Estimating the potential impact of nonvoters on outcomes of parliamentary elections in proportional systems with an application to German national elections from 1949 to 2009

“If turnout was 100%, would it affect the election result?” is a frequently asked research question. So far, the question has been primarily answered regarding the changes in the distribution of votes. This article extends the analysis to changes in the distribution of seats and government formation. It therefore proposes a method that factors in apportionment methods, election threshold, sizes of parliaments, leverage of nonvoters, closeness of election results, and individual characteristics of nonvoters. The method is then applied to German national elections from 1949 to 2009. The application shows that Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) would have gained from the counterfactual participation of nonvoters, although usually not enough to result in a government change. However, the elections of 1994 and 2005 show evidence that such a change could have happened.     

Lessons of the European crisis for regional monetary and financial integration in East Asia

The debt crisis in several member states of the euro area has raised doubts on the viability of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the future of the euro. While the launch of the euro in 1999 stirred a lot of interests in regional monetary integration and even monetary unification in various parts of the world, including East Asia, the current crisis has had the opposite effect, even raising expectations of a break-up of the euro area. Indeed, the crisis has highlighted the problems and tensions that will inevitably arise within a monetary union when imbalances build up and become unsustainable. This article discusses the causes of the current European crisis and the challenges that EMU countries face in solving it. Based on this analysis, it derives five lessons for regional financial and monetary cooperation and integration in East Asia.     

Acute poisoning involving the pyrrolidinophenone-type designer drug 4'-methyl-alpha-pyrrolidinohexanophenone (MPHP)

A 36-year-old woman consulted the medical emergency unit of a private health center for abdominal pain and gastroenteritis of 5 days duration. Acute right pyelonephritis was diagnosed. Five hours after admission she became unconscious in a state of clinical shock. She was transferred to an intensive care unit but resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful and she died 3 h later. Three days after death, she was buried in the family vault. Five days after the burial, her husband lodged a complaint with the public prosecutor because he had not received a clear explanation from the physicians concerning the cause of his wife's death. After analysis of the medical records of the deceased by two forensic pathologists, a medicolegal autopsy was ordered by the public prosecutor. The corpse was exhumed and autopsy performed 9 days after death. Massive hemoperitoneum was diagnosed with a macroscopically ruptured subcapsular hematoma. Pathological study confirmed acute right pyelonephritis and demonstrated the precise cause of the hemorrhage: rupture of the hepatic artery at the hilar part, following infectious arteritis which was probably secondary to the acute pyelonephritis. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first published report of such a case.