Prostate cancer and life insurance

Prostate cancer is comprehensively reviewed from the perspective of risk-stratification. Epidemiology and staging are assessed. The diagnostic implications are described. Treatment strategies are outlined and underwriting implications are presented.     

Mercantilism and Imperialism in the Rise and Decline of the Dutch and British Economies 1585-1815

This essay locates the rise and relative decline of the economy of the Netherlands over the period l585-l8l5 in geopolitics. It has used the rise of Britain, l688-1815 as a point of reference and for bilateral comparison, in order to validate a hypothesis that the degree of avoidable decline had less to do with inefficiencies in the economic sphere, but flowed essentially from political failures to countervail blatant and violent challenges from the new nation's mercantilist rivals – particularly France but also Britain. I concluded that a similar pattern of political complacency, cultural inertia and liberal myopia marked the response of imperial Britain to the threat from Germany after its reunification in l870.     

A comment on the role of prices for excludable public goods

Blomquist and Christensen [(2005). The role of prices for excludable public goods, International Tax and Public Finance, 12 ,61–79] argue that welfare is initially decreasing in the price of an excludable public good and that the case for a positive price for an excludable public good price is weak. We argue that this result follows from their particular characterization of the public good and that an alternative and equally reasonable characterization overturns their result. Hence, the policy case for a positive price on the public good is stronger than Blomquist and Christiansen suggest. JEL Classification H21 · H41