The Olson ratio and indirectly endogenous rent

Public Choice - We consider an economy where the rent value depends indirectly on value-adding investment of agents (thus indirectly endogenous) and the win-probability is a function of rent...     

Measuring carbon monoxide content in muscles

A method ist described to determine the CO-content in the tissue of muscles. The prepared tissue is pulverized in a swinging mill at the temperature of liquid nitrogen. Parts of the powder are weighed into headspace vessels. Carbon monoxide ist ejected by a formerly described method and measured gaschromatographically. The Fe-content is determined after an acid disintegration by AAS. Acute intoxications lead to higher CO-contents in heart than in periphere muscles. Chronic exposure to carbon monoxide does not produce these differences.     

Scanning electron microscopy: application in the identification of diatoms in cases of drowning.

A simple and rapid method is described for processing organ and water samples for the identification of diatoms so that they can be studied and recorded for taxonomic and diagnostic purposes. Samples are treated with concentrated nitric acid; the fluid obtained is centrifuged, and its sediment is dried, coated, and examined under the scanning electron microscope. The method does not alter the morphology of diatoms and allows the study of freshwater and seawater species present in the organs of bodies found in the water, making possible the diagnosis of drowning under specific conditions.     

Child's play: The political imaginary of international relations and contemporary popular children's films

Many scholars in International Relations (IR) have drawn from popular films to examine various problématiques that have informed the discipline's main theorisations. As Cynthia Weber remarks, popular films are powerful because they engage in the very ‘serious political work’ of mythologising the ‘truths’ and ‘realities’ which provide the foundation for many of IR's main theoretical envisionings of our world. To date, however, children's films have received very little attention. For the purpose of this paper, three have been isolated: Toy Story (1995), A Bug's Life (1998) and Rescue Heroes: The Movie (2003). Children's films, it can be argued, help to craft and restore certain perspectives for each new generation of young minds during the crucial years when the world is being textualised for the first time. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to read these films as working towards producing and sustaining the power/knowledge that seeks to defend contemporary forms of world order while concurrently extending and disseminating the rule of these forms of world order through the medium of children's popular cinema.     

Trade union behaviour and inter-regional variations in unemployment rates

An important problem in the political economy of the UK is that the disparity of unemployment rates across its regions is much more marked than the corresponding dispersion of wage rates. One possibility is that this is due to the attitude of trade unions to their members in different regions. If unions wish to preserve parity between members in different regions then they will value wage equality between regions over and above wage levels. This may then persuade them to overlook inter-regional productivity differences in setting wages. The price that low-efficiency regions will then pay for this desire for wage equality is higher unemployment rates.Much of the research for this paper was carried out while the author was visiting the Trade Union Economics Research Institute (FIEF), Stockholm in 1989. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a seminar there and the author is gratefully to Villy Bergstrom, Paul Chen, Douglas Hibbs, Eva Udden-Jondal and other institute members for several useful comments. Comments from Kevin Lee, John Spencer and an anonymous referee have also substantially improved the paper. The usual disclaimer applies.