Chapter 3.3 examines informal payments. Informal payments are unsanctioned, unregulated payments made out-of-pocket by patients directly to their health care provider for services that are covered by third party purchasers. They are not recorded in routine administrative databases but can be captured in surveys, although they are usually underreported. Key learning includes that

• Informal payments (IPs) reduce access to health care and financial protection. They can undermine population health and reduce trust in providers and governments in the long run.

• IPs often stem from unmet desire for safe, timely or high-quality care and imply a mismatch between supply, demand and pricing in the formal health care payment system. When formal system payments are felt to be inadequate, IPs may also be used to express gratitude to providers.

• Settings with low physician density and / or where the share of GDP spent on health care is low, tend to have higher levels of IPs.

• IPs are also associated with settings with high reliance on formal out-of-pocket payments (user charges).

• Reducing or ending IPs is difficult and requires a combination of specific, targeted measures and broad health systems reforms that address underlying causes.

• The policy measures that may reduce IPs include

• – Formalizing out-of-pocket payments, with exemptions to protect vulnerable populations

• – Making clear and explicit what the health care benefits package covers

• – Better monitoring and enforcement of rules and penalties

• – Maintaining and expanding publicly-financed statutory coverage.

This chapter examines the international rules governing SOEs, including those in the World Trade Organization and various free trade agreements (FTAs), focusing on the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The chapter analyses the specific provisions of CPTPP Chapter 17, which sets forth a comprehensive set of disciplines on SOEs, including definitions of SOEs, commercial activities, commercial considerations, designated monopolies, and non-commercial assistance. It also discusses the concepts of adverse effect and injury caused by SOEs, as well as exceptions to the disciplines. Finally, the chapter offers observations on the CPTPP’s rules, including the definition of SOEs, the scope of commercial activities, and the extraterritorial effect of FTAs.

The distinctive morphology of the Neandertal midface has long intrigued researchers. A comprehensive understanding of their upper airways, encompassing the nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses, is essential for unraveling Neandertal paleobiology. These airways are integral to vital functions such as respiration, olfaction, and speech. Analyzing their structural interconnections across various craniofacial units sheds light on Neandertal skeletal anatomy and evolutionary dynamics. This review delves into recent studies exploring respiratory air conditioning, olfaction, and metabolic functions associated with the nasal and paranasal cavities. Additionally, it examines hypotheses and research pertaining to phonation and speech involving the pharynx and larynx. Lastly, the review scrutinizes the overall airway structure, its morphological aspects, growth patterns, and relationships within the Neandertal craniofacial system, considering the organism’s energetic demands.

This chapter opens the second half of the book by exploring how Imperial prose fiction responds to Roman education. Starting with Lucian’s True Story as a case in point, the chapter argues that ancient novels stage an irreverent critique of literary paideia and the learned readers it produces. Novels embrace the aesthetics of riddling (ainigma) and deception (apate) to satirize the curriculum of canonical fiction taught in schools. Through scenes of “fiction incompetence” and erotic or exotic alternatives to traditional learning, novelists expose the precarity of elite educational ideologies. The chapter surveys a wide range of Greek and Latin novels, showing how they subvert the moral and hermeneutic expectations of “good” fiction. It concludes by introducing the case studies for the remaining chapters (Life of Aesop, Story of Apollonius, and the Alexander Romance) which parody scholastic models of fictionality while promoting their heroes as masters of riddle-reading and alternative education. These works challenge ancient views of fiction as a vehicle for moral instruction, reimagining narrative pleasure as a rebellion against the institutional authority of paideia.

Haiti was a remarkably constant presence in Carpentier’s life and its imprint on his narrative fiction and essays has been profound, far-reaching, and indelible. Carpentier’s fascination with Haiti begins with his first novel, ¡Écue-Yamba-Ó! (1933), culminates in The Kingdom of This World (1949) and resurfaces within the transatlantic context of the French Revolution in yet another major work, Explosion in the Cathedral (1962). While traces of Haiti appear in myriad formal and conceptual manifestations throughout Carpentier’s oeuvre, in this essay I suggest that the notion of the Plantationocene, forged by Donna Haraway and Donna Tsing, carries significant critical potential for refocusing Carpentier’s links with Haiti in a manner that is both transdisciplinary and cross-historical.

The Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex, or SACC, a collection of city-states that surrounded the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea during the early first millennium BCE, is traditionally understudied by researchers interested in contacts between the Aegean and the Near East. In part this is due to the interest garnered by the Phoenicians and their far-flung colonies, but it is also because the complicated ethnolinguistic composition of the city-states themselves defies easy categorization. This chapter presents an overview of the material evidence for the robust exchange between the Aegean and SACC during the early first millennium BCE. Syro-Anatolian finds in the Aegean, especially luxury items including worked ivory and bronze objects, couple with Aegean ceramics in the Levant and southeastern Anatolia to index a surprisingly robust exchange between the two spheres. Although the mechanisms of this exchange remain unclear, it is now apparent that SACC was a major component of Iron Age eastern Mediterranean cultural and economic networks.

There are differences between the opening of Philemon and Paul’s other letters. As was customary, Paul provides his own name as the sender (on Paulos, see Col 1:1), but in his other, more formal letters he describes himself authoritatively as Paul an apostle. The absence of his usual title here perhaps signals the informality or intimacy that he is using, since he is writing to an old acquaintance. Paul is not writing to Philemon leveraging his apostolic influence, at least not overtly; he is sharing with him a concern, about which Paul is offering a solution.

The Spanish missionary Bartolomé de Las Casas wrote his ‘Defense of the Indians’ in response to the theologian and philosopher Juan Ginés De Sepúlveda’s ‘On the Just Causes of War against the Indians’. Both Casas and Sepúlveda point to Aristotle as a source for their arguments. This chapter approaches the debate as a way to think through the relationships between race and Indigeneity. First, I introduce the concept of Indigeneity and the ways it has been negotiated between Indigenous peoples and settler-colonialists. I then move to critically analysing Casas’ arguments, showing how his understanding of Aristotle’s notion of ‘barbarians’ has had a lasting legacy on the definition of Indigeneity. Finally, I turn to the absence of Indigenous voices in Casas’ account as a broader moment to consider Indigenous future(s) in Classics and possible areas for re-negotiating reception and Indigenous scholars’ agency in those negotiations.