Debt and mutual lending connected members of the Roman elite in the late Republic, as part of (and in tension with) the bonds of friendship and political support. This article offers a fresh approach to understanding economics in Catullus’ Carmina, arguing that the poems show a consistent attention to the ubiquity of debt in the lives of their characters. By close readings of C. 5, 23, 41 and 103, I argue that Catullus shows us the effects of economic hierarchy on amicitia, but he also depicts his own persona trapped in a mindset of acquisition, profit and loss. Rather than constructing an urbane world sealed from financial pressures, Catullus’ poetry dramatises the transformative impact of debt on lives and emotions in the 50s b.c.e.

Do retrospective and prospective messages about judicial candidates influence participation in individual state high court races? To answer this question, I examine the effect of television ads for judicial candidates on ballot rolloff in state high court elections from 2000 to 2018. I find that increased exposure to ads with higher proportion of retrospective messages has diminishing returns, as more exposure to these ads increases the average rolloff per judicial election and per judicial race. Despite concerns about candidates announcing what they will do once they are elected, I find no relationship between prospective messages and voter participation given increased exposure to ads containing such messages. These results suggest that exposure to a candidate’s record may both mobilize and fatigue voters, and that concerns about prospective rhetoric may be exaggerated.

Thomas Edward Cliffe Leslie is an influential figure in the Irish history of economic thought. This paper presents Leslie’s critical appraisal of British land systems and discusses his critique of the classical landed property reform. The paper illustrates the affinities between Leslie’s and John Stuart Mill’s economic thought regarding the Irish land question. Furthermore, it shows that Leslie’s support for small proprietorship in Ireland is regarded as a prerequisite for defending the Act of Union of 1800. Lastly, the paper argues that Leslie’s political economy of British land systems is a significant stream in the foundation of the Irish historical school and in the promotion of an alternative political economy.

Globalisation and the multilingual turn in applied linguistics have exposed a persistent tension between learners’ linguistic repertoires and traditional monolingual pedagogies. It is out of this tension that translanguaging pedagogy (TP) emerged as an instructional framework grounded in translanguaging theory, witnessing a burgeoning empirical literature on its classroom value. However, the empirical evidence has failed to produce a coherent account of TP’s effectiveness in L2 education, as findings have exhibited considerable heterogeneity across instructional contexts, learner populations, and outcome measures. The present study sought to reconcile these inconsistent findings through a multilevel Bayesian meta-analysis of 108 effect sizes drawn from 40 independent studies among 3,145 learners. The pooled effect size of Hedges’ g = 1.014 (standard error = 0.138, 95% credible interval [0.748, 1.291]) establishes a positive and statistically credible effect of TP on L2 achievement. Moderator analyses identified educational level and target language skills as credible sources of heterogeneity, with tertiary-level learners and speaking outcomes yielding the largest effect sizes. Target language, linguistic distance, and treatment duration did not reach the posterior probability threshold for credible inference. These findings advance the theoretical understanding of TP and furnish an empirically grounded basis for instructional decision-making in L2 education.

We study Stackelberg equilibria (Bowley optima) in a monopolistic centralized sequential-move insurance market, with a profit-maximizing insurer who sets premia using a distortion premium principle, and a single policyholder who seeks to minimize a distortion risk measure. We show that equilibria are characterized as follows: In equilibrium, the optimal indemnity function exhibits a layer-type structure, providing full insurance over any loss layer on which the policyholder is more pessimistic than the insurer’s pricing functional about tail losses; and no insurance coverage over loss layers on which the policyholder is less pessimistic than the insurer’s pricing functional about tail losses. In equilibrium, the optimal pricing distortion function is determined by the policyholder’s degree of risk aversion, whereby prices never exceed the policyholder’s marginal willingness to insure tail losses. Moreover, we show that both the insurance coverage and the insurer’s expected profit increase with the policyholder’s degree of risk aversion. Additionally, and echoing recent work in the literature, we show that equilibrium contracts are Pareto efficient, but they do not induce a welfare gain to the policyholder. Conversely, any Pareto-optimal contract that leaves no welfare gain to the policyholder can be obtained as an equilibrium contract. Finally, we consider a few examples of interest that recover some existing results in the literature as special cases of our analysis.

