effect on growth in developing countries, but there are large differences in the effect across countries. Second, a general‐to‐specific model‐selection approach is used to systematically search for country‐specific factors explaining the cross‐country differences in the growth effects of FDI. The results suggest that the cross‐country heterogeneity in the growth effect of FDI can be explained mainly by cross‐country differences in freedom from government intervention, business freedom, FDI volatility, and primary export dependence.
DUOPOLISTIC HIRING AND SALES COMPETITION—A THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS
Authors: Berninghaus Siegfried K. , Güth Werner , Hoppe Christian , Paul Christian 
Published: April 2012

ABSTRACTTwo firms compete in selling as well as hiring, where sales levels depend on the hired workforce. There are two types of workers, mobile and immobile, differing in effort costs, and two workers of each type. The principals offer contracts to all workers, who then select an employer. Finally, the workers determine production levels and profits. Our experimental results show: vanishing cost differences between mobile and immobile workers induce monopolistic hiring but low profits. In contrast, large cost differences result in higher profits and allow for various hiring constellations such as one firm hiring only low‐cost workers.
Living Up to Lenin: Leadership Culture and the Spanish Communist Party, 1920–1939*
Authors: REES TIM 
Published: April 2012

AbstractIn its quest to spread the Bolshevik revolution around the world, the Communist International (Comintern) sought to create a strong leadership culture among communist parties. This article examines the experience of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE). It shifts the focus away from a traditional concern with the individual or collective characters and capabilities of leaders, towards an analysis of the everyday characteristics and behaviours required of leaders, what they signified and the degree to which the PCE conformed in practice to ‘Leninist’ archetypes. While there was an active acceptance within the PCE of the need to emulate the Bolshevik example, the specifically Spanish cultural and political environment in which party leaders operated also exerted a powerful influence. Consequently, the PCE only ever partially conformed to the Comintern's leadership doctrines, and its leaders inevitably fell short of Bolshevik ideals.
Scene‐context effect in visual memory is independent of retention interval1
Authors: INOUE KAZUYA , TAKEDA YUJI 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThe context of a natural scene can facilitate memory for embedded objects. It has been reported that such scene‐context effects can be lost in the flicker paradigm, which alternatively presents a picture, followed by a modified version of the picture after a brief interval. Using a follow‐the‐dot paradigm which instills serial attending, determinants of the scene‐context effect are examined by varying both scene‐context (normal, jumbled) and the retention interval (short, long) between cued and target objects. In this paradigm, a dot cue was sequentially presented on 12 different objects of a scene, then the memory for one of the cued objects was tested. This paradigm requires holding information about multiple objects in memory at once. Retention intervals were varied by manipulating the serial position of the dot on a target object. The results showed that the retention interval did not influence the scene‐context effect. Potential mechanisms for the scene‐context effect are discussed.
Detection of a change in photorealism1
Authors: SEYAMA JUNICHIRO , NAGAYAMA RUTH S 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThe perceived degree of photorealism is interpreted as reflecting the artificialness or naturalness of images. Natural images (real‐scene photographs) are images with high degrees of naturalness, while artificial images (e.g., paintings) are images with low degrees of naturalness. Alternatively, natural images are images with low degrees of artificialness, while artificial images are images with high degrees of artificialness. We attempted to disambiguate these two interpretations of the perception of photorealism by using a change‐blindness paradigm. Participants observed an image sequence showing a gradual transformation from a natural image to an artificial image or vice versa, and reported changes they noticed. More participants reported noticing changes in photorealism for the natural‐to‐artificial transformations than for the opposite transformations. This asymmetry indicates that disappearing naturalness was detected more readily than emerging naturalness, or alternatively, emerging artificialness was detected more readily than disappearing artificialness. The results for the control conditions showed that the emergence of visual information was detected more readily than the disappearance. These results suggest that the perception of photorealism should be considered as the perception of artificialness.
The effects of social memories in autobiographical elaboration on incidental memory
Authors: TOYOTA HIROSHI 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThe present study compared the effects of social memories with those of nonsocial memories on incidental memory. The participants were presented target words on two occasions, and each time they were asked to think of a past episode associated with them in the orienting task, followed by an unexpected free‐recall test. The results showed that the targets that were associated with social memories, episodes including any person, were recalled more often than those with nonsocial memories. Also, the spacing effect was observed only for the recall of target words associated with social memories. These results were interpreted as showing that the inclusion of any particular person in an episode makes an episode itself more distinctive as an effective cue in autobiographical elaboration.