The appeal of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World led many authors to attempt reconstructing them on paper, thus giving rise to an exercise in speculation whose results would soon be published as engravings. These, in turn, would later provide models for series of paintings, which reflect not only a historical interest in the scholarly reconstructions but also a recognition of their aesthetic value.1 In this regard, one of the pioneers of a pictorial appropriation of the Wonders was Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574), who developed a fascination for the architecture of Antiquity during his long stay in Rome, a period that witnessed the discovery and assessment of many ancient remains and monuments.2 His endeavour led to the establishment of the canonical series of the Seven Wonders,3 defining not only the list of works but also the iconography for each monument, which would later become fully integrated within a collective worldview.

Chapter 2 develops the theoretical framework that underpins the book. It argues that politicians in developing democracies face a dual incentive: they need competent bureaucrats who can implement programs effectively, yet they also desire control over those bureaucrats to secure loyalty and political advantage. As a result, politicians often recruit based on merit but retain formal or informal levers of influence, such as control over promotions or geographic transfers. The chapter distinguishes between programmatic and non-programmatic distribution, emphasizing that politicians often require bureaucratic loyalty to engage in non-programmatic distribution. Further, politicians have greater incentives to engage in non-programmatic distribution when local elections are highly competitive. Accordingly, I expect that intense local electoral competition will result in worse governance outcomes, including higher levels of corruption and partisan allocation of public goods. This framework provides the theoretical lens to interpret the empirical evidence presented in subsequent chapters and situates the book’s contribution within broader debates on state capacity, bureaucratic autonomy, clientelism, and democratic accountability.

In this chapter, we first provide an overview of health and mental health outcomes across the different types of street segments studied to assess whether residents of crime hot spots have more adverse health issues compared with residents living on street segments with little or no crime. We find that there are strong relationships between mental and physical health and living in crime hot spots as opposed to non-hot spots. We then examine whether negative health outcomes are a consequence of living in a crime hot spot. We find that hot spots of crime are not simply places with high crime rates; they are also places with strong physical and mental health deficits. After accounting for selection, several physical and mental health problems are found to result from living in a crime hot spot.

This chapter analyses the Marxian problem of transforming values into prices of production in light of Sraffa’s price system. It begins by introducing an ‘ideal’ price system where workers receive the entire net product. This system, based on ‘values’ or embodied labor, is contrasted with the ‘prices-of-production system’ where profits are distributed in proportion to total capital. The chapter then delves into the differences between these systems, highlighting Marx’s three propositions about the relationship between the rate of surplus value and the rate of profit.

It examines the special case of Sraffa’s Standard system where income distribution is independent of the price system and explores the concept of a linear operator that transforms values into prices. The chapter also discusses Marx’s simplification of uniform ‘organic composition of capital,’ where values and prices coincide. Finally, it demonstrates that the rate of surplus value is inherent in the prices-of-production system when expressed in terms of the per-capita net product.