A model of candidate location with endogenous valence

This work gives a theoretical explanation for the increase in campaign spending and party polarization in U.S. politics. I assume that the effectiveness of persuasive advertising, and of costly valence campaigning in general, positively depends on the share of nonpartisan voters. A decline in the number of partisan voters in a constituency results in greater campaign spending by the candidates. If the voters are risk-averse, the candidates who maximize their expected office rents minus the cost of campaigning will choose divergent policy platforms strategically in order to reduce the costs of subsequent campaign spending. The degree of policy divergence positively depends on the share of nonpartisan voters for a broad class of voter disutility and candidate cost of valence functions.     

Cognitive Barriers in Perception of Nanotechnology

This article is concerned with predictions of future events, such as technological achievements and changes in the human condition that they will bring about. Cognitive barriers arise when human agents are either asked or forced to make judgments and decisions with respect to unknown singular events. This article argues that barriers such as an aversion to not knowing and the impossibility to believe trump expert and ordinary human reasoning. These barriers apply to nanotechnology. To avoid undesired societal effects arising from them, this essay proposes a set of steps designed to foster responsible public dialogue.     

Belarusian population genetic database for 15 autosomal STR loci

Allele frequencies of 15 short tandem repeat loci included in the AmpFlSTR Identifiler kit (Applied Biosystems) were obtained from a sample set of unrelated individuals living in Belarus (n=176). For all loci, no deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium was found. Results were compared with data available for the Belarusian minority residing in northeastern Poland and for other Slavic populations. Statistically significant differences were observed between Belarusians and all compared populations. The values of heterozygosity, polymorphic information content (PIC), power of discrimination (PD), power of exclusion (PE), paternity index (PI) and matching probability (pM) were calculated.     

Less Democracy, More Courts: A Puzzle of Judicial Review in Russia

This article explores why, throughout the 1990s, some Russian regions created their own constitutional courts and others did not. Contrary to current theories that assert that politicians create a strong and independent judiciary to protect them from the tyranny of election-winners in the context of political uncertainty, my analysis finds that constitutional courts emerged only in those regions where governors virtually guaranteed their re-election by consolidating their political power vis-à-vis federal and local governments. The article argues that both federal and regional politicians used the process of creating subnational constitutional courts to legitimize their federalism and judicial reforms. The changes in the balance of power between those governors, who aspired to have their own judicial system, and the federal government that insisted on a single federal judicial system, determined the variation in the process of court-building across Russian regions.     

New capital accumulation in transition economies: implications for capital-labor and capital-output ratios

This paper investigates the impact of new capital accumulation on capital-labor and capital-output ratios in 26 transition economies (TE) of Central and Eastern Europe and former USSR. Using a perpetual inventory method, we estimate the amount of capital accumulated in these countries since the start of market reforms and compare it to results for developed countries and largest emerging market economies. We found that on per worker basis, capital accumulation in TE is lagging far behind that of their mature market neighbors in European Union. Disparities in capital-output ratios were not as pronounced, as higher capital-labor ratios were reached in economies with higher levels of GDP per capita. Regression analysis indicates that capital per worker was accumulated faster in TE having higher saving rates, relatively higher priced labor, closer proximity to Western Europe, and higher manufacturing share in the economy. The K/Y levels were influenced by the same determinants except for relative input costs.