Politique ��trang��re suisse

Le conseiller f��d��ral Didier Burkhalter a pris la direction du D��partement f��d��ral des affaires ��trang��res (DFAE). ��� Le parlement a octroy�� un cr��dit de 11.35 milliards de francs pour la coop��ration internationale 2013-2016. ��� Le Conseil f��d��ral a activ�� la clause de sauvegarde envers les Etats de l���UE-8. ��� Les questions institutionnelles ont continu�� �� bloquer les relations bilat��rales avec l���UE. ��� L���Allemagne et les Etats-Unis ont maintenu la pression sur la place financi��re suisse lors des n��gociations d���accords de double-imposition. ��� Le peuple a refus�� l���initiative de l���ASIN �� La parole au peuple ! ��. ��� La Suisse a pris position sur le conflit syrien en instaurant des sanctions contre le r��gime. ��� La Suisse a f��t�� ses 10 ans d���adh��sion �� l���ONU et a re��u son secr��taire g��n��ral Ban Ki-Moon. ��� La Suisse a accueilli �� Berne le Prix Nobel de la Paix Aung San Suu Kyi et a ouvert une ambassade au Myanmar.

Dopaminergic stimulation increases selfish behavior in the absence of punishment threat.

RATIONALE People often face decisions that pit self-interested behavior aimed at maximizing personal reward against normative behavior such as acting cooperatively, which benefits others. The threat of social sanctions for defying the fairness norm prevents people from behaving overly selfish. Thus, normative behavior is influenced by both seeking rewards and avoiding punishment. However, the neurochemical processes mediating the impact of these influences remain unknown. Several lines of evidence link the dopaminergic system to reward and punishment processing, respectively, but this evidence stems from studies in non-social contexts. OBJECTIVES The present study investigates dopaminergic drug effects on individuals' reward seeking and punishment avoidance in social interaction. METHODS Two-hundred one healthy male participants were randomly assigned to receive 300��mg of L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (L-DOPA) or a placebo before playing an economic bargaining game. This game involved two conditions, one in which unfair behavior could be punished and one in which unfair behavior could not be punished. RESULTS In the absence of punishment threats, L-DOPA administration led to more selfish behavior, likely mediated through an increase in reward seeking. In contrast, L-DOPA administration had no significant effect on behavior when faced with punishment threats. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study broaden the role of the dopaminergic system in reward seeking to human social interactions. We could show that even a single dose of a dopaminergic drug may bring selfish behavior to the fore, which in turn may shed new light on potential causal relationships between the dopaminergic system and norm abiding behaviors in certain clinical subpopulations.

An International Regulatory Framework for National Employment Policies

Employment-related policies are sensitive by any standard, and they remain basically national despite international labour standards (ILS) being even older than the United Nations. Globalization is changing this situation where countries may have to choose between ���more��� or ���better��� jobs. The multilateral framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO) can only have an indirect impact. But Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) and International Investment Agreements (IIA) are emerging as a new way of gradually enhancing the impact of certain labour standards. In addition, unilateral measures both by governments and importers driven by social and environmental consumer preferences and pressure groups increasingly shape the international regulatory framework for national employment policies. Even small, locally operating enterprises risk marginalization and market exclusion by ignoring these developments. The long-term influence of this new ���network approach��� on employment-related policies, including job location, gender issues, social coherence and migration remains to be seen. Nonetheless, the still flimsy evidence gathered here seems to indicate that this new, international framework might increase sustainable employment where and when supporting measures, including through unilateral preferences and even sanctions, form a ���cocktail��� which export-oriented industries and their suppliers will find palatable.

Penalty Enhancement for Hate Crimes: An Economic Analysis

The issue of bias-motivated crimes has attracted consderable attention in recent years. In this paper, we develop an economic framework to analyze penalty enhancements for bias-motivated crimes. We extend the standard model by introducing two different groups of potential victims of crime, and assume that a potential offender's benefits from a crime depend on the group to which the victim belongs. We begin with the assumption that the harm to an individual victim from a bias-motivated crime is identical to that from an equivalent non-hate crime. Nonetheless, we derive the result that a pattern of crimes disproportionately targeting an identifiable group leads to greater social harm. This conclusion follows both from a model where disparities in groups' victimization probabilities lead to social losses due to fairness concerns, as well as a model where potential victims have the opportunity to undertake socially costly victimization avoidance activities. In particular, penalty enhancements can reduce the incentives for avoidance activity, and thereby protect the networks of profitable interactions that link members of different groups. We also argue that those groups that are covered by hate crime statutes tend to be those whose characteristics make it especially likely that penalty enhancement is socially optimal. Finally, we consider a number of other issues related to hate crimes, including teh choice of sanctions from behind a Rawlsian 'veil of ignorance' concerning group identity.

