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From animal rights to anti-abortion, from tax resistance to anti-poverty, activists from across the political spectrum often deliberately break the law to further their causes. While not behaviors common to hardened or self-seeking criminals, the staging of civil disobedience, non-violent resistance, and direct action can nevertheless trigger a harsh response from law enforcement, with those arrested risking jail time and criminal records. Crimes of Dissent features the voices of these activists, presenting a fascinating insider’s look at the motivations, costs and consequences of deliberately violating the law as a strategy of social change.Crimes of Dissent provides readers with an in-depth understanding of why activists break the law, and what happens to them when they do. Using dynamic examples, both historic and recent, Jarret Lovell explores how seasoned protesters are handled and treated by the criminal justice system, shedding light on the intersection between the political and the criminal. By adopting the unique vantage of the street-level activist, Crimes of Dissent provides a fascinating view of protest from the ground, giving voice to those who refuse to remain silent by risking punishment for their political actions.

Crime --- Social movements --- Civil disobedience --- change. --- consequences. --- costs. --- deliberately. --- fascinating. --- insiders. --- look. --- motivations. --- social. --- strategy. --- violating.

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Two of the most salient trends surrounding the issue of migration and development over the past two decades are the large rise in remittances, and an increased flow of skilled migration. However, recent literature based on cross-country regressions has claimed that more educated migrants remit less, leading to concerns that further increases in skilled migration will hamper remittance growth. This paper revisits the relationship between education and remitting behavior using microdata from surveys of immigrants in 11 major destination countries. The data show a mixed pattern between education and the likelihood of remitting, and a strong positive relationship between education and the amount remitted conditional on remitting. Combining these intensive and extensive margins gives an overall positive effect of education on the amount remitted. The microdata then allow investigation as to why the more educated remit more. The analysis finds that the higher income earned by migrants, rather than characteristics of their family situations, explains much of the higher remittances.

Brain Drain --- Consequences of migration --- Developing countries --- Educated Migrants --- Family members --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Illegal migrants --- Immigrant --- Immigrants --- Immigration --- Immigration policies --- Impact of education --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Migration --- Policy Research --- Population Policies --- Progress --- Remittance --- Remittances --- Skill level --- Skilled migrants --- Social Development --- Tertiary education

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This paper aims to estimate the global aggregate of disaster impacts during 1960 to 2007 using Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) methodology. The authors selected 184 major disasters in terms of the size of economic damages, based on the data available from the International Emergency Disasters and MunichRe (NatCat) databases for natural catastrophes. They estimate the losses and total impacts including the higher-order effects of these disasters using social accounting matrices constructed for this study. Although the aggregate damages based on the data amount to USD 742 billion, the aggregate losses and total impacts are estimated at USD 360 billion and USD 678 billion, respectively. The results show a growing trend of economic impacts over time in absolute value. However, once the data and estimates are normalized using global gross domestic product, the historical trend of total impacts becomes statistically insignificant. The visual observation confirms the inverted 'U' curve distribution between total impact and income level, while statistical analyses indicate negative linear relationships between them for climatological, geophysical, and especially hydrological events.

Catastrophic consequences --- Conflict and Development --- Disaster --- Disaster community --- Disaster Management --- Disaster reduction --- Disaster risk --- Disaster risk reduction --- Disasters --- Documents --- Drought --- Droughts --- Earthquake --- Earthquakes --- Economic Theory and Research --- Environment --- Floods --- Hazard Risk Management --- Hurricane --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Natural catastrophes --- Natural disaster --- Natural Disasters --- Natural hazards --- Reconstruction --- Urban Development --- Volcano

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This paper studies the effect of individual uncertainty on collective decision-making to implement innovation. We show how individual uncertainty creates a bias for the status quo even under irreversible voting decisions, in contrast with Fernandez and Rodrik (1991). Blocking innovation is rooted in the aversion to the potential loss of political clout in future voting decisions. Thus, risk neutral individuals exhibit what we call political risk aversion. Yet individual uncertainty is not all bad news as it may open the door to institutional reform. We endogenize institutional reform and show a non-monotonic relationship between institutional efficiency and the size of innovation.

Business & Economics --- Economic Theory --- Uncertainty. --- Rational expectations (Economic theory) --- Expectations, Rational (Economic theory) --- Economic forecasting --- Time and economic reactions --- Uncertainty --- Reasoning --- Labor --- Industries: Information Technololgy --- Production and Operations Management --- Inventions --- Technological Change: Choices and Consequences --- Diffusion Processes --- Innovation --- Research and Development --- Technological Change --- Intellectual Property Rights: General --- Macroeconomics: Production --- Geographic Labor Mobility --- Immigrant Workers --- Information technology industries --- Technology --- general issues --- Macroeconomics --- Inventions & inventors --- Labour --- income economics --- Emerging technologies --- Productivity --- Technological innovation --- Labor mobility --- Industrial productivity --- Technological innovations --- China, People's Republic of

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This paper solves and estimates a stochastic model of optimal inter-temporal behavior to assess how changes in the design of the unemployment benefits and pension systems in Brazil could affect savings rates, the share of time that individuals spend outside of the formal sector, and retirement decisions. Dynamics depend on five main parameters: preferences regarding consumption and leisure, preferences regarding formal Vs. informal work, attitudes towards risks, the rate of time preference, and the distribution of an exogenous shock that affects movements in and out of the social security system (given individual decisions). The yearly household survey is used to create a pseudo panel by age-cohorts and estimate the joint distribution of model parameters based on a generalized version of the Gibbs sampler. The model does a good job in replicating the distribution of the members of a given cohort across states (in or out of the social security / active or retired). Because the parameters are related to individual preferences or exogenous shocks, the joint distribution is unlikely to change when the social insurance system changes. Thus, the model is used to explore how alternative policy interventions could affect behaviors and through this channel benefit levels and fiscal costs. The results from various simulations provide three main insights: (i) the Brazilian SI system today might generate distortions (lower savings rates and less formal employment) that increase the costs of the system and might generate regressive redistribution; (ii) there are important interactions between the unemployment benefits and pension systems, which calls for joint policy analysis when considering reforms; and (iii) current distortions could be reduced by creating an actuarial link between contributions and benefits and then combining matching contributions and anti-poverty targeted transfers to cover individuals with limited or no savings capacity.

Access to Finance --- Compensation and Benefits --- Debt Markets --- Economic Theory and Research --- Emerging Markets --- Employment levels --- Exogenous shock --- Exogenous shocks --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Gender --- Gender and Law --- Household survey --- Informal sector --- Jobs --- Labor demand --- Labor force --- Labor market --- Labor Markets --- Labor Policies --- Labor supply --- Law and Development --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Pensions and Retirement Systems --- Private sector --- Private Sector Development --- Private sector workers --- Program costs --- Retirement --- Social Protections and Labor --- Unemployment --- Unemployment benefits --- Unemployment insurance --- Unemployment insurance system --- Unemployment spell --- Unintended consequences --- Wages --- Youth and Government