Economics Commons^™

Cardiovascular Disease And Type 2 Diabetes In Evolutionary Perspective: A Critical Role For Helminths?, Michael D. Gurven, Benjamin C. Trumble, Jonathan Stieglitz, Aaron D. Blackwell, David E. Michalik, Caleb E. Finch, Hillard Kaplan

ESI Publications

Heart disease and type 2 diabetes are commonly believed to be rare among contemporary subsistencelevel human populations, and by extension prehistoric populations. Although some caveats remain, evidence shows these diseases to be unusual among well-studied hunter-gatherers and other subsistence populations with minimal access to healthcare. Here we expand on a relatively new proposal for why these and other populations may not show major signs of these diseases. Chronic infections, especially helminths, may offer protection against heart disease and diabetes through direct and indirect pathways. As part of a strategy to insure their own survival and reproduction, helminths exert multiple cardio-protective …

Why Ireland: How Bank Failure Was Their Key To Success, Nia R. Gillenwater

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

Despite Ireland’s status as the first EU country to receive a bailout, Ireland appears to be bouncing back extremely well from the ongoing financial crisis in Europe and the EU. Looking at recent Irish economic statistics it begs the question whether the government’s complete guarantee of all Irish debts was the best response. Ireland’s financial crisis seemed quite similar to America’s: for both the root causes are freely lending for real estate and property. The responses however, were very different. While America let Lehman Brothers fail and only provided a partial guarantee to its banks, Ireland provided a complete guarantee …

Finland's Economic Freeze, Shivang Mehta

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

Abstract

The Eurozone sovereign debt crisis has been well documented and so has Germany’s booming manufacturing economy but these events are relatively easy to explain. Greece’s troubles can easily be traced to its social security structure and lack of land registry while Germany’s success is a result of labour reforms, an undervalued currency and an emphasis on small scale businesses which form the backbone of the economy. A relatively paradoxical case has been that of Finland; ranked second for global innovation by the World Economic Forum and with over $1.8 billion being invested by the government in the country’s tech …

“Give A Man A Fish: Reflections On The New Politics Of Distribution”, By James Ferguson [Book Review], Daniela Atanasova

Southern African Journal of Policy and Development

Development policy and discourse have long shied away from the idea of giving money directly to the poor. In his latest book, anthropologist James Ferguson argues that this reluctance is slowly giving way. He documents a veritable ‘cash transfer revolution’ taking place in the Global South, with countries such as South Africa, Brazil and Namibia in the vanguard. Drawing on a rich empirical and ethnographic literature on cash transfers and the livelihoods of the poor, with a focus on southern Africa, Ferguson delivers a thought-provoking analysis of the genesis, limitations and radical potential of these programmes. At its most original, …

University Rankings: Evidence And A Conceptual Framework, Jonathan G.S. Koppell, Jacob Fowles, H. George Frederickson

Publications from President Jonathan G.S. Koppell

University ranking has high public visibility, the ranking business has flourished, and institutions of higher education have not been able to ignore it. This study of university ranking presents general considerations of ranking and institutional responses to it, particularly considering reactions to ranking, ranking as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and ranking as a means of transforming qualities into quantities. The authors present a conceptual framework of university ranking based on three propositions and carry out a descriptive statistical analysis of U.S. and international ranking data to evaluate those propositions. The first proposition of university ranking is that ranking systems are demarcated …

A Targeted Approach? A Study Of Ngo Roles And Practices In Promoting Economic Development, Emma Shoaf

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

In recent years, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have become key actors promoting economic development. Despite their rapid rise, there are still significant gaps in the development sphere regarding what NGOs do in specific contexts. This research evaluates how NGOs promote economic development among Palestinian refugees in Lebanon to give context to general trends within development literature. Through an in-depth case study of the NGO Cives Mundi and their recent development project Tatreez–focused on promoting economic empowerment among Palestinian refugee women through the formation of a weaving co-op–this study seeks to evaluate key advantages and disadvantages to NGO work in specific …

