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Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of illustrations -- List of contributors -- Acknowledgments -- List of abbreviations -- Understanding the governance of international organizations -- Understanding IOs -- Our approach -- Understanding players -- The contributions in this volume -- 1. The World Trade Organization as an institution -- Status of the WTO -- Membership of the WTO -- Structure of the WTO -- Structure of the WTO Secretariat -- Secretariat staff -- Selection of the Director-General -- Organizational issues raised by expanding WTO membership -- Appellate Body and secretariat -- History and culture: from GATT to WTO -- The WTO from 1995 to 2013 -- Interaction between main groups of players -- Decision making -- What fears/expectations have been raised? Have these materialized? -- Conclusion: an organization that needs rebalancing? -- 1.2. Weak organization, strong institution: Comment -- Strong institution? -- 2. Reform at the World Bank -- Opening up the Bank -- Structural adjustment lending and economic policy reform -- The Wapenhans Report and project quality -- The Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative -- IDA grants -- Decentralization -- Conclusion -- 2.1. The World Bank: Comment -- 2.2. The World Bank-plus ça change?: Comment -- 3. Governance at work at the International Monetary Fund -- Governance structure -- Effectiveness: the IMF's hallmark -- Vote and voice: the quest for increased legitimacy -- Consensus building and ownership: why they matter -- Ministerial engagement increasingly indispensible -- Strategic oversight and accountability -- Conclusion: governance reform-too slow, too incremental? -- 3.1. IMF governance and decision-making processes: Comment -- Obligations of IMF members -- Ownership is vital -- Concerns about legitimacy reduce the IMF's effectiveness.

China's One-Child per couple policy (OCP) has created a generation of one-child families, and these parents are now getting old. How do they live? This study examined the well-being of this cohort with four indicators: subjective (life satisfaction), mental (depression), physical (health), and psychological well-being (positive psychological functioning). Data were collected from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), and parents aged 60 and above were included. We examined the well-being of one-child older adults compared with those having multiple children across age groups and investigated the effects of children support and rural-urban difference. Compared with those with multiple children, one-child older adults were not at a disadvantage. They were significantly better in mental and physical well-being, with no difference in subjective or psychological well-being. One-child parents had a more stable pattern of subjective and mental well-being across age groups (60–64, 65–69, 70+). Among the three types of support, emotional support significantly predicted psychological well-being. Furthermore, urban older adults, of whom the majority were one-child parents, valued much more emotional support than their peers in rural areas. The findings suggest that the generation of Chinese older adults affected by the OCP live fairly well, and the parental status may shift older adults' focus on filial piety expectations.

The olfactory response of fire ants to plant leaves, mealybugs and the honeydew excreted by mealybugs was tested with a Y-tube olfactometer. The foraging activities of fire ants on three plants were also measured. Our results showed that plant leaves and mealybugs alone had no significant attraction to the fire ant workers, while fire ants could be obviously attracted by honeydew. The selection rate of fire ants on honeydew of Hibiscus rosa-sinensis, cotton (Gossypium spp.) and tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) was 60.22%, 57.45% and 64.29% respectively. When mealybugs were present on plants, fire ant workers foraged more frequently on the plants than controls (P<0.05). As to different plants, fire ants preferred foraging on tomato (66.3 per plant) to Hibiscus rosa-sinensis (50.4 per plant) and cotton (45.1 per plant). However, there was no significant difference in foraging frequency of fire ants on the three kinds of plant, with 24.9, 22.9 and 32.3 ants foraging per five minutes respectively.

Government policies that impose restrictions on the size of large establishments or firms, or promote small ones, are widespread across countries. In this paper, we develop a framework to systematically study policies of this class. We study a simple growth model with an endogenous size distribution of production units. We parameterize this model to account for the size distribution of establishments and for the large share of employment in large establishments. Then, we ask: quantitatively, how costly are policies that distort the size of production units? What is the impact of these policies on productivity measures, the equilibrium number of establishments and their size distribution? We find that these effects are potentially large: policies that reduce the average size of establishments by 20% lead to reductions in output and output per establishment up to 8.1% and 25.6% respectively, as well as large increases in the number of establishments (23.5%). ; Publicado

Government policies that impose restrictions on the size of large establishments or firms, or promote small ones, are widespread across countries. In this paper, we develop a framework to systematically study policies of this class. We study a simple growth model with an endogenous size distribution of production units. We parameterize this model to account for the size distribution of establishments and for the (observed) large share of employment in large establishments. Then, we ask: quantitatively, how costly are policies that distort the size of production units? What is the impact of these policies on productivity measures, the equilibrium number of establishments and their size distribution? We find that these effects are potentially large: policies that reduce the average size of establishments by 20% lead to reductions in output and output per establishment up to 8.1% and 25.6% respectively, as well as large increases in the number of establishments (23.5%).

Paper presented at Technical Symposium held at the Stern School Of Business, New York University ; We develop a simple framework to address government policies that restrict the size of establishments in a particular sector. The economy we study is a two-sector extension of the span-of-control model of Lucas [Lucas, R.E., 1978. On the size distribution of business firms. Bell Journal 9, 508–523]. In the model, production requires a managerial input, and individuals sort themselves into managers and workers. Since managers are heterogeneous in terms of their ability, establishments of different sizes coexist in equilibrium in each sector. We then study government policies that aim to change the size distribution of establishments in a given sector, such as Japan's Large Scale Retail Location Law. How costly are these policies? What is their impact on productivity, the number and size distribution of establishments? We find that these effects are potentially large. ; Publicado

International Organizations (IOs) are vital institutions in world politics in which cross-border issues can be discussed and global problems managed. This path-breaking book shows the efforts that small states have made to participate more fully in IO activities. It draws attention to the challenges created by widened participation in IOs and develops an original model of the dilemmas that both IOs and small states face as the norms of sovereign equality and the right to develop coincide. Drawing on extensive qualitative data, including more than 80 interviews conducted for this book, the authors find that the strategies which both IOs and small states adopt to balance their respective dilemmas can explain both continuity and change in their interactions with institutions ranging from UN agencies to the World Trade Organization