NATO/US false-flag attacks in Europe

False flag operations are acts of deception carried out by government officials to blame other countries or political groups for an attack against the nation with the aim of stirring up a desire for retribution against the supposed perpetrator. Since the effectiveness of a false-flag operation depends on preventing the truth from becoming widely known, it is impossible to know how often such operations have been carried out. Nevertheless, some historical events have been revealed in time, so we can better understand how they operate. The focus here is on false-flag operations in Western Europe and Turkey, carried out as part of the Gladio program during the Cold War under the supervision of the CIA. In each case, the CIA persuaded NATO members to recruit right-wing operatives to engage in terrorist actions and then blame the resulting deaths on left-wing groups, mostly communists. In this way, the United States used deception and terror to prevent communists from gaining power in Europe after World War II.     

9/11, the power elite,and the U.S. think tanks that plan the future

Four think tanks with close ties to the highest levels of government have shaped American foreign policy for decades. They are the Council on Foreign Relations, the RAND Corporation, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission. With direct ties to government officials who have engaged in various covert operations, these organizations provide a space within which advocates of global control can share ideas and develop new policies. Among the groups that have bravely questioned the consensus-forming character of these think tanks are groups of people whose relatives died on 9/11. Because of their investigations into the government officials whose careers have blossomed as a result of 9/11, these ordinary citizens have become sharp critics of the expansionist ideology that was seemingly legitimized by 9/11.     

Land and small farmer resistance in authoritarian Egypt

This article examines small farmer resistance in Egypt. It situates contemporary struggles in the context of the uneven success of small farmers' historical resistance to land dispossession and neoliberal reform. Struggles over land are the prime driver of rural conflict and small farmers contest state strategies that reward local elites, land owners, and supporters of the military regime. There may not be a coherent social movement able to resist contemporary patterns of capital accumulation, but there are elements of resistance that edge forward an agenda for a “political conversation” about much-needed deep social reforms. The internationally-supported Sisi presidency has used violence to consolidate military power, making open revolt difficult. Nevertheless, small farmers link struggles over access to land with poor state provisioning of water and infrastructure as a means of building resistance.     

Pension,possible phaseout,and endogenous fertility in general equilibrium

The rich literature on Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG)-type pensions provides a notion that when pension return is dominated by the market return, generally it is impossible to phase pension out without hurting any generation. We show that PAYG pensions can indeed be phased out in a much richer framework where fertility is endogenous and general equilibrium effects are present. Interestingly, the factor that helps us to phase the pension out in a Pareto way is hidden in the structure of PAYG pension itself. Individualistic agents fail to recognize the benefits of their fertility decision on these programs and, therefore, end up in an allocation that is strictly dominated by the allocations that internalize this externality. Exploiting this positive externality, competitive economy can improve its allocations and can reach the planner's steady-state in finite time where each generation secures as much utility as in the competitive equilibrium. Clearly, it is possible to transition in a Pareto way to an economy either with no pension or with pensions whose return is not dominated by market return.     

Nonparametric measurement of potential gains from mergers: an additive decomposition and application to Indian bank mergers

Journal of Productivity Analysis - In this paper, we derive conditions under which merger between a number of firms within the same industry would induce a more cost efficient production of the...     

Household savings and present bias among Chinese couples: A household bargaining approach

Family savings is crucial to long-term wellbeing for all members in a household, particularly in a Chinese context where costs of living increasingly shift from government to individuals. Savings are typically examined as a balance of financial behaviors and spending preferences; however, this study highlights how savings in a family context is also a function of relationship status. Drawing on intra-household bargaining models, we analyze data from the 2014 China Family Panel Studies to examine the extent to which men's and women's relative power in the household explain variation in savings levels across families. Our findings indicate that women's greater bargaining positions (e.g., income and assets) correspond with greater savings for the family. However, such bargaining power constitutes a net negative for family savings when women have both greater relational power and higher spending preferences. We suggest that family savings can and should be understood as an outcome of dynamic bargaining conditions in addition to income factors.