Public debt stabilization: the relevance of policymakers’ time horizons

Policymakers are stuck in time. Political short-termism, policy myopia, policy short-sightedness, and similar words have been coined to emphasize the present-centric policy thinking. Politics tends to produce short time horizons, and as a result, policymakers often fail to use present opportunities to mitigate future harms. Focusing on fiscal and monetary strategic interactions, given different separate decision makers, our paper aims to explore the effects of policymakers’ time horizons on debt stabilization. To formalize our ideas, we use the novel concept of Nonlinear-model-predictive-control Feedback Nash Equilibrium (NFNE) and find that present-centric policy thinking and decision horizons matters under several dimensions.     

Silence of the Innocents: Undocumented Immigrants’ Underreporting of Crime and their Victimization

Do undocumented migrants underreport crimes to the police in order to avoid being deported? And do criminals exploit such vulnerability? We address these questions using victimization surveys and administrative data around the 1986 U.S. immigration amnesty. The amnesty allows us to solve two major identification issues that have plagued this literature: migrants’ legal status is endogenous and unobserved. The results show that the reporting rate of undocumented immigrants is 17 percent, which limits the immigrants’ ability to protect some of their fundamental human rights. However, right after the 1986 amnesty, which disproportionately legalized individuals of Hispanic origin, crime victims of Hispanic origin show enormous improvements in reporting behavior. The implied increase in the reporting rate by amnesty applicants is close to 20 percentage points.     

To Elect or Not to Elect: Leaders,Alternation in Power and Social Welfare in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper investigates whether and how multiparty elections, introduced in many African countries since the early 1990s, affect a government’s commitment to welfare policies. We hypothesise that contested multiparty elections and turnovers between different leaders and political forces in government – even when democratic standards are not met – positively impact the promotion of social welfare. We test these hypotheses through a cross-sectional and time-series research design, making use of our new, comprehensive ‘Africa Leadership Change’ (ALC) dataset. Empirical results confirm that leaders elected through multiparty elections and countries that experience political alternations in government are associated with higher levels of social welfare.     

Academic entrepreneurship: founding and governance determinants in university spin-off ventures

The Journal of Technology Transfer - Academic research is generally seen as one of the most important goals of a university, but universities are being called upon simultaneously to assist in...     

Observations on dental structures when placed in contact with acids: experimental studies to aid identification processes

In a "mafia" crime case, a magistrate asked us whether it is possible to destroy a cadaver by immersing it in acids, and would it be possible to identify any residues. The aim of this study was to observe the behavior of teeth exposed to four kinds of acid solutions. The teeth were placed in plastic containers with 25 mL of acid and observed. The experiences showed that teeth are completely dissolved after 14 h of immersion in 37% solution of hydrochloric acid, while at 90h in 96% sulfuric acid, the destruction of the samples is still incomplete. In nitric acid the teeth undergo a complete dissolution in 12 h, and in 17 h in aqua regia (chloroazotic acid-hydrochloric/nitric acid 1:3). It was possible to recognize the characteristic morphological features of dental tissues and structures up until the advanced stages of degradation.     

European associations in law and economics foreword

European Journal of Law and Economics -     

Estimating the impact of an integrated CCTV program on crime

Journal of Experimental Criminology - Prior research has identified that CCTV cameras play some role in deterring crime in public places. However, increasingly, CCTV surveillance is being...     

Does Democratization Foster State Consolidation? Democratic Rule,Political Order,and Administrative Capacity

The established view in political science is that a sound and functioning state has to be in place before democracy can be introduced. State first, and then democracy. While acknowledging the existence of a basic state infrastructure as a necessary starting point, we examine the possibility that democratization itself may play an important role in the subsequent development and consolidation of the state. We do this by addressing the major conceptual and methodological shortcomings of existing research on this topic. The results of our panel analysis, covering a population of 122 countries, show that both a country's level of democracy and the interaction between degree and duration of democracy positively and significantly affect the consolidation of the state and of its two key individual dimensions, namely, political order and administrative capacity.     

Acetaldehyde accumulation during headspace gas-chromatographic determination of ethanol

The acetaldehyde accumulation in blood during the equilibration time of samples processed by gas-liquid chromatographic headspace technique is reported. The quantitative loss of blood ethanol concentration is recorded at various temperatures and times of the preheating process.When the equilibration process is performed at 40 °C, minimal errors, due to ethanol oxidation, are observed.