El alumnado con TDAH (hiperactividad) como colectivo en riesgo de exclusi��n social: propuestas de acci��n y de mejora

La hiperactividad es algo m��s que un trastorno simple, negativo y defectuoso. Las personas con TDAH tienen un potencial latente del que nadie habla (como la creatividad, el ingenio, la hiperconcentraci��n, la sensibilidad, entre otros). Ser hiperactivo es positivo si tenemos la habilidad de comprender y tratar el trastorno desde una perspectiva educativa diferente ya que el alumnado con TDAH es uno de los colectivos que suman m��s amonestaciones, sanciones y expulsiones en los centros educativos de nuestro pa��s. Sin embargo, estos ni��os pueden tener ��xito acad��mico y, posteriormente, en su vida laboral y afectiva, si previamente hemos sabido comprenderlos y actuar con un proceso educativo adecuado a su idiosincrasia y si hemos sabido otorgar cierto grado de organizaci��n y reencauzamiento en sus mentes a veces infravaloradas. Para ello, las administraciones p��blicas educativas deben desarrollar estrategias de formaci��n eficientes para formar a un profesorado que, muchas veces, asiste desorientado e impotente a un comportamiento ca��tico, desordenado e impulsivo que puede provocar serios conflictos no s��lo en la ense��anza sino en el mismo clima de convivencia escolar.

Las transgresiones sexuales de Clitofonte : Seducci��n y adulterio

El protagonista de la novela de Aquiles Tacio Leucipa y Clitofonte incurre en dos tipos de transgresiones de la moral sexual: seducci��n de una joven virgen y adulterio. Analizaremos aqu�� el modo en que ambas faltas aparecen representadas en la novela, su definici��n, las reacciones sociales ante ellas y las penas que pueden aplic��rseles, y compararemos esa representaci��n con las caracterizaciones de estos delitos en las leyes griegas y romanas que interactuaban en el complejo panorama cultural del per��odo imperial. Postulamos que este an��lisis puede aportar datos que contribuyan a la comprensi��n de la historia social y de los c��digos morales y legales que delimitaban las relaciones l��citas e il��citas entre los sexos, pues a pesar de que la ficci��n novelesca no refleja en forma directa la realidad hist��rica, afloran en ella elementos propios del contexto socio-cultural en que autor y p��blico est��n inmersos

Las transgresiones sexuales de Clitofonte : Seducci��n y adulterio

El protagonista de la novela de Aquiles Tacio Leucipa y Clitofonte incurre en dos tipos de transgresiones de la moral sexual: seducci��n de una joven virgen y adulterio. Analizaremos aqu�� el modo en que ambas faltas aparecen representadas en la novela, su definici��n, las reacciones sociales ante ellas y las penas que pueden aplic��rseles, y compararemos esa representaci��n con las caracterizaciones de estos delitos en las leyes griegas y romanas que interactuaban en el complejo panorama cultural del per��odo imperial. Postulamos que este an��lisis puede aportar datos que contribuyan a la comprensi��n de la historia social y de los c��digos morales y legales que delimitaban las relaciones l��citas e il��citas entre los sexos, pues a pesar de que la ficci��n novelesca no refleja en forma directa la realidad hist��rica, afloran en ella elementos propios del contexto socio-cultural en que autor y p��blico est��n inmersos

Las transgresiones sexuales de Clitofonte : Seducci��n y adulterio

El protagonista de la novela de Aquiles Tacio Leucipa y Clitofonte incurre en dos tipos de transgresiones de la moral sexual: seducci��n de una joven virgen y adulterio. Analizaremos aqu�� el modo en que ambas faltas aparecen representadas en la novela, su definici��n, las reacciones sociales ante ellas y las penas que pueden aplic��rseles, y compararemos esa representaci��n con las caracterizaciones de estos delitos en las leyes griegas y romanas que interactuaban en el complejo panorama cultural del per��odo imperial. Postulamos que este an��lisis puede aportar datos que contribuyan a la comprensi��n de la historia social y de los c��digos morales y legales que delimitaban las relaciones l��citas e il��citas entre los sexos, pues a pesar de que la ficci��n novelesca no refleja en forma directa la realidad hist��rica, afloran en ella elementos propios del contexto socio-cultural en que autor y p��blico est��n inmersos

More Is Not Always Better: An Experimental Individual-Level Validation of the Randomized Response Technique and the Crosswise Model

