The fall of the Soviet Union initiated an era of unparalleled political and economic reform given the breadth, depth and speed of the changes. The shift towards democracy and capitalism entailed greater personal freedom of thought, expression and lifestyles. The dismantling of the command economy allowed competition to flourish, thus improving productivity of the individual as well as the firm. Overall, individual well?being should have been enhanced through increased freedom and economic resources. However, in Russia and many other countries that underwent market reform, the transition was accompanied by economic crisis, which decreased well?being through material hardship and insecurity. Populations that had never dealt with extreme social risk suddenly found themselves unemployed, unpaid or unable to cope with inflation, while lacking a sufficient safety net and watching the “winners” of the transition achieve unprecedented wealth.
Undoubtedly, these complicated transformations greatly influenced demographic decisions, including whether and when a child was desired. Indeed, while the majority of men and women had two children in Russia before 1990, fertility fell to below 1.2 children per woman by the end of the 1990s (Zhakarov and Ivanova 1996). Research on this dramatic decline has shown very little relevance of postponement to the majority of this fertility decline, nor does it appear due to increasing childlessness rates; the decline seems to be due to stopping behavior in which second and higher order births declined (Sobotka 2002).
I have developed a new experimental preparation of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. A fly is glued to a steel pin, which is held in the field between two magnets such that the fly is free to rotate about only one axis. Such "magnetically tethered" flies perform rapid yaw turns, similar to the behaviors termed "body saccades" in free flight. Saccades can be evoked by visual stimulation, in a manner suggesting that the underlying neural circuitry may be performing an angular threshold calculation. Once a saccade is initiated, however, visual feedback has very little effect on its dynamics, but rotational feedback from the haltere system plays an important role in structuring the time course of saccades. Vision is important, though, in maintaining a stable orientation in both intact flies and flies with asymmetrical wing alterations.
Most stock exchanges around the world impose daily price limits. For example, on any given trading day on the Chinese stock exchanges a stock price cannot change by more than 10 percent from its previous day’s closing price. The rationale behind price limits varies. They are believed to moderate excessive volatility, mitigate panic behavior, and/or minimize price manipulation (e.g., see Kim and Rhee (1997), Kim (2001), Kim and Yang (2004), and Kim and Park (2010)). However, for more than a decade, researchers have criticized price limits. According to many studies, price limits impede market efficiency, while showing no evidence of achieving their intended objectives. In this paper, we offer compelling and convincing evidence that shows benefits of price limits.
