Effect of Forced Relocation on Household Income and Consumption Patterns: Evidence from the Aynak Copper Mine Project in Afghanistan

In 2011, the government of Afghanistan and a Chinese mining company relocated an entire village near the Aynak copper mine, where they developed a mining site. This paper investigates the impact of this displacement on affected households’ income and consumption patterns using a difference-in-differences approach and primary household-level data from the villages around the mine in two periods: one just before relocation in 2011 and another in 2015. In 2011, all households of the Wali Kali village, one of the seven project-affected villages, were involuntarily relocated. Project-affected families (PAFs) claim that their traditional earning sources have been inadequately replaced by mine-related earnings and that, being separated geographically, they now face difficulty maintaining social networks that are necessary for their survival. Once lost, rebuilding social networks is not easy in war-trampled Afghanistan. This paper clarifies these shadowy effects of forced relocation and demonstrates that traditional daily labour income was reduced significantly and only partially replaced by income from mine-related activities among those who were relocated and that relocation significantly discouraged the participation in community life, reflecting the losses of social capital among the PAFs due to separation.     

Involuntary defection in two-level games

Public Choice - Ratification failures are prevalent in international relations, but due to the assumption of unitary actors in international relations theory, theoretical analysis has been...     

On-treatment predictions of success in peg-interferon/ribavirin treatment using a novel formula

AIM:To predict treatment success using only simple clinical data from peg-interferon plus ribavirin therapy for chronic hepatitis C. METHODS:We analyzed the clinical data of 176 patients with chronic hepatitis and hepatitis C virus genotype 1 who received 48 wk standard therapy, derived a predictive formula to assess a sustained virological response of the individual patient using a logistic regression model and confirmed the validity of this formula.The formula was constructed using data from the first 100...     

Real Solutions for Fake News? Measuring the Effectiveness of General Warnings and Fact-Check Tags in Reducing Belief in False Stories on Social Media

Political Behavior - Social media has increasingly enabled “fake news” to circulate widely, most notably during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. These intentionally false...     

A Simple Solubility Tests for the Discrimination of Acrylic and Modacrylic Fibers

In a crime scene investigation, single fibers play an important role as significant trace physical evidence. Acrylic fibers are frequently encountered in forensic analysis. Currently, acrylic and modacrylic are not discriminated clearly in Japan. Only results of FT‐IR, some of acrylics were difficult to separate clearly to acrylic and modacrylic fibers. Solubility test is primitive but convenient useful method, and Japan Industrial Standards (JIS) recommends FT‐IR and solubility test to distinguish acrylic and modacrylic fibers. But recommended JIS dissolving test using 100% N,N‐dimethylformamide (DMF) as a solvent, some acrylics could not be discriminated. In this report, we used DMF and ethanol (90:10, v/v) solvent. The JIS method could not discriminate 6 acrylics in 60 acrylics; hence, DMF and ethanol (90:10, v/v) solvent discriminated 59 of the 60 fibers (43 acrylic and 16 modacrylic fibers) clearly, but only one modacrylic fiber incorrectly identified as acrylic.