SMU professor available to discuss working paper’s analysis of controversial ‘dreamer’ population.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) increased high school graduation rates by 15 percent, reduced teenage birth rates by 45 percent, and led to a 25 percent increase in college enrollment among Hispanic women, according to a working paper co-authored by SMU economist Elira Kuka for the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The results have significant bearing for the direction of future immigration policy, the paper concludes.
“Our research shows that when we give undocumented youth a large incentive to invest in education, such as participation in DACA and access to the labor opportunities it opens if they stay in school, they respond to these opportunities,” says Kuka, an assistant professor in the SMU Department of Economics. “Giving immigrants a work permit and relief from deportation makes them more likely to invest in education, work more, and have less (teenage) fertility.”
The study also found that individuals who acquire more schooling work more at the same time, countering the typically held belief that work and school are mutually exclusive, and indicating DACA generated a large boost in productivity.
“You can think about our research in two ways: If you just care about immigration policy, it’s important because we show that DACA really improves these peoples’ lives and the type of immigrant workforce we have in the U.S., which is currently missing from the policy debate about the costs and benefits of the program,” Kuka says. “More generally, our research tells us something about the education choices of low-income Americans. Why don’t they invest in education despite its large wage premium? Do they not respond to incentives or do they lack the right incentives to go to school? Our results suggest the second.”
Co-authors are Na’ama Shenhav, an economics professor at Dartmouth College, and Kevin Shih, an economics professor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The working paper, “Do Human Capital Decisions Respond to the Returns to Education? Evidence from DACA,” was released in February by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
“To complete this research, we used data from the American Community Surveys, which is a yearly survey that collects demographic, educational, and employment information for a 1 percent representative sample of the U.S. population,” Kuka explains. “We then identified who in the survey was likely to be a DACA recipient based on nation of origin, when they arrived in the country, and other factors, identified control groups that resembled the likely DACA recipients, then charted outcomes for both groups before and after DACA went into effect. We saw a divergence in trajectories where people eligible for DACA got this big bump in educational attainment, a big drop in fertility, and so on.” — Kenny Ryan, SMU
Kuka, an assistant professor in the SMU Department of Economics, and her colleagues found that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program under fire by the Trump Administration has significantly changed the lives of young people who came to the United States illegally as children.
Kuka’s research focus is on understanding how government policy effects individual behavior and well-being, the extent to which it provides social insurance during times of need, and its effectiveness in alleviation of poverty and inequality.
Her current research topics include the potential benefits of the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program, the protective power of the U.S. safety net during recessions and various issues in academic achievement.
By Elizabeth Redden
Inside Higher Ed
A new working paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research argues that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program had a “significant impact” on the educational and life decisions of undocumented immigrant youth, resulting in a 45 percent decrease in teen birth rates, a 15 percent increase in high school graduation rates and a 20 percent increase in college enrollment rates. The researchers found differential effects by gender, with most of the gains in college enrollment concentrated among women. For men alone, the effect of DACA on college enrollment was not statistically significant.
DACA, which was established by former president Obama in 2012, gave certain undocumented immigrant students who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children temporary protection from deportation and authorization to work in the U.S. DACA recipients have faced uncertainty over their future since September, when President Trump announced plans to end the program after six months.
“Our main conclusion from this paper is that future labor market opportunities or just opportunities in general really matter,” said Elira Kuka, one of the authors of the paper, titled “Do Human Capital Decisions Respond to the Returns to Education? Evidence From DACA,” and an assistant professor of economics at Southern Methodist University.
“People are worried, ‘Why are there some populations that are not going to high school and not investing in education?’” Kuka said. “Maybe the reason is they don’t see improved opportunities — but if they see improved labor outcomes they will actually invest in their education.”
An assistant professor in the SMU Department of Economics, Kuka and her colleagues found that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program under fire by the Trump Administration has significantly changed the lives of young people who came to the United States illegally as children.
Kuka’s research focus is on understanding how government policy effects individual behavior and well-being, the extent to which it provides social insurance during times of need, and its effectiveness in alleviation of poverty and inequality.
Her current research topics include the potential benefits of the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program, the protective power of the U.S. safety net during recessions and various issues in academic achievement.
By Jillian Berman
Market Watch
If students believe they’re education will pay off, they may be more likely to continue with it.
Enacting Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, increased high school graduation rates among undocumented immigrants by 15% and college enrollment rates by 20%. That’s according to a study by economists at Dartmouth College, Southern Methodist University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research on Monday.
DACA provides work authorization and deferral of deportation for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. In addition to eligibility requirements surrounding the age at which undocumented immigrants came to the U.S., DACA also has an education requirement — that immigrants be in school, completed high school or a GED program (unless they’re a veteran).
“You’ve given them a huge carrot to stay in school,” said Na’ama Shenhav, an economics professor at Dartmouth and one of the authors of the study. The opportunity for protection from deportation allows students to envision a possible return on their education that wasn’t available before. “For a population that previously was experiencing very low incentives to stay in school, this could have substantially re-oriented their perception of opportunities,” Shenhav said.
Kuka, an assistant professor in the SMU Department of Economics, and her colleagues found that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program under fire by the Trump Administration has significantly changed the lives of young people who came to the United States illegally as children.
Kuka’s research focus is on understanding how government policy effects individual behavior and well-being, the extent to which it provides social insurance during times of need, and its effectiveness in alleviation of poverty and inequality.
Her current research topics include the potential benefits of the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program, the protective power of the U.S. safety net during recessions and various issues in academic achievement.
By Matthew Yglesias
Vox
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program changed the lives of young people who came to the United States illegally as children in incredible ways — boosting high school graduation rates and college enrollment, while slashing teen births by a staggering 45 percent.
That’s according to timely new research from Elira Kuka, Na’ama Shenhav, and Kevin Shih that uses the program to study a larger question that’s of interest to economists — when education becomes more available, do people go get more of it? The DACA results suggest that the answer is yes, at least when there’s a clear upside. The program itself, in other words, was a smashing success in terms of bringing people out of the shadows and letting them contribute more to American society.
Oscar Hernandez, a DACA recipient, explained to Vox’s Dara Lind how things changed.
”The discussion in my house was, ‘You don’t get noticed. Because if you do something awesome and great, you might get noticed, and if you do get noticed, they might find out that we’re here undocumented, and if they find we out we could get separated.’ It was never a discussion we had, but that was the unwritten rule for our house. You don’t do bad things, but you also don’t do good things. You stay under the radar, you work, and that’s it.”
DACA changed that. Suddenly, recipients got to experience what US citizens take for granted — that to excel is good.
Canceling DACA almost certainly won’t reduce the overall size of the unauthorized population living in the United States, but it will meaningfully reduce the educational attainment and economic productivity of the undocumented population. That’s bad for the DREAMers, but also America as a whole.
DACA eligibility led to a lot more schooling
One of DACA’s provisions was that to qualify, you had to get a high school degree if you were old enough. That’s an unusual incentive to stay in school, and using a difference-in-differences design to compare the eligible to non-eligible population over time (you can do this because you had to have arrived within a specific time and age window to qualify) they show that DACA-eligibility increased high school graduation rates by 15 percent and brought teen births down by 45 percent.
Easy, inexpensive experiment briefly sent inspiring female role models into intro to econ classes and sharply increased college female interest in the male-dominated, well-paying field of economics.
A low-budget field experiment to tackle the lack of women in the male-dominated field of economics has been surprisingly effective, says the study’s author, an economist at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
Top female college students were inspired to pursue a major in economics when exposed very briefly to charismatic, successful women in the field, according to SMU economist Danila Serra.
The results suggest that exposing young women to an inspiring female role model succeeds due to the mix of both information and pure inspiration, Serra said.
“The specific women who came and talked to the students were key to the success of the intervention,” she said. “It was a factor of how charismatic and enthusiastic they were about their careers and of how interesting their jobs looked to young women.”
Given the simplicity and low-cost of the intervention, similar experiments could be easily conducted in other male-dominated or female-dominated fields of study to enhance gender diversity.
Serra’s results showed that among female students exposed to the enthusiastic mentors there was a 12-percentage point increase in the percentage of female students enrolling in the upper-level Intermediate Microeconomics course the following year — a 100% increase, or doubling, for that demographic.
Not surprisingly, given that the intervention was targeted to female students, Serra found that the role model visits had no impact on male students.
But astonishingly it had the greatest impact on high-achieving female students.
“If we restrict the analysis to the top female students, the students with a GPA of 3.7 or higher, the impact is remarkable — it is a 26 percentage points increase,” Serra said. “So this intervention was especially impactful on the top female students who perhaps were not thinking about majoring in economics.”
“I didn’t think such limited exposure would have such a large impact,” Serra said. “So this is telling me that one of the reasons we see so few women in certain fields is that these fields have been male-dominated for so long. This implies that it is very difficult for a young woman to come into contact with a woman in the field who has an interesting job in the eyes of young women and is enthusiastic about her major and her work. Young men, on the other hand, have these interactions all the time because there are so many male economics majors out there.”
Co-author on the research is Catherine Porter, associate professor of economics at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, and Serra’s former Ph.D. classmate at the University of Oxford.
“The gender imbalance in economics has been in the news a lot lately, and much of the discussion has been very negative,” said Porter. “This study offers something positive: a cheap way of improving the gender balance. The results can hopefully be used by other schools in order to redress the low numbers of women that major in economics – women have a lot to offer and should consider economics as a subject that is interesting and varied for a career.”
Inspiring the individual is the best tool to recruit and retain
Serra launched the study after SMU was one of 20 U.S. universities randomly chosen by Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin for the Undergraduate Women in Economics Challenge. The project awarded each university a $12,500 grant to develop a program freely chosen by the universities to test the effectiveness of a deliberate intervention strategy to recruit and retain female majors.
Nationally, there’s only about one woman for every three men majoring in economics. SMU has a large number of economics majors for a school of its size, with 160 a year. The gender imbalance, however, is greater at SMU than the national average, with only one woman to every four men.
Serra developed her intervention based on her own experience as a Ph.D. student at the University of Oxford several years ago.
“I started thinking about role models from my personal experience,” Serra said. “As a student, I had met many female professors in the past, but my own experience taught me that inspiration is not about meeting any female professor — it’s about meeting that one person that has a huge charisma and who is highly inspiring and speaks to you specifically.”
Serra said that’s what she experienced as a graduate researcher when she first met Professor Abigail Barr, who later became her Ph.D. advisor.
“I know for a fact that that is why I decided to do a Ph.D. in economics, because I was greatly inspired by this person, her experiences and her research,” she said. “So I thought it would be interesting to see whether the same could work for a general student population.”
Two inspiring women role models, 15 minutes, four classrooms
Serra asked two of her department’s top undergraduate female economics students to take the lead in choosing the role models.
The students, Tracy Nelson and Emily Towler, sorted through rosters of SMU economics alums and shortlisted 18 men and women that they thought were working in interesting fields – which purposely excluded stereotypical jobs in banking and finance – and then carried out scripted interviews with a subset of who agreed to be interviewed via Skype to get additional information about their career path and to assess their charisma.
The students ultimately found two alumnae, Julie Lutz and Courtney Thompson, to be the most inspiring. Lutz, a 2008 graduate, started her career in management consulting but, shortly after, decided to completely change her career path by going to work for an international NGO in Nicaragua, and then as a director of operations at a toy company based in Honduras. Lutz now works in Operations at a fast-growing candy retail company. Courtney Thompson, class of 1991, has had a stellar career in marketing, becoming the senior director of North American Marketing and Information Technology at a large international communications company, with the unique claim of being not only a female econ major at a time when that was exceedingly rare, but also African American in a white dominated field.
Serra invited each woman to speak during the Spring 2016 semester for 10 to 15 minutes to four Principals of Economics classes that she had randomly selected from a set of 10. The Principles classes are very popular, with about 700 students total from a variety of desired majors, and are typically gender balanced. The imbalance, said Serra, starts the following year with Intermediate Microeconomics, which is a requirement for upper-level economics courses and so is a good indicator of a desire to major in economics.
Serra offered each role model an honorarium for speaking, but each woman declined and indicated they were happy to be back on campus sharing with students. Serra told the speakers nothing of the purpose of the research project, but encouraged each one to explain to the class why they majored in economics and to be very engaging. She directed them to approach the students with the following question in mind: “If you had to convince a student to major in economics, what would you say?”
Thompson, Serra said, during her college days played SMU’s costumed Peruna mascot, and today retains a “bubbly, big personality, that makes her extremely engaging.” In her classroom visits, Thompson described her experience working and being extremely successful in marketing with an economics degree, while being surrounded by business majors. Lutz, being still in her 20s, was very easy for the young women in the classrooms to identify with, and her experience working in the non-profit and in developing countries may have been especially appealing to them.
Young women judge best who will inspire them
Serra believes that a key to the success of the intervention was the fact her two female economics students actively participated in the selection of the role models.
“The most important thing about the project was that I realized I needed current female students to choose the role models,” Serra said. “I’m not that young anymore, so I’m probably not the best person to recognize what is inspiring to young women. I think young female students are in the best position to tell us what is most inspiring to them.”
For her highly cited corruption research, Serra uses lab experiments to study bribery, governance and accountability, questioning long-standing assumptions. Some of her findings are that corruption declines as perpetrators take into account social costs of their illegal activities, and as victims share information about specific bribery exchanges through online reporting. Serra’s current research agenda also includes experimental work on gender differences in preferences, behaviors and outcomes. — Margaret Allen, SMU
Serra questioned long-standing assumptions; found corruption declines as perpetrators take into account social costs of their illegal activities, and as victims share information about specific bribery exchanges through online reporting systems.
Guilt and shame play a role in reducing bribery, according to research by economist Danila Serra, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
As an economist who has studied bribery behavior extensively, Serra has discovered that bribery declines if potentially corrupt agents are made aware of the negative effects of corruption, and when victims can share specific information about bribe demands through online reporting systems.
“Dr. Serra’s accomplishments have marked her as an ascending scholar, teacher, mentor and colleague of exceptional promise,” said a statement from the foundation.
The prize is named for Nobel Laureate Vernon L. Smith, considered the father of experimental economics. It aims to build on his legacy and inspire recipients, early on in their careers, to set the loftiest possible goals for themselves as social-science theorists, practitioners, colleagues, mentors and truth seekers, the foundation said.
Serra’s interest in understanding bribery transformed in 2005 when she became frustrated by measurement problems and the difficulty of finding good data. Her goal was to identify and understand the causes of corruption, and in particular whether non-monetary motivations, social norms and culture play any role in corruption decision-making. During her Ph.D. work at the University of Oxford, economist Abigail Barr exposed Serra to lab experiments, a relatively new methodology for the field of economics.
