The Three As of Government Formation: Appointment,Allocation, and Assignment

How does the Prime Minister organize her government so that she can implement her policy agenda? In our model, a Prime Minister appoints individuals to her cabinet, allocates their portfolios, and assigns their policy tasks—that is, she decides the relevant jurisdiction of departments and the type of proposals a minister can make. Upon appointment, ministers obtain expertise on policies specific to their jurisdiction and strategically communicate this information to the Prime Minister before a policy is implemented. Assignment allows the Prime Minister to implement her agenda even when she is constrained to appoint ministers whose policy preferences are far from her own. A Prime Minister weakly prefers a diverse cabinet. In equilibrium, the Prime Minister is indifferent between delegating policy or implementing policy herself.     

Assessment of age and sex by means of DXA bone densitometry: application in forensic anthropology

An effective way to reveal the history of drug abuse is to determine the parental drug and its metabolites in hair. Here, a quantitative HPLC-Chip-MS/MS method was developed for simultaneous measurement of ketamine and its metabolite norketamine in human hair. Ketamine and norketamine were extracted from hair by acid hydrolysis, and then enriched by organic solvent extraction. The chromatographic separation was achieved in 15 min, with the drug identification and quantification by a tandem mass spectrometer. The linear regression analysis was calibrated by deuterated internal standards with a R(2) of over 0.996. The limit of detection (LOD) and the limit of quantification (LOQ) for ketamine and norketamine were 0.5 and 1 pg/mg of hair, respectively. The standard curves were linear from the value of LOQ up to 100 pg/mg of hair. The validation parameters including selectivity, accuracy, precision, stability and matrix effect were also determined. In conclusion, this method was able to reveal the present of ketamine and norketamine with less hair from the drug abusers, and which had the sensitivity of ～1000-fold higher than the conventional method. In addition, the amount of ketamine and norketamine being detected in different hair segments would be useful in revealing the historical record of ketamine uptake in the drug abusers.     

Unveiling the Price of Obscenity: Evidence From Closing Prostitution Windows in Amsterdam

Does legitimating sinful activities have a cost? This paper examines the relationship between housing demand and overt prostitution in Amsterdam. In our empirical design, we exploit the spatial discontinuity in the location of brothel windows created by canals, combined with a policy that forcibly closed some of the windows near these canals. To pin down their effect on housing prices, we apply a difference-in-discontinuity (DiD) estimator, which controls for the precise location of brothel windows and the effect of other policies and local developments. Our results show that the housing prices are discontinuous at the bordering canals, and this discontinuity nearly disappears after closures. The discontinuity is also found to decrease with the distance to brothels, disappearing after 300 yards. Our estimates indicate that homes right next to sex workers were 30 percent cheaper before the closures. This result seems unrelated to the presence of other businesses, such as bars and cannabis shops. Instead, the price discount is partly explained by petty crimes. However, 73 percent of the effect remains unexplained after controlling for many forms of crime and risk perception. Our findings suggest that households tend to be against the visible presence of sex workers and related nuisances, reaffirming their marginalization.