Happiness and its molecular fingerprints

Happiness and well-being are in part heritable, but modifiable traits. The promotion of well-being and happiness, much like the primary prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCD), will become increasingly important in a world that is facing an NCD epidemic due to demographic aging and urbanization. The costs for the often lifelong treatment of NCDs are already high and may increase further with the arrival of expensive personalized medicine. The effective promotion of happiness at the individual and population level in order to guide policy requires a causal and mechanistic understanding of its modifiable determinants. With more than half of the world’s population living in cities, it becomes, for example, important to understand how environmental, social, and lifestyle characteristics of urban life influence well-being. Yet, the correlation between many of these factors and the fact that they act in concert poses a large challenge in causal inference. The -omics biomarkers which form a pillar of personalized medicine are at the same time essential research instruments of modern-day observational epidemiology. The paper discusses how they can be applied to overcome the challenges researchers face in studies on the association of complex risk and protective patterns with specific well-being phenotypes and their relation to diseases. Important concepts are discussed in the context of well-being that were recently developed by epidemiologists to stimulate more investments into the understanding of the modifiable part of health (e.g., Exposome; Meet-in-the-Middle; Mendelian Randomization) to match the huge investments that went into genetic research.     

Does sustainable intensification of maize production enhance child nutrition? Evidence from rural Tanzania

Food insecurity, child malnutrition, and land degradation remain persistent problems in sub‐Saharan Africa. Agricultural sustainable intensification (SI) has been proposed as a possible solution to simultaneously address these challenges. Yet there is little empirical evidence on if agricultural management practices and inputs that contribute to SI from an environmental standpoint do indeed improve food security or child nutrition. We use three waves of data from the nationally‐representative Tanzania National Panel Survey to analyze the child nutrition effects of rural households’ adoption of farming practices that can contribute to the SI of maize production. We group households into four categories based on their use of three soil fertility management practices on their maize plots: “Nonadoption”; “Intensification” (use of inorganic fertilizer only); “Sustainable” (use of organic fertilizer, maize–legume intercropping, or both); and “SI” (joint use of inorganic fertilizer with organic fertilizer and/or maize–legume intercropping). The results from multinomial endogenous treatment effects models with the Mundlak–Chamberlain device suggest that use of practices in the “SI” category is associated with improvements in children's height‐for‐age and weight‐for‐age z‐scores relative to “Nonadoption,” particularly for children aged 25–59 months. These effects appear to come through improvements in both crop income and productivity.     

The information content of wheat derivatives regarding the Ukrainian war

We extract implied price densities from wheat options and futures prices during the first 17 months of the Ukrainian war. Changing differences between short- and long-term densities indicate that market expectations about the dynamics of the underlying changed over time. Before the signing of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, wheat derivatives prices showed predictive power for the further development of the conflict, and implied volatilities from wheat options were highly correlated with geopolitical risk (GPR). Afterwards, wheat prices lost their predictive power for the conflict, but instead reflected the market's opinion regarding the viability of the Black Sea Grain Initiative. By that time, correlations between wheat price risk and GPR dropped sharply.     

Effective consumer access to justice: Class actions

Consumer protection legislation recognizes consumer rights, but in many cases consumers do not institute judicial proceedings in order to assert their rights, particularly for small injuries.Class actions are seen as having the potential to overcome some of the hurdles that bar consumers from effective access to courts to seek redress to their grievances.Class action proceedings are not simple and the enactment of such a measure requires modifications to be made to the judicial process. The author in discussing the efficiency of the measure outlines the major adjustments to be made and the different solutions developed in the majority of states that have enacted such a procedure.

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Erfolgreicher Rechtszugang von Verbrauchern: Verbandsklagen

Zusammenfassung Die Verbraucherrechte werden zwar in den meisten LÄndern durch die Verbraucherschutzgesetze anerkannt, aber die Verbraucher leiten dennoch nur selten rechtliche Schritte ein, um ihr Interesse zu wahren. Das gilt vor allem bei geringfügigen SchÄden oder Benachteiligungen. Das Instrument der Verbandsklage wird als Möglichkeit zum Abbau von Barrieren angesehen, die Konsumenten von rechtlichen Schritten abhalten. Dieses Instrument ist ziemlich kompliziert und erfordert einige VerÄnderungen des gerichtlichen Vorgehens. Die Autorin diskutiert diese VerÄnderungen so, wie sie von den meisten Staaten vorgenommen wurden, die die Verbandsklage eingeführt haben, speziell unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Wirksamkeit dieses Verfahrens.

     

Trade Liberalization and Union Wages in a Differentiated Bertrand Duopoly

In a framework of a unionized international Bertrand duopoly with differentiated products, this article analyzes national labor market interdependencies and the consequences of trade liberalization for union wages. The analysis suggests that national wages are likely to be strategic complements (substitutes) if products are ordinary substitutes (complements). Under the assumption of linear demand, it is shown that bilateral trade liberalization always leads to higher union set wages and union utilities, regardless of the nature of product rivalry. An analysis of the consequences of unilateral tariff reductions shows that foreign tariff reductions always give rise to higher union wages and utilities, whereas the impact of unilateral domestic tariff reductions depends on the nature of product rivalry.     

Dual transfer pricing with internal and external trade

This paper examines a transfer pricing problem between two divisions of a decentralized firm. The selling division is privately informed about its own costs and produces a good that is sold both externally in an intermediate market and internally within the firm. Unlike most previous work, we focus on dual transfer pricing systems that allow the selling division to be credited for an amount that differs from the amount charged to the buying division. We identify conditions under which efficient decentralized trade and external price setting incentives can be provided with a properly chosen set of dual transfer prices that do not rely on direct communication. Instead, the optimal dual transfer prices will depend only on public information about the market price charged by the upstream division in the external market, which indirectly communicates information about production costs to the downstream division. For a variety of well-known demand functions, the optimal transfer prices will be linear functions of the market price. Our main results hold when the upstream division faces multiple internal buyers or faces a binding capacity constraint.     

Less planning,more development? Housing and urban reform discourses in Australia

This paper examines how particular interests shape urban policy debate and reform in Australia. With a particular emphasis on proposed planning system reforms in the nation’s largest state of New South Wales, we examine written submissions from development industry sectors, resident groups, and professional associations. We then compare these submissions to government responses, finding these responses heavily reflect industry narratives. In the context of an ongoing microeconomic reform agenda oriented towards deregulation and competition policy, housing development is framed as central to delivering economic growth, while the planning system is portrayed as a constraint holding back investment and new housing production. Through this prism, a series of rhetorical strategies reframe community concerns about housing affordability and the impact of new development to fit the growth agenda, while environmental and social considerations are largely sidelined.