The political autonomy of Chinese provinces derives from their economic independence. After the 2008 economic crisis, budget deficits increased significantly in most Chinese provinces, making them more reliant on financial support from Beijing. Provinces suffering high deficits will lose their political clout in both local and national politics. Therefore, provinces with large deficits tend to be less resistant to the enforcement of the law of avoidance and underrepresented in the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. We find that in provincial standing committees, the members who are native or have more birthplace ties are more likely to be ranked behind the outsiders, especially so in provinces with a high level of deficits. We also find that provincial-standing-committee members from high-deficit provinces have a low possibility to obtain seats in the party's Central Committee. These findings confirm the close relationship between economic independence and political autonomy of Chinese provinces. In addition, we find that the logic of economic independence cannot depict the whole picture and that regional pluralism is also an important concern when the party manages its provincial leadership teams.

What are the effects of fiscal imbalances, and austerity, on regional-level spending? To answer this question, we examine an original dataset of yearly spending decisions of regional governments in Italy and Spain between 2003 and 2015. We find that the rise in regional deficits has an important negative effect on regional governments’ spending. The strength of this effect is, however, mitigated by the presence of a left-wing party in regional office. In addition, we uncover an important variation in the extent of cutbacks across policy sectors: regional governments tend to protect the health sector and focus their retrenchment efforts on social assistance and running of public institutions. Partisanship matters here too, as left-wing parties tend to protect healthcare more than their right-wing rivals. These findings bear relevance for understanding the role of partisanship and policy sector in the process of public retrenchment in multi-level states.

This study seeks to determine the effectiveness of the active labour-market policies (ALMPs) of employment-oriented welfare states contribute to the financial soundness of welfare states. Even if they are insignificant, overall, the results show that ALMPs lead to higher employment rate and sounder public finances as could be expected by the central idea of employment-oriented welfare states. However, extending ALMPs does not always create a virtuous circle among government interventions, employment rate and fiscal soundness. That is, the results for employment and public finances depend on how the government intervenes in the labour market. We argue that the critical point goal should be to improve employability, not just to increase the employment rate.

Sinistrality, characterized by an excess of non-right-handedness, has been reported in schizophrenic patients, but the findings are controversial.

As no genetic study has been made in deficit patients, characterized by enduring and primary negative symptoms, the aim of the study was to test the involvement of a familial factor in deficit syndrome. The results in 71 schizophrenic patients showed less familial factors but a greater weight in heritage of schizophrenia in deficit than in nondeficit patients.

The authors study the frequency of primary enduring negative symptoms in first-admission patients with schizophrenic and non-schizophrenic disorders. Carpenter's criteria for distinguishing the primary, enduring negative symptoms from the more transient negative symptoms (secondary to different factors) were applied. Furthermore, they compare negative symptom complexes between first-admission patients and patients with recurrent hospitalizations (within 5 years after first admission). There was a trend for patients with recurrent admissions to show more frequently a deficit syndrome than first-admission patients. Nevertheless, this difference was not significant (χ2 = 0.90). First-admission patients with deficit syndrome had significantly higher affective blunting (P < 0.05) and anhedonia (P < 0.001) than those with recurrent admissions. First-admission subjects with psychotic disorders had significantly higher frequency of deficit syndrome than those first-admission patients with non-psychotic disorders (P < 0.05). These results show that negative symptoms observed in first-admitted non-schizophrenic patients can also be enduring and primary. Thereby this work does not contribute to support the specificity of primary enduring negative symptoms for schizophrenia. Moreover, data suggest, that primary anhedonia and affective blunting can decrease within the first 5 years after discharge.

The objective of this analysis was to identify the production practices used by farmers to change seasonal production. Production practices included milk production per cow, proportion of cows milking, number of first lactation animals entering the herd, number of cows leaving the herd, number of days to first breeding, and calves born. Farms that participated in a seasonal pricing plan during 1993, 1994, and 1995 decreased production practice seasonality in response to price premiums, which caused a decrease in production seasonality compared to nonparticipating farms. Participating farms showed a preference for adjusting entering first lactation animals and number of calves born, but did make adjustments in other practices as well.

