This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. There has been widespread adoption of new laws to support new...

A low molecular mas (18 kD) phosphoprotein (pp18) was characterized and purified from cultured sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum 1.) cell line H50-7209. Autophosphorylation assays were used to detect pp18 after separation by sodium dodecyl sulfatepolyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PACE). Only pp18 was detected by a brief in situ phosphorylation method, whereas additional putative protein ki...

This paper analyzes how US presidential candidates should allocate resources across states to maximize the probability of winning the election, by developing and estimating a probabilisticvoting model of political competition under the Electoral College system. Actual campaigns act in close agreement with the model. There is a 0.9 correlation between equilibrium and actual presidential campaign...

Previous studies have found large negative e¤ects of direct democracies on government spending. Since they do not control for preference heterogeneity, these estimates su¤er from omitted variable bias. If citizens in areas with stronger direct democracy have lower tastes for government, the restraining e¤ect of institutions is overstated. Exploiting a unique dataset in Switzerland, we demonstra...

We look at the consequences of allowing social insurance to be voluntary when its coverage can be supplemented in the market. Social insurance pools risks and social contributions are increasing in income, while the market is affected by adverse selection. We claim that making social insurance voluntary does not lead to its collapse since there are always individuals either benefiting from redi...

Based on a panel of 24 OECD countries this present paper shows that the total government sector is contracted by Baumol’s cost disease. The most affected government services are education and healthcare. Furthermore, this paper shows that Baumol’s cost disease produces adverse consequences under a balanced budget rule such as a debt brake, which is a key element of the EU Fiscal Compact. Govern...

Imidazole, pyrazole, 1,2,3-triazole-, 1,2,4-triazole-, and tetrazole-based energetic materials are theoretically investigated by employing density functional theory (DFT). Heats of formation (ΔfH(0)'s) for the studied compounds (298 K) in the gas phase are determined at the B3P86/6-311G (d, p) theory level through isodesmic reactions. The bond dissociation energies (BDEs) corresponding to NO2, ...

The ab initio crystal density, bond topological and explosive properties of the energetic molecule 2-methyl-5-nitraminotetrazole (MNAT) have been calculated by the MOLPAK/PMIN software and the AIM theory. The density predicted from the crystal structure simulation almost matches the experimental density. The geometrical parameters of the molecule lifted from the crystal structure are in very cl...

The cost of public investment is not the value of public capital. Unlike with private investors, there is no plausible behavioral model in which every dollar that the public sector spends as “investment” creates capital in an economic sense. While this simple analytic point is obvious, it has so far been uniformly ignored in the empirical literature on economic growth which uses, at best, cumul...

A difficulty of studying damped Lyα systems is that they are distant, so one knows little about the interstellar medium of the galaxy. Here we report upon a damped Lyα system in the nearby galaxy NGC 4203, which is so close (vhelio = 1117 km s ) and bright (Bo = 11.62) that its H I disk has been mapped. The absorption lines are detected against Ton 1480, which lies only 1.9 (12 h50 kpc) from th...