Little is known in the scholarly literature about the effect of war and peace on happiness; but they have a large number of direct and indirect effects on happiness, difficult or impossible to capture due mainly to issues of causality and attribution. The paper concentrates on three fundamental claims regarding the effect of war and peace on happiness: ‘War brings happiness’; ‘People adjust to wars’; and ‘The happiness of the dead is irrelevant’. An attempt is made to discuss different solutions to deal with these claims but it is made clear that each one has grave disadvantages. Bruder Klaus, whose full name was Niklaus von Flüeh, is the patron saint of Switzerland. This paper describes Bruder Klaus as a creator of peace and, based on the claims mentioned above, as a felicitator or wellbeing facilitator.
What impact has financial globalization had on risk sharing? In theory, financial globalization
should improve international consumption risk sharing. While the answer to this question is of
utmost policymaking concern, results in the empirical literature are inconclusive. The paper
surveys the extant literature and tries to identify which factors influence the answer: i)
consumption risk sharing seems to have increased among industrialized countries but much less in
the emerging world. ii) The increase in risk sharing is generally found to be stronger in studies that
focus on the trends rather than purely cyclical variation in the data. iii) globalization has not only
affected consumption responses to output shocks but also the structure of these shocks themselves.
This, in turn, has affected the measurement of risk sharing. The paper examines the relevance of
these points on a sample of East Asian Economies. My results indicate that risk sharing in East Asia
has started to increase once the region had recovered from the Asian crisis.
Perceptual objects often comprise a visual and auditory signature which arrives simultaneously through distinct sensory channels, and cross-modal features are linked by virtue of being attributed to a specific object. Continued exposure to cross-modal events sets up expectations about what a given object most likely "sounds" like, and vice versa, thereby facilitating object detection and recognition. The binding of familiar auditory and visual signatures is referred to as semantic, multisensory integration. While integration of semantically-related cross-modal features is behaviorally advantageous, situations of sensory dominance of one modality at the expense of another, impairs performance. In the present study, magnetoencephalography recordings of semantically-related cross-modal and unimodal stimuli captured the spatiotemporal patterns underlying multisensory processing at multiple stages. At early stages, 100ms after stimulus onset, posterior parietal brain regions responded preferentially to cross-modal stimuli irrespective of task instructions or the degree of semantic relatedness between the auditory and visual components. As participants were required to classify cross-modal stimuli into semantic categories, activity in superior temporal and posterior cingulate cortices increased between 200 and 400ms. As task instructions changed to incorporate cross-modal conflict, a process whereby auditory and visual components of cross-modal stimuli were compared to estimate their degree of congruence, multisensory processes were captured in parahippocampal, dorsomedial, and orbitofrontal cortices 100 and 400ms after stimulus onset. Our results suggest that multisensory facilitation is associated with posterior parietal activity as early as 100ms after stimulus onset. However, as participants are required to evaluate cross-modal stimuli based on their semantic category or their degree of congruence, multisensory processes extend in cingulate, temporal, and prefrontal cortices.