In this paper, we look for long-run and short-run effects of fiscal deficits on economic growth in an endogenous growth model with productive public spending that may be financed by public deficit and debt. The model shows a multiplicity of long-run balanced growth paths (a high-growth and a low-growth steady state) and a possible indeterminacy of the transition path, which may be consistent with the empirical literature, which exhibits strong nonlinear responses of economic growth to fiscal deficits. Starting from the high-growth steady state, a positive impulse in the deficit ratio exerts an adverse effect on economic growth in the long run, after an initial rise. Starting from the low-growth steady state, the situation may be radically undetermined, and the effect of fiscal deficit impulses is subjected to “optimistic” or “pessimistic” views on public-debt sustainability.

In a very interesting endogenous growth model, Futagami, Iwaisako, and Ohdoi [Macroeconomic Dynamics 12 (2008), 445–462] study the long-run growth effect of borrowing for public investment. Their model exhibits (i) the multiplicity of balanced growth paths (BGPs) in the long run (two steady states) and (ii) a possible indeterminacy of the transition path to the high-growth BGP. The goal of this note is to show that their results depend on a sharp assumption, namely the definition of the public debt target as a ratio to private capital. If the target is defined in terms of public debt–to–GDP ratio, both results vanish: the model exhibits a unique BGP (no multiplicity) and the adjustment path to this unique equilibrium is determinate (no indeterminacy).

The relationship between the MMSE as a measure of cognitive deficit and two procedures for assessing medical-legal competence is explored. The findings on 60 patients assessed for financial capacity by a multidisciplinary panel, and 41 published cases assessed using the HCAT for capacity to consent to treatment are analysed using logistic regression and ROC curves based on the binary outcome capable/incapable. Cognitive deficit is not a good indicator of the results for mental capacity obtained either by the multidisciplinary panel or the HCAT. The relationship between cognitive deficits and procedures for the allocation of decisional authority is unclear. Some discussion is given to account for this discrepancy.

Dans cet article, nous proposons un modèle théorique simple dans lequel l'impact du déficit budgétaire sur les dépenses publiques d'investissement dépend du niveau de dette publique (en pourcentage du PIB). Lorsque la dette publique est faible, l'impact du déficit est positif, car la charge de la dette peut être absorbée par une diminution des dépenses de consommation. Lorsque la dette est très élevée, en revanche, il n'est plus possible de réduire les dépenses de consommation, et l'ajustement s'opère par les dépenses d'investissement, de sorte que la relation entre déficit et dépenses publiques d'investissement devient négative. Une analyse empirique menée dans un modèle économétrique avec effets de seuil en panel sur 22 pays de l'OCDE vient confirmer cette non linéarité.

In field conditions in South Australia hatching of eggs of Ectropis excursaria showed a morning and an afternoon peak. In the laboratory, hatching coincided with “lights-on” stimulus at 20°C, 10:14 and 12:12 L:D. Increase or decrease of temperature by 5°C shifted the start of hatching to late scotophase while increasing photoperiod shifted a substantial proportion of hatching to later in photophase. Survival of first instars was linearly related to saturation-deficit of the atmosphere.

A l’examen des items de l’échelle de ralentissement dépressif (ERD) de Widlocher et de ceux de l’échelle d’évaluation de la symptomatologie négative d’Andreasen (SANS), il apparaît une communauté symptomatologique entre syndrome déficitaire et ralentissement dépressif, ce qui a amené les auteurs á faire l’hypothése suivante: la note globale de la SANS peut être une mesure du ralentissement dépressif. Effectuée sur une population de 33 patients diagnostiqués épisode dépressif majeur, DSM III, cette étude a permis de montrer que la note globale de la SANS était corrélée a l’intensité du syndrome dépressif et que cette corrélation se faisait préférentiellement avec la composante ralentissement du syndrome dépressif (mesuré par l’ERD et par les items de l’échelle de mélancolie de Bech et Rafaelsen). Par ailleurs, la note globale de l’ERD était plus fortement corrélée a la SANS qu’aux autres échelles de dépression utilisées dans cette étude (échelle de dépression d’Hamilton á 26 items, échelle de dépression de Montgomery-Asberg). La note globale de la SANS pourrait donc être considerée comme une mesure du ralentissement dépressif.