Coercion,Information, and the Success of Sanction Threats

This article explores when and why sanction threats succeed in extracting concessions from the targeted country. We focus on two different, albeit not mutually exclusive, mechanisms that can explain the success of sanction threats. The first mechanism relates to incomplete information regarding the sanctioner's determination to impose sanctions and suggests that threats help to extract concessions by revealing the sanctioner's resolve. The second mechanism underscores the direct impact of common interest between the two countries and explains the success of sanction threats by the targeted country's greater dependence on this link between the two countries and the sanctioner's ability to exploit this dependence. We test the hypotheses using a new strategic structural estimator. Our results provide no evidence in favor of the informational hypothesis, while lending robust support for the coercive hypothesis.     

The Average Treatment and Its Cost,Age, and Gender of Patients With Ischemic Heart Diseases

Ensuring efficient treatment of patients in hospital care, with precise management of resources and cost planning. Goals： Dividing the patients with ischemic heart diseases into five groups with the highest cost of treatment, and determining the link among the cost of treatment and the average length of hospital stay, age, and gender of these patients. Materials and methods： Standardized reports of 10,040 patients from three hospitals in Macedonia from 2010 to 2012 were used. The databases were processed in SPSS 17, and the ANOVA and the Chi-square test were applied. Results and discussion： There is a statistically significant difference between the groups which have different cost of treatment and the average length of their treatment （F = 183.63 and p = 0.000） and a statistically significant difference between the five most expensive groups of patients in terms of their gender （Chi-square = 370.262, df = 4, and p = 0.000）. Furthermore, there are statistically significant differences between patients with different cost of treatment in terms of their age （F = 24.25 and p = 0.000）. Conclusion： The ＂most expensive＂ patients have the longest average hospital stay.     

Shifting Domestic Politics and Security Policy in Japan and Taiwan: The Search for a Balancing Strategy between China and the US

This article examines the impact of the changed domestic political environment in Japan and Taiwan in the second half of the 2000s, namely the arrival of administrations with a more moderate China policy, on their respective relations with Beijing and Washington. It seeks to find out the extent to which Japan under the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and Taiwan under the Kuomintang (KMT) may have attempted a policy shift towards accommodation of China at the expense of their respective security ties with America. The article also examines how much impact upon security policy can be traced to the changes in domestic politics in the two cases. The discussion suggests that, irrespective of the altered domestic political situation, the concern that China's growing military power may adversely affect national interests has largely trumped the political will for seeking accommodation, more so in the Japanese case than in the Taiwanese case. While both Tokyo and Taipei have avoided deferring to Beijing's interests, each has sought to strike a delicate balance between engaging China and maintaining defense ties with the US.     

The structures of uncertainty: performativity and unpredictability in economic operations

Abstract

The paper reflects on the presuppositions and consequences of the concept of performativity (understood as the involvement of the observer in the objects and projects he/she describes). The paper proposes a broader notion of performativity, one that not only concerns theory but is also extended to the entire economy, which observes itself in all of its operations. This conception has the advantage of being connected with critical approaches inside economics, which highlight the central role of uncertainty and surprise. It can explain how and why performativity turns into counter-performativity and how financial operators exploit uncertainty when orienting their behaviour, expecting and using the unpredictability of the future.