Human-Scale Economics: Economic Growth And Poverty Reduction In Northeastern Thailand, Joel D. Moore, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Under what conditions does economic growth benefit the poor? One way to answer this question is to identify and compare positive and negative outlier areas, those that experience greater and lesser poverty reduction, respectively, compared to what was anticipated given their levels of economic growth. The more similar these areas, the more leverage there is to unearth the factors that allow the poor to benefit from growth. In this paper, we employ an inductive approach to glean possible pathways out of poverty from two highly similar underdeveloped neighboring provinces in northeastern Thailand. Using extensive fieldwork and interviews, we explore factors …

Incense Burning During Pregnancy And Birth Weight And Head Circumference Among Term Births: The Taiwan Birth Cohort Study, Le-Yu Chen, Christine Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

Incense burning for rituals or religious purposes is an important tradition in many countries. However, incense smoke contains particulate matter and gas products such as carbon monoxide, sulfur and nitrogen dioxide, which are potentially harmful to health. We analyzed the relationship between prenatal incense burning and birth weight and head circumference at birth using the Taiwan Birth Cohort Study. We performed multivariate regression analysis on a sample of 15,773 Taiwanese babies born in 2005 and controlled extensively for factors that may be correlated with incense burning and birth outcomes. Prenatal incense burning environment was associated with lower birth weight and …

Climate Change And Vulnerability To Poverty: An Empirical Investigation In Rural Indonesia, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

Scientists estimate that anthropogenic climate change leads to increased surface temperature, sea-level rise, more frequent and significant extreme weather and climate events, among others. In this study, we investigate how climate change can potentially change the vulnerability to poverty using a panel data set in Indonesia. We focus on the effect of drought and flood, two of the commonly observed disasters there. Our simulation results indicate that vulnerability to poverty may increase substantially as a result of climate change in Indonesia.

Concepts And Measurement Of Vulnerability To Poverty And Other Issues: A Review Of Literature, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper reviews the growing body of literature on vulnerability. We first provide a survey of existing studies on the concepts and measurements of vulnerability to poverty by classifying them into welfarist, expected poverty, and axiomatic approaches. We then review a number of empirical studies on vulnerability to poverty in Asia and elsewhere. This review shows that poverty and vulnerability are related, but different, and that key determinants of vulnerability often include education and location. We also briefly review other areas of vulnerability analysis such as vulnerability to climate change and offer various policy implications arising from vulnerability analysis.

Dependency Theory Reloaded: Exploring Baseball In The Dominican Republic, Sarah Nass

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Latin America’s presence in Major League Baseball has grown rapidly in recent years. The increase of players from the Dominican Republic can no longer be ignored. But why is Major League Baseball in the Dominican Republic? What has been the impact of Major League Baseball’s player development strategies and tactics on the people and culture of the Dominican Republic? Does the Dominican Republic need Major League Baseball to be successful? An ethnographic study was conducted in an attempt to answer these questions. This study examines the relationship between Major League Baseball and the Dominican Republic. Examining this relationship using the …

An Epigenetic Clock Analysis Of Race/Ethnicity, Sex, And Coronary Heart Disease, Steve Horvath, Michael Gurven, Morgan E. Levine, Benjamin C. Trumble, Hillard Kaplan, Hooman Allayee, Beate R. Ritz, Brian Chen, Ake T. Lu, Tammy M. Rickabaugh, Beth D. Jamieson, Dianjianyi Sun, Shengxu Li, Wei Chen, Lluis Quintana-Murci, Maud Fagny, Michael S. Kobor, Philip S. Tsao, Alexander P. Reiner, Kerstin L. Edlefsen, Devin Absher, Themistocles L. Assimes

ESI Publications

Background: Epigenetic biomarkers of aging (the “epigenetic clock”) have the potential to address puzzling findings surrounding mortality rates and incidence of cardio-metabolic disease such as: (1) women consistently exhibiting lower mortality than men despite having higher levels of morbidity; (2) racial/ethnic groups having different mortality rates even after adjusting for socioeconomic differences; (3) the black/white mortality cross-over effect in late adulthood; and (4) Hispanics in the United States having a longer life expectancy than Caucasians despite having a higher burden of traditional cardio-metabolic risk factors.