“I was always interested in corruption. As soon as I discovered the field of experimental economics I decided to design and implement bribery experiments,” Serra said. “I recreate the situation I want to study in a laboratory setting, employing real monetary incentives, which we provide, and with scenarios where the subjects can make corruption decisions that increase their money at the expense of other players. The play is anonymous and they get to bring home the money they earn in the experimental setting.”
Corruption isn’t purely about money
The focus of Serra’s research sharpened further when she began to question the root assumption that guilt and shame don’t play a role in bribery. She found in laboratory experiments that the intrinsic costs of guilt and shame do matter, and that corruption isn’t purely a matter of money.
She found that corruption declines when potentially corrupt agents are made aware of the negative impact of their actions, and when bottom-up anti-corruption mechanisms are in place, such as victims sharing specific information about bribe demands. Serra also found evidence of a significant relationship between corruption and culture.
“In one of my early studies, I employed a sample of international students at the University of Oxford and found among undergraduate students that the level of corruption in their home country predicts their propensity to engage in corruption in my bribery experiment,” she said.
“This is what we’d expect, they have internalized corrupt norms,” Serra said. “But the surprising result is that this wasn’t true for graduate students. We concluded that graduate students do not conform to the prevailing social norms of their home countries and, possibly, they want to distance themselves from such norms.”
Serra’s research has produced 12 papers on bribery and she has edited a book about experimental research on corruption. Her work on corruption has been cited hundreds of times by other researchers in the field. She has also investigated issues related to governance, public service provision and bottom-up accountability in developing countries. More recently, she has embarked on new research exploring gender differences in behaviors and outcomes in a variety of contexts, including students’ choices of major.
The Vernon L. Smith Ascending Prize for Serra is a major professional recognition of the profound impact of her pioneering research in the area of experimental public economics and in particular on the understanding of corruption and other forms of rule breaking, said SMU economist Santanu Roy, chair of the SMU Department of Economics and University Distinguished Professor.
“She is one of the most cited economists of her generation,” Roy said. “The prize comes with a $50,000 award which, as far as I know, is the largest amount awarded as a prize for young economists. The fact that Dr. Serra was chosen to receive the inaugural prize named for the father of experimental economics tells us about the high expectations that her peers have about her future research productivity.”
Economics as an empirical discipline
The Smith Prize seeks to inspire early-career scholars to emulate Smith’s joyous zeal for scientific discovery. It may be used flexibly to advance social science in whatever manner a recipient chooses, the foundation said.
The prize is made possible through the Rasmuson Foundation and other contributors.
As a social scientist, Smith was committed to exploring theoretical foundations in economics, social science, and science generally; achievement in the form of quantifiable impacts in transforming economics into an experimental and more empirical discipline; collegiality in funding, mentoring, and collaborating with fellow scholars; and curiosity in looking beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries in search of truth.
“The International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics heartily congratulates Dr. Serra and looks forward to following her career in the years to come,” the statement said. — Margaret Allen, SMU
SMU economics professor wins prestigious appointment to nation’s premier organization for impartial economic research, the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Kuka is in the SMU Department of Economics. She will be a fellow in the NBER’s research program on children, a key policy area.
NBER, founded in 1920, is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers and business professionals.
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is the most prestigious and active research organization in economic policy and empirical analysis in the U.S., said University Distinguished Professor Santanu Roy, chair of the SMU Department of Economics. Several Nobel laureates and Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers (to the White House) have been fellows of the NBER, Roy said.
“To be appointed a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER is a tremendous recognition for a young scholar like Elira Kuka, who is just completing her second year as assistant professor after her Ph.D. It is a major boost to the SMU Economics Department’s research profile and visibility,” Roy said. “Elira’s work on several important public policy issues related to children’s health, unemployment insurance and education have started appearing in the very top journals of the profession. She is on a firm trajectory to be a star in her research field.”
NBER-affiliated researchers study a wide range of topics and they employ many different methods in their work. Key focus areas include developing new statistical measurements, estimating quantitative models of economic behavior and analyzing the effects of public policies while remaining impartial and foregoing recommendations.
Over the years the NBER’s research agenda has encompassed a wide variety of issues that confront our society. Twenty-six Nobel Prize winners in Economics and 13 past chairs of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers have held NBER affiliations.
The more than 1,400 professors of economics and business now teaching at colleges and universities in North America who are NBER researchers are the leading scholars in their fields.
Kuka joined SMU in 2015. She received an undergraduate degree from Wellesley College, Mass., and her Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Davis. Her research focuses on understanding how government policy affects individual behavior and wellbeing, the extent to which it provides social insurance during times of need, and its effectiveness in alleviation of poverty and inequality.
Her current research topics include the potential benefits of the federal Unemployment Insurance program, the protective power of the U.S. safety net during recessions and various issues in academic achievement.
“…although individuals may feel antagonism towards other groups in society, that prejudice is less strong if they interact with these groups in their daily lives.” — Desmet, Gomes and Ortuño-Ortín
Quartz internet news magazine covered the research of SMU Economics Professor Klaus Desmet and colleagues. The article reported that the new study by Desmet and two other economists found that after examining data from nearly every country in the world, they find that when diverse groups interact, it leads to better outcomes in terms of health, education and public infrastructure.
“Chalk one up for contact theory,” wrote San Francisco-based reporter Dan Kopf, who covers economics and markets and has a Masters in Economics from the London School of Economics.
Desmet, who has his degree from Stanford University, is Ruth and Kenneth Altshuler Centennial Interdisciplinary Professor. His research interests include international trade, regional and urban economics, macroeconomics and political economy.
Desmet’s work is likely to be of profound significance for actual policy makers, according to Santanu Roy, University Distinguished Professor and Chair of the SMU Department of Economics.
“Klaus Desmet is engaged in truly path breaking research in undestanding the spatial, cultural and genetic dimensions of the global economy and the deep long run determinants of economic change,” said Roy. “Over the last few years, his work has been published in the very top journals in economics such as the American Economic Review and the Journal of Political Economy, a major boost to the reputation and visibility of the SMU economics department.”
By Dan Kopf
Quartz
A striking fact about the tide of nationalism sweeping through the West is that it is strongest in places with the least diversity. Supporters of Donald Trump, and his “America first” policies, generally come from areas of the US least touched by immigration. The parts of the UK that opted to “take back control” by voting for Brexit also clustered in areas with fewer foreign-born residents.
But as a group of economists note, “although individuals may feel antagonism towards other groups in society, that prejudice is less strong if they interact with these groups in their daily lives.”
In recently released research (pdf), Klaus Desmet, Joseph Gomes, and Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín go well beyond examining the demographics of Trump and Brexit voters. Their research explores whether contact theory, the belief that increased interaction leads to better relations between groups, or conflict theory, that interaction leads to more prejudice, is a better way to describe the current state of the world. They examined data from nearly every country in the world, and find that when diverse groups interact, it leads to better outcomes in terms of health, education, and public infrastructure. Chalk one up for contact theory.
A vast body of earlier research has found, however, that ethnic and linguistic diversity tends to reduce spending on public goods. This is usually explained as a preference not to share with people perceived to be different. For example, Sweden’s high government spending versus the US might be down to Sweden’s relative lack of diversity.
This suggests that diversity is not helpful if groups mainly keep to themselves. To test this assumption, Desmet, Gomes, and Ortuño-Ortín divided the world into a grid of five-square-kilometer cells and estimated the number of people who speak different languages in each. Using this data and country-level estimates of diversity, the researchers calculated two numbers:
1) Country diversity: The probability that within a country two randomly chosen people speak the same language. A higher score means greater diversity in languages spoken.
Kids who witness domestic violence are more likely to get in trouble at school and have behavioral problems, including being aggressive and bullying their classmates.
NPR journalist Gabrielle Emanuel covered the research of SMU government policy expert Elira Kuka for an All Things Considered segment on NPR as part of its series on “The Mental Health Crisis In Our Schools.” The segment examined the impact on an entire school classroom when one student is victimized by domestic violence at home.
Kuka, an assistant professor in the SMU Department of Economics, and her colleagues found that new data shows violence in the home hinders the academic performance not only of the student who is abused, but also of their classmates, too.
Kuka’s research focus is on understanding how government policy effects individual behavior and well-being, the extent to which it provides social insurance during times of need, and its effectiveness in alleviation of poverty and inequality.
Her current research topics include the potential benefits of the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program, the protective power of the U.S. safety net during recessions and various issues in academic achievement.
By Gabrielle Emanuel
NPR
Every Monday morning at Harvie Elementary School, in Henrico County, Va., Brett Welch stands outside her office door as kids file in.
“The first thing I’m looking for are the faces,” says Welch, a school counselor. She’s searching for hints of fear, pain or anger.
“Maybe there was a domestic incident at the house that weekend,” says Welch. “That’s reality for a lot of our kids.”
And a reality for a lot of kids in the U.S. While it’s difficult to get an exact number, researchers estimate that between 10 and 20 percent of children are exposed to domestic violence each year.
New data quantifies what many teachers and school counselors already know: While such violence often takes place outside of school, its repercussions resonate in the classroom.
It hurts not only the kids who witness the violence, but also their classmates. The harm is evident in lower test scores as well as lower rates of college attendance and completion. And the impact extends past graduation — it can be seen in lower earnings later in life.
“It’s a sad story,” says Scott Carrell, economist at the University of California, Davis, who has studied this for over a decade.
But, he says, there’s one thing he and his colleagues — economists Mark Hoekstra and Elira Kuka — found that can improve the situation “not only for that family but for all the child’s classmates.” What was it? Reporting domestic violence when it happens.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information, www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
SMU scientists and their research have a global reach that is frequently noted, beyond peer publications and media mentions.
By Margaret Allen
SMU News & Communications
It was a good year for SMU faculty and student research efforts. Here is a small sampling of public and published acknowledgements during 2015:
Hot topic merits open access
Taylor & Francis, publisher of the online journal Environmental Education Research, lifted its subscription-only requirement to meet demand for an article on how climate change is taught to middle-schoolers in California.
Co-author of the research was Diego Román, assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development.
Román’s research revealed that California textbooks are teaching sixth graders that climate change is a controversial debate stemming from differing opinions, rather than a scientific conclusion based on rigorous scientific evidence.
Research makes the cover of Biochemistry
Drugs important in the battle against cancer were tested in a virtual lab by SMU biology professors to see how they would behave in the human cell.
A computer-generated composite image of the simulation made the Dec. 15 cover of the journal Biochemistry.
Scientific articles about discoveries from the simulation were also published in the peer review journals Biochemistry and in Pharmacology Research & Perspectives.
The researchers tested the drugs by simulating their interaction in a computer-generated model of one of the cell’s key molecular pumps — the protein P-glycoprotein, or P-gp. Outcomes of interest were then tested in the Wise-Vogel wet lab.
The ongoing research is the work of biochemists John Wise, associate professor, and Pia Vogel, professor and director of the SMU Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery in Dedman College. Assisting them were a team of SMU graduate and undergraduate students.
The researchers developed the model to overcome the problem of relying on traditional static images for the structure of P-gp. The simulation makes it possible for researchers to dock nearly any drug in the protein and see how it behaves, then test those of interest in an actual lab.
To date, the researchers have run millions of compounds through the pump and have discovered some that are promising for development into pharmaceutical drugs to battle cancer.
Strong interest in research on sexual victimization
Teen girls were less likely to report being sexually victimized after learning to assertively resist unwanted sexual overtures and after practicing resistance in a realistic virtual environment, according to three professors from the SMU Department of Psychology.
The finding was reported in Behavior Therapy. The article was one of the psychology journal’s most heavily shared and mentioned articles across social media, blogs and news outlets during 2015, the publisher announced.
The study was the work of Dedman College faculty Lorelei Simpson Rowe, associate professor and Psychology Department graduate program co-director; Ernest Jouriles, professor; and Renee McDonald, SMU associate dean for research and academic affairs.
Consumers assume bigger price equals better quality
Even when competing firms can credibly disclose the positive attributes of their products to buyers, they may not do so.
Instead, they find it more lucrative to “signal” quality through the prices they charge, typically working on the assumption that shoppers think a high price indicates high quality. The resulting high prices hurt buyers, and may create a case for mandatory disclosure of quality through public policy.
That was a finding of the research of Dedman College’s Santanu Roy, professor, Department of Economics. Roy’s article about the research was published in February in one of the blue-ribbon journals, and the oldest, in the field, The Economic Journal.
Published by the U.K.’s Royal Economic Society, The Economic Journal is one of the founding journals of modern economics. The journal issued a media briefing about the paper, “Competition, Disclosure and Signaling,” typically reserved for academic papers of broad public interest.
Chemistry research group edits special issue
Chemistry professors Dieter Cremer and Elfi Kraka, who lead SMU’s Computational and Theoretical Chemistry Group, were guest editors of a special issue of the prestigious Journal of Physical Chemistry. The issue published in March.
The Computational and Theoretical research group, called CATCO for short, is a union of computational and theoretical chemistry scientists at SMU. Their focus is research in computational chemistry, educating and training graduate and undergraduate students, disseminating and explaining results of their research to the broader public, and programming computers for the calculation of molecules and molecular aggregates.
The special issue of Physical Chemistry included 40 contributions from participants of a four-day conference in Dallas in March 2014 that was hosted by CATCO. The 25th Austin Symposium drew 108 participants from 22 different countries who, combined, presented eight plenary talks, 60 lectures and about 40 posters.
CATCO presented its research with contributions from Cremer and Kraka, as well as Marek Freindorf, research assistant professor; Wenli Zou, visiting professor; Robert Kalescky, post-doctoral fellow; and graduate students Alan Humason, Thomas Sexton, Dani Setlawan and Vytor Oliveira.
There have been more than 75 graduate students and research associates working in the CATCO group, which originally was formed at the University of Cologne, Germany, before moving to SMU in 2009.
Vertebrate paleontology recognized with proclamation
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings proclaimed Oct. 11-17, 2015 Vertebrate Paleontology week in Dallas on behalf of the Dallas City Council.
The proclamation honored the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which was jointly hosted by SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College and the Perot Museum of Science and Nature. The conference drew to Dallas some 1,200 scientists from around the world.
Making research presentations or presenting research posters were: faculty members Bonnie Jacobs, Louis Jacobs, Michael Polcyn, Neil Tabor and Dale Winkler; adjunct research assistant professor Alisa Winkler; research staff member Kurt Ferguson; post-doctoral researchers T. Scott Myers and Lauren Michael; and graduate students Matthew Clemens, John Graf, Gary Johnson and Kate Andrzejewski.
The host committee co-chairs were Anthony Fiorillo, adjunct research professor; and Louis Jacobs, professor. Committee members included Polcyn; Christopher Strganac, graduate student; Diana Vineyard, research associate; and research professor Dale Winkler.
KERA radio reporter Kat Chow filed a report from the conference, explaining to listeners the science of vertebrate paleontology, which exposes the past, present and future of life on earth by studying fossils of animals that had backbones.
