Effects of Financial Incentives on Saving Outcomes and Material Well‐Being: Evidence From a Randomized Controlled Trial in Uganda

The use of savings products to promote financial inclusion has increasingly become a policy priority across sub‐Saharan Africa, yet little is known about how families respond to varying levels of savings incentives and whether the promotion of incentivized savings in low‐resource settings may encourage households to restrict expenditures on basic needs. Using data from a randomized controlled trial in Uganda, we examine: (1) whether low‐income households enrolled in an economic‐empowerment intervention consisting of matched savings, workshops, and mentorship reduced spending on basic needs and (2) how varied levels of matching contributions affected household savings and consumption behavior. We compared primary school‐attending AIDS‐affected children (N = 1,383) randomized to a control condition with two intervention arms with differing savings‐match incentives: 1:1 (Bridges) and 1:2 (Bridges PLUS). We found that: (1) 24 months post‐intervention initiation, children in Bridges and Bridges PLUS were more likely to have accumulated savings than children in the control condition; (2) higher match incentives (Bridges PLUS) led to higher deposit frequency but not higher savings in the bank; (3) intervention participation did not result in material hardship; and (4) in both intervention arms, participating families were more likely to start a family business and diversify their assets.     

Labour's Modernization of Local Government

The modernization of local government is central to the government's plans to revitalize the UK's constitutional arrangements. Implicitly managerialist, the modernizing local government project also contains centralist and localist themes. Translated into policy, these themes are articulated as leadership, community, democracy and regulation. However, these elements are potentially contradictory and may produce tensions in the project that may be difficult to resolve. By reviewing the government's aims to promote leadership, community and democracy in local government, it is also argued that the planned modernization of local government will extend further and into new areas the regulation of local authorities.     

Silicosis: Diagnosis and Medicolegal Implications

Despite well‐publicized sources of occupational hazard, silicosis continues to threaten industrial workers in the United States. We performed a retrospective search of the University of Wisconsin electronic pathology database to retrieve autopsy cases of silicosis and collaborated with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services to obtain statewide epidemiologic data regarding silicosis morbidity/mortality since 2003. Three silicosis autopsy cases were retrieved: all were men with ≥ 30 years of occupational crystalline silica exposure and similar histologic features of collagenous pulmonary nodules with admixed refractile particles. Overall, our state exceeds the national rate of silicosis‐related hospitalizations and mortality, that is, 10.1 hospitalizations per million WI residents versus 1.2 nationally and 1.2 deaths per million WI residents versus 0.4 nationally. Surveillance is crucial to identify emerging occupational hazards and protect workers. A diagnosis of silicosis must be carefully considered at autopsy since it carries substantial implications for worker's compensation, compensatory losses, and employer liability.     

Postmortem genetic testing in sudden unexplained death: A public health laboratory experience

Sudden unexplained death in the young poses a diagnostically challenging situation for practicing autopsy pathologists, especially in the absence of anatomic and toxicological findings. Postmortem genetic testing may identify pathogenic variants in the deceased of such cases, including those associated with arrhythmogenic channelopathies and cardiomyopathies. The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene (WSLH) is a state-run public health laboratory which performs postmortem genetic testing at no cost to Wisconsin medical examiners and coroners. The current study examines sequencing data from 18 deceased patients (ages 2 months to 49 years, 5 females) submitted to WSLH, from 2016 to 2021. Panel-based analysis was performed on 10 cases, and whole exome sequencing was performed on the most recent 8 cases. Genetic variants were identified in 14 of 18 decedents (77.8%), including 7 with pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants (38.9%). Whole exome sequencing was more likely to yield a positive result, more variants per decedent, and a larger number of variants of uncertain significance. While panel-based testing may offer definitive pathogenic variants in some cases, less frequent variants may be excluded. Whole exome testing may identify rare variants missed by panels, but increased yield of variants of uncertain significance may be difficult to interpret. Postmortem genetic testing in young decedents of sudden unexplained death can provide invaluable information to autopsy pathologists to establish accurate cause and manner of death and to decedent's relatives to allow appropriate management. A public health laboratory model may be a financially advisable alternative to commercial laboratories for medical examiner's/coroner's offices.     

Trophy Hunting of Black Rhino Diceros bicornis: Proposals to Ensure Its Future Sustainability

Proposing the use of charismatic species of large mammals as a conservation tool is often controversial, even though the Conservation of Biological Diversity promotes sustainable use as one of its three pillars. Indeed, sustainable use has been important in helping to recover southern white rhinos, the South African population of which was downlisted in 1994 to Appendix II of CITES for trophy hunting and live sales only. The Appendix I listed black rhino is now also beginning to recover, particularly in South Africa and Namibia, where how best to deal with surplus males arising from successful biological management is an increasing problem. Furthermore, black rhinos are now being increasingly moved to private land, where incentives from use may help help promote metapopulation management goals. As a result, the African Rhino Specialist Group anticipated proposals to trophy hunt black rhinos, and were concerned to recommend criteria that proponent countries would need to meet for such proposals to succeed. These recommendations address four guiding principles:

• ensuring that any offtakes are biologically sustainable and based on good monitoring;

• ensuring that incentives from any hunting opportunities are maximized, without discriminating between state agencies and the private sector;

• rewarding good biological management and long-term commitment to black rhino conservation; and

• ensuring that appropriate internal and external controls are in place.

     

An Autocracy at War: Explaining Egypt's Military Effectiveness, 1967 and 1973

In the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt shocked the world with its atrocious performance in battle, only to stun the world again with its remarkable military turnaround in the October 1973 war. Existing studies, which emphasize culture, social structure, and regime type, have a difficult time explaining why this single autocratic state, in such a short period of time, exhibited such extremes in its military competence. None can explain both why Egypt performed so poorly in 1967 and improved so significantly in 1973. Other explanations such as military strategy and learning explain the puzzle in part, but they alone cannot account for the outcome. This article presents a theory that accounts for the divergence in effectiveness, focusing on underlying differences in the fabric of the autocratic regime. It argues that changes in the balance of civil-military power in the state—born from more fundamental differences in domestic politics in the autocracy—shaped three areas of military activity critical to military effectiveness: strategic assessment, command, and control, and leadership. In developing this argument, the article both contributes to growing scholarship on the sources of states' military effectiveness and explains why Egypt's performance varied so significantly in these historically consequential wars.     

Interdependent and Domestic Foundations of Policy Change: The Diffusion of Pension Privatization Around the World

In the last two decades, striking correlations in the location and timing of structural pension reforms have raised important questions about the kind of information used by policy makers in their decisions to adopt such measures. This study tests the hypothesis that the adoption of pension privatization is shaped systematically by an interdependent logic, wherein the decision to privatize pensions in one country is systematically linked to corresponding decisions made by governments in relevant peer nations. Duration analysis with time-varying covariates of data from 59 countries between 1980 and 1999 reveals that the decision to adopt a private pension reform in one country increases systematically as the proportion of peer nations that have adopted corresponding measures rises. Importantly, the effect of this peer dynamic varies across groups of nations, with the most powerful impact of peer decisions being found among Eastern European and Central Asian nations. Peer dynamics likewise contribute powerfully to the adoption of private pension reforms in Latin America, but do not significantly shape the hazard of privatization among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member nations. Even controlling for diffusion mechanisms, the analysis shows that pension reform decisions remain subject to domestic political and economic considerations, including demographic pressures, financial costs and incentives to reform, and constraints delimited by the political institutions in each nation.