Results: We analyzed blood, saliva, and brain samples from seven different racial/ethnic groups. …

Natural Disasters In Latin America: The Role Of Disaster Type And Productive Sector On The Urban-Rural Income Gap And Rural To Urban Migration, Madeline Alice Messick

Dissertations

This research provides insight into the impact of natural disasters as drivers of rural to urban migration in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Disasters of varying types are predicted to have differing impacts on the productive sectors of agriculture, industry, and services; which due to the concentration of the various productive sectors in either urban or rural areas, subsequently changes the urban-rural wage differential. Changes to the wage differential (as measured by the urban-rural income gap) are predicted to lead to movement between urban and rural areas until a new equilibrium wage is reached.

This dissertation first identifies a …

Moving From Tension To Symbiosis In A Distinctive City, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan noted that meticulous urban planning has enabled Singapore to attain a high quality of living, delicately balancing the inherent tension between the economy and the environment. He shared his views on relevant issues such as the conflicting interests between Singapore’s immigration policy and its national identity, as well as the inherent tension between the economy and the environment. Associate Prof Tan pointed out that the quest to balance economic growth with environment concerns and social character is not a mere luxury but a growing imperative. He added that as Singapore …

Architecture As Artefact, Socialfact, And Mentalfact : On The Hypothetical Works Of Office Of Strategic Architecture (Osa) : Part 2 = 建築作為藝術、社會、精神之平台 : 策略建築局前設工作 : 第二部分, Eka Swadiansa

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 28th July 2016, Eka Swadiansa gave us a lecture at the Third South South Forum on Sustainability. The lecture was titled Architecture as Artifact, Socialfact and Mentalfact: on the Hypothetical Works of OSA .He divided the lecture into six parts:

1. Architecture as Artefact
2. Architecture as Socialfact
3. Architecture as Artefact VS Socialfact
4. Architecture as Mentalfact
5. Office of Strategic Architecture (OSA)
6. Tadao Ando Works: Architecture as Faith Mentalfact (Extended Discussion)

This was the afternoon session of the lecture.

Architecture As Artefact, Socialfact, And Mentalfact : On The Hypothetical Works Of Office Of Strategic Architecture (Osa) : Part 1 = 建築作為藝術、社會、精神之平台 : 策略建築局前設工作 : 第一部分, Eka Swadiansa

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 28th July 2016, Eka Swadiansa gave us a lecture at the Third South South Forum on Sustainability. The lecture was titled Architecture as Artifact, Socialfact and Mentalfact: on the Hypothetical Works of OSA .He divided the lecture into six parts:

1. Architecture as Artefact
2. Architecture as Socialfact
3. Architecture as Artefact VS Socialfact
4. Architecture as Mentalfact
5. Office of Strategic Architecture (OSA)
6. Tadao Ando Works: Architecture as Faith Mentalfact (Extended Discussion)

This was the morning session of the lecture.

Associations Between Male Testosterone And Immune Function In A Pathogenically Stressed Forager-Horticultural Population, Benjamin C. Trumble, Aaron D. Blackwell, Jonathan Stieglitz, Melissa Emery Thompson, Ivan Maldonado Suarez, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Objectives—Despite well-known fitness advantages to males who produce and maintain high endogenous testosterone levels, such phenotypes may be costly if testosterone-mediated investment in reproductive effort trade-off against investment in somatic maintenance. Previous studies of androgen-mediated trade-offs in human immune function find mixed results, in part because most studies either focus on a few indicators of immunity, are confounded by phenotypic correlation, or are observational. Here the association between male endogenous testosterone and 13 circulating cytokines are examined before and after ex vivo antigen stimulation with phytohaemagglutinin (PHA) and lipopolysaccharides (LPS) in a high pathogen population of Bolivian forager-horticulturalists.

Materials …

Global Financial Crisis And Challenges : Discussion = 全球金融危機與挑戰 : 討論, Tak Hing, Erebus Wong

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 27th July 2016, at SSFS 3, Erebus Wong gave a presentation titled "More Science or Ethnics in Economics and Finance?".