SMU earthquake scientists rock scientific journal
Modelled pressure changes caused by injection and production. (Nature Communications/SMU)
Findings by the SMU earthquake team reverberated across the nation with publication of their scientific article in the prestigious British interdisciplinary journal Nature, ranked as one of the world’s most cited scientific journals.
The article reported that the SMU-led seismology team found that high volumes of wastewater injection combined with saltwater extraction from natural gas wells is the most likely cause of unusually frequent earthquakes occurring in the Dallas-Fort Worth area near the small community of Azle.
The research was the work of Dedman College faculty Matthew Hornbach, associate professor of geophysics; Heather DeShon, associate professor of geophysics; Brian Stump, SMU Albritton Chair in Earth Sciences; Chris Hayward, research staff and director geophysics research program; and Beatrice Magnani, associate professor of geophysics.
The article, “Causal factors for seismicity near Azle, Texas,” published online in late April. Already the article has been downloaded nearly 6,000 times, and heavily shared on both social and conventional media. The article has achieved a ranking of 270, which puts it in the 99th percentile of 144,972 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals, and 98th percentile of 626 tracked articles of a similar age in Nature.
“It has a very high impact factor for an article of its age,” said Robert Gregory, professor and chair, SMU Earth Sciences Department.
The scientific article also was entered into the record for public hearings both at the Texas Railroad Commission and the Texas House Subcommittee on Seismic Activity.
Researchers settle long-debated heritage question of “The Ancient One”
The skull of Kennewick Man and a sculpted bust by StudioEIS based on forensic facial reconstruction by sculptor Amanda Danning. (Credit: Brittany Tatchell)
The research of Dedman College anthropologist and Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory David Meltzer played a role in settling the long-debated and highly controversial heritage of “Kennewick Man.”
Also known as “The Ancient One,” the 8,400-year-old male skeleton discovered in Washington state has been the subject of debate for nearly two decades. Argument over his ancestry has gained him notoriety in high-profile newspaper and magazine articles, as well as making him the subject of intense scholarly study.
Officially the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Kennewick Man was discovered in 1996 and radiocarbon dated to 8500 years ago.
Because of his cranial shape and size he was declared not Native American but instead ‘Caucasoid,’ implying a very different population had once been in the Americas, one that was unrelated to contemporary Native Americans.
But Native Americans long have claimed Kennewick Man as theirs and had asked for repatriation of his remains for burial according to their customs.
Meltzer, collaborating with his geneticist colleague Eske Willerslev and his team at the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, in June reported the results of their analysis of the DNA of Kennewick in the prestigious British journal Nature in the scientific paper “The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man.”
The results were announced at a news conference, settling the question based on first-ever DNA evidence: Kennewick Man is Native American.
The announcement garnered national and international media attention, and propelled a new push to return the skeleton to a coalition of Columbia Basin tribes. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced the Bring the Ancient One Home Act of 2015 and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has offered state assistance for returning the remains to Native Tribes.
Science named the Kennewick work one of its nine runners-up in the highly esteemed magazine’s annual “Breakthrough of the Year” competition.
The research article has been viewed more than 60,000 times. It has achieved a ranking of 665, which puts it in the 99th percentile of 169,466 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals, and in the 94th percentile of 958 tracked articles of a similar age in Nature.
In “Kennewick Man: coming to closure,” an article in the December issue of Antiquity, a journal of Cambridge University Press, Meltzer noted that the DNA merely confirmed what the tribes had known all along: “We are him, he is us,” said one tribal spokesman. Meltzer concludes: “We presented the DNA evidence. The tribal members gave it meaning.”
Prehistoric vacuum cleaner captures singular award
Paleontologists Louis L. Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)
Science writer Laura Geggel with Live Science named a new species of extinct marine mammal identified by two SMU paleontologists among “The 10 Strangest Animal Discoveries of 2015.”
The new species, dubbed a prehistoric hoover by London’s Daily Mail online news site, was identified by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist and SMU adjunct research professor Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.
Jacobs and Fiorillo co-authored a study about the identification of new fossils from the oddball creature Desmostylia, discovered in the same waters where the popular “Deadliest Catch” TV show is filmed. The hippo-like creature ate like a vacuum cleaner and is a new genus and species of the only order of marine mammals ever to go extinct — surviving a mere 23 million years.
Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago. Their strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said.
As noted by the CERN Courier — the news magazine of the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, which hosts the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest science experiment — more than 250 scientists from 30 countries presented more than 200 talks on a multitude of subjects relevant to experimental and theoretical research. SMU physicists presented at the conference.
The SMU organizing committee was led by Fred Olness, professor and chair of the SMU Department of Physics in Dedman College, who also gave opening and closing remarks at the conference. The committee consisted of other SMU faculty, including Jodi Cooley, associate professor; Simon Dalley, senior lecturer; Robert Kehoe, professor; Pavel Nadolsky, associate professor, who also presented progress on experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider; Randy Scalise, senior lecturer; and Stephen Sekula, associate professor.
Sekula also organized a series of short talks for the public about physics and the big questions that face us as we try to understand our universe.
Rather than explicitly revealing information about the quality of their products and services, many firms prefer to signal quality through the prices they charge, typically working on the assumption that a high price indicates high quality.
New research by Maarten Janssen, University of Vienna, and Southern Methodist University economist Santanu Roy provides a new explanation for why firms choose not to disclose quality directly – and explains how prices that are set to signal quality can distort actual buying decisions.
Their study, “Competition, Disclosure and Signalling,” which is published in the February 2015 issue of the Economic Journal, shows that when firms compete on price, not disclosing product quality voluntarily can soften competition and boost profits.
“We often use prices to form ideas about product quality. Firms understand this,” said Roy, a professor in SMU’s Department of Economics in Dedman College of Humanities & Sciences. “As a result, their strategic decisions about pricing and direct disclosure of product characteristics become intricately linked. Our research explains why firms may prefer not to disclose quality attributes of their products and instead induce buyers to try to infer quality from prices: it allows firms to sustain high prices despite strong competition.”
Finding may be a case for imposing mandatory disclosure regulation
The finding has an important policy implication for regulators: even if consumers infer all relevant product information from prices (or other actions by firms), there may be a case for imposing mandatory disclosure regulation. Such regulation can reduce market power and the price and consumption distortions resulting from firms’ use of prices to signal product quality.
“If you regulate and force firms to directly disclose quality attributes, prices may fall and lead to better market outcomes,” Roy said. “This is a really exciting area of research where game theory based models can provide direct insights into behavior of market participants. Our current research studies some related issues such as the case for ‘truth in advertising’ regulation and penalizing false advertising of product attributes.”
The researchers begin by noting that in a large number of markets, ranging from educational and health services to consumer goods and financial assets, sellers have important information about the quality of their products. Quality attributes include satisfaction from consuming the product, durability, safety and potential health hazards as well as ethical and environmental attributes.
Information about these quality attributes is not always publicly available to potential buyers or competitors. In many of these markets, firms have the option of voluntarily disclosing product information in a credible and verifiable manner – for example, through independent certification, rating agencies or regulated advertising.
Without hard, credible information about products, buyers associate higher prices with better quality
But in practice, firms do not disclose product quality very often, even when there are relatively cost-effective mechanisms for credible disclosure and even when the product quality itself is not bad.
For example, empirical studies find that hospitals often do not disclose risk-adjusted mortality; schools often do not report standardized test scores; restaurants almost never disclose hygiene inspection reports; and so on.
In fact, the reluctance of firms to disclose voluntarily may discourage the emergence of rating agencies and certification intermediaries in many industries. This study provides a new explanation for why firms do not wish to disclose quality.
The researchers’ explanation is based on the commonplace observation that even when there is no hard and credible information about products on the market, buyers often associate higher prices with better quality and cheap products with low quality.
Such beliefs held by buyers are rational in markets where firms anticipate this and choose their actions (such as prices) to convey the hidden information. Economists call this “signaling”: it is an alternative way of communicating private information by firms.
The researchers argue that firms may not disclose product attributes voluntarily because they find it more profitable to signal their information indirectly.
Excessively high price makes it credible to buyers that product could not be low quality
This is somewhat paradoxical at first glance. Economists have long maintained that signalling is costly for firms. For example, to signal high quality through high prices, a firm may have to charge a much higher price than in a situation where product quality was observed or disclosed, leading to loss of sales and profit. The excessively high price is needed to make it credible to buyers that this could not be a low quality product as the producer of such a product would have lower costs and therefore prefer to sell high volume at low price.
Why then would a firm prefer to signal rather than disclose? The answer lies in the strategic behavior of firms and market competition. The researchers show that when firms compete on price, not disclosing product quality voluntarily, competing under a “veil of incomplete information” can soften competition, leading to higher profits and a more collusive outcome.
Firms’ incentives to lower prices to steal business from their rivals are disciplined by the fact that buyers may associate lower prices with lower quality. The resulting market outcome can be one with higher profits for the nondisclosing firm. The strategic incentive for nondisclosure may be strong even when a firm has a strong competitive advantage in the market.
Absence of voluntary disclosure does not mean that consumers make uninformed decisions
In contrast with previous research on this issue, the new explanation of nondisclosure is not based on disclosure being too costly or imperfect. The researchers show that no firm may disclose product quality (including the ones with the best product quality), even if the mechanism for voluntary disclosure is almost costless and frictionless.
The researchers’ analysis indicates that the absence of voluntary disclosure does not mean that consumers make uninformed decisions; nondisclosure arises precisely when buyers infer quality from the market behavior of firms.
But markets may well be inefficient as the prices that are set to signal quality distort actual buying decisions. This leads to the important policy implication that there may be a case for imposing mandatory disclosure regulation on firms. — Royal Economic Society and Southern Methodist University
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
The size and homogeneity of a country’s population has a big bearing on its economic policies
The Economist’s “Free Exchange” column covered the research of SMU economist Klaus Desmet as part of a larger examination of the ideal size of nations from an economic perspective and within the context of Scotland’s recent vote on the question of independence.
Desmet is an expert in international trade, regional and urban economics, macroeconomics and political economy. He is the Ruth and Kenneth Altshuler Centennial Interdisciplinary Professor in Economics.
Desmet’s research published in the Journal of Development Economics, “The political economy of linguistic cleavages,” and looked at the genealogical relationships between the world’s 6,912 languages.
The data revealed which linguistic cleavages are most relevant for a range of political economy outcomes.
Desmet and his co-authors on the study found “that deep cleavages, originating thousands of years ago, lead to better predictors of civil conflict and redistribution. The opposite pattern emerges when it comes to the impact of linguistic diversity on growth and public goods provision, where finer distinctions between languages matter.”
The Economist
WHEN Scotland turned down independence, it was bucking a trend. Since 1946 the number of sovereign states has soared, from 76 to 197. The steady shrinking of the world’s political units raises the question of what the ideal size would be from an economic perspective. Separatists from Catalonia to the southern Philippines should be aware that a country’s population, economists believe, has a big impact on all sorts of policies, from the level of government spending to its openness to trade.
Separatists eyeing the exit have many motivations, but economics typically plays a big role in the choice to stay or go. In their book “The Size of Nations”, Alberto Alesina and Enrico Spolaore lay out the costs and benefits of going it alone.* Scale has its advantages: bigger countries are easier to defend from foreign aggressors, for instance. When barriers to trade are high, a bigger domestic market allows for more internal specialisation. A 19th-century British prime minister is reported to have complained to a French ambassador, “If you were not such persistent protectionists, you would not find us so keen to annex territories!” America’s size allowed it to develop new and highly productive forms of industry in the late 1800s, which Europe’s smaller countries could not match until tariffs fell in the 20th century.
Yet the bigger a country grows the more multitudes it contains. Larger populations are not always more diverse than smaller ones—Japan is both much larger and more homogenous than Belgium—but in larger countries there are generally more politically distinct subgroups. As the voting public becomes more heterogenous, the scope for intractable disputes over government policies grows.
Messrs Alesina and Spolaore reckon falling barriers to trade have reduced the cost of being a small state and boosted interest in separatism. Ironically, the European Union has made breaking up especially attractive. Catalan nationalists, for instance, assume that if Catalonia parted ways with Spain, which it currently subsidises by paying more in taxes than it receives in government spending, it would nonetheless remain within the single market. That makes independence a much easier sell.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
If your ancestors could grow crops easily—and thus get proof that patience pays off—you’re more likely to value distant payoffs, argue two economists in a new paper.
Journalist Joe Pinsker with The Atlantic covered the research of SMU economist Ömer Özak about the association between cultures that value long-term payoffs and their ancient history of successful crop yields. Pinsker’s story, “Can a Nation’s Soil Explain Its Economic Fortunes?” published Sept. 17. Özak’s co-author on the study was economist Oded Galor, Brown University.
Özak, an assistant professor in the SMU Department of Economics, is an expert in technological change and economic growth, macroeconomics and monetary economics and international economics. For more about Özak’s research and teaching philosophy, see his web site at ÖmerÖzak.com.
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Özak’s research focuses on technological change and economic growth, macroeconomics and monetary economics and international economics.
In particular, Özak’s research explores the role of geography, technology and culture on contemporaneous economic development. He additionally has explored the relationship between market imperfections and technological innovation and adoption. His research also examines the dynamics of economies with heterogeneous interacting agents. Özak has published books and articles on economic growth, mathematics, game theory, monetary theory and the history of economic thought.
By Joe Pinsker
The Atlantic
Jared Diamond argued, in his 1997 book Guns, Germs, and Steel, that geography is fate. One thread of his theory sought to explain why societies in Eurasia developed more quickly than in the Americas and Africa. Because Eurasia is oriented horizontally, he argued, all of its ancient inhabitants were at roughly similar latitudes, which meant that they worked with roughly similar environments and climates. Thus, a particularly valuable crop or domesticated animal could be put to use just about anywhere on the continent, and one group’s best practices could easily be adopted by other groups—not the case in vertical Africa. Hence, different rates of development.
Two economics researchers, Brown’s Oded Galor and Southern Methodist University’s Ömer Özak, recently published an ambitious paper reminiscent of Diamond’s work. Like Diamond, they make an argument that is so simple and intuitive that it at first glance appears reductive: People whose ancestors come from places with richer harvests are more likely to appreciate the benefits of long-term thinking. Essentially, the theory suggests that because people who lived in especially fertile areas had more reason to believe that patience pays off, they came to create cultures that are okay with delaying gratification.
Galor and Özak’s thinking, while data-driven, mostly yields abstract conclusions: The higher the crop yield, the more patient people will be, and the more patient people are, the more dependably their economies will grow. However, the pair’s findings are occasionally quite concrete: Modern-day countries that, roughly 500 years ago, had crop yields one standard deviation higher than average build roughly one year of extra schooling into their education systems. In other words, if wheat was really shooting up for your ancestors 500 years ago, then you’re more likely to have had 12 years of schooling instead of 11.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
A plane flew over central Dallas as part of aerial spraying efforts last summer to combat mosquitoes carrying the West Nile virus. (Credit: Dallas Morning News)
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The Dallas Morning News covered the research of SMU economist Thomas B. Fomby and SMU Dedman College Distinguished Alumnus Robert W. Haley, who co-authored a new study on West Nile Virus.
