Pellagra: a rare disease observed in a victim of mental and physical abuse

Lesions of the brain stem and cerebellum due to nutritional deficiencies are mostly seen in chronic alcohol abuse and more rarely in severe malnutrition. We report the case of a 27-year-old woman, found dead in the family flat. She presented cachexia (167 cm, 25 kg) and multiple hematomas of the limbs. Postmortem examination revealed lesions due to peritonitis. Neuropathological examination showed severe atrophy of the corpus callosum and central neuronal chromatolysis, which are observed in pellagra. Inflammatory colitis or celiac disease was not found. Toxicological analysis was negative, in particular no alcohol absorption. Pellagra, which is due to nicotinamide deficiency, is a disease rarely seen in this country. In this case, nutritional deficiency was the consequence of failure to eat in a context of abuse. The woman was born of an incestuous relationship and presented intellectual retardation due to poor affective relations with her mother.     

How to pay for the peace? A theoretical framework with references to African countries

This paper analyses a simple game-theoretic model to highlight the choice of the government between raising its defence expenditures or giving away some “gifts” to his opponents, as a means to defend his position in power. If the government is a Cournot-Nash player, then there is no gift in equilibrium, and any increase in the budget will lead to more inefficient defence expenditures. However, if the government is a Stackelberg-leader, then he will use the “gift” as a tool in his policy for staying in power.     

Education,identity, and community: lessons from Jewish emancipation

Why do some minority communities take up opportunities for education while others reject them? To shed light on this, we study the impact of Jewish Emancipation in nineteenth century Europe on patterns of education. In Germany, non-religious and Reform Jews dramatically increased their rates of education. In the less developed parts of Eastern Europe, Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities imposed unprecedented restrictions on secular education and isolated themselves from society. Explaining this bifurcation requires a model of education that is different from the standard human capital approach. In our model, education not only confers economic benefits but also transmits values that undermine the cultural identity of minority groups. We show that it is individually rational for agents who benefit least from rising returns to education to respond by reducing their investment in education. Group-level sanctions for high levels of education piggyback upon this effect and amplify it.     

Decentralization and access to social services in Colombia

Decentralization is meant to improve access to public services, but relatively few studies examine this question empirically. We explore the effects of decentralization on access to health and education in Colombia using an original database covering over 95 % of Colombian municipalities. We show that decentralization improved enrollment rates in public schools and access of the poor to public health services. In both sectors, improving access was driven by the financial contributions of local governments. Small increases in own-shares of spending led to surprisingly large increases in the access of the poor in both sectors. Our theoretical model implies that where local information dominates productive efficiency, elected local governments will provide services better tailored to local needs. Decentralizing such services should increase their use by the public. Together, theory and empirics imply that decentralization made the Colombian state more accountable. It provided local officials with the information and incentives they need to allocate resources in a manner responsive to voters’ needs and improve the impact of public expenditures.     

Policing appearances

Cet article établit une distinction entre deux stratégies policières, respectivement dénommées police de relation et police d'intervention. La police de relation vise à modifier les perceptions et les sentiments du public à l'égard de sa propre sécurité ou à l'égard de l'image de la police. Cette stratégie repose sur la communication et la persuasion et elle est illustrée par ce qu'on appelle la police communautaire. La police d'intervention tente de modifier certaines situations extérieures comme l'occurence de désordres et les taux effectifs de criminalité et de victimisation. Elle se fonde sur l'usage de la force et correspond à la police réactive traditionnelle et à certaines formes plus récentes de police intensive. La distinction proposée est articulée à travers une discussion de la crise que traverse présentement la justice pénale, des remèdes qu'on tente d'y apporter au niveau de la police et des évaluations de l'efficacité de ces remèdes.     

Resource Management under Climatic Risk: A Case Study from Niger

In this article, we develop an empirical model of an agro-pastoral system subject to high climatic risk in order to test the impact of rainfall variability on livestock densities, land allocation patterns and herd mobility observed at the community level. Also, because grazing land is a common-pool resource, we determine the impact of cooperation on these decision variables. To capture different abilities of communities to cooperate in managing these externalities, we construct indices comprised of factors considered to affect the costliness of achieving successful cooperation. We then test hypotheses regarding the impact of rainfall variability and cooperation, using data collected in a semi-arid region of Niger. Results indicate that rainfall variability initially leads to higher densities, but the impact becomes negative as variability increases still further. This result indicates that the benefits of accumulating large herds in variable environments are eventually offset by the increasing probability of large losses. Mobility in the current period is strongly related to current rainfall, and is also positively related to long-term rainfall variability. Communities with characteristics hypothesised to favour cooperation have lower stock densities and greater herd mobility. Neither cooperation nor rainfall variability has a significant impact on the proportion of land allocated to crops or common pastures.     

Why suicide-terrorists get educated, and what to do about it

This paper tries to reconcile the observed fact that suicide-terrorists have a relatively high education level with rationality. It brings out the conditions under which potential students choose to acquire some education in a rational-choice model where this yields a non-zero probability of blowing up the resulting human capital in a terrorist attack. The comparative-statics of the rational expectations equilibrium of this model demonstrate how economic development, on the one hand, and repression, on the other hand, might reduce terrorism under some parameter restrictions.     

The politics of french nuclear development

France has evolved a nuclear energy policy markedly different from that of the United States and other technologically advanced western nations. The roots of the difference lie in French governmental processes which allow French officials to impose policy in the face of resistant public opinion, in the convergent economic interests of the French nuclear industry and labor, and in the French aspirations for technological achievement. But economic factors—rather than political ones—are obliging France to reduce its plans for future growth of the industry.