Contra Hegemony : Part 2 : Post Capital Business Planning And Its Global Market Potencies = 逆反霸權 (2) : 後資本主義商業計劃及其全球市場潛力, Eka Swadiansa

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 27th July 2016, at the Third South South Forum on Sustainability, Eka Swadiansa delivered the second part of his presentation on Contra Hegemony. The title of this session is Contra Hegemony (Part 2): Post Capital Business Planning and its Global Market Potencies.

Contra Hegemony : Part 1 : Conscious Regional Planning And Its Adaptive Development Policies = 逆反霸權 (1) : 有意識之區域規劃及其靈活之發展政策, Eka Swadiansa

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 27th July 2016, at SSFS 3, Eka Swadiana delivered the first part of his talk on Contra Hegemony. This session is titled Contra Hegemony (Part 1): Conscious Regional Planning and its Adaptive Development Policies.

This presentation talked about recent Indonesian government policies launched under the leadership of the currently in power President Joko Widodo; in the discourse to his very limited fiscal gap, the dream of undergoing vast development, and the blue print of national development formulated by taking the long forgotten Indonesian local wisdom to envision a foreseen optimistic future. Some insights on both state and privately owned …

Latin America : Exhaustion Of Post-Neocapitalist Experiences? How To Think Our Future? = 拉丁美洲 : 後新資本主義耗盡的經驗? 怎樣思考我們的未來?, François Houtart

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 26th July 2016, François Houtart delivered a lecture on Latin America, which was titled Latin America: Exhaustion of Post-Neocapitalist Experiences? How to Think Our Future?.

Delirious New World : Static City And The Engineering Of Collective Spaces Of Otherness = 瘋狂新世界 : 靜態城市與異態集體空間, Eka Swadiansa

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 25th July 2016, Eka Swadiansa gave us a talk titled Delirious New World: Static City and the Engineering of Collective Spaces of Otherness.

中國建築與城市主義 = Architecture And Urbanism : The Case Of China, Aibin Yan, Huizhong Bin

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 25th July 2016, Bui Huizhong and Yan Aibin gave a presentation based on the topic: Architecture and Urbanism: the Case of China.

中國金融資本主義與三農問題 = Financial Capitalism And The Agrarian Question In China, Xiaohui Yan, Ping Wang

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 25th July 2016, Yan Xiaohui and Wang Ping talked on Financial Capitalism and the Agrarian Question in China.

The Agrarian Question In Asia = 亞洲三農問題, Chantana Banpasirichote

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 25th July 2016, at SSFS 3, Chantana Banpasirichote gave us a lecture on the Agrarian Questions in Asia.

Latin America : Agrarian Question : Agriculture Vs Capitalist Modern Agriculture : Land, Water, Forests = 拉丁美洲 : 三農問題農業 Vs 現代資本主義農業 : 土地、水、森林, François Houtart

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 25th July 2016, at SSFS 3, François Houtart gave us a lecture on Latin America: Agriculture vs Capitalist Modern Agriculture: Land, Water, Forests.

No Fire Zone : The Killing Fields Of Sri Lanka : Discussion = 無戰火地帶 : 斯里蘭卡之殺戮戰場 : 映後座談, François Houtart, Jude Lal Fernando

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 24th July 2016, François Houtart and Jude Lal Fernando showed us a documentary called "No Fire Zone — the Killing Fields of Sri Lanka". This is the discussion session.

Popular Movements In Southeast Asia = 東南亞民眾運動, Surichai Wungaeo

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 24th July 2016, Surichai Wungaeo gave us a talk titled Popular Movements in Southeast Asia.

Popular Movements In Korea = 韓國民眾運動, Jung Ok Lee

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 24th July 2016, at the Third South South Forum, Lee Jung Ok delivered a talk titled Popular Movements in Korea.

Latin America : Popular Movements, Progressive Governments And Present Political Crisis = 拉丁美洲 : 民眾運動、進步政府與當前政治危機, François Houtart

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 24th July 2016, at SSFS 3, François Houtart gave us a lecture on Latin America: Popular Movements, Progressive Governments and Present Political Crisis.