Fomby and Haley, along with other researchers, analyzed a decade of data related to West Nile Virus and, in particular, the 2012 West Nile epidemic in Dallas County. The analysis allowed them to identify important precursors of West Nile Virus outbreaks that allow for early and effective intervention.
Haley is chief of Epidemiology and professor of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern. Other authors of the study were physician Wendy Chung, chief epidemiologist, and her associates Christen Buseman, Sibeso Joyner and Sonya Hughes, all of Dallas County Health and Human Services; and James Luby, professor of internal medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at UT Southwestern.
They reported the findings in the July 17 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Their analysis of the West Nile data, along with weather and housing data, found that the epidemics begin early, after unusually warm winters; are often in similar geographical locations; and are predicted by an index based on an estimate of the average number of West Nile virus-infected mosquitoes collected per trap-night, called the Mosquito Vector Index.
As a result of their data analysis, the researchers recommend the use of a vector-index rating system to identify the best timing and location of early interventions.
An in-depth study of last year’s West Nile epidemic in Dallas County blames a mild winter, wet spring and an abundance of mosquitoes for spreading the sometimes-fatal virus.
But local officials did not realize how quickly the mosquito-borne outbreak was unfolding. If they had recognized the signs earlier, 110 severe human infections might have been prevented and a dozen lives saved, the study said.
“It’s a very optimistic estimate and might not be totally realistic,” said Dr. Robert Haley, one of the authors of the study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
His estimate was based on the possibility that officials could have resorted to aerial spraying of insecticides in early July, instead of a month later. It also supposed that spraying could have halted the West Nile outbreak.
The study suggested a deadly equation was at work: Five percent of the Culex mosquitoes were carrying the West Nile virus by late June. At that point, the disease was spreading quickly, but no one knew it.
While the conclusions are purely hindsight, the study could provide valuable information to help prevent future West Nile outbreaks, said Haley, chief epidemiologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
“This could be a breakthrough for how to track a West Nile outbreak,” he said. “For a small amount of data, this study is remarkably strong.”
The study grew out of the worst West Nile outbreak in Texas history. More than 400 Dallas County residents suffered mild to severe symptoms of the neuroinvasive disease and 20 died.
All were bitten by infected mosquitoes despite widespread warnings and ground spraying of insecticide. But no one could explain why it happened.
Dr. Wendy Chung, the study’s lead author, said researchers looked for answers in a massive amount of West Nile data collected last year by government agencies.
The study focused on infected mosquitoes and how quickly they passed the virus to humans. It also considered the locations where people were infected and if weather patterns might have accelerated the outbreak.
“Weather that predisposes us to have a bad West Nile season is considered one of the soft indicators” of an impending outbreak, said Chung, chief epidemiologist for Dallas County Health and Human Services. “You can have bad weather and not have a bad season.”
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Study examines characteristics, features of West Nile virus outbreaks from Dallas County housing, hospital and weather data
Larvae of Culex Mosquitoes make dense groups in standing water. (Credit: James Gathany, CDC)
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Researchers who analyzed a decade of data related to West Nile Virus and, in particular, the 2012 West Nile epidemic in Dallas County, have identified important precursors of West Nile Virus outbreaks that allow for early and effective intervention.
An analysis of the West Nile data, along with weather and housing data, found that the epidemics begin early, after unusually warm winters; are often in similar geographical locations; and are predicted by an index based on an estimate of the average number of West Nile virus-infected mosquitoes collected per trap-night, called the Mosquito Vector Index.
As a result of their data analysis, the researchers recommend the use of a vector-index rating system to identify the best timing and location of early interventions.
The researchers, from Southern Methodist University, UT Southwestern Medical Center and Dallas County Health and Human Services, reported the findings in the July 17 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
The analysis revealed a mosquito vector index rating of 0.5 in June or July as the best time to act to avoid an outbreak and stave off the resultant rise in human West Nile infections, which can cause long-term neurological damage and even death.
“In years when the vector index didn’t start up until late July or August, impending outbreaks just sputtered — in late summer mosquito abundance declines and mosquitoes become less active and stop biting as much. When the vector index goes above .5 early — June or July — right then large numbers of people are silently getting infected, and this should be the best time to intervene,” said senior author Robert W. Haley, Chief of Epidemiology and Professor of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern.
“After the infecting mosquito bite, on average it takes a week for the first symptoms to develop, a week to see people turning up at hospitals, and a week for laboratory confirmation of the diagnosis and reporting to health officials,” Haley said. “That three weeks is critical. Acting early from the vector index rather than after human case reports and deaths mount up can nip an outbreak in the bud. However, if mosquito data are unavailable or consensus to intervene takes longer, later intervention may still be important to terminate the outbreak.”
The analysis found also that less of a hard freeze during winter months and unusually warm spring temperatures contributed to epidemic years for West Nile, a major concern as global temperatures continue to warm, Haley said.
A fourth critical finding in the paper related census track data to the 2012 outbreak, showing that areas of higher property values, higher housing density, and higher percentages of unoccupied homes were at higher risk. That’s likely due to fostering the types of environment and mosquitos most likely to transmit the disease, which is carried more by house mosquitoes than wooded mosquitoes. In Dallas County, the data showed year-after-year clustering in the Park Cities and North Dallas areas.
Study authors supply instruction manual for other counties
The analysis tools used in the study may be applicable elsewhere, but due to variations in weather, mosquito populations and other factors, each region or county will need to conduct its own analysis to identify the most appropriate vector index rating signaling when to act, Haley said. Along with the paper, the authors provide an instruction manual for other counties to calculate the vector index from their own mosquito infection surveillance data.
“Given the leading character of this index, epidemiologists and government officials can implement, in a more timely manner, preventative measures to reduce the impact of future West Nile Virus outbreaks,” said data modeling expert Thomas B. Fomby, Professor of Economics and the Director of the Richard B. Johnson Center for Economic Studies at SMU.
Fomby provided the time series expertise needed to analyze the leading nature of the vector index and determine that aerial spraying used during the epidemic did not have any significant adverse health effects on the general public.
“Time Series Count modeling and Event Analysis are statistical methods that are frequently used in economic research but not so often used in medical research,” Fomby said. “Time Series Count modeling was used to investigate the leading nature of the vector index while Event Analysis was used to examine the impacts of aerial spraying. This is a prime example of where interdisciplinary tools can be useful in conducting scientific research.”
Other authors of the study were physician Wendy Chung, Chief Epidemiologist, and her associates Christen Buseman, Sibeso Joyner and Sonya Hughes, all of Dallas County Health and Human Services; and James Luby, professor of internal medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at UT Southwestern.
West Nile virus first identified in Dallas County in 2002
“After declining over the prior 5 years, mosquito-borne West Nile virus infection resurged in 2012 throughout the United States, most substantially in Dallas County, Texas. Dallas has been a known focus of mosquito-borne encephalitis since 1966, when a large epidemic of St. Louis encephalitis (SLE) occurred there, necessitating aerial spraying of insecticide for control,” according to background information in the article.
“With the introduction of West Nile virus into New York City in 1999 and its subsequent spread across the country, West Nile virus appears to have displaced SLE virus,” the authors wrote. “Dallas recognized its initial cases of West Nile virus encephalitis in 2002 and its first sizeable outbreak in 2006, followed by 5 years of low West Nile virus activity. In the 2012 nationwide West Nile virus resurgence, Dallas County experienced the most West Nile virus infections of any U.S. urban area, requiring intensified ground and aerial spraying of insecticides.”
Study analyzed multitude of data, from infections to weather to geography
The study examined the features associated with the West Nile virus epidemics to identify surveillance and control measures for minimizing future outbreaks.
The researchers analyzed surveillance data from Dallas County (population, 2.4 million), which included the numbers of residents diagnosed with West Nile virus infection between May 30, 2012 and Dec. 3, 2012; mosquito trap results; weather data; and syndromic (pertaining to symptoms and syndromes) surveillance from area emergency departments.
From May 30 through Dec. 3, 2012, patients with any West Nile virus-positive test result were reported to the health department; 615 met laboratory case criteria, and 398 cases of West Nile virus illness with 19 deaths were confirmed by clinical review in residents of Dallas County.
The outbreak included 173 patients with West Nile neuroinvasive disease (WNND) and 225 with West Nile fever, and 17 West Nile virus-positive blood donors. Regarding patients with WNND, 96 percent were hospitalized; 35 percent required intensive care; 18 percent required assisted ventilation; and the case-fatality rate was 10 percent. The overall WNND incidence rate in Dallas County was 7.30 per 100,000 residents in 20l2, compared with 2.91 in 2006.
The first West Nile virus-positive mosquito pool of 2012 was detected in late May, earlier than in typical seasons. Symptoms of the first 19 cases of WNND in 2012 began in June, a month earlier than in most prior seasons; thereafter, the number of new cases escalated rapidly. Sequential increases in the weekly vector index early in the 2012 season significantly predicted the number of patients with onset of symptoms of WNND in the subsequent l to 2 weeks.
West Nile neuroinvasive disease clustered in neighborhoods with high housing density
The 2012 epidemic year was distinguished from the preceding 10 years by the mildest winter, as indicated by absence of hard winter freezes, the most degree-days above daily normal temperature during the winter and spring and other features. During the 11 years since West Nile virus was first identified in Dallas, the researchers found that the annual prevalence of WNND was inversely associated with the number of days with low temperatures below 28 degrees Fahrenheit in December through February.
“Although initially widely distributed, WNND cases soon clustered in neighborhoods with high housing density in the north central area of the county, reflecting higher vector indices and following geospatial patterns of West Nile virus in prior years,” the authors write.
Aerial insecticide spraying was not associated with increases in emergency department visits for respiratory symptoms or skin rash.
“This report identifies several distinguishing features of a large urban West Nile virus outbreak that may assist future prevention and control efforts for vector-borne infections,” the authors write. “Consideration of weather patterns and historical geographical hot spots and acting on the vector index may help prevent West Nile virus-associated illness.” — UT Southwestern, JAMA, SMU
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Grant will establish first-of-its-kind research laboratory at Moscow’s New Economic School to focus on many types of societal diversity
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To book a live or taped interview with Shlomo Weber in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu. (Photo: Octavio Mateus)
A $3 million grant to SMU economics professor Shlomo Weber will fund the establishment of a first-of-its-kind research laboratory to study diversity and social interactions.
The new center at Moscow’s New Economic School will focus on research into the many different types of societal diversity, including economic, historical, geographical, linguistic and ethnic. Researchers at the center will assess the impact of societal diversity on economic, political and social development, said Weber, who is the Robert H. and Nancy Dedman Trustee Professor of Economics in the SMU Department of Economics.
Weber is a PINE Foundation Visiting Professor of Economics at the New Economic School, where President Obama delivered the 2009 commencement address and declared a reset on Russian-American relations.
“This kind of support is quite unique in the world,” he said. “Our team of Russian and foreign scholars will do their best to contribute to the study of Russia’s social and economic development in the past, present and future.”
Grant supports theoretical and empirical aspects of research into diversity Ranked the best economics institution in the former communist countries, NES is a private graduate school in economics. Its mission is to benefit Russia’s private and public sectors through excellence in economics education and research. Faculty-in-residence include economists with doctoral degrees in economics and finance from the world’s leading universities.
Members of the SMU economics faculty will have a chance to participate in research at the laboratory, especially in studies of social and trade networks and development, Weber said. SMU economics doctoral students will have opportunities for internships.
Every year, 15 to 20 graduates of the NES Master’s program join the top doctoral economics programs in the United States. Many leading economics and finance departments have NES alumni on their faculty. SMU Assistant Professor Anna Kormlitzina, in SMU’s Department of Economics, is a graduate of NES.
“The award of this grant is remarkable evidence of NES’s progress over the 20 years of its existence,” Weber said. “I’m grateful to the government of the Russian Federation for the decision to support theoretical and empirical aspects of diversity and social interactions, focused but not limited to Russian economy and society.”
Research will examine how diversity impacts social interactions, trust, emergence of social networks
The grant is part of an annual program by the Russian Federation that supports research supervised by the world’s leading scholars. Weber was one of 700 applicants, 42 of whom were awarded funding.
The research will be conducted on theoretical, empirical and experimental grounds and will examine how diversity impacts social interactions, trust and emergence of various types of social networks and on the quality and functioning of public and private institutions.
Weber’s grant was the only one awarded within the discipline of “Economics and Business.” Grants were awarded on the basis of the scientist’s scientific achievements, research experience and research prospects of the project; sponsoring organization; and leadership potential of the research laboratory being established.
The grant carries a possible two-year extension. Winners of the competition personally lead the laboratory for a minimum of four months each calendar year.
Grant will bring together the world’s leading scholars on diversity
“This grant will help to bring together the world’s leading scholars, including Nobel winners Robet Aumann, from Hebrew University, and Eric Maskin, from Harvard, and leading authorities in their respective fields — Stephen Durlauf, Wisconsin, and Matt Jackson, Stanford — as well as young scholars and students,” Weber said. “The decision to award this grant recognizes the success of NES in implementing its mission to benefit Russia’s private and public sectors through excellence in economics education and research. It also provides support for further development of the school’s research capacity.”
Weber’s expertise includes consulting in Eastern and Western Europe and in Central and Southeast Asia. He currently coordinates an Open Society Institute development project at the National University of Mongolia.
Weber’s recent book, with economist Victor Ginsburgh, “How Many Languages Do We Need? Economics of Linguistic Diversity” (2011, Princeton University Press), will be followed later this year by a volume edited with economist Michael Alexeev, “The Oxford Handbook of Russian Economy.”
Weber earned his doctoral degree in mathematical economics from Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from Moscow State University.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
SMU with The Hunger Center of North Texas will look at the impact of social networks and social capital
Economics researchers at SMU will analyze the roles social networks and isolation play in fighting hunger in North Texas.
Recent studies have found that household economic resources are not the only factor contributing to food insecurity, according to SMU economist Thomas B. Fomby.
About 1 in 6 U.S. households are affected by food insecurity, meaning there’s not enough food at all times to sustain active, healthy lives for all family members, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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“This study will analyze the role of other factors causing food insecurity, such as urban or rural settings, access to nutrition assistance programs, access to inexpensive groceries, family support and social stigma,” Fomby said.
Fomby, professor of economics and director of the Richard B. Johnson Center for Economic Studies, and Daniel Millimet, SMU professor of economics, are conducting the study. A $120,000 grant from the North Texas Food Bank is funding the research. The study will be complete in March 2014.
