Enforcement problems and secondary markets

There is a large and growing literature that studies the effects of weak enforcement institutions on economic performance. This literature has focused almost exclusively on primary markets, in which assets are issued and traded to improve the allocation of investment and consumption. The general conclusion is that weak enforcement institutions impair the workings of these markets, giving rise to various inefficiencies.But weak enforcement institutions also create incentives to develop secondary markets, in which the assets issued in primary markets are retraded. This paper shows that trading in secondary markets counteracts the effects of weak enforcement institutions and, in the absence of further frictions, restores efficiency.

Property enforcement as organized consent

This article develops and tests a theory of the institutions that makeproperty rights viable, ensuring their enforcement, mobilizing thecollateral value of assets and promoting growth. In contrast tocontractual rights, property rights are enforced in rem, being affectedonly with the consent of the right holder. This ensures enforcement butis costly when multiple, potentially colliding rights are held in thesame asset. Different institutions reduce the cost of gathering consentsto overcome this trade-off of enforcement benefits for consent costs:recording of deeds with title insurance, registration of rights and evena regimen of purely private transactions. All three provide functionallysimilar services, but their relative performance varies with the numberof transactions, the risk of political opportunism and regulatoryconsistency. The analysis also shows the rationality of allowingcompetition in the preparation and support of private contractswhile requiring territorial monopoly in recording and registrationactivities, this to ensure independence and protect third parties.

How enforcement institutions affect markets

In an experiment we study market outcomes under alternative incentive structures for third-party enforcers. Our transactions resemble an anonymous credit market where lenders can give loans and borrowers can repay them. When borrowers default, judges are free to enforce repayment but are themselves paid differently in each of three treatments. First, paying judges according to lenders votes maximizes surplus and the equality of earnings. In contrast, paying judges according to borrowers votes triggers insufficient enforcement, destroying the market and producing the lowest surplus and the most unequal distribution of earnings. Lastly, judges paid the average earnings of borrowers and lenders achieve results close to those based on lender voting. We employ a steps-of-reasoning argument to interpret the performances of different institutions. When voting and enforcement rights are allocated to different classes of actors, the difficulty of their task changes, and arguably as a consequence they focus on high or low surplus equilibria.

Mandatory communication skills training for oncologists: enforcement does not substantially impact satisfaction.

PURPOSE: Even though there is evidence that both patients and oncology clinicians are affected by the quality of communication and that communication skills can be effectively trained, so-called Communication Skills Trainings (CSTs) remain heterogeneously implemented. METHODS: A systematic evaluation of the level of satisfaction of oncologists with the Swiss CST before (2000-2005) and after (2006-2012) it became mandatory. RESULTS: Levels of satisfaction with the CST were high, and satisfaction of physicians participating on a voluntary or mandatory basis did not significantly differ for the majority of the items. CONCLUSIONS: The evaluation of physicians' satisfaction over the years and after introduction of mandatory training supports recommendations for generalized implementation of CST and mandatory training for medical oncologists.

Measuring ecological niche overlap from occurrence and spatial environmental data

1. Aim - Concerns over how global change will influence species distributions, in conjunction with increased emphasis on understanding niche dynamics in evolutionary and community contexts, highlight the growing need for robust methods to quantify niche differences between or within taxa. We propose a statistical framework to describe and compare environmental niches from occurrence and spatial environmental data.¦2. Location - Europe, North America, South America¦3. Methods - The framework applies kernel smoothers to densities of species occurrence in gridded environmental space to calculate metrics of niche overlap and test hypotheses regarding niche conservatism. We use this framework and simulated species with predefined distributions and amounts of niche overlap to evaluate several ordination and species distribution modeling techniques for quantifying niche overlap. We illustrate the approach with data on two well-studied invasive species.¦4. Results - We show that niche overlap can be accurately detected with the framework when variables driving the distributions are known. The method is robust to known and previously undocumented biases related to the dependence of species occurrences on the frequency of environmental conditions that occur across geographic space. The use of a kernel smoother makes the process of moving from geographical space to multivariate environmental space independent of both sampling effort and arbitrary choice of resolution in environmental space. However, the use of ordination and species distribution model techniques for selecting, combining and weighting variables on which niche overlap is calculated provide contrasting results.¦5. Main conclusions - The framework meets the increasing need for robust methods to quantify niche differences. It is appropriate to study niche differences between species, subspecies or intraspecific lineages that differ in their geographical distributions. Alternatively, it can be used to measure the degree to which the environmental niche of a species or intraspecific lineage has changed over time.

