We propose that people may gain certain "offensive" and "defensive" advantages for their cherished belief systems (e.g., religious and political views) by including aspects of unfalsifiability in those belief systems, such that some aspects of the beliefs cannot be tested empirically and conclusively refuted. This may seem peculiar, irrational, or at least undesirable to many people because it ...

One key function of political leadership is to facilitate coordinated action by “followers.” The need to fulfill this function can affect leaders’ strategic incentives to depict the political world in one way as opposed to another when choosing political communications. This paper describes a laboratory experiment that was conducted to explore the effects of a leader’s communications on followe...

Stewardship is not a new concept for public policy, but has not been used to its optimum by the health policy-makers. Although it is being practiced in most successful models of health system, but the onus to this function is still due till date. Lately, few experts in World Health Organization (WHO) have realized its importance and have been raising the issue at different platforms to pursue t...

We study the political economy of social insurance with double heterogeneity of voters (i.e., different income and risk levels). Social insurance is financed through distortionary taxation and redistributes across income and risks. Individuals vote over the extent of social insurance, which they can complement on the private market. Private insurance suffers from adverse selection which results...

This paper investigates the behaviour of Indian aggregate imports during the period 1971-1995. In our empirical analysis of the aggregate import demand function for India, cointegration and error correction modelling approaches have been used. In the aggregate import demand function for India, import volume is found to be cointegrated with relative import price and real GDP. Our econometric est...

Does government stability shift the way White and Black Americans represent and make voting decisions about political candidates? Participants judged how representative lightened, darkened, and unaltered photographs were of a racially ambiguous candidate ostensibly running for political office (Studies 1-3). When the governmental system was presented as stable, White participants who shared (vs...

D political connections buffer firms from or bind firms to the government? To examine this theoretical puzzle, we distinguish two types of managerial political connections, ascribed and achieved, and theorize that these different types of ties either buffer firms from or bind firms to government demands. Furthermore, we propose that these effects are contingent on both industrial and regional i...

The subject matter of this paper is an investigation of factors affecting the women s' presence in politics (aged 20-40 years) in 2015 (Case study: City of Sanandaj). Political participation is regarded as one of the major development indices. If the political development is considered as meaning "expansion of participation and competition of social groups in the political life", one of its pre...