Two recent evaluation studies undertaken for the European Commission, related to the LEADER Community Initiative implemented throughout the 1990s, have provided the basis for the issues discussed in this article. This programme was set up to encourage pilot experiences in the promotion of rural development in the problem areas of Europe, by introducing a set of distinctive features emphasizing ...

In an endemic area of North-East Brazil (the town of Picos, State of Piauí), a nongovernmental organization (NGO) supported the activity against leprosy in connection with governmental health organizations and local agents. The indicators of leprosy elimination were compared over time (within Picos) and across space (Picos versus Piauí). The case detection rate, above 8 per 10,000 people in the...

Science is an international effort, receiving contributions from researchers across the globe. The capacity of a country or region to generate and publish quality research varies greatly according location examined. Among factors that dictate quantity scientific are availability infrastructure human resources, traditions related endeavors, and, most significantly, local governmental support for...

Evidence that some executed prisoners suffered excruciating pain has reinvigorated the ethical debate about physician participation in executions. In widely publicized litigation, death row inmates argue that participation of anesthesiologists in their execution is constitutionally required to minimize the risk of unnecessary suffering. For many years, commentators supported the ethical ban on ...

In social dilemmas punishment costs resources, not just from the one who is punished but often also from the punisher and society. Reciprocity on the other side is known to lead to cooperation without the costs of punishment. The questions at hand are whether punishment brings advantages besides its costs, and how its negative side-effects can be reduced to a minimum in an environment populated...

Although the law generally does not permit an individual to profit by his own wrongdoing, that equitable principle may be inapplicable in the case of an individual who has been adjudicated insane (and therefore has not committed a wrong in the eyes of the law). This paper discusses three unusual legacies of a determination of insanity: the inheritance cases (permitting the insane killer to inhe...

Experiments have shown that punishment enhances socially beneficial cooperation but that the costs of punishment outweigh the gains from cooperation. This challenges evolutionary models of altruistic cooperation and punishment, which predict that punishment will be beneficial. We compared 10- and 50-period cooperation experiments. With the longer time horizon, punishment is unambiguously benefi...

It is a commonly held intuition that increasing punishment leads to less crime. Let's move our glance from the punishment for the crime itself to the punishment for the attempt to commit a crime, or to the punishment for the threat to carry it out. We'll argue that the greater the punishment for the attempt to rob, i.e. for the threat, “give me your money or else...”, the greater the number of ...

Software piracy has become a global problem that hinders the development of software industry. Therefore, it is important to understand the underlying mechanisms that drive users’ software piracy behavior. Previous literature on this issue heavily relied on the general deterrence theory (GDT) suggesting that two key punishment perceptions namely punishment severity and punishment certainty dete...