Audit report on the ADLM Counties Environmental Public Health Agency for the year ended June 30, 2007

Audit report on the ADLM Counties Environmental Public Health Agency for the year ended June 30, 2007

Audit report on the Webster County Metropolitan Law Enforcement Telecommunications Board for the years ended June 30, 2007 and June 30, 2006

Audit report on the Webster County Metropolitan Law Enforcement Telecommunications Board for the years ended June 30, 2007 and June 30, 2006

Audit report on the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy for the year ended June 30, 2007

Audit report on the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy for the year ended June 30, 2007

The influence of environmental conditions on immune responses, morphology and recapture probability of nestling house martins (Delichon urbica)

Nestling birds produced later in the season are hypothesized to be of poor quality with a low probability of survival and recruitment. In a Spanish population of house martins (Delichon urbica), we first compared reproductive success, immune responses and morphological traits between the first and the second broods. Second, we investigated the effects of an ectoparasite treatment and breeding date on the recapture rate the following year. Due probably to a reverse situation in weather conditions during the experiment, with more rain during rearing of the first brood, nestlings reared during the second brood were in better condition and had stronger immune responses compared with nestlings from the first brood. Contrary to other findings on house martins, we found a similar recapture rate for chicks reared during the first and the second brood. Furthermore, ectoparasitic house martin bugs had no significant effect on the recapture rate. Recaptured birds had similar morphology but higher immunoglobulin levels when nestlings compared with non-recaptured birds. This result implies that a measure of immune function is a better predictor of survival than body condition per se.

Os Problemas Ambientais em Cabo Verde - Políticas e Medidas de Protecção Ambiental

A presente dissertação teve como finalidade analisar os Problemas Ambientais em Cabo Verde, com destaque para as políticas e medidas implementadas no período que decorre de 1975 a 2010. Para tal, centrou-se no confronto de resultados de estudos que permitiram uma comparação entre os Concelhos da Praia e de São Salvador do Mundo, localizados no sul e no centro da ilha de Santiago, respectivamente. Como ponto de partida, fez-se uma caracterização climática/ambiental do país, salientando a sua fragilidade ambiental através de uma estreita ligação entre as suas características naturais e o estado de ambiente para delinear a evolução das medidas políticas e jurídicas tomadas no sentido de combater ou minimizar os problemas existentes. Todo o trabalho empírico foi realizado nos concelhos acima referidos, com base nos inquéritos efectuados junto dos moradores, escolas, técnicos e políticos que lidam com a problemática ambiental nesses Concelhos. Posteriormente, foi possível analisar profundamente as principais causas da degradação ambiental nos dois Concelhos como a pobreza, a escassez de água, o saneamento básico, o aumento da população, o êxodo rural e as construções clandestinas, estabelecendo uma correlação entre estas e o desenvolvimento económico-social e a qualidade de vida dos seus habitantes. Finalmente, expôs-se o trabalho realizado e o que se perspectiva fazer para sua mitigação, privilegiando a vertente pedagógica, destacando a importância do envolvimento de grupos comunitários para prossecução de acções diversificadas de sensibilização, de programação e da formação em paralelo com o reforço de fiscalização para melhor aplicação de normas existentes.

The adverse effects of environmental policy in green markets

We model green markets in which purchasers, either firms orconsumers, have higher willingness-to-pay for lesspolluting goods. The effectiveness of pollution reductionpolicies is examined in a duopoly setting. We show thatduopolists' strategic behaviour may increase pollutionlevels. Maximum emission standards, commonly used in greenmarkets, improve the environmental features of products.Nonetheless, overall pollution levels will rise becausegovernment regulation also affects market shares and bootsfirms' sales. Consequently, social welfare may be reduced.We also explore the effects of technological subsidies andproduct charges, including differentiation of charges.

Iowa Law Enforcement Academy Performance Report FY2012

The Iowa Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) was created by an act of the Iowa legislature in 1967 with its purpose being to upgrade law enforcement to professional status. The specific goals were to maximize training opportunities for law enforcement officers, to coordinate training and to set standards for the law enforcement services.

Iowa Law Enforcement Academy FY2008 Annual Report and Performance Report

Annual Report Created by Academy Director E.A. (Penny) Westfall

Specialization and rent-seeking in moral enforcement: The case of confession

Moral codes are produced and enforced by more or less specialized means and are subject to standard economic forces. This paper argues that the intermediary role played by the Catholic Church between God and Christians, a key difference from Protestantism, faces the standard trade-off of specialization benefits and agency costs. It applies this trade-off hypothesis to confession of sins to priests, an institution that epitomizes such intermediation, showing that this hypothesis fits cognitive, historical and econometric evidence better than a simpler rent-seeking story. In particular, Catholics who confess more often are observed to comply more with the moral code; however, no relationship is observed between mass attendance and moral compliance. The data also links the current decline in confession to the rise in education, which makes moral self-enforcement less costly, and to the productivity gap suffered by confession services, given its necessarily interpersonal nature.