This study attempts to ascertain whether particular structural arrangements and demographic features of a community were responsible for especially severe disturbances during the 1960s. Preliminary to addressing this question, consideration is given to the manner of measuring severity and to the volatile components of this phenomenon. With respect to the latter, it is found that (1) disorder se...

Even efficient financial markets may break down under periods of prolonged stress, especially when the ramification an event is unclear. Political violence such event, sending immediate signals about possible impact on firm valuations but unclear information future viability existing institutions. This paper examines effect political in 19th century Russia its stock market; using a battery unit...

All of us know where we were on September 11, 2001. I was in the operating room at our university hospital at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in disbelief of the events in New York City, the Pentagon, and aboard Flight 93 over southwestern Pennsylvania. Similarly, I will never forget November 22, 1963: I was a 10-year-old in school in a small, rural North Dakota town when Pr...

Ever since President Bush introduced his ‘Road Map’ for a permanent solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in April 2003, a great deal of public attention has focused on its demand for a reformed Palestinian Authority (PA) to confront aggressively radical Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad who violently oppose a two-state solution to the conflict. One of the major obstacle...

One of the book's strengths is to discuss less-cited examples: the Shah of Persia, for instance, whose plans to modernize his country foundered with his leukaemia, concealed from all except the French secret service (was this why France supported the Ayatollah Khomeini?); or Ferdinand Marcos, whose systemic lupus erythematosus and renal failure led to a repressive regime largely dominated by hi...