I investigate the welfare maximizing steady-state inflation rate in a heterogeneous-agent New Keynesian model with Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity (DNWR). After matching the annual wage change distribution in the U.S., I demonstrate that DNWR has a significant impact on the economy, particularly when the inflation target is set low. The optimal inflation rate is estimated to be as high as 8.8%, and increasing the inflation target to the optimal level yields a welfare gain of nearly 3.50%. While the results exhibit sensitivity to parameterization, a broad range of calibrations indicates that the optimal inflation rate is consistently above 3%.

In response to the Hamidian massacres of 1894–1897, Armenian immigrants held commemorative events in the US that concurred with their activism for the Armenian Question. Although largely overlooked in scholarship, these commemorative practices offer insights into the early history of this community and the memory of the late Ottoman state violence. We explore how American Armenians commemorated the Hamidian massacres, addressing this gap in scholarship. Specifically, we delve into the socio-political and cultural sphere, analyzing the agencies and narratives involved in these commemorative practices. Through a close examination of various commemorative forms, we find that the incentives of American Armenians went beyond simply honoring the victims. We argue that the motives of mourning loss and striving to prevent violence from recurring were intricately intertwined in the commemoration. Despite the unsuccessful outcome, the search for prevention remained an important driving force behind commemorating Ottoman violence in the following years. By integrating its memory into their public life, communal leadership aimed not only to foster social cohesion among Armenian immigrants but also to garner public empathy and sympathy within the host society, ultimately translating it into political support for the Armenian Question, which was believed could prevent future atrocities.

This paper discusses variants of Weber’s class number problem in the spirit of arithmetic topology to connect the results of Sinnott–Kisilevsky and Kionke. Let p be a prime number. We first prove the p-adic convergence of class numbers in a ${\mathbb{Z}_{p}}$-extension of a global field and a similar result in a ${\mathbb{Z}_{p}}$-cover of a compact 3-manifold. Secondly, we establish an explicit formula for the p-adic limit of the p-power-th cyclic resultants of a polynomial using roots of unity of orders prime to p, the p-adic logarithm, and the Iwasawa invariants. Finally, we give thorough investigations of torus knots, twist knots, and elliptic curves; we complete the list of the cases with p-adic limits being in ${\mathbb{Z}}$ and find the cases such that the base p-class numbers are small and $\nu$’s are arbitrarily large.

Of all the many instruments that symbolized scientific endeavour in British India by the end of the nineteenth century, microscopes were among the most iconic, and yet, for both empirical and ideological reasons, their rise to scientific authority was slow and often contested. Moving from recreational use and marginal scientific status in the 1830s, by the 1870s microscopes were becoming integral to colonial education and governance and deployed across a wide scientific spectrum, their expanding use and heightened public presence facilitated by a rich and diverse visual culture. The eventual triumph of the microscope in India cannot be detached from its ongoing entanglement with local issues and agencies, its ascent to medical authority in particular constrained by scepticism about its utility. In this battle of instruments and imaginaries, microscopes – political emblems as well as material objects and scientific tools – pose critical questions about the visibility of science in a colonial context, about evolving techniques of seeing and representation, about the racialization of science and about the individual or collective authority of those who sought empowerment through the lens.

The Amazon comprises the most biodiverse region in the world, but, despite being highly threatened by human-induced environmental changes, little is known about how those changes influence the remaining forest’s extent and configuration in Brazil’s arc of deforestation. We analysed the spatial and temporal dynamics and the configuration of forest cover in Brazil’s state of Rondônia over 34 years. We calculated seven landscape metrics based on freely available satellite imagery to understand the habitat transformations. Overall, natural vegetation cover declined from 90.9% to 62.7% between 1986 and 2020, and fragmentation greatly increased, generating 78 000 forest fragments and 100 000 fragments of ‘natural vegetation’, which also includes forest. We found that c. 50% of the vegetation is within c. 1 km of the nearest forest edge, and the mean isolation between fragments is c. 2.5 km. Most natural vegetation and forest vegetation layers outside protected areas (PAs; Brazil’s ‘conservation units’) and Indigenous territories (ITs) are >10 km from the nearest PA or IT. This reduction of natural vegetation in Rondônia is posing major threats to the survival of species and is undermining the dynamics of ecosystems. Measures to control deforestation and avoid the reduction of large remnants are urgently needed.

In the 2023 judgment of Nicaragua v. Colombia, the International Court of Justice ruled that, under customary international law, a State’s entitlement to a continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from its baselines is not permitted to extend within 200 nautical miles from the baselines of another State. In identifying this customary rule, the Court did not apply the two-element approach. The state practice relied upon by the Court to identify the general practice is not sufficiently widespread, representative, or consistent. The opinio juris is inferred from such state practice, which is not necessarily driven by a sense of legal obligation. The Court’s assertion of the customary rule constitutes, in effect, a rewriting of the relevant provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, amounting to a legislative exercise.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is commonly considered a neurodevelopmental disorder, with symptoms present before 12 years of age. Increasingly, adults who have no evidence of impairment in childhood are seeking treatment for ADHD. In this Editorial, we propose that psychiatry considers conceptual changes to better understand impairment and distress caused by inattention and disorganisation in adulthood.