We establish a criterion for the integrality of averages of roots of unity and apply it to settle a conjecture regarding the linearity of functions on $\mathbb {Z}_n$. Specifically, we prove that for any modulus $n \ge 1$, if $f: \mathbb {Z}_n \to \mathbb {Z}_n$ is a function whose averages $({1}{/n}) \sum _{x=0}^{n-1} \omega ^{f(x)+bx}$ (where $\omega =e^{2\pi i/n}$) are algebraic integers for all $b \in \mathbb {Z}_n$, then f is necessarily linear modulo n. This provides a short, elementary proof that works uniformly for all n and avoids the finite-field machinery used in previous partial results. Furthermore, when $n=p^r$, we use a local–global integrality argument to show that any normalised sum of $p^r$th roots of unity that is p-adically integral must be either $0$ or a single root of unity. As an application, we completely characterise the perfect isometries of the cyclic group $C_{p^r}$; they are precisely those induced by affine permutations $x \mapsto \alpha x + \beta $ with $\gcd (\alpha , p^r)=1$.

The concept of ‘ecology of fear’ recognises the importance of non-consumptive effects of predators inspiring fear in their prey, but has subsequently been broadened to include the non-consumptive effects of parasites on their hosts. Here, we experimentally tested whether blue mussels (Mytilus edulis) exhibit species-specific avoidance behaviour in response to infective transmission stages (cercariae) of three trematode species: Himasthla elongata and Renicola roscovita, both of which use blue mussels as hosts, and Cryptocotyle lingua, which parasitises fish. Furthermore, we investigated whether avoidance behaviour could be triggered solely by chemical cues. The results show that mussels reduced clearance rates by 34% in the presence of H. elongata alone and of 51% in the presence of H. elongata and R. roscovita in sympatry, which was comparable to previously reported direct consumptive effects of infection on filtration activity. The presence of C. lingua and R. roscovita alone had no significant effect on clearance rate. The observed reduction in filtration activity resulted in lower infection rates of experimental mussels. Moreover, mussels reduced clearance rates by 42% in the mere presence of chemical cues from the first intermediate host Littorina littorea, while exudates of H. elongata had no additional negative effect. It is evident that a non-consumptive parasite effect can significantly reduce the filtration activity of experimental blue mussels. Considering the magnitude of this reduction and the widespread occurrence of parasitic trematodes, it is reasonable to expect that fear of parasitism has ecological consequences for the functioning role of mussels.

Reverse mortgage markets remain small internationally, with bequest motives frequently cited as a key reason. We develop a new two-generation lifecycle simulation model to study the role of reverse mortgages in intergenerational financial planning, particularly as a tool for families to bring forward bequests. The model incorporates parental altruism by assuming parents derive utility not only from their own consumption and housing but also from their child’s current and future financial well-being. This extends traditional bequest models, which typically consider only the wealth transferred at death. The model accounts for house price risk, interest rate risk, investment risk, wage growth, health shocks, long-term care costs, private pensions, and means-tested public pensions. Using this framework, calibrated to Australian economic and policy settings, we compare the welfare gains from bequests and early bequests (inter vivos gifts) for homeowning parents and adult children seeking to purchase their first home. The results suggest that families across a range of wealth levels can experience substantial welfare gains when the parent uses a reverse mortgage both for retirement income and to gift the adult child a first home deposit. Early bequests funded through reverse mortgages increase overall family welfare compared to preserving home equity for a bequest or using a reverse mortgage solely for the parent’s consumption, particularly for middle-wealth households. A policy experiment shows that gifting limits reduce welfare gains for some families, but have a small overall impact. These findings suggest that policies encouraging informed use of reverse mortgages could improve intergenerational financial security.

