The timing and the frequency of punishment are critical elements in law enforcement. Previous studies suggest the superiority of immediate punishment schemes over delayed punishment, as well as the importance of frequent punishment. Yet law enforcement schemes which utilize both frequent and immediate punishment may be cost prohibitive in real settings. In this work, we propose the “bad lottery...

In this article we propose a model-free diagnostic for single-peakedness (unimodality) of item responses. Presuming a unidimensional unfolding scale and a given item ordering, we approximate item response functions of all items based on ordered conditional means (OCM). The proposed OCM methodology is based on Thurstone & Chave's (1929) criterion of irrelevance, which is a graphical, exploratory...

The extraordinary (unplanned) review of clinical privileges is the means by which an organisation can manage specific complaints about individual practitioners' clinical competence that require immediate investigation. To date, the extraordinary review of clinical privileges for doctors and dentists has not been the subject of much research and there is a pressing need for the evaluation and re...

Punishment can stabilize costly cooperation and ensure the success of a common project that is threatened by free-riders. Punishment mechanisms can be classified into pool punishment, where the punishment act is carried out by a paid third party, (e.g. a police system or a sheriff), and peer punishment, where the punishment act is carried out by peers. Which punishment mechanism is preferred wh...

While peer punishment sometimes motivates increased cooperation, it sometimes reduces cooperation. We use a lab experiment to study why punishment sometimes fails. We begin with a gift exchange game with punishment as it has typically been implemented therein since punishment has often backfired in this game. We modify two features of punishment that could increase its efficacy: punishment’s st...

The use of the word “eternal” in the title of Richard Horton's piece “Occupied Palestine, an eternal alliance for health” (March 30, p 1084)1 is apt. It fits with his evangelical intentions “to put science in the service of social justice and selfdetermination.”2 However, Horton omits important data, leading to the spurious conclusion that President Obama, by disappointing the Palestinians, is ...