Ein grundlegenderes Verständnis der peripheren okulomotorischen Pathophysiologie könnte zur Verbesserung der Strabismuschirurgie beitragen. Konventionelle strabologische Untersuchungsmethoden sind hilfreich, um Augenmotilitätsstörungen zu erkennen. Dennoch ist in komplexen Fällen eine präzise Diagnose mit den pathophysiologischen Erkenntnissen, die durch diese Untersuchungen und mit einem quasi agonist-antagonist extraokular Muskel-Modell gegeben sind, nicht möglich; besonders nach einer Chirurgie der extraokularen Muskeln, welcher sich das okulomotorische System anpasst. Das Problem liegt in der Verbindung von Daten der dynamischen Augenbewegung mit statischen Orbitagewebe-Konformationen. Das unvollständige Verständnis der Umwandlung der neuronalen Steuerungssignale in mechanische Augenbewegungen provozierte eine jahrzehntelange Kontroverse über die aktive oder passive Rolle des orbitalen Bindegewebes, die noch geklärt werden muss. Momentan stehen keine geeigneten dynamischen Daten zur Beurteilung des orbitalen Gewebeverhaltens zur Verfügung, selbst wenn dynamische (Un-)Gleichgewichte existieren, wie z.B. bei Verletzungen des Listingschen Gesetzes während schnellen Augenbewegungen, in bestimmten Fällen. Dies hat, zusammen mit der Komplexität der orbitalen Biomechanik, die Entwicklung eines angemessenen neuro-biomechanischen Orbitamodells verzögert. Gleichzeitige hohe räumliche und zeitliche Auflösung der Kinetik des Orbitalgewebes während der Augenbewegung würde die Umwandlung des neuronalen Signals in eine mechanische Wirkung besser beschreiben. Daraus ergeben sich die Ziele dieser Arbeit: Erstens soll ein klinisch benutzbarer visueller Reiz entwickelt werden, welcher periodisch wiederholende Augenbewegungen im Inneren des Scanners erzeugt. Damit sollen segmentierte Magnetresonanz-Bilder (MR-Bilder) ohne Bewegungsartefakte in einer genügend kurzen Zeit synchron aufgenommen werden. Zweitens soll die Bildaufnahme mit Hilfe von TFEPI durch Wahl eines reduziertes Sichtfeldes (FOV) und k-t BLAST beschleunigt werden. Drittens soll die Bewegung (CDENSE, CSPAMM) und Geschwindigkeit (Q-Flow) direkt in Bilder der Augenhöhlen kodiert werden, um zusätzliche Bewegungsdaten in der begrenzten Aufnahmezeit zu liefern. Viertens ist die dynamische Verformung der Orbitagewebe durch neue, bildrauschresistente, modellfreie Methoden zu quantifizieren. Weiter war die Messung der (vermuteten) inhomogenen Kontraktion entlang den Augenmuskeln und die Differenzierung der normalen gegenüber der pathologischen Deformation während den Augenbewegungen ein wichtiges Ziel. Diese neue Messgrößen der Augenhöhlenmechanik und deren Steuerung sollten das Verständnis der Strabismusätiologie verbessern. Die ersten hoch aufgelösten anatomischen, bewegungs- und geschwindigkeitskodierten Bilder der Deformationsdynamik der Augenhöhlen wurden mit der beschriebenen Methode erfolgreich aufgenommen. Dreidimensionale anatomische und bewegungskodierte MR-Bilder konnten mit hoher räumlicher und zeitlicher Auflösung in weniger als 10 Minuten durch eine Beschleunigung der Bildaufnahme gewonnen werden. Die Verformung des Orbitagewebes während der Augenbewegung konnte quantifiziert werden. Zum ersten Mal konnten die räumlich-zeitlichen Verformungsmuster des Glaskörpers visualisiert und viskoelastische Modellparameter quantifiziert werden. Verschiedene Arten von Deformationsmustern des Glaskörpers konnten beschrieben werden. Die Viskosität und Elastizität des Glaskörpers wurden durch ein viskoelastisches Modell bestimmt. Somit sind relevante Modellierungsparameter der Augenhöhlebiomechanik in vivo quantifiziert worden. Die Differenzierung des dynamischen Deformationsprofils entlang der Augenmuskeln von Duane-Syndrom Patienten gegenüber physiologischen Deformationsprofilen erlaubte die nicht funktionellen Segmente der pathologischen Muskeln zu bestimmen und lieferte neue Einblicke in die okulomotorische Steuerung. Das erweiterte Verständnis der Physiologie des Orbitagewebes und deren neuronalen Kontrollmechanismen könnte bisher unerkannte Ursachen des Schielens klären, welche traditionelle Konzepte verbessern oder alternative Behandlungen vorschlagen könnten. Die Ursachen von Krankheiten wie neuronal bedingte Lähmung, verzögerte neuromuskuläre Übertragung, mechanische Beschränkung und Entzündung der Augenmuskeln voneinander zu differenzieren kann jetzt geplant werden.