Household income a powerful predictor, but social networks play role
Although household income is the single most powerful predictor of food security, poverty and hunger are not synonymous. According to Feeding America, 28 percent of food insecure residents in Dallas County are ineligible for most nutrition assistance programs because they have incomes above 185 percent of the federal poverty level; and the U. S. Department of Agriculture reports that 58.9 percent of U.S. households with incomes below the poverty level are food secure. The reasons for this are not well understood.
“With this research, we expect to better understand the causes of food insecurity in North Texas and improve the assessment of at-risk households,” Fomby said.
The SMU study is one of two major research projects launching The Hunger Center of North Texas, a new collaborative research initiative created by the North Texas Food Bank. The University of North Texas is also collaborating on a study.
The studies will focus on the impact that “social networks” and “social capital” have on household food security. The central questions are:
How do social relationships and community conditions make it easier (or harder) for low-income households to keep healthy food on the table?
How do these social and community influences differ in the City of Dallas and rural areas of North Texas?
Groundbreaking research may help leverage social forces to reduce food assistance “We believe that this research will be groundbreaking,” said Richard Amory, director of research for the North Texas Food Bank. “Nutrition assistance programs tend to approach individuals and households in isolation. Understanding the role that communities play in food security may help us leverage social forces to develop more effective programs and, ultimately, reduce the need for food assistance.”
The studies will start to shed some light on issues related to hunger in the community, said Kimberly Aaron, vice president of Policy, Programs and Research for the North Texas Food Bank.
“In performing our due diligence on existing research, while forming The Hunger Center, it became clear that many factors related to food insecurity are not well understood,” Aaron said.
SMU and the North Texas Food Bank recently formed a partnership, “Stampede Against Hunger,” to build on SMU’s strong support for NTFB, connecting campus groups already working with the food bank, as well as encouraging new types of participation for the campus and alumni community.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information, www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Existing scientific literature suggests the U.S. government nutritional program known as WIC improves birth outcomes of children, but new research is unable to find either a positive or negative impact on infant health.
WIC, which serves 53 percent of all U.S. infants, is for low-income pregnant women and their young children under five who are at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty level. The program provides grocery store food vouchers or electronic benefit transfer cards for healthy and nutritious food, and free prenatal care and health and nutritional counseling.
But economist and study author Manan Roy, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, says women severely underreport having received WIC food vouchers, either because they fear the stigma or fail to recall participating; and also the “poorest of the poor” sign up for the programs. Ignoring either of those two factors could skew an analysis of WIC’s impact on infant health. This is the first study to simultaneously account for both.
Since the poorest of the poor have the most unfavorable attributes to begin with, the “true” effect of the program will be biased downwards. Measurement error in the reports also bias the “true” effect of WIC participation, Roy said.
“To my knowledge, this is the first study of WIC to account for both factors,” said Roy. “The results are striking and ought to serve as a note of caution and guide to future evaluations of the program. I am unable to conclude there exists a causal effect — positive or negative — of prenatal WIC receipt on birth outcomes, even if as few as 1 percent of eligible women misreport their participation.”
Based on these findings and the existing literature on program evaluation, Roy said, it would be ideal to have experimental data or at least some form of verification of program participation in nationally representative household surveys to accurately evaluate WIC’s impact. In the absence of such data, researchers should be aware of and accordingly account for both these problems using varied statistical methods. Roy’s study focused on birth outcomes of infants, and didn’t look at WIC’s effect on older eligible children or breastfeeding practices.
Existing literature notes underreporting without accounting for it, but suggests WIC improves birth outcomes
The evidence has strong implications, Roy said, since WIC caters to a special sub-population that is in maximum need of nutritious food, regular health check-ups and nutritional counseling.
Formally known as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, WIC is a $7.1 billion program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As of March 2012, WIC provides nearly 9 million women and young children an average of $46 a month each, according to the government. Recipients can buy milk, cheese, cereal, juice, fruits, vegetables, bread, beans and rice.
Driving research interest in WIC is the growing perception that early life conditions have a long-term impact on adult-life outcomes as well as the evidence that early life interventions yield higher returns than do later life remedial or compensatory interventions.
Prior studies evaluating the effectiveness of WIC are mostly based on household surveys. Researchers are aware, however, that the poorest of the poor enroll into programs like WIC and that an overwhelming number of women deny receiving the benefits when polled on household surveys. Existing scientific literature has consistently recognized the underreporting problem without accounting for it, but nevertheless suggests WIC improves birth outcomes of children, such as birth weight and gestation age.
New study accounts for poorest of the poor and underreporting receipt of benefits
“My contribution is that I account for both these problems simultaneously and conclude that it is difficult to be sure whether there is a positive or a negative effect of the program,” Roy said.
Roy used data on more than 4,000 9-month-old infants available from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, released by the National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education.
In that study, women are interviewed when the child is 9 months old. They are asked whether they received WIC benefits while they were pregnant with the child. So, it is difficult to rule out an element of recall error in addition to the social stigma of “being on welfare,” Roy said.
“In this first step toward quantifying the consequence of misreporting, I find that even 1 percent of misreporting is sufficient to render inconclusive the evidence concerning WIC’s causal effect. Any greater degrees of misreporting will only worsen the situation,” she said.
Earlier research found low-income infants better off under public insurance
Roy presented her study, “Identifying the Effect of WIC on Infant Health When Participation is Endogenous and Misreported,” at the Southern Economic Association Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., and in her dissertation, “Three Essays on the Effect of Public Policies on Infant and Adolescent Health.” The paper is available from IDEAS, a service of the Economic Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Roy is a Ph.D. candidate in SMU’s Department of Economics.
The study follows earlier infant health research in which Roy analyzed data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort to compare private vs. public insurance and its impact on infant health. In that study, Roy found that among insured infants, those in low-income families are better off under government-provided Medicaid and CHIP than infants covered by private insurance, because public plans provide cheaper but comprehensive coverage.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Game theoretic analysis indicates that strategic policies to allow or ban parallel imports are often based on motivating domestic firms to succeed in competitive foreign markets.
Imposing trade restrictions on parallel imports has the surprising effect of motivating a firm to export, according to a new study using game theory economic analysis.
That’s the finding of economists Santanu Roy, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and Kamal Saggi, Vanderbilt University, Nashville.
The economists found that diverse parallel importing policies among countries today make it possible to analyze for the first time how competition between firms and allowing or banning parallel imports can influence competition in foreign and domestic markets.
“Our research is the first to look at the consequence of strategic policy setting by governments in the context of competition in domestic and foreign markets,” Roy said.
Most surprising among the findings, he said, is that imposing trade restrictions on parallel imports can actually motivate a firm to export.
That can be the case when the market to which the firm is exporting is smaller than its own.
“So even though you are formally prohibiting the import of a product, you are actually promoting trade,” Roy said. “And that’s a new way of looking at this.”
Parallel importing: When a firm competes with itself
Parallel importing occurs when a manufacturer exports its trademarked or patented products to a foreign market where demand, policies or price pressures require the goods be sold at a lower price. A third-party buyer purchases the low-priced goods and imports them back to the manufacturer’s home country, undercutting domestic prices.
The controversial practice has spawned gray market retail, where consumers buy high-value, brand-named goods at cut prices, such as electronics, video games, alcohol, books and pharmaceuticals.
Parallel importing and gray market retail are growing worldwide
Some advocates of free trade decry parallel importing, saying it infringes on manufacturers’ intellectual property rights accorded by copyright, patent and trademark laws. That, in turn, can discourage investment in new technology and products.
As a result, some countries allow parallel importing; others ban it. For example, parallel importing is allowed among the member countries of the European Union. It’s not permitted by the United States, although exceptions exist for many different products. Generally speaking, developed nations restrict parallel importing, while developing nations allow it.
The study by Roy and Saggi found there is no one-size-fits-all solution — neither a global ban nor a blanket endorsement.
Only need for intervention could be countries with major asymmetries
In fact, the study’s authors found that policy diversity is working well because it takes into account important variables such as similarity or dissimilarity of markets, as well as competing products and government regulations.
“The only area where there may be need for intervention is where there may be major asymmetries between countries — where one country is very large and the other is very small,” Roy said.
Roy and Saggi found that there’s strategic interdependence in the policymaking across governments, as well as a lot of strategic dependence in the decisions of firms. For that reason, the degree of asymmetry of demand across countries is going to be a very important part of the picture, Roy said.
Impact of parallel importing varies, depending on the markets
By modeling the impact of parallel importing under various scenarios, Roy and Saggi discovered that parallel importing typically works in favor of a domestic manufacturer whose export market is similar in size to its domestic market, and where intellectual property rights and parallel trade policies are similar to its own. In that case, a competitor is unlikely to cut prices, and prices remain stable and profitable both at home and abroad.
However, where markets are dissimilar, they found that parallel importing led to price slashing both at home and abroad, which in turn drove manufacturers to abandon exporting to prevent prices being slashed at home.
“One of the consequences of parallel import policy is that when it’s allowed, firms will actually take steps to alter their pricing in such a way that parallel imports don’t occur,” Roy said. “So the fact we don’t actually observe parallel imports in data doesn’t mean that parallel import policy does not have a very important impact on the way firms price their goods across the markets.”
Parallel importing policies should be set on a case-by-case basis
Because the impact of parallel importing varies on a case-by-case basis, policies governing parallel imports should be determined country by country and product by product. Roy and Saggi warn against uniform global standards to restrict or allow parallel imports, such as could be imposed by the international trade governing body, the World Trade Organization, or through its agreements, such as the TRIPS agreement on trade-related intellectual property rights.
Roy and Saggi report their findings in two articles: “Equilibrium Parallel Import Policies and International Market Structure,” a scenario in which there are quality differences in the products across countries, forthcoming in the Journal of International Economics; and “Strategic Competition and Optimal Parallel Import Policy,” a scenario in which there’s asymmetrical protection of intellectual property, forthcoming in the Canadian Journal of Economics. Roy and Saggi were members of a development research group at the World Bank that researched parallel importing.
Roy is professor and director of graduate studies in the SMU Department of Economics. Saggi is professor and director of the graduate program in economic development in the Vanderbilt Department of Economics. — Margaret Allen
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
To book a live or taped interview with Shlomo Weber in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu. (Photo: Octavio Mateus)
Weber is the Robert H. and Nancy Dedman Trustee Professor of Economics at SMU and director of the Richard Johnson Center for Economic Studies at SMU. He is also a PINE Foundation professor of economics at the New Economic School, Moscow.
Weber’s main area of research is game theory and its applications to public finance, political economy and international trade. Weber has consulted on numerous projects for private businesses, international organizations and governments in Asia, North America, Western and Eastern Europe.
DALLAS, UPI — A majority of European Union citizens are marginalized because they do not speak English, the language most EU official business is conducted in, a study says.
Shlomo Weber of Southern Methodist University in Dallas and Victor Ginsburgh of the Free University of Brussels say that for the EU’s non-English speakers, their native languages are of limited use in the union’s political, legal, communal and business spheres.
That means they have limited access to EU laws, rules, regulations and debates in the governing body, they said.
“Language is the proxy for engagement. People identify strongly with their language, which is integral to culture and traditions,” Weber said in an SMU release Tuesday. “Language is so explosive; language is so close to how you feel.”
Previous studies have found 90 percent of the EU’s official documents are drafted in English and later translated to other languages, mostly French and sometimes German.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
To book a live or taped interview with Shlomo Weber in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu. (Photo: Octavio Mateus)
The European Union has 27 member countries and 23 official languages, but its official business is carried out primarily in one language — English. Yet the striking findings of a new study show that barely a third of the EU’s 500 million citizens speak English.
What about the other two-thirds? They are linguistically disenfranchised, say the study’s authors.
For the EU’s non-English speakers, their native languages are of limited use in the EU’s political, legal, communal and business spheres, conclude economists Shlomo Weber, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and Victor Ginsburgh, Free University of Brussels (ULB), the authors who conducted the study. Those who are disenfranchised have limited access to EU laws, rules, regulations and debates in the governing body — all of which may violate the basic principles of EU society, the researchers say.
“Language is the proxy for engagement. People identify strongly with their language, which is integral to culture and traditions,” Weber says. “Language is so explosive; language is so close to how you feel.”
Weber and Ginsburgh base their findings on a new methodology they developed to quantitatively evaluate both costs and benefits of government policies to either expand or reduce diversity. The method unifies previous approaches to measure language diversity’s impact, an area of growing interest to scholars of economics and other social sciences.
“With globalization, people feel like they’ve been left on the side of the road. If your culture, your rights, your past haven’t been respected, how can you feel like a full member of society?” says Weber. “It is a delicate balance. People must decide if they want to trade their languages to increase by a few percentage points the rate of economic growth.”
Methodology can be applied to language diversity in other nations, including the United States
Beyond the EU, the Weber-Ginsburgh methodology can evaluate linguistic policies in other nations, too, including the U.S. It builds on a body of earlier published research by Weber, Ginsburgh and other economists.
“Our analysis offers a formal framework by which to address the merits and costs of the vast number of languages spoken in various countries,” said Weber. “We formally measure linguistic similarities and subsequently the linguistic distances between groups who speak various languages.”
The methodology also can measure the impact of other kinds of diversity, whether animal and plant biodiversity or economic classes of people, say the study’s authors.
Quantitative analysis finds English is the language spoken by largest percentage of EU citizens
Previous researchers found that 90 percent of the EU’s official documents are drafted in English and later translated to other languages, often French and sometimes German. Previous research also has documented frustration among EU officials with the political entity’s multitude of languages, as members wonder whether they are being understood.
Against that backdrop, the Weber-Ginsburgh analysis of the EU used official data from a routinely conducted EU survey of member states carried out in 2005 and later. The data came from answers to questions that included: What is your mother tongue? Which languages are you conversant in? How do you rate your fluency on a scale of very good, good or basic?
Weber and Ginsburgh found that of all the languages, English embraces the most EU citizens, followed by German second and French third.
English, German and French fall short
Yet those languages fall far short of including all people. The economists found that many EU residents are excluded.
Nearly two-thirds of EU citizens — 63 percent — don’t speak or understand English, while 75 percent don’t readily speak or understand German, and 80 percent don’t speak or understand French.
“English is spoken almost everywhere around the world,” the authors write, “but it is still far from being spoken by almost everyone.” At the same time, many non-native speakers of English feel the onslaught of that language’s global domination, a phenomenon that wasn’t generally foreseen and that evolved only within the last 60 years.
Weber and Ginsburgh discovered one EU age group that is less marginalized by English than other groups — youth ages 15 to 29. Fewer than half the young people — 43 percent — are disenfranchised, the researchers found.
