Evaluating the economic impact of a special credit programme: KIK/KMKP in Indonesia

This article discusses a study of the economic impact of Indonesia's KIK/KMKP programme of special credits for small‐scale enterprises. Our major focus is on how to measure economic impact. It discusses the concept of ‘impact’, the survey design, the statistical framework, and the practical problems of implementation, and briefly summarises the findings. We believe that our methodology generated reasonably reliable data and fundamentally sound estimates of the credit programme's direct impact on employment, output and income.     

Direct Analyte‐Probed Nanoextraction Coupled to Nanospray Ionization–Mass Spectrometry of Drug Residues from Latent Fingerprints

Here, we present a method of extracting drug residues from fingerprints via Direct Analyte‐Probed Nanoextraction coupled to nanospray ionization–mass spectrometry (DAPNe‐NSI‐MS). This instrumental technique provides higher selectivity and lower detection limits over current methods, greatly reducing sample preparation, and does not compromise the integrity of latent fingerprints. This coupled to Raman microscopy is an advantageous supplement for location and identification of trace particles. DAPNe uses a nanomanipulator for extraction and differing microscopies for localization of chemicals of interest. A capillary tip with solvent of choice is placed in a nanopositioner. The surface to be analyzed is placed under a microscope, and a particle of interest is located. Using a pressure injector, the solvent is injected onto the surface where it dissolves the analyte, and then extracted back into the capillary tip. The solution is then directly analyzed via NSI‐MS. Analyses of caffeine, cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and ecstasy have been performed successfully.     

New Chinese Discussions about Securing China's Territorial Frontier

This article places the emergent Chinese discussion about frontiers into a broader historical context. It then turns to a detailed analysis of the heterodox stances on frontiers that Yu Xiaofeng and Xu Lili, and Ma Rong have recently articulated. The conclusion notes that such relatively iconoclastic approaches to territory still stand outside the mainstream of official policy and elite writing about China's boundaries. However, it will also maintain the writings that are the focal point of this article have nonetheless begun to carve out a space for re-imagining China's current approach to territory and nationality.     

Approval regulation and endogenous consumer confidence: Theory and analogies to licensing,safety, and financial regulation

Safety regulation – in the form of pre-market approval, licensure, screening, and product entry limitations – governs numerous market realms, including consumer finance. In this article, we ask whether the effects of safety regulation go beyond safety and affect consumers' beliefs about the distribution of products they can use. We model “approval regulation,” where a government regulator must approve the market entry of a product based upon observable, unbiased, and non-anticipable experiments. We show that even if regulator and firm disagree about only quality standards, the disagreement induces the firm to provide more information about its product than it would in the absence of regulation. Put differently, purely first-order disagreements in regulation generate second-order consequences (more certainty about product quality). These second-order consequences of regulation are sufficient to generate first-order effects among end-users (more consumption of superior products), even when users are risk-neutral. In other words, even if approval regulation produces little or no improvement in safety or quality, it still aggregates information useful to “downstream” product users; these users will exhibit higher consumption and will more readily switch to superior products. In contrast with libertarian analyses of entry regulation and licensure, the model predicts that entry restrictions may be associated with greater product or service utilization (consumption) as well as with greater price sensitivity among consumers. Because contemporary cost–benefit analyses ignore these second-order effects, they are unlikely to capture the possible confidence effects of approval regulation.