1,721,105 research outputs found
Survival of the Weakest: Why the West Rules
No full textWe study a model of institutions that evolve through conflict. We find that one of three configurations can emerge: an extractive hegemony, a balance of power between extrac-tive societies or a balance of power between inclusive societies -the latter being most conducive to innovation. As extractive societies are assumed to have an advantage in head to head confrontations we refer to this latter possibility as the survival of the weakest. Our contention is that the reason that the West "rules" can be traced back to two events both taking place in China: the invention of the cannon, which made possible the survival of the weakest in Europe; and the arrival of Genghis Khan, which led to the survival of the strongest in China.\(c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
Intervention and Peace
Full text linkIntervention often does not lead to peace, but rather to prolonged conflict. Indeed, we document that it is an important source of prolonged conflicts. We introduce a theoretical model of the balance of power to explain why this should be the case and to analyze how peace can be achieved: either a hot peace between hostile neighbors or the peace of the strong dominating the weak. Non-intervention generally leads to peace after defeat of the weak. Hot peace can be achieved with sufficiently strong outside intervention. The latter is thus optimal if the goal of policy is to prevent the strong from dominating the weak
TRADE ASSOCIATIONS: WHY NOT CARTELS?
Full text linkThe relevance of special interests lobbying in modern democracies can hardly be questioned. But if large trade associations can overcome the free riding problem and form effective lobbies, why do they not also threaten market competition by forming equally effective cartels? We argue that the key to understanding the difference lies in supply elasticity. The group discipline, which works in the case of lobbying, can be effective in sustaining a cartel only if increasing output is sufficiently costly—otherwise the incentive to deviate is too great. The theory helps organizing a number of stylized facts within a common framework
Nuclear bile acid receptor FXR as pharmacological target: are we there yet?
No full textAbstractThe farnesoid X receptor (FXR) is a member of the nuclear receptor superfamily that is primarily expressed in the enterohepatic system where it functions as intracellular sensor for bile acids. Ligand dependent FXR activation induces transcriptional responses to coordinately regulate bile acid, cholesterol, triglyceride and glucose metabolism, and to protect the intestinal mucosa from bacterial overgrowth and inflammatory insults. Here we discuss the latest discoveries in FXR-driven metabolic pathways with relevance to pathophysiology and novel therapeutic approaches of several conditions such as hypertriglyceridemia, type 2 diabetes, cholesterol gallstone disease, steato-hepatitis and metabolic syndrome
The whip and the Bible: Punishment versus internalization
Full text linkA variety of experimental and empirical research indicate that prosocial behavior is important for economic success. There are two sources of prosocial behavior: incentives and preferences. The latter, the willingness of individuals to “do their bit” for the group, we refer to as internalization, because we view it as something that a group can influence by appropriate investment. This implies that there is a trade-off between using incentives and internalization to encourage prosocial behavior. By examining this trade-off we shed light on the connection between social norms observed inside the laboratory and those observed outside in the field. For example, we show that a higher value of cooperation outside the laboratory may lower the use of incentives inside the laboratory even as it increases their usage outside. As an application we show that the model calibrated to experimental data makes reasonable out-of-sample quantitative forecasts
The tripartite auction folk theorem
No full textWe formally study two bidder first-price, second-price, and all-pay auctions with known values, deriving the equilibrium payoffs and strategies and showing when all three yield the same equilibrium payoffs to the bidders. This latter result, the tripartite auction theorem, does not hold for all auctions, in particular it can fail for symmetric auctions with high stakes and in auctions with very low stakes
Credit Market Failures and Policy
No full textIn a simplified version of the Stiglitz and Weiss (1981) model of the credit market we characterize optimal policies to correct market failures. Widely applied policies, notably interest-rate subsidies and investment subsidies, are compared to the theoretical optimum. Copyright � 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc..
Master regulation of bile acid and xenobiotic metabolism via the FXR, PXR and CAR trio
No full textRecent discoveries highlighted intriguing molecular pathways that regulate synthesis, uptake, metabolism and excretion of bile acids and xenobiotics. The knowledge of factors that control these homeostatic processes is of clinical relevance to better understand the drug-drug interacting scenario as well as to control cholesterol detoxification, cholestasis and other conditions. Here we present evidences for the existence of a gut-liver safety network whereby activation of the nuclear receptor FXR, PXR, CAR trio provides protection against accumulation of exogenous and metabolic noxae
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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