The economists also introduce the concept of “proximity” — the degree to which languages are similar to one another. People who speak similar languages are less disenfranchised from one another, they say. Similarity is a factor of pronunciation, phonetics, syntax, grammar and vocabulary, although the authors caution that even words that seem alike aren’t always related, but instead are merely similar by chance or because languages borrow words.
Language represents identity and culture
Among the world’s 271 nations, more than 6,900 languages are spoken, Weber and Ginsburgh say.
Their research has found that there is no optimal degree of language diversity for a society, but many examples throughout history demonstrate that too much linguistic diversity is expensive, detrimental and often divisive, they say.
“The story of post-colonial Africa — what’s been called Africa’s growth tragedy — offers a painful example of the heavy costs incurred by a multitude of linguistic and ethnic divisions,” Weber says.
Language and cultural differences frequently have played a role in war, underdevelopment, brutal changes of power, poor administration, corruption and slacking economic growth, say the authors. Linguistic divides also impose friction on trade between countries, as well as influence migratory flows, literary translations or votes cast in various contests.
For example, in Sri Lanka two linguistic groups fought a bloody civil war for 25 years, killing tens of thousands of people, note Weber and Ginsburgh.
More recently, the former Belgian Prime Minister became infuriated at a position taken by U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and decided to vent his ire by hurling the supreme insult: Refusing to speak English when addressing the official EU body, and opting instead for his native Flemish.
Designating an official language must weigh costs, benefits
Can the EU ever mandate an official language that embraces its 500 million citizens? How can Nigeria manage 527 languages spoken by citizens of that country? Or Cameroon, with its 279? How does democracy function in India, where 30 languages thrive among more than 1 billion native speakers?
About one-third of the world’s nations have met these challenges by legislating official language provisions in their constitutions, the authors say. The official language typically applies to official documents, communication between institutions and citizens and debates in official bodies.
But to scientifically determine an optimal set of core languages, the authors say, nations must weigh the costs of linguistic disenfranchisement against the benefits of standardization.
“History provides many examples of political regimes that have mandated single languages for efficiency or social control reasons, many of which have proved unsustainable in the face of backlash from those disenfranchised linguistically,” Weber says. “At the other end of the spectrum, other countries have permitted, by default or design, linguistic anarchy in which dozens or even hundreds of languages exist — to the detriment of even basic efficiency. ‘How Many Languages Do We Need?’ provides a common-sense argument and quantitative methodology to evaluate both criteria for languages: efficiency and enfranchisement, which are indispensable for sustainable globalization in our fractionalized world.”
France: An example of linguistic diversity handled well
Over the course of human history, has any country handled their linguistic diversity well?
“France,” Weber says. “Two hundred years ago, France had a lot of dialects, and only 3 million of its 28 million people spoke French. That’s only 10 percent of the people. In a bloodless transition the government imposed French as the official language but allowed dialects to flourish.”
Weber is the Robert H. and Nancy Dedman Trustee Professor of Economics at SMU. He is also a PINE Foundation professor of economics at the New Economic School, Moscow.
Ginsburgh is professor of economics emeritus at ULB, member of the European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics in Brussels, and a member of the Center of Operations research and Econometrics, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. — Margaret Allen
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
To book a live or taped interview with Shlomo Weber in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu. (Photo: Octavio Mateus)
Writing for the International Monetary Fund, Hitchings’ review “Speaking in Tongues” notes that Weber and his co-author, Victor Ginsburgh, have scrupulously researched the costs and benefits of the many languages across the globe. Hitchings, the author of “The Language Wars” and “The Secret Life of Words” among other books, notes that the books most thought-provoking section is the case study of linguistic policy in the European Union.
Hitchings, whose focus is language and cultural history, summarizes the message of the book: “Reform of the European Union’s linguistic workings calls for collaboration, which touches on a fundamental issue of the book: the vexed question of what the ‘we’ in the book’s title really means. It is a pronoun that implies togetherness. It is an appeal for community. But it evokes widely differing solidarities, bonds, and priorities. In any debate about language (or politics), ‘we’ is hard to come by, as this book makes very clear.”
Weber is the Robert H. and Nancy Dedman Trustee Professor of Economics at SMU and director of the Richard Johnson Center for Economic Studies at SMU. He is also a PINE Foundation professor of economics at the New Economic School, Moscow.
Weber’s main area of research is game theory and its applications to public finance, political economy and international trade. Weber has consulted on numerous projects for private businesses, international organizations and governments in Asia, North America, Western and Eastern Europe.
Speaking in Tongues
By Henry Hitchings
In this scrupulously researched study, Belgian economist Victor Ginsburgh, whose native language is Swahili, and game theorist Shlomo Weber, a Canadian citizen who is a native Russian speaker, assess the costs and benefits of the vast number of languages currently in use across the globe.
It is commonly assumed that a reduction in the number of languages improves efficiency. Although no one knows the exact number of living languages, the figure is astonishingly large—a sensible estimate would be 6,000–7,000. But half the world’s population has one out of a mere eleven of these as a first language.
Most developed economies are in countries where a single language predominates; in countries where there is great linguistic diversity there tends also to be much bureaucracy and wastefulness. The nonprofit SIL International, which maintains a database of the world’s languages, reports that 278 are currently used in Cameroon; the figures for Chad, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea are, respectively, 131, 514, and 830. It is easy to see how this kind of linguistic multiplicity might impede economic development—for instance, by hampering geographical and social mobility and by obstructing many citizens’ access to key legal services.
Utopian thinkers have long imagined that technology and political planning will one day end civilization’s linguistic tension and confusion. Today there is support for the idea of establishing English as the global lingua franca. Indeed, many believe it already is. Yet the dominance of one language leads to the erosion of others—potentially a catastrophe for the world’s linguistic and cultural ecosystem. Ginsburgh and Weber quote the playwright Ariel Dorfman, born in Chile but now a U.S. citizen: “The ascendancy of English, like so many phenomena associated with globalization, leaves too many invisible losers, too many people silenced.”
Ginsburgh and Weber often write in a highly technical fashion, scrutinizing such matters as cladistic distance, ethnolinguistic fractionalization, and dichotomous disenfranchisement indices. Yet this analysis is presented crisply, and there are plenty of well-chosen snippets from commentators including Mario Vargas Llosa and Amartya Sen. The discussion embraces not only the costs of translation and Joseph Greenberg’s classic attempts to quantify diversity, but also the quirks of Finnish private investors and the Eurovision Song Contest.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
The news wire service United Press International has covered the research of SMU economist Manan Roy, a doctoral candidate and adjunct professor in the SMU Department of Economics.
Roy analyzed new federal data about insured infants to compare public health insurance with private health insurance. Her analysis found that among the insured, infants in low-income families are better off under the nation’s government-funded public health insurance than infants covered by private insurance.
SAN DIEGO, Dec. 8 (UPI) — Public health insurance coverage for infants is more comprehensive and costs less than private health insurance plans, a U.S. researcher found.
Study author Manan Roy, a Ph.D. student and an adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said in the national debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — which requires all Americans to have health insurance — it’s widely assumed private health insurance can do a better job than the public insurance funded by the U.S. government.
Infants covered under Medicaid and its sister program — CHIP — come mostly from lower-income families who are more likely to be unmarried, younger, less educated, poor and disadvantaged, while infants covered by private health insurance are mostly from white and are generally more advantaged, Roy said.
“Public health insurance gets a lot of bad press,” Roy said in a statement. “But for infants who are covered by health insurance, the government-funded insurance appears to be more efficient than private health insurance — and can actually provide better care at a lower cost.”
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
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Surprising result from first-of-its-kind study builds on earlier research that found public health insurance coverage is more comprehensive and costs less than private plans
In the fierce national debate over a new federal law that requires all Americans to have health insurance, it’s widely assumed that private health insurance can do a better job than the public insurance funded by the U.S. government.
But a first-of-its-kind analysis of newly available government data found just the opposite when it comes to infants covered by insurance.
Among the insured, infants in low-income families are better off under the nation’s government-funded public health insurance than infants covered by private insurance, says economist and study author Manan Roy, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. The finding emerged from an analysis that was weighted for the fact that less healthy infants are drawn into public health insurance from birth by its low cost.
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The finding is surprising, says Roy, because the popular belief is that private health insurance always provides better coverage. Roy’s analysis, however, found public health insurance is a better option — and not only for low-income infants.
“Public health insurance gets a lot of bad press,” says Roy. “But for infants who are covered by health insurance, the government-funded insurance appears to be more efficient than private health insurance — and can actually provide better care at a lower cost.”
Why?
“Private health insurance plans vary widely,” Roy says. “Many don’t include basic services. So infants on more affordable plans may not be covered for immunizations, prescription drugs, for vision or dental care, or even basic preventive care.”
The U.S. doesn’t have a system of universal health insurance. But the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010, requires all Americans to have health insurance. The act also expands government-paid free or low-cost Medicaid insurance to 133 percent of the federal poverty level.
“Given the study’s surprising outcome, it’s likely that the impact of national reforms to bring more children under public health insurance will substantially improve the health of infants who are in the worst health to begin with,” Roy says. “It’s likely to also help infants who aren’t low-income.”
Roy presented her study, “How Well Does the U.S. Government Provide Health Insurance?” at the 2011 Western Economic Association International Conference, San Diego. Roy is a Ph.D. student and an adjunct professor in SMU’s Department of Economics.
Study weighted to account for less healthy infants in public health insurance A large body of previous research has established that insured infants are healthier than uninsured infants. Roy’s study appears to be the first of its kind to look only at insured infants to determine which kind of insurance has the most impact on infant health — private or public.
Roy found:
Infants covered by public insurance are mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds. Those under Medicaid and its sister program — CHIP — come mostly from lower-income families. Their parents — usually black and Hispanic — are more likely to be unmarried, younger and less educated. Economists refer to this statistical phenomenon — when a group consists primarily of people with specific characteristics — as strong positive or negative selection. In the case of public health insurance, strong negative selection is at work because it draws people who are poor and disadvantaged.
Infants on public health insurance are slightly less healthy than infants on private insurance. On average they had a lower five-minute Apgar score and shorter gestation age compared to privately insured infants. They were less likely to have a normal birth weight and normal Apgar score range, and were less likely to be born near term.
Infants covered by private health insurance are mostly from white or Asian families and are generally more advantaged. They are from higher-income families, with older parents who are usually married and more educated. Their mothers weigh less than those of infants on public insurance. This demonstrates strong positive selection of wealthier families into private health insurance.
Roy then compared the effect of public insurance on infant health in relation to private health insurance. To do that, she used an established statistical methodology that allows economists to factor negative or positive selection into the type of insurance. In comparing public vs. private insurance — allowing for strong negative selection into public health care — a different picture emerged.
“The results showed that it’s possible to attribute the entire detrimental effect of public health insurance to the negative selection that draws less healthy infants into public health insurance,” Roy says.
In fact, in a most striking revelation, allowing for a modest to significant amount of negative selection of infants into public health insurance, Roy’s findings suggest that among the insured population of infants, private health insurance is detrimental to child health.
“The real surprise with these findings is that despite a less healthy population — due to the negative factors created by poverty — public health insurance is actually improving the health of these infants,” Roy says.
Public health insurance provides more comprehensive benefits The findings are less surprising upon deeper analysis.
A previous study by the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities sheds light on Roy’s research. That group found that public health insurance provides more comprehensive benefits than private insurance. For example, all children on Medicaid and CHIP receive preventive and primary medical care, inpatient and outpatient care, pediatric vaccines, laboratory and X-ray services, prescription drugs, immunizations, and dental, vision and mental health care coverage.
The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey collected by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that on a per person basis, government-provided health insurance for children under 4 years old is cheaper on average compared to private health insurance plans.
“Enrollees in private health insurance can choose from a wide variety of plans,” Roy says. “Those who cut their costs by purchasing less coverage are reducing their access to quality care, including basic services like preventive care, prescription drugs, and vision and dental care.”
Roy says she can only speculate why infants from advantaged and disadvantaged families differ in their health outcomes. It’s possible that infants from families that are better off have access to better nutrition, a healthier lifestyle and possibly safer, cleaner neighborhoods than those from poorer backgrounds.
“Poor families and their infants may be subsisting on cheap food, for example, which tends to be fatty and less nutritious,” Roy says, “and that translates to worse health.”
Study relied on new U.S. government data on thousands of infants Roy’s statistical analysis drew on data from more than 7,500 infants born in 2001. The data were the most recent available from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, released by the National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education.
The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study follows children born in the United States from birth through the start of kindergarten. Children are from diverse socioeconomic and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Data were gathered from parents, teachers and providers of child care and early education.
Data collected cover children’s health, care, education and cognitive, social, emotional and physical development over time. Included are standard infant health measures like length, infant weight, five-minute Apgar score, and the number of weeks the child was in the womb, which is considered an indicator of birth weight.
Poor families living at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty level represented 49 percent of Roy’s data set.
Demand for public health insurance has increased during the past decade, says Roy, while demand for private insurance has declined. Specifically, between 1999 and 2009 there was an increase in the overall proportion of children under 3 years of age who were insured. Of those, the proportion covered by private insurance declined. The proportion covered by public health insurance increased.
Other researchers have firmly established that infants who are covered by health insurance have timely access to quality care, Roy says. Expanding access could reduce, for example, the number of infants born with low birth weight, which is associated with chronic medical diseases like diabetes, hypertension and heart disease in adulthood. Low birth weight also has been linked to lower average scores on tests of intellectual and social development.
The United States has the highest infant mortality rate among developed nations due to low birth weight and is the only industrialized nation without universal health insurance. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a legal challenge to the Obama administration’s new law requiring everyone have health insurance. — Margaret Allen
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
To book a live or taped interview with Shlomo Weber in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.
Thanks to a new model created by an international research group it is now possible to predict which European countries are more likely to become united or which are more likely to break up. It does so by not only considering demographic and economic criteria but, most ingeniously of all, culture and genetics.
Southern Methodist University economist Shlomo Weber was a member of the team and co-author of the study that was published in the Journal of Economic Growth.
The scientists said their method quantitatively analyzes the stability and disintegration of European nations. It also estimates the implicit benefits of a larger European Union or, in other words, what would happen if the EU were one country. They also give empirical support for the use of genetics as an indicator of cultural heterogeneity amongst nations.
Besides Weber, other researchers included scientists from the Carlos III University of Madrid, the Toulouse School of Economics in France and the New Moscow School of Economics in Russia.
It has always been common knowledge that the more nations that join together in unity, the greater the profits, said Ignacio Ortuño Ortín, a researcher at the University of Madrid. This is because the market gets bigger and costs are shared. On the other hand, when many regions or countries are brought together there is a difference in populations, both economically and culturally. This, in turn, implies a high cost. There was a need for methodology that quantitatively analyzes these two aspects using specific cases.
