Search

The economic consequences of limits on political donations depend on the degree of political competition. Donors, who are ideologically aligned with candidates, decide how much to contribute to their own candidate. They may benefit from rent-seeking by their own candidate but dislike rent-seeking by the opposition. Increased rent-seeking by politicians thus generates campaign contributions for themselves but also mobilizes donations to the opposing candidate, potentially to a greater extent. This latter effect acts as a deterrent to rent-seeking when contributions finance electoral campaigns and positively affect election chances. When political competition is low, incumbent donors outnumber opposition donors and limits reduce rent-seeking. When political competition is high, donors are equalized and laissez-faire reduces rent-seeking. Consistent with these hypotheses, data from the US states suggest that limits are associated with better policies and stronger growth performance at low levels of political competition, whilst laissez-faire is preferred when political competition is high.

In this paper, electoral and partisan effects in inflation are identified for 18 OECD countries via regression analysis, building on the work of Alesina, Cohen and Roubini. The correlation of the size of these effects across countries with the level of central bank independence is investigated; the results suggest a negative correlation.

The efficient satisfaction of constraints is essential to the performance of constraint-based user interfaces. In the past, most constraint-based user interfaces have used one-way rather than multi-way constraints because of a widespread belief that one-way constraints were more efficient. In this paper we argue that many user interface construction problems are handled more naturally and elegantly by multi-way constraints than by one-way constraints. We present pseudocode for an incremental multi-way constraint satisfaction algorithm, DeltaBlue, and describe experience in using the algorithm in two user interface toolkits. Finally, we provide performance figures demonstrating that multi-way constraint solvers can be entirely competitive in performance with one-way constraint solvers.

SUMMARY The oxidation of methyl linoleate catalyzed by various salts of cobalt was studied in a model system based on microcrystalline cellulose. The freeze-dried model system was adjusted to various water activities, and the effect of water on the oxidation kinetics was determined using manometric measurements and measurements of diene conjugation. It was found that water had an inhibitory effect on the metal-catalyzed oxidation of the fatty ester, as well as on oxidation in the absence of added metals. The kinetics of the reactions were evaluated in terms of the previously established hydroperoxide decomposition mechanisms. The effect of water on the metal-catalyzed oxidation was found to exist in the monomolecular decomposition period as well as in the more rapid phase of the reaction, during which the hydroperoxide decomposition is known to follow bimolecular decomposition kinetics. The inhibition of the reaction by water is interpreted as due to deactivation of added, as well as of originally present, metal catalysts by hydration of the coordination shells; and also possibly as due to hydrogen bonding between hydroperoxides and water, and therefore to interference with the normal bimolecular decomposition reaction.