This report presents 50 AMS radiocarbon dates from wood charcoal samples extracted from newly uncovered Neolithic settlement layers at the archaeological site of Amzabegovo (Sveti Nikole, North Macedonia). It constitutes the largest radiocarbon dataset from a Neolithic site in North Macedonia. The calibrated dates span 6391–5635 cal BC (95.4%), falling within the Early and Middle Neolithic. With an inferred occupation onset potentially as early as 6391–6236 cal BC (95.4%), Amzabegovo provides the earliest securely dated Neolithic settlement layers in the Ovče Pole catchment area and serves as an important chronological reference point for Early Neolithic expansion in the Vardar River basin. The consideration of the radiocarbon dates from the American excavations led by Marija Gimbutas in 1969–1970 highlights both the possibilities and the limitations of juxtaposing the old and new datasets. Future analyses of the archaeological stratigraphy and material from Amzabegovo hold the potential to offer insights into the Neolithic period in the southern Balkans and beyond, with the new radiocarbon dates significantly enhancing our understanding of the region’s chronological developments.

In 1985, Adams [‘The algebraic independence of certain Liouville continued fractions’, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 4 (1985), 512–516] proved that any finite number of Liouville series in different bases are algebraically independent. In this paper, we prove the equivalence between algebraic and linear independence when the bases are equal.

This research paper aimed to determine if bio-stimulation affects peri-oestrous behavioural patterns of buffalo heifers and can improve oestrous behavioural responses through fenceline and direct contact with bulls during the heifers’ first and second oestrous cycles. Buffalo heifers are known to have poor and less intense expression of oestrus behaviour. This leads to lower oestrous detection rates and ultimately results in poor reproductive efficiency. Providing social cues, such as bio-stimulation, is an effective technique for improving oestrous behaviours in cattle, pigs and sheep. For this study, 24 pre-pubertal Murrah heifers were allotted to 3 groups of 8 each; similar in age (15.08 ± 0.16 months) and body weight (199.5 ± 0.21 kg). In T0, heifers were not exposed to a bull; in T1, heifers had continuous exposure to a bull behind a fenceline; and in T2, heifers were directly exposed to a bull twice daily (6 hours total). Oestrous behaviours were recorded on days −3, −2 and −1 (prior to oestrus), day 0 (day of oestrus) and on days +1, +2 and +3 (post-oestrus) using 24-hour digital cameras. Oestrous behaviours (sniffing/licking, tail raising, micturition, chin resting and mounting attempts) commenced on day −3 or day −2, peaked on day 0 and waned by day +2 or day +1 during both oestrous cycles. Oestrous behaviour frequencies were higher for the heifers in T1 and T2 groups (P < 0.05) in comparison to the T0 group during both cycles. Receptive standing in response to mounting was only observed during the second oestrous cycle on the day of oestrus, and the frequency was significantly highest in T2, followed by T1 and T0 (P < 0.05). It was concluded that direct or fenceline bull exposure triggered more expression of oestrous behaviours in buffalo heifers, with direct exposure having a greater effect than fenceline exposure.

We present a detailed study of the evolution of the number of connected components in sub-critical multiplicative random graph processes. We consider a model where edges appear independently after an exponential time at a rate equal to the product of the sizes of the vertices. We provide an explicit expression for the fluid limit of the number of connected components normalized by its initial value, when the time is smaller than the inverse of the sum of the square of the initial vertex sizes. We also identify the diffusion limit of the rescaled fluctuations around the fluid limit. This is applied to several examples. In the particular setting of the Erdős–Rényi graph process, we give the fluid limit of the normalized number of connected components, and the diffusion limit of the scaled fluctuations in the sub-critical regime, where the mean degree is between zero and one.