Case study: Yugoslavia’s economic, cultural differences played role in instability
The mathematical model the researchers put forward includes factors such as a country’s wealth alongside size and cultural differences in terms of population genetics. According to the experts, the most difficult aspect to quantify when making predictions is the “measurement” of countries from a cultural point of view. “We take population genetics data and then use it to support the fact that such genetic distance between regions can be used as a good tool when approaching cultural distance,” Ortuño said.
According to the scientists, this does not suggest that genetics explains culture but that there is a correlation between the two. This means that populations that have intermixed more will also display greater cultural similarity. “We are not saying that genes explain the way a person thinks,” clarifies Ortuño.
In order to put consistency of their model to the test, a real-life case was chosen: the disintegration of Yugoslavia. The authors of the study found that the economic differences between its republics determined the order of disintegration – a fact that coincided with their model. Likewise, cultural differences, although small, played a key role in triggering instability.
Predictions for other countries The model’s first theoretical predictions were made by pairing two countries based on the hypothetical situation of Europe being a single country and on the regions that are more prone to separate from their current nation.
If the European Union were to become stronger and had a common fiscal as well as monetary policy (both of which together would turn it into a single country), in the long run, Greece and Portugal would benefit the most. In terms of percentages, Portugal would benefit from an increase in wealth of 13 percent, Greece would see an increase of 11.9 percent, Ireland with 8.9 percent and Finland with 8 percent. Spain would see a growth of 4.1 percent whereas those countries that would benefit least would be Germany, followed by Italy and then France.
The researchers have also predicted what regions have more incentives to separate from the nations to which they belong. “We are not suggesting that it would be beneficial for these regions to separate but it is true that, in relative terms, the Basque Country and Scotland have more incentives,” they claim.
According to the model, those that are more inclined to pair up would be Austria and Switzerland, Denmark and Norway, and France and Great Britain. Spain would be more interested in uniting with France but “this does not necessarily mean that France would be interested in uniting with Spain,” says Ortuño. He adds that “we avoid taking the strategic decisions of countries into account. This means that our model predicts how much a country would benefit if a union were to occur.”
The team is currently working on a new project with collaborators in Moscow who are applying the same method to understand the stability of regions in Russia. — Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
To book a live or taped interview with Daniel L. Millimet in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.
The link between the federal school lunch program and childhood obesity that was uncovered by the research of SMU economist Daniel L. Millimet has been covered by the health articles on the site Live Strong in “How Can Overweight Children Lose Weight Fast?“
The article notes Millimet’s finding that a la carte options such as ice cream and sodas are readily available to children in the school lunch line.
The research, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, found that children who eat school lunches that are part of the federal government’s National School Lunch Program are more likely to become overweight.
The same research study found, however, that children who eat both the breakfast and lunch sponsored by the federal government are less heavy than children who don’t participate in either, and than children who eat only the lunch, said Millimet.
Millimet authored the study with economists Rusty Tchernis, Georgia State University, and Muna S. Hussain, Kuwait University.
The prevalence of childhood obesity among children increased from 6.5 percent in 1980 to 19.6 percent in 2008, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Obesity is the result of too many calories consumed and not enough calories expended. An overweight child is much more likely to become an overweight or obese adult. A change in lifestyle, healthy eating habits and daily physical activity can help an overweight child lose weight.
Pack Their Lunch
Lunches served in school cafeterias may be one of the causes for your child to be overweight. According to a study done by Daniel Millimet, PhD, professor of economics at Southern Methodist University, many schools are not complying with federal guidelines. His study found that 10 to 35 percent of schools do not supply their students with low-fat lunches. A la carte options such as ice cream and sodas are readily available to your children. By packing their lunch for them you can control what and how much they eat each day.
Findings suggest that nonperforating appendicitis, when the appendix hasn’t burst, and nonperforating diverticulitis could be similar diseases that warrant similar treatments
Antibiotics rather than surgery may be the better treatment for cases of appendicitis in which the appendix hasn’t burst, according to a new study.
The study’s authors say the findings suggest that nonperforating appendicitis, as the disease is called when the appendix hasn’t burst, may be unrelated to perforating appendicitis, in which the appendix has burst.
Instead, the study found that nonperforating childhood appendicitis, which historically has been treated with emergency surgery, seems to be a disease similar to nonperforating adult diverticulitis, which is often treated with antibiotics.
“It is assumed, but has never been proved, that appendicitis always perforates unless appendectomy is performed early in its course,” said the authors. “There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that this is not the case.”
The study, “Epidemiological similarities between appendicitis and diverticulitis suggesting a common underlying pathogenesis,” was reported in the Archives of Surgery.
Hospital discharge records reveal correlation Childhood appendicitis and adult diverticulitis share many similarities, including association with colon hygiene and a low intake of fiber in the diet.
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Those shared epidemiological features prompted researchers to examine whether the two might be similar, according to economist Thomas B. Fomby at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
A statistical sampling of data from U.S. hospital discharge records revealed a correlation between nonperforating appendicitis and nonperforating diverticulitis.
“We used a technique called cointegration to investigate common movements in epidemiologic data series,” said Fomby, a professor in SMU’s Department of Economics, who led the statistical analysis with statistician Wayne A. Woodward, professor and department chair in SMU’s Department of Statistical Science.
Lead author on the study was Edward H. Livingston, M.D., in the division of Gastrointestinal and Endocrine Surgery at University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas; with the Department of Surgery, Veterans Affairs Medical Center Dallas; and in the Department of Bioengineering, University of Texas at Arlington. Also co-authoring was Robert W. Haley, M.D., in the Department of Internal Medicine-Epidemiology, UT Southwestern Medical School, and a past recipient of the SMU Distinguished Alumni Award.
Regional and national data move together over time The study looked at 27 years of data from the National Hospital Discharge Survey, which is compiled annually by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The analysis specifically compared national data and regional data for children with appendicitis and adults with diverticulitis who were admitted to U.S. hospitals between 1979 and 2006.
The statistical methodology called panel cointegration allowed the researchers to sift through eight different combinations of the two diseases, both by region and nationally, to see whether they vary together across time and to eliminate the possibility of coincidence or a chance correlation, Fomby said.
“We analyzed all the national data, and then found the same thing in every region also,” Fomby said. “That reinforced what we were finding at the national level.”
The authors’ analysis shows that although the annual incidence rates of adult nonperforating diverticulitis and child nonperforating appendicitis changed greatly during the past 25 years, their secular patterns — long-term trends — followed the same general patterns, overall as well as region by region, according to the authors.
“These secular changes were significantly cointegrated, meaning that the incidence rates changed in time together, suggesting that nonperforating appendicitis and nonperforating diverticulitis could be different manifestations of the same underlying process.”
Statisticians and economists have applied this kind of analysis to international finance, macroeconomics and other areas, but it’s not been used to any extent in medical epidemiology, Fomby said. Two economists, Clive Granger and Robert Engel, won the 2003 Nobel Prize in Economics for their invention of the technique.
Appendicitis, diverticulitis may be similar diseases “Childhood appendicitis and adult diverticulitis seem to be similar diseases, suggesting a common underlying pathogenesis,” write the authors. Secular trends for the nonperforating and perforating forms are strikingly different, they said.
“At least for appendicitis, perforating disease may not be an inevitable outcome from delayed treatment of nonperforating disease. If appendicitis represents the same pathophysiologic process as diverticulitis, it may be amenable to antibiotic rather than surgical treatment.”
Appendicitis is a painful infection in the area of the lower right abdomen that typically affects younger people, age 10 to 30, according to the National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse within the National Institutes of Health. It is the No. 1 cause of emergency abdominal surgeries, according to NDDIC.
Appendicitis is caused by blockage in the appendix, a fingerlike pouch jutting from the large intestine, according to NDDIC. Among the various causes of the blockage can be feces, abdominal trauma or inflammatory bowel disease, the agency says.
Diverticulitis, which is more common among people older than 60, occurs when pouches that have developed in the lining of the gastrointestinal tract become inflamed and sometimes infected, according to NDDIC. It is often treated with antibiotics, the authors say.
Perforating appendicitis not a progression of nonperforating appendicitis? “These findings seem incompatible with the long-held view that perforating appendicitis is merely the progression of nonperforating disease where surgical intervention was delayed too long,” write the authors. “If perforating appendicitis was simply a manifestation of nonperforating appendicitis not treated in a timely manner, the secular trends should have been statistically similar, which they were not.”
Both diseases have increased in incidence as cleanliness in the Western world has improved, in populations with higher socioeconomic status, and where grain-processing technologies have lowered dietary fiber content, the authors say.
In a previous study, the researchers demonstrated changes in the annual incidence rates of appendicitis. The new study demonstrated changes for nonperforating diverticulitis as well. — Margaret Allen
SMU is a private university in Dallas where nearly 11,000 students benefit from the national opportunities and international reach of SMU’s seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
To book a live or taped interview with Daniel L. Millimet in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.
The link between the federal school lunch program and childhood obesity uncovered by the research of SMU economist Daniel L. Millimet has been reported in The San Angelo Standard-Times in “Study shows obesity has complex origins.”
Writing for the Scrips Howard News Service, reporter Trish Choate quotes Millimet on the research and the link in an article that published Sept. 3 in the Standard-Times.
The research, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, found that children who eat school lunches that are part of the federal government’s National School Lunch Program are more likely to become overweight.
The same research study found, however, that children who eat both the breakfast and lunch sponsored by the federal government are less heavy than children who don’t participate in either, and than children who eat only the lunch, said Millimet.
Millimet authored the study with economists Rusty Tchernis, Georgia State University, and Muna S. Hussain, Kuwait University.
SAN ANGELO, Texas — WASHINGTON — A new study indicates a link between childhood obesity and school lunches, as well as a connection between healthier children and school breakfasts.
Elementary schoolchildren eating lunches at schools participating in the federally funded National School Lunch Program are more likely to become overweight, said a professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas who co-authored the study sponsored by U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But children eating both federally funded school breakfasts and school lunches tend to be leaner than those eating only the lunch, SMU economist Daniel L. Millimet said.
“I think breakfast is a more important meal in terms of maintaining a healthy weight than lunch,” Millimet said.
Also, other studies have indicated school breakfasts comply better with government nutrition regulations than school lunches, he said.
Also covering the research is AlterNet’s Emily Badger, with the story “Do School Lunches Plump Up Poor Kids?” The story, which was posted Sept. 3, quotes Millimet on whether there’s a “causal” effect and asks “Does the National School Lunch Program make children obese, or are obese children simply more likely to sign up for the program in the first place?”
EXCERPT:
Students who participate in the National School Lunch Program are more likely to come from lower-income families or families with two working parents who don’t have time to pack a brown-bag lunch the night before. Those same students, as a quick glance around many school cafeterias this fall will show, are also more likely to be overweight.
The challenge for researchers and policymakers has been to sort out the relationship between the two.
“When you just look at those groups
[who participate in school lunch], those are groups also more likely to not be the healthiest kids,” said Daniel Millimet, an economist at Southern Methodist University. “Then there’s a question of whether or not there’s actually something causal going on, or does the perception just reflect people who are self-selecting into the program?”
In other words: Does the National School Lunch Program make children obese, or are obese children simply more likely to sign up for the program in the first place? Read the full story
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.
To book a live or taped interview with Santanu Roy in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU’s Office of News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.
How should a country respond to a biological invader that reaches its shores via cargo shipped as international trade?
Pesky invaders like Zebra mussels, Asian Longhorned Beetles, Kudzu, Triffid weed and others have wreaked billions of dollars in economic damage, destroying agriculture, harming human health and threatening biodiversity.
The answer: Policymakers must balance concerns about the damage and cost of controlling invaders against the economic necessity of free trade, say economists Santanu Roy, Southern Methodist University, and Lars J. Olson, University of Maryland.
In their article “Dynamic Sanitary and Phytosanitary Trade Policy,” Roy and Olson examine the various conditions policymakers must evaluate to determine the best policies governing invasive species based on sound economics.
Growing number of invaders worldwide
Roy and Olson developed the analysis in response to the growing number of biological invasions, which are raising important trade policy issues, Roy says.
Their research was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture through its Program of Research on the Economics of Invasive Species Management, or PREISM. Invasive species, such as pests and weeds, destroy agriculture and cost the industry hundreds of billions of dollars annually, say experts.
“In their native habitat, these species are kept in control by their competitors and predators,” Roy says. “But once they are out of their habitat, they can multiply and spread at an enormous rate — as there are fewer natural predators — and they put local native species in great difficulty and danger of survival.”
Qualitative guidance
The analysis by Roy and Olson provides qualitative guidance to policymakers for the optimal response to a particular invasion.
“We shed some light on the level of required restrictions under various scenarios that take into consideration the economic and ecological factors such as the trade benefit, cost of control and timeframe for growth of pests and disease,” Roy says. “Our paper gives economists a set of readily usable conditions under which they can determine how restrictive a country’s current trade policy should be and how it should be altered over time as the fundamental conditions — such as the size of the existing infestation in the country — change over time.”
A host of international trade agreements address the growing problem of biological invasions, including those of the World Trade Organization. The WTO, which was formed in 1995, promotes free trade among its 153 members. It acknowledges that its members may legitimately restrict trade for reasons that include protection of human, animal or plant health from pests, diseases, toxins and other contaminants.
More restrictions = higher retail prices
Trade restrictions can prevent fresh batches of invasive species from entering. They range from direct limits on the quantity of imports to regulations and standards governing how products are produced, treated and packaged in their home country.
After the fact, “control” is the “cure” for an established invasive species. Measures can include mechanical weeding, chemical spraying and trapping, depending on whether the goal is to eradicate a pest or to merely stop its spread.
“The costs for these are reflected in higher prices of imported goods paid by you and me — the consumers,” Roy says. “This is the downside of trade restrictions that has to be balanced with current and future economic and ecological damages that are prevented, as well as current and future control costs that are avoided.”
Entry of pests sometimes the best route
From their analysis, Roy and Olson concluded that there are times when the best route is to allow some entry of pests: when damages are low, the pests’ growth rate is low and the discount rate — the relative weight placed on present costs and benefits compared to those in the future — is high enough.
Also, trade policy doesn’t have to be too restrictive if the cost of controlling established pest populations is low enough. On the other hand, managing trade to prevent further entry may be warranted when the current established population of the species is below a stage where the growth rate of the invasion is likely to increase sharply. The same is likely to be true if the future cost of controlling an established invasion is likely to be high.
Sophisticated approach
“What we’re suggesting is a more sophisticated approach to learning the cost to an economy for various scenarios, such as allowing pests to come in and then controlling them over time,” Roy says. “Different strategies would have different costs. If you can establish how the damage grows and the cost of controlling it, then we can tell you the best strategy, whether it should be controlled, eradicated completely, whether there should be some trade restrictions or prohibition of trade.”
Their study also can be seen as relevant to the control and prevention of invading diseases, such as HIV and various strains of influenza, Roy says.
