Sendai five years on: reflections on the role of international law in the creation and reduction of disaster risk

This article offers a critical examination of the position of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 within international law. It is argued that any interrogation into the role of international law must begin not with existing disaster risk reduction (DRR) laws and policies, but rather with an enquiry into the nature of disaster risk and the role of international law in its creation and reduction. It is demonstrated how, while areas such as international human rights law can be utilized to enforce obligations in support of DRR, other areas – in particular international investment law – actively work to undermine DRR efforts. In order for international law to be a productive tool in the reduction of disaster risk international lawyers must engage with critical work in disaster studies in order to explore the role that the former has played – and can play – in creating and addressing hazards, vulnerabilities and capacities

What Determines Trust? Human Capital vs. Social Institutions: Evidence from Manila and Moscow

It is now well established that highly developed countries tend to score well on measures of social capital and have higher levels of generalized trust. In turn, the willingness to trust has been shown to be correlated with various social and environmental factors (e.g. institutions, culture) on one hand, and accumulated human capital on the other. To what extent is an individual's trust driven by contemporaneous institutions and environmental conditions and to what extent is it determined by the individual's human capital? We collect data from students in Moscow and Manila and use the variation in their height and gender to instrument for measures of their human capital to identify the causal effect of the latter on trust. We find that human capital positively affects the propensity to trust, and its contribution appears larger than the combined effect of other omitted variables including, plausibly, social and environmental factors

The Co-evolution of Institutions and Technology

We propose a model of growth driven by the co-evolution of institutions and technology. To be consistent with Douglass North (1990, 1991, 1994), institutions are defined as a type of collective knowledge about a specific environment that can prescribe how to adapt general technology before the latter can be actually used. Institutions, then, are treated as a factor in the innovation process, and as such can be purposely accumulated. The simultaneous accumulation of institutions and technology are modeled as an evolutionary game whereby boundedly-rational .rms choose how much to allocate to ‘institutional spending’ vis-a-vis research expenditures, in anticipation of changes in monopoly pro.ts from technological innovation. Using Taylor and Jonker’s (1978) Replicator Dynamics to describe the evolution of such strategies, we are able to show how this transition process converges to the steady state model of Romer (1990).endogenous growth, institutions, technological change

The International Legal System, Cases and Materials, 8th ed.

From the Publisher The world of international law is expanding and changing at an accelerated pace. The International Legal System, 8th Edition captures the critical developments for law students as they prepare for the global legal marketplace.Important additions to the new edition include an entirely new chapter, Humanitarian Emergency, Health and Migration Law and a thoroughly revised International Economic Law chapter with extensive new material on trade, investment, and development. Materials on Russia\u27s 2022 invasion of Ukraine have been added, as well as material on cryptocurrencies, and updates to the discussion on climate change and other global environmental concerns.Professor Diane Desierto has joined the book, bringing her expertise on international economic law, human rights, and dispute resolution. Together, the book\u27s four authors have extensive knowledge and experience of five continents, making The International Legal System, 8th Edition the most international of all available international law casebooks. The book also retains its enduring strength: Investigating the interlinkages of international, national, and regional law.https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_books/1430/thumbnail.jp

The International Legal System, Cases and Materials, 8th ed.

From the Publisher The world of international law is expanding and changing at an accelerated pace. The International Legal System, 8th Edition captures the critical developments for law students as they prepare for the global legal marketplace.Important additions to the new edition include an entirely new chapter, Humanitarian Emergency, Health and Migration Law and a thoroughly revised International Economic Law chapter with extensive new material on trade, investment, and development. Materials on Russia\u27s 2022 invasion of Ukraine have been added, as well as material on cryptocurrencies, and updates to the discussion on climate change and other global environmental concerns.Professor Diane Desierto has joined the book, bringing her expertise on international economic law, human rights, and dispute resolution. Together, the book\u27s four authors have extensive knowledge and experience of five continents, making The International Legal System, 8th Edition the most international of all available international law casebooks. The book also retains its enduring strength: Investigating the interlinkages of international, national, and regional law.https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_books/1430/thumbnail.jp

PPAR antagonist attenuates mouse immune-mediated bone marrow failure by inhibition of T cell function

Acquired aplastic anemia is an immune-mediated disease, in which T cells target hematopoietic cells; at presentation, the bone marrow is replaced by fat. It was reported that bone marrow adipocytes were negative regulators of hematopoietic microenvironment. To examine the role of adipocytes in bone marrow failure, we investigated peroxisomal proliferator-activated receptor gamma, a key transcription factor in adipogenesis, utilizing an antagonist of this factor called bisphenol-A-diglycidyl-ether. While bisphenol-A-diglycidyl-ether inhibited adipogenesis as expected, it also suppressed T cell infiltration of bone marrow, reduced plasma inflammatory cytokines, decreased expression of multiple inflammasome genes, and ameliorated marrow failure. In vitro, bisphenol-A-diglycidyl-ether suppressed activation and proliferation, and reduced phospholipase C gamma 1 and nuclear factor of activated T-cells 1 expression, as well as inhibiting calcium flux in T cells. The in vivo effect of bisphenol-A-diglycidyl-ether on T cells was confirmed in a second immune-mediated bone marrow failure model, using different strains and non-major histocompatibility antigen mismatched: bisphenol-A-diglycidyl-ether ameliorated marrow failure by inhibition of T cell infiltration of bone marrow. Our data indicate that peroxisomal proliferator-activated receptor gamma antagonists may attenuate murine immune-mediated bone marrow failure, at least in part, by suppression of T cell activation, which might hold implications in the application of peroxisomal proliferator-activated receptor gamma antagonists in immune-mediated pathophysiologies, both in the laboratory and in the clinic. Genetically “fatless” mice developed bone marrow failure with accumulation of marrow adipocytes in our model, even in the absence of body fat, suggesting different mechanisms of systematic and marrow adipogenesis and physiologic versus pathophysiologic fat accumulation

Is It Worth Taxing Pirated Products? The Case of Optical Media Discs in the Philippines

This paper questions the conventional argument that the existence of a black market provides negative externalities in the form of foregone tax revenues that could otherwise be used to increase social welfare. It is not enough to estimate the size of the black market, one should also show how much of this can be eradicated, and how much of what is eradicated can be replaced by legitimate (taxable) goods, and how much of what is replaced can generate actual tax revenue. When all these are taken into account, the actual tax loss from piracy may be trivial. We illustrate this point using time-series data on optical media disc piracy in the Philippines. (c) 2010 The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.