Causes of Noncompliance with International Law: A Field Experiment on Anonymous Incorporation

Using two field experiments, we probe the efficacy of international rules mandating that incorporation services establish their customers’ true identities. The standards were designed to prevent anonymous “shell” corporations central to money laundering, corruption, and other crimes. Posing as consultants seeking confidential incorporation, we randomly assigned six experimental conditions in emails varying information about monetary reward, international and domestic law, and customer risk to 1,793 incorporation services in 177 countries and 1,722 U.S. firms. Firms in tax havens obey the rules significantly more often than in OECD countries, whereas services in poor nations sometimes prove more compliant than those in rich countries. Only the risk of terrorism and specter of the Internal Revenue Service decrease offers for anonymous incorporation, but they also lower compliance. Offers to “pay a premium” reduce compliance. The risk of corruption decreases response rates but, alarmingly, also decreases compliance rates. Raising international law has no significant effect.     

Chinese capital flows and offshore financial centers

Abstract

Why is the British Virgin Islands a bigger source of foreign direct investment into China than the USA, the European Union and Japan combined? Why is there 10 times more investment from China in the Caymans Islands than there is in the USA? This paper argues that these flows represent the efforts of Chinese and foreign investors to reduce governance and measurement transaction costs. Investors avail themselves of efficient institutions in offshore centers that are absent locally. These institutional attractions include the ease of raising capital on foreign stock markets, access to reliable courts, and more flexible and sophisticated financial products. Existing explanations of these capital movements, characterizing them as criminal money or tax arbitrage, are insufficient. Evidence is drawn from government statistics, private legal advice and interviews in offshore financial centers.     

Y-chromosomal STR haplotypes in a population from the Amazon region, Brazil

Haplotype and allele frequencies of the nine Y-STR (DYS19, DYS389 I, DYS389 II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, DYS385 I/II) were determined in a population sample of 200 unrelated males from Belém, Brazil. The most common haplotypes are shared by 1.5% of the sample, while 186 haplotypes are unique. The haplotype diversity is 0.9995+/-0.0006. The data obtained were compared to those of other Brazilian populations. AMOVA indicates that 99.91% of all the haplotypical variation is found within geopolitical regions and only 0.09% is found among regions.     

Nucleotide variability of HV-I in Afro-descendents populations of the Brazilian Amazon Region

The analysis of genetic variation in the nucleotide sequences of mitochondrial DNA, provides unique information about the population diversity and human identification. In this study, the mitochondrial DNA sequences of the first hypervariable region (HV-I) were analyzed in 243 unrelated individuals of seven Afro-descendents populations of the Amazon Region. Sequence polymorphisms were detected using PCR and direct sequencing analysis. A total of 133 different haplotypes were found determined by 97 variable nucleotides. Each one of the three more frequent haplotypes was shared by 9 samples and 91 sequences were unique. The genetic diversity was estimated to 0.9898+/-0.0016 and the probability of two random individuals showed identical mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplotypes were 1.2%.     

Discontinuity and Disaster: Gaps and the Negotiation of Culpability in Medication Delivery

This paper shows how discontinuities in the process of drug delivery enable but also underdetermine the isolation of a culprit in adverse medication events. A case example illustrates how we are forced to abandon conceptualizations of blame that assume a dichotomy (either culpable or not), and shift instead to a more nuanced version that estimates the degree to which an actor desired, generated, or could have foreseen the harmful outcome, and the extent to which constraints external to the actor altered the event. The paper concludes that meaningful safety interventions in a system as diverse, socially embedded and complex as health care delivery cannot just build on "good science" (e.g., good methods) to generate "root" causes. Rather, they need to somehow be sensitive to how and which narratives of success and failure are created, as these constrain which countermeasures are likely to be encouraged, funded, and accepted.