Social desirability and the fear of sanctions can deter survey respondents from responding truthfully to sensitive questions. Self-reports on norm breaking behavior such as shoplifting, non-voting, or tax evasion may therefore be subject to considerable misreporting. To mitigate such misreporting, various indirect techniques for asking sensitive questions, such as the randomized response technique (RRT), have been proposed in the literature. In our study, we evaluate the viability of several variants of the RRT, including the recently proposed crosswise-model RRT, by comparing respondents��� self-reports on cheating in dice games to actual cheating behavior, thereby distinguishing between false negatives (underreporting) and false positives (overreporting). The study has been implemented as an online survey on Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 6,505). Our results indicate that the forced-response RRT and the unrelated-question RRT, as implemented in our survey, fail to reduce the level of misreporting compared to conventional direct questioning. For the crosswise-model RRT, we do observe a reduction of false negatives (that is, an increase in the proportion of cheaters who admit having cheated). At the same time, however, there is an increase in false positives (that is, an increase in non-cheaters who falsely admit having cheated). Overall, our findings suggest that none of the implemented sensitive questions techniques substantially outperforms direct questioning. Furthermore, our study demonstrates the importance of distinguishing false negatives and false positives when evaluating the validity of sensitive question techniques.

Is Group Lending A Good Enforcement Scheme for Achieving High Repayment Rates?: Evidence from Field Experiments in Vietnam

Microfinance institutions employ various kinds of incentive schemes but estimating the effect of each scheme is not easy due to endogeneity bias. We conducted field experiments in Vietnam to capture the role of joint liability, monitoring, cross-reporting, social sanctions, communication and group formation in borrowers��� repayment behavior. We find that joint liability contracts cause serious free-riding problems, inducing strategic default and lowering repayment rates. When group members observe each others��� investment returns, participants are more likely to choose strategic default. Even after introducing a cross-reporting system and/or penalties among borrowers, the default rates and the ratios of participants who chose strategic default under joint liability are still higher than those under individual lending. We also find that joint liability lending often failed to induce mutual insurance among borrowers. Those who had been helped or who had repaid a little in the previous round were more likely to default strategically and repay a little again in the current round and those who paid large amounts were always the same individuals.

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Political institutions and policy outcomes : effects of presidential vetoes on budget making

The article examines how the power distribution between the executive and the legislature under the Presidential system affects policy outcomes. We focus in particular on the presidential veto, both package and partial. Using a simple game theory model, we show that the presidential partial veto generally yields a result in favor of the President, but that such effects vary depending on the reversion points of the package veto and the Congress's possible use of sanctions against the President. The effects of the Presidential partial veto diminish if the reversion point meets certain conditions, or if the Congress has no power to impose sufficient sanctions on the President when the President revises the outcome ex-post. To clarify and explain the model, we present the case of budget making in the Philippines between 1994 and 2008. In the Philippines, the presidential partial veto has been bringing expenditure programs closer to the President's ideal point within what may be called the Congress's indifference curve. The Congress, however, has not always passed budget bills and from time to time has carried over the previous year's budget, in years when the budget deficit increased. This is the situation that the policy makers cannot retrieve from the reversion point.

Political limits on the world oil trade : firm-level evidence from US firms

International politics affect trade patterns, especially for firms in extractive industries. We construct the firm-level dataset for the U.S. oil-importing companies over 1986-2010 to test whether the state of international relations with the trading partners of the U.S. affect importing behavior of the U.S. firms. To measure "political distance" between the U.S. and her trading partners we use voting records for the UN General Assembly. We find that the U.S. firms, in fact, import significantly less oil from the political opponents of the U.S. Our conjecture is that the decrease in oil imports is mainly driven by large, vertically-integrated U.S. firms that engage in foreign direct investment (FDI) overseas.

Myanmar's apparel industry in the new international environment : prospects and challenges

Myanmar���s apparel industry had long been denied access to Western markets due to sanctions against its military government. The birth of a "civilian" government in March 2011 improved Myanmar���s relations with the international community, and Western sanctions were largely lifted. Regained market access is expected to trigger rapid growth of Myanmar���s apparel exports. This paper examines this impact with a comparison to Vietnam���s apparel industry. The industry���s prospects are getting bright, but the business environment has recently changed drastically in Myanmar. A new challenge for Myanmar���s apparel industry is remaining globally competitive. This paper also examines advantages and disadvantages that apparel firms in Myanmar experience. Although its abundance of low-wage workers remains a source of competitiveness, Myanmar needs its government to play a more active role to build the foundation of the industry.