Roy is a professor and director of graduate studies in the Economics Department at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Olson is professor and chair, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Maryland.
SMU is a private university in Dallas where nearly 11,000 students benefit from the national opportunities and international reach of SMU’s seven degree-granting schools. — Margaret Allen
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the SMU News Broadcast Studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@mail.smu.edu.
With children going back to school, parents are concerned that their youngsters are staying fit and eating right, especially those who dine in a school cafeteria.
New research funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture finds that children who eat school lunches that are part of the federal government’s National School Lunch Program are more likely to become overweight.
The same research study found, however, that children who eat both the breakfast and lunch sponsored by the federal government are less heavy than children who don’t participate in either, and than children who eat only the lunch, says economist Daniel L. Millimet at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Millimet authored the study with economists Rusty Tchernis, Georgia State University, and Muna S. Hussain, Kuwait University.
“The fact that federally funded school lunches contribute to the childhood obesity epidemic is disconcerting, although not altogether surprising,” said Millimet, whose research looks at the economics of children, specifically topics related to schooling and health.
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees the federal lunch and breakfast programs. Through USDA the federal government reimburses schools for a portion of school lunch costs and also donates surplus agricultural food items. While USDA does require that the meals meet certain nutritional standards, schools choose the specific foods.
A la carte items outside the guidelines
Schools also can serve individual food items a la carte, which fall outside the scope of the federal guidelines and allow students to choose additional foods.
For their study, the researchers analyzed data on more than 13,500 elementary school students. Students were interviewed in kindergarten, first and third grades, and then again in later grades.
“First, it is very difficult to plan healthy but inviting school lunches at a low price,” Millimet said. “Second, given the tight budgets faced by many school districts, funding from the sales of a la carte lunch items receives high priority. That said, it’s comforting to know that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the federal school nutrition programs, takes the issue very seriously. The USDA sponsors not only my research, but that of others as well, to investigate the issues and possible solutions.”
The USDA is partnering with First Lady Michelle Obama to fight what experts say is a childhood obesity epidemic among America’s school children. The First Lady on May 18 released the results and recommendations of The White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity report, which said that more than 30 percent of American children ages 2 to 19 are overweight or obese. The report recommends serving healthier foods in schools.
Lunches may not be in compliance
Judging from the results of the study, Millimet said, the food being served in school lunches may not maintain a healthy weight in children. The food in school breakfasts appears to be healthier, however.
“Technically what is going on is that the federal government establishes nutrition guidelines for lunches and breakfasts if schools wish to receive federal funding,” Millimet said. “But there’s evidence that school lunches are less in compliance with these guidelines than breakfasts. The other possible issue is that these days schools try to make money from a la carte items at lunch. And it’s possible that even if the school lunch is healthy, kids buying lunch are more likely to tack on extra items that are not healthy.”
Nutritionists strongly advocate eating breakfast for a healthy lifestyle, Millimet said, noting that — up to a point — any breakfast is better than no breakfast.
The National Student Lunch Program supplies meals to about 30 million children in 100,000 public and nonprofit private schools, according to the USDA.
The School Breakfast Program gives cash assistance to more than 80,000 schools for about 10 million children.
Obesity among students takes jump
The study cites data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey taken between 1971 and 1974 and again from 2003 to 2004 that found the prevalence of overweight preschool children ages 2-5 jumped from 5 percent to 13.9 percent. Among school-aged children, it jumped from 4 percent to 18.8 percent for children 6-11; and 6.1 percent to 17.4 percent for those 12-19.
Millimet is a professor and director of undergraduate studies in the SMU Department of Economics. Tchernis is an associate professor in Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, and Hussain is an assistant professor in Kuwait University’s Department of Economics. — Margaret Allen
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.
The fast-growing use of cell phones in Africa — where many people lack the basic human necessities — has made headlines worldwide the past few years.
The surprising boom has led to widespread speculation — and hope — that cell phones could potentially transform the impoverished continent.
But new research by economists Isaac M. Mbiti and Jenny C. Aker finds that cell phones — while a useful and powerful tool for many people in Africa — cannot drive economic development on their own.
Mbiti, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and Aker, at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., say that while there is evidence of positive micro-economic impacts, so far there’s limited evidence that mobile phones have led to macro-economic improvements in African countries.
Not a magic bullet
Cell phones can do only so much, say the researchers.
Many Africans still struggle in poverty and still lack reliable electricity, clean drinking water, education or access to roads.
“It’s really great for a farmer to find out the price of beans in the market,” says Mbiti, who has seen the impact of the cell phone boom firsthand while conducting research in his native Kenya. “But if a farmer can’t get the beans to market because there is no road, the information doesn’t really help. Cell phones can’t replace things you need from development, like roads and running water.”
To really have an impact, say Mbiti and Aker, the cell phone boom requires complementary access to public infrastructure, such as reliable electricity.
“Also needed are appropriate policies and regulations that can promote the development of innovative mobile phone-based applications such as mobile banking services that have the potential to positively impact the economic livelihood of Africans,” Mbiti says.
The researchers also cite areas where more research is needed, such as the number of direct and indirect jobs created by the cell phone industry; whether mobile phones actually drive increases in gross domestic product; accurate mobile phone penetration rates; and whether cell phones are driving consumer surpluses due to increased market competition.
While there are some limited assessments of the impact by economists — in Niger, Uganda and rural South Africa, for example — more research by economists is needed, say Mbiti and Aker. They hope their study will spur economists to delve deeper into the long-term impact.
Boom improves daily life
Despite the extreme poverty of many Africans, mobile phone coverage has jumped from 10 percent of the population in 1999 to 60 percent in 2008, say Mbiti and Aker. Mobile phone subscriptions have skyrocketed from 16 million in 2000 to 376 million in 2008, they say.
As a result, cell phones have had some dramatic effects, particularly in rural Africa, say the researchers: farmers can compare market prices for the grain they grow; fisherman are able to sell their catch every day and reduce spoilage and waste by locating customers; health workers remind AIDS patients to take their daily medicine; day laborers find job opportunities; Africans have an affordable way to easily and quickly transfer money; health clinics can collect, measure, monitor and share health data; families share news of natural disasters, conflicts and epidemics; people learn to read and write to send text messages; election campaigns are monitored to prevent cheating; and new jobs are being created, such as small shops that sell, repair and charge cell phone handsets, as well as sell pre-paid phone credits.
Cell phones too costly for many Africans
But extreme poverty means cell phones remain out of reach for many Africans, say the researchers.
In some countries, for example, as few as 2 percent of the population can get access to a cell phone, say Mbiti and Aker.
In Niger the cost of a one-minute call can run 38 cents a minute — 40 percent of a household’s daily income. The cheapest mobile phone available costs the equivalent of enough millet to feed a family of five for five days. About 300 million Africans live on less than $1 a day, and 120 million live on less than 50 cents a day, say the researchers.
Critical infrastructure lacking
One impediment is the lack of adequate infrastructure. A fast-growing mobile phone company in Nigeria, for example, struggled to maintain electricity to the 3,600 base stations that communicate its cellular signals, they say. Ultimately the company kept the mobile towers operational by deploying its own generators — which burned 450 liters of diesel a second.
In sub-Saharan Africa, say the researchers, only 29 percent of roads are paved, and barely 25 percent of people have access to electricity. While it’s efficient for a manufacturer to take customer orders via mobile phone, their production is limited by the lack of a reliable power source and access to markets.
Mbiti is an assistant professor of economics in SMU’s Department of Economics. He is a 2010-2011 MLK Visiting Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Aker is assistant professor of development economics, Fletcher School and Department of Economics at Tufts. She is also a non-resident fellow, Center for Global Development, Washington, D.C.
SMU is a private university in Dallas where nearly 11,000 students benefit from the national opportunities and international reach of SMU’s seven degree-granting schools.
SMU economist Isaac M. Mbiti has seen in his native Kenya how cell phone use in Africa is booming. He and Jenny C. Aker, Tufts University, wrote about the phenomenal growth of cell phones — and their impact — in the March/April 2010 issue of the Boston Review.
Cell phones can do only so much, say the researchers.
Many Africans still struggle in poverty and still lack reliable electricity, clean drinking water, education or access to roads.
“It’s really great for a farmer to find out the price of beans in the market,” says Mbiti, who has seen the impact of the cell-phone boom firsthand while conducting research in his native Kenya. “But if a farmer can’t get the beans to market because there is no road, the information doesn’t really help. Cell phones can’t replace things you need from development, like roads and running water.”
Ten years ago the 170,000 residents of Zinder were barely connected to the 21st century. This mid-sized town in the eastern half of Niger had sporadic access to water and electricity, a handful of basic hotels, and very few landlines. The twelve-hour, 900 km drive to Niamey, the capital of Niger, was a communications blackout, with the exception of the few cabines telephoniques along the way.
Then, in 2003 a Celtel mobile-phone tower appeared in town, and life rapidly changed. “I can get information quickly and without moving,” a wholesaler in the local market told me. Before the tower was built, he had to travel several hours to the nearest markets via a communal taxi to buy millet or meet potential customers, and he never knew whether the person he wanted to see would be there. Now he uses his mobile phone to find the best price, communicate with buyers, and place orders.
Zinder, which has since grown to some 200,000 residents, still has no ATMs or supermarkets, and many roads to surrounding villages are made of sand or compressed dirt. But it is filled with small kiosks freshly painted in the colors of the prepaid mobile phone cards they sell.
The research described in the article “Association of Viral Infection and Appendicitis” looks at the relationship between appendicitis and seasonal viral infections. The scientists reviewed 36 years of hospital discharge data and concluded there is a relationship to a flu-like virus.
The appendix is a fingerlike pouch attached to the large intestine in the lower right area of the abdomen. IMAGE: NDDIC
Fomby and Woodward collaborated with researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and the VA Medical Center in Gainesville, Florida.
Appendicitis may be triggered by a viral infection
By JENNY HOPE Daily Mail Online
A viral infection could explain why appendicitis appears more common in certain years and during the summer.
A flu-like virus could be the hidden cause of appendicitis, scientists claim.
Although one in ten of us will experience the condition — in which the appendix becomes dangerously inflamed — doctors have always been baffled by what triggers it.
A viral cause would fit in with another of the researchers’ findings — that appendicitis appears to be more common in certain years and during the summer.
The illness occurs when the appendix, a worm-like cul-de-sac connected to the colon on the right side of the body, becomes inflamed.
A perforated appendix that has swollen and burst is life-threatening because the abdomen is filled with infected material. In fact, appendicitis is the most common reason for emergency surgery.
In the latest study, researchers examined American hospital admissions for appendicitis, influenza and gastric viral infections over 36 years.
Their analysis showed appendicitis peaked in the years 1977, 1981, 1984, 1987, 1994 and 1998.
That clustering pattern suggested outbreaks were typical of viral infections.
Seasonal trends were also uncovered, showing a slight increase in the number of appendicitis cases over the summer months.
Once hunted to near-extermination, the Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf reached an important milestone recently. With a population estimated at 1,500, the wolf re-established itself in the Yellowstone National Park area, and in March 2008 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed it from protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Almost immediately, hunters began petitioning the state offices of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming for permits to hunt the wolves, perhaps down to as little as 20 percent of their current numbers in some areas. Such a weighty issue begs the questions: How much hunting is safe for a given species? How many gray wolves can die before the species loses its chance at recovery?
Gray Wolf. Credit: John & Karen Hollingsworth/USFWS
Understanding the market forces that drive these environmental decisions is a vital yet missing piece of public policy on natural resource management, says Santanu Roy, SMU professor of economics in Dedman College and 2007-08 SMU Ford Research Fellow.
An expert in dynamic economic models and microeconomic theory, Roy focuses on the economics of natural resources and the environment.
Central to Roy’s model for managing biological species is a concern about how population size and uncertainty affect the flow of benefits and costs from the harvesting of resources and what it means for conservation and extinction when resources are managed optimally over time.
“The traditional model of biological harvesting usually considers only the market value and benefits of using these resources,” he says. “But there is an increasing consciousness of the value of biodiversity, that a species might be very valuable someday because of the biodiversity it helps provide.”
The traditional view of natural resources in general, and of biological species in particular, is as an investment asset, as something speculators can own or privatize, liquidate or conserve, Roy adds.
“These simple comparisons have to be abandoned,” he says.
As an example, Roy focuses on the critically endangered blue whale. Suppose an individual gained the right to own the entire stock of blue whales in the oceans, he says.
“If the blue whale population were doubling every year, it would be worth conserving from an investment standpoint. But, at present, it is growing at only 2 percent to 5 percent a year,” Roy says. “If you take all the available blue whales now, sell them at market price, put the money in the bank and enjoy the interest for the rest of your’s and your children’s lives, that’s more money than you could make by cultivating whales forever.”
But this approach fails to consider several factors unique to species, he says.
“There are peculiar challenges that come from the biological side of the story,” Roy says. “And these challenges must become part of the equation.”
One is the possibility of what biologists call depensation, if a population becomes too small, it collapses and cannot grow anymore.
“The International Whaling Commission basically stopped all harvesting of blue whales 30 years ago,” he says, “but the population hasn’t recovered. They don’t meet each other to mate that often.”
Another factor in Roy’s model is stock dependence of cost.
“If you take $100 out of your checking account and have a party, the enjoyment you get will not depend upon how much money you have left in the bank,” he says.
“That’s not true for biological species, which become more and more costly to harvest as their populations shrink,” Roy says. This is one reason why species like the blue whale, almost paradoxically, stop losing their numbers once they are near extinction, he adds.
“If you’ve ever gone fishing,” Roy says, “you know that it’s very difficult to fish if there are very few of them.”
Conversely, if a population is large, its harvesting cost becomes small — a condition that took a toll on the American bald eagle in the past century, Roy says. Protections for the bird allowed its population to grow rapidly. The resulting easy harvesting gave hunters an incentive to drive them nearly to extinction.
“When a population increases, at some point it sharply decreases, because it becomes very economical to harvest,” he says. “These are the critical moments at which species can become extinct.”
Roy hopes his research will help steer public policy toward more intelligent management of biological issues, especially regarding extinction, he says. The U.S. government has long held “safe standards,” meaning the point at which a population is greater than a size critical to survival, as its conservation yardstick. But Roy’s work has shown that “some species may never be safe,” he says.
“The thing most lacking in public policy right now is that it doesn’t understand individual cases,” he adds. “We need to take much more of the available scientific information into account. What’s good for one species is not good for another.”
Roy, who joined SMU in 2003, earned his Ph.D. degree from Cornell University. He has published his work in the “Journal of Economic Theory” and other publications. — Kathleen Tibbetts
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The research of SMU faculty 
“That’s not true for biological species, which become more and more costly to harvest as their populations shrink,” Roy says. This is one reason why species like the blue whale, almost paradoxically, stop losing their numbers once they are near extinction, he adds.