Sudden Death Due to Hydatid Disease: A Six‐Year Study in the Northern Part of Tunisia

Human ecchinococcosis also known as hydatid disease is a zoonotic infection caused by the tapeworm Ecchinococcus with 2–3 Million cases worldwide. We hereby report a 6 years period study of Sudden death due to hydatidosis aiming to analyze the epidemiological criteria, death circumstances, and autopsy observations attributed to hydatid disease. During the past 6 years, 26 death cases were due to hydatid disease. Our analysis shows that the sex ratio (M/F) was 1.6, the mean age was 31‐year old, and 65% of the subjects lived in rural places. In 17 cases, death occurred in the victim's place, five victims died after a heavy exercise, and in two cases, death occurred immediately after trauma. At autopsy, 91% of the cysts were found in the liver. In three cases, death followed a septic state, and in two cases, it followed an acute respiratory failure. Death was attributed to anaphylaxis in 17 cases.     

Does Size Matter? Reassessing the Relationship between Aquaculture and Poverty in Bangladesh

Aquaculture has long been promoted by development institutions in Bangladesh on the understanding that it can alleviate poverty. Most of this attention has focused on forms of the activity commonly referred to as ‘small-scale’. This article draws on concepts from the literature on agricultural growth and elaborates a typology of aquaculture based on relations of production which suggests that, in Bangladesh, quasi-capitalist forms of aquaculture may possess greater potential to reduce poverty and enhance food security than the quasi-peasant modes of production generally assumed to do so. The implications of this conclusion are explored.     

Modernisation and Time Preferences in Tanzania: Evidence from a Large-Scale Elicitation Exercise

Assumptions about individual time preferences are important for explanations of poverty and development. Data from a large-scale elicitation exercise in Tanzania show significantly higher levels of impatience in urban areas than in rural areas. This result remains robust to adding controls for socio-economic differences between rural and urban areas, which possibly correlate with time preferences. We attribute this to differences in ‘modernisation’ between urban and rural areas, with modernisation leading to increased impatience. This is corroborated by the observed positive correlation between impatience and education; the latter being an important vehicle of modernisation for traditional societies in Tanzania.     

Do vehicle recalls reduce the number of accidents? The case of the U.S. car market

The number of automobile recalls in the U.S. has increased sharply in the last two decades, and the numbers of units involved are often counted in the millions. In 2010 alone, over 20 million vehicles were recalled in the United States, and the massive recalls of full model lines by Toyota have brought this issue to the front pages around the country and the world. However, there is no quantitative evidence of the effect of recalls on safety. Without that evidence, the government and insurance companies have been reluctant to request and use more detailed recall information to increase correction rates, and regulators have not studied the possible link between the growing number of recalls and the risk of life for consumers. In this paper we empirically quantify the effect of vehicle recalls on safety using repeated cross‐sections on accidents of individual drivers and aggregate vehicle recall data to construct synthetic panel data on individual drivers of a particular vehicle model. We estimate the effect of recalls on the number of accidents and find that a 10 percent increase in the recall rate of a particular model reduces the accidents of that model by between 0.78 percent and 1.6 percent when using the full sample of accidents in our data. We also find that recalls classified as “hazardous” are more effective in reducing accidents, and the recall effect is especially strong when we restrict attention to accidents that lead to personal injuries and only include vehicles more likely to be at fault for the accident, but much less so for accidents that only lead to property damage. We also find that vehicle models with recalls with higher correction rates have on average fewer accidents in the years following a recall, which indicates the importance of the role of drivers' behavior regarding recalls on safety. Our findings suggest that policymakers should consider, for example, policies to allow insurance companies to take into account recall correction behavior when pricing auto insurance, which could be made possible through regulatory changes by the U.S. government, and should revisit the complex trade‐offs between pre‐ and post‐market regulation in this important industry. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

A Unique Denial: Israel's Foreign Policy and the Armenian Genocide

This article focuses on the Israeli politicization of the Armenian genocide from the perspective of foreign policy. Since the early 1980s Israel's official position has been to not recognize the Armenian genocide. The issue of recognition came to the surface in 1982 after Turkey put pressure on Israel to cancel a Holocaust and genocide conference. This article shows that Israel agreed to pressure the conference organizers to cancel the conference in order to secure protection for Jews fleeing Iran and Syria through the Turkish border. This article also explores the role of informal ambassadors in shaping Israel's position on this issue. Using recently declassified archival documents and oral interviews with key Israeli stakeholders, this is the first investigation into the role of informal ambassadors, specifically the Jewish minority in Turkey, and the American Jewish pro-Israeli lobby. The article also addresses a secondary incentive for Israel's refusal to recognize the genocide: ethnic competition between Jews and Armenians as victims of genocide.