I study the effects of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) on labor market outcomes among potentially eligible immigrants. DACA allowed undocumented immigrants to participate in the labor market without fear of deportation, which might be expected to increase the probability of working and allowing workers to move to higher-skilled occupations. However, using a regression discontinuity design, I find very little to no effects on the probability of working and the likelihood of working in high-skilled jobs among DACA-eligible immigrants. The confidence intervals permit modest effects on these variables, but rule out large ones. My estimates are local, mainly applicable to older individuals close to the age threshold, and not broadly generalizable to younger DACA-eligible groups.

In the United States, the public does not view all refugee groups with equal favorability. Why do individuals express more support for some refugee groups compared to others? We argue that some Americans are more supportive of certain refugee groups when they share a racial identity because it is easier for them to empathize with them. While recent research points to empathy as a useful tool for cultivating supportive attitudes toward refugees and immigrants, the political science literature lacks a nuanced understanding of the conditions under which empathy drives pro-social attitudes toward refugees, specifically with regard to racial dynamics. Does empathy allow people to overcome their racial ingroup preferences, or does it magnify them? With an original web experiment administered to a 50/50 Black and white sample of Americans, we prime half of the sample to associate refugees with their racial ingroup and prime the other half with their racial outgroup. We find that refugee race only affects support for refugees among white individuals with low group empathy. For high-empathy whites and Blacks of all levels of empathy, the race linked to refugees does not condition their support for refugees. Rather, group empathy is a strong, independent explanation for variation in attitudes toward refugees. We also find modest evidence that the positive association between empathy for refugees and support for this group is driven by partisanship, particularly for whites. The direct effect of partisanship on support for refugees is much stronger. This study contributes to research on the dynamics of race, empathy, and attitudes toward refugees.

Centralisation of powers typically occurs in times of crisis. The paper investigates and compares the intergovernmental relations (IGRs) in the Italian decentralised systems during the economic and financial crisis (2008–2013) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2022). During both these two phases, Italy experienced a transition from a political government to a technical one. During the economic and financial crisis, Silvio Berlusconi's government (2008–2011) was succeeded by a technical one led by Mario Monti (2011–2013); similarly, during the pandemic, Giuseppe Conte's government (2020–2021) was followed by a technical one led by Mario Draghi (2021–2022). The hypothesis is that the presence of ‘political’ governments still guarantees a certain degree of cooperation with lower levels of government (i.e. regional and local administrations), while ‘technical’ governments further exacerbate the centralisation of powers. The paper analyses the legislative activities of the central government and the documents of the Italian ‘conference system’ during the two periods of analysis. According to our hypothesis, the findings show a greater centralisation of power under the technical government during the pandemic, but not during the economic crisis. This outcome suggests that the policy domain may serve as a main intervening factor over the degree of centralization of the IGRs during periods of crisis.

Alluvial fans associated with eolian fields are common geomorphic features that reflect complex interactions in which the alluvial or eolian system acts as both a sedimentary source and a modifier. The semi-arid region of the São Francisco River is notable in Quaternary studies for its alluvial system and the largest Quaternary inland eolian field in Brazil. Fluvial fans are present on the western margin of the river and to the south of the eolian field. To characterize these fans, we used remote sensing, fieldwork, sedimentology, and OSL dating. We identified three fluvial fans: two asymmetric (> 185 km2) and one circular (8.5 km2). The eolian deposits played a critical role in both sediment supply and formation of the fluvial fans. Fan spreading occurred due to the difference in gradient between the eolian field and the river terraces. Fan deposits were dated to 4.5 ± 0.6 ka, and overlap with other systems, which suggests the system was active before 4 ka. Currently, these fans are degrading and being reworked by wind, and the drainages that exist across them are ephemeral. The Xique-Xique fluvial fans are now fossil systems, preserving evidence of past increased rainfall and base level lowering in the Late Holocene.

This paper examines Douglass North’s evolving recommendations for economic development policy. Using archival material, it traces how North’s historical analysis of economic growth shaped his policy prescriptions from the start of his career through the 1990s. In the 1950s and 1960s, North attributed US economic growth primarily to trade and productivity gains driven by the United States’s competitive market system and international trade, leading him to advocate market-oriented reforms. But from the 1970s onward, recognizing the critical role of institutions through his study of institutional history, he emphasized reducing transaction costs through extensive reforms in property rights and political systems. His archives reveal how his historical understanding of development made him increasingly skeptical of simplistic, market-oriented reforms, and underscore the originality of his policy proposals for Latin America and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s.

This article provides an overview of the main interpretations in contemporary historiography of the role of Italian political actors in the management of public debt during the First Republic, also in the context of European integration. In order to fill the gaps in historical research on this crucial issue, the conclusion proposes some questions and insights for future research.