Economic models typically allow for “free disposal” or “reversibility” of information, which implies non-negative value. Building on previous research on the “curse of knowledge” we explore situations where this might not be so. In three experiments, we document situations in which participants place positive value on information in attempting to predict the performance of uninformed others, even when acquiring that information diminishes their earnings. In the first experiment, a majority of participants choose to hire informed—rather than uninformed—agents, leading to lower earnings. In the second experiment, a significant number of participants pay for information—the solution to a puzzle—that hurts their ability to predict how many others will solve the puzzle. In the third experiment, we find that the effect is reduced with experience and feedback on the actual performance to be predicted. We discuss implications of our results for the role of information and informed decision making in economic situations.
Rewards in the natural environment are rarely predicted with complete certainty. Uncertainty relating to future rewards has typically been defined as the variance of the potential outcomes. However, the asymmetry of predicted reward distributions, known as skewness, constitutes a distinct but neuroscientifically underexplored risk term that may also have an impact on preference. By changing only reward magnitudes, we study skewness processing in equiprobable ternary lotteries involving only gains and constant probabilities, thus excluding probability distortion or loss aversion as mechanisms for skewness preference formation. We show that individual preferences are sensitive to not only the mean and variance but also to the skewness of predicted reward distributions. Using neuroimaging, we show that the insula, a structure previously implicated in the processing of reward-related uncertainty, responds to the skewness of predicted reward distributions. Some insula responses increased in a monotonic fashion with skewness (irrespective of individual skewness preferences), whereas others were similarly elevated to both negative and positive as opposed to no reward skew. These data support the notion that the asymmetry of reward distributions is processed in the brain and, taken together with replicated findings of mean coding in the striatum and variance coding in the cingulate, suggest that the brain codes distinct aspects of reward distributions in a distributed fashion.
How effectively do democratic institutions provide public goods? Despite the incentives an elected leader has to free ride or impose majority tyranny, our experiment demonstrates that electoral delegation results in full provision of the public good. Analysis of the experimental data suggests that the result is primarily due to electoral selection: groups elect prosocial leaders and replace those who do not implement full contribution outcomes. However, we also observe outcomes in which a minimum winning coalition exploits the contributions of the remaining players. A second experiment demonstrates that when electoral delegation must be endogenously implemented, individuals voluntarily cede authority to an elected agent only when preplay communication is permitted. Our combined results demonstrate that democratic delegation helps groups overcome the free-rider problem and generally leads to outcomes that are often both efficient and equitable.
This paper reports an experiment examining the effect of social norms on pro-social behavior. We test two predictions derived from work in psychology regarding the influence of norms. The first is a “focusing” influence, whereby norms only impact behavior when an individual’s attention is drawn to them; and the second is an “informational” influence, whereby a norm exerts a stronger impact on an individual’s behavior the more others he observes behaving consistently with that norm. We find support for both effects. Either thinking about or observing the behavior of others produces increased pro-social behavior – even when one expects or observes little pro-social behavior on the part of others – and the degree of pro-social behavior is increasing in the actual and expected pro-social behavior of others. This experiment eliminates strategic influences and thus demonstrates a direct effect of norms on behavior.
In this paper we show that the recent model by Gilles Duranton [Duranton, G., 2007. Urban evolutions: The fast, the slow, and the still. American Economic Review 97, 197-221] performs remarkably well in replicating the city size distribution of West Germany, much better than the simple rank-size rule known as Zipf's law. The main mechanism of this theoretical framework is the "churning" of industries across cities. Little is known in urban economics about the determinants of local industry turnover so far. We present an empirical analysis of the excess churning index for West German cities, which describes the strength of intra-city industry reallocations over time. We find that urban growth and industry turnover are not notably correlated: Some, but not all fast-growing cities have notably changed. Secondly, human capital is positively related to growth and turnover, but only among successful cities. Industrial change within unsuccessful cities is driven by the disappearance of old-fashioned and declining sectors such as agriculture or mining. On a more general level our results suggest that the recent model by Duranton is a powerful description of the urban growth process. Still there are some aspects that are not captured by that model, which are at the core of other theories of urban growth.
