The impact of structural adjustment programme on the economic situation in many African countries can not be overemphasised. Over more than a decade of implementing neo-liberal economic policies by the Bretton Woods institution it is of great importance to document the lessons learnt. This paper explains how the expected effect of structural adjustment policies produced unintended effects which...

Global development goals have become increasingly used by the United Nations and the international community to promote priority global objectives. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the most prominent example of such goals, but many others have been set since the 1960s. Despite their prominence and proliferation, little has been written about the concept of global goals as a policy to...

Karl Popper’s method of conjectures and refutationsis used as a framework to analyze and critique emerging construction theories. A perceived problem initiates the quest for tentative theories and error elimination as a solution. However, according to Popper, the result is a new version of the problem or an unintended consequence that creates anemergingproblem. The method of conjectures and ref...

This section covers basic topics and illustrates the technical notion of a computational effect with several mathematical and programming examples. In everyday language, a “side effect” refers to the unintended or unforeseen consequences of an action. By analogy, in order to identify the side effect of a given computation, it is first necessary to isolate the “publicly stated” or “publicly expe...

Does activist investors’ focus on short-term stock prices impede their role in improving corporate governance? This model builds on the notion that both the act of intervention and the threat of an intervention can generate value for the target firm. We demonstrate that an activist with short-termism intervenes excessively (insufficiently) when her ability to conduct a value-enhancing intervent...

A number of factors—including the fact that the banned weapons and magazines were rarely used to commit murders in this country, the limited availability of data on the weapons, other components of the Crime Control Act of 1994, and State and local initiatives implemented at the same time—posed challenges in discerning the effects of the ban. The ban appears to have had clear short-term effects...

In this paper a brief history of the Phillips curve from Fisher (1973 [1926]) to the FriedmanPhelps natural rate hypothesis is sketched. Empirical evidence from France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States during the latter half of the 20th century in support of a positive long-run relationship between inflation and unemployment is presented. In order to reconcile the predominant t...

Entertainment computing is central to the leisure activities of many Americans, with a remarkable array of choices now available to the average person. Video and computer games, in particular violent games, are especially popular, even with relatively young children. With this popularity, concern has been raised about possible unintended consequences of participation in interactive violence. De...

We study the impact of a merit-based incentive payment system on provider behavior in the primary care setting using experimental methods that leverage healthcare simulations with patient actors. Our approach allows us to exogenously change a provider’s incentives and to directly measure the consequences of alternative payment systems. Within our sample, we find that merit-based incentive payme...

In an experiment in non-formal schools in Indian slums, a reward scheme for attending a target number of school days increased average attendance when the scheme was in place, but had heterogeneous effects after it was removed. Among students with high baseline attendance, the incentive had no effect on attendance after it was discontinued, and test scores were unaffected. Among students with l...