Examining onsets of political instability in countries worldwide from 1955 to 2003, we develop a model that distinguishes countries that experienced instability from those that remained stable with a two-year lead time and over 80% accuracy. Intriguingly, the model uses few variables and a...

Gilligan and Krebbiel (1989) analyse bipartisanship in committees through a model in which committee ideal points are exactly symmetric about the floor's ideal point. This article has three objectives: it shows that the Gilligan and Krebbiel equilibrium does not generalize to asymmetric...

Przeworski, Alvarez, Cheibub, and Limongi (2000) challenge the key hypothesis in modernization theory: political regimes do not transition to democracy as per capita incomes rise, they argue. Rather, democratic transitions occur randomly, but once there, countries with higher levels of GDP per...

We compare quantitatively eight stochastic models explaining improvements in mortality rates in England &Wales and in the US. On the basis of the Bayes Information Criterion (BIC), we find that an extension of the Cairns, Blake & Dowd (2006b) model that incorporates the cohort effect fits the...

The National Health Service (NHS) in England is introducing a national cost-per-case tariff system for the reimbursement of hospital services. Unlike most other countries with similar payment mechanisms, hospitals in England will have few alternative sources of income once the tariff system is...