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In this experiment, we manipulate corporate political connections to assess whether a company's political influence serves as a barrier or an inducement to investment. We utilize survey data from 3329 firm employees and managers across Venezuela, Ukraine, and Egypt. Overall, our findings suggest that respondents generally prefer not to invest in companies with political connections. Interestingly, this aversion is conditional on the respondent's company's own level of political connection: individuals from highly connected companies do not penalize connected companies as investment choices. In contrast, those from less-connected companies are inclined to invest in companies without political connections. We theorize that this pattern is rooted in differences in how companies with varying levels of connections manage liabilities. Our data reveal that connected companies are more likely to employ informal, rather than formal, mechanisms to resolve disputes. We argue that unconnected investors likely prefer investing in unconnected companies to better ensure that their property rights are safeguarded.

If one believes press reports, the misuse of computers is rampant. The same the many other misuses have gone unreported as a result of the embarrassment and loss of image/integrity of those affected (as victims) and the belief that to expose misuses will lead to further problems and expense, as well as encourage copy-cat crimes. Much of the press coverage of computer misuse has centered on the younger members of computing community using inexpensive personal computer systems. The placement of powerful tools into the hands of adolescents without imposing the appropriate control would appear to be a contributing factor to their unfettered use of computers and communications systems. Such usage ranges from benign exploration of the powers of computational and communication systems, through the malicious use of those devices for personal aggrandisement, to the use of computers for distinctly criminal activities. At present there are no technological or ethical barriers that separate the explorer from the criminal; possibly the prospect of being able to perform more and more complex projects can innocently lead the benign learner into improper activities. Conversely the blame for breaches of security and the infiltration of personal, private systems, is sometimes placed on the backs of the owners of those systems for maintaining an attractive nuisance. Concern must also be expressed about the community-developing attractive nuisances of bulletin boards (BBS's), many of which are benign, but too many of which are used to extend the fringe area of illegality in exchanging pirated software, providing message systems for immoral or illegal purposes, and revealing cracks in governmental and commercial security.

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Cambridge University Press via the DOI in this record ; Data availability statement: Data replication sets are available at https://dataverse.harvard.ed/atavers/JPolS ; Studies of the American public demonstrate that partisans often diverge not only on questions of opinion but also on matters of fact. However, little is known about partisan divergence in factual beliefs among the government officials who make real policy decisions, or how it compares to belief polarization among the public. This letter describes the first systematic comparison of factual belief polarization between the public and government officials, which we conducted using a paired survey approach. The results indicate that political elites are consistently more accurately informed than the public across a wide range of politically contentious facts. However, this increase in accuracy does not translate into reduced factual belief polarization. These findings demonstrate that a more informed political elite does not necessarily mitigate partisan factual disagreement in policy making. ; European Union Horizon 2020 ; Stanford University, Laboratory for the Study of American Values

AbstractIn this paper marginal investment costs are assumed known for two kinds of equipment stocks employed to supply telecommunications services: trunks and switching facilities. A network hierarchy is defined which includes important cases occurring in the field and also appearing in the literature. A different use of the classical concept of the marginal capacity of an additional trunk at prescribed blocking probability leads to a linear programming supply model which can be used to compute the sizes of all the high usage trunk groups. The sizes of the remaining trunk groups are approximated by the linear programming models, but can be determined more accurately by alternate methods once all high usage group sizes are computed. The approach applies to larger scale networks than previously reported in the literature and permits direct application of the duality theory of linear programming and its sensitivity analyses to the study and design of switched probabilistic communications networks with multiple busy hours during the day. Numerical results are presented for two examples based on field data, one of which having been designed by the multi‐hour engineering method.