The Cost of Being Too Patient Giuliano, Paola; Sapienza, Paola
AEA papers and proceedings,
05/2020, Volume:
110
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
We study the cost of being too patient on happiness. We find that the relationship between patience and various measures of subjective well-being is hump-shaped: there exists an optimal amount of ...patience that maximizes happiness. Beyond this optimal level, higher levels of patience have a negative impact on well-being.
The participation of women in agriculture and the role of women in society in the preindustrial period were remarkably different across ethnicities and strongly related to the type of agricultural ...technology adopted historically. The sexual division of labor was broadly associated to two technological regimes: shifting cultivation, where the majority of agricultural work was done by women, and plough cultivation, a system mostly dominated by men. In this article, we review the literature on the persistent effect of the impact of historical plough use on female labor force participation and fertility today. We also provide additional evidence showing that differences regarding the role of women across the two agricultural regimes were more general and persisted over time in other societal aspects, including the form of marital arrangements, the presence of polygamy and the freedom of movement enjoyed by women.
Genetic distance, geographic proximity, and economic variables are strongly correlated. Disentangling the effects of these factors is crucial for interpreting these correlations. We show that ...geographic factors that shaped genetic patterns in the past are also relevant for current transportation costs and could explain the correlation between trading flows and genetic distance. After controlling for geography, the impact of genetic distance on trade disappears. We make our point by constructing a database on geographical barriers, by introducing a novel dataset on transportation costs, and by proposing a new classification of goods according to the ease with which they can be transported.
To find a common pathogenetic trait induced by polyQ-expanded proteins, we have used a conditional expression system in PC12 cells to tune the expression of these proteins and analyze the early and ...late consequences of their expression. We find that expression for 3 h of a polyQ-expanded protein stimulates cellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and significantly reduces the mitochondrial electrochemical gradient. 24–36 h later, ROS induce DNA damage and activation of the checkpoint kinase, ATM. DNA damage signatures are reversible and persist as long as polyQ-expanded proteins are expressed. Transcription of neural and stress response genes is down-regulated in these cells. Selective inhibition of ATM or histone deacetylase rescues transcription and restores the expression of silenced genes. Eventually, after 1 week, the expression of polyQ-expanded protein also induces endoplasmic reticulum stress. As to the primary mechanism responsible for ROS generation, we find that polyQ-expanded proteins, including native Ataxin-2 and Huntingtin, are selectively sequestered in the lipid raft membrane compartment and interact with gp91, the membrane NADPH-oxidase subunit. Selective inhibition of NADPH oxidase or silencing of H-Ras signaling dissolves the aggregates and eliminates DNA damage. We suggest that targeting of the polyQ-expanded proteins to the lipid rafts activates the resident NADPH oxidase. This triggers a signal linking H-Ras, ROS, and ERK1/2 that maintains and propagates the ROS wave to the nucleus. This mechanism may represent the common pathogenetic signature of all polyQ-expanded proteins independently of the specific context or the function of the native wild type protein.
Trust and Cheating Butler, Jeff; Giuliano, Paola; Guiso, Luigi
The Economic journal (London),
September 2016, Volume:
126, Issue:
595
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
When we take a taxi we may feel cheated if the driver takes an unnecessarily long route despite the lack of a contract to take the shortest possible path. Is the behaviour of the driver affected by ...beliefs about our cheating notions? We address this question in the context of a trust game. We find that both parties to a trust exchange have personal notions of cheating and that these notions have a bimodal distribution. We conceptualise cheating notions as moral expectations, which provide a micro-foundation for guilt. Cheating notions substantially affect decisions on both sides of the trust exchange.
•This paper studies the transmission of pro-social values from parents to children through a public goods game experiment.•We cannot reject the null that the correlation between the degree of ...cooperation of a child and that of his or her parent is zero.•That is, there is lack of evidence in our data that prosocial values are transmitted from parents to children.•This finding is robust to the inclusion of demographic and socio-economic controls.
This paper studies whether prosocial values are transmitted from parents to their children. We do so through an economic experiment in which children and their parents play a standard public goods game. The experimental data presents us with a surprising result. While we find significant heterogeneity in cooperative preferences in both parents and children, we cannot reject the null that the correlation between the degree of cooperation of a child and that of his or her parent is zero. That is, there is lack of evidence in our data that prosocial values are transmitted from parents to children. This finding is robust to the inclusion of demographic and socio-economic controls. Finally, parents show a significant degree of conditional cooperation, thus confirming the results of the existing experimental literature; such conditional cooperation is however absent in children.
Retracted: Growing up in a Recession Giuliano, Paola; Spilimbergo, Antonio
The Review of economic studies,
04/2014, Volume:
81, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Injury of the arterial wall induces the formation of the neointima. This structure is generated by the growth of mitogenically activated smooth muscle cells of the arterial wall. The molecular ...mechanism underlying the formation of the neointima involves deregulated cell growth, primarily triggered by the injury of the arterial wall. The activated gene products transmitting the injury-induced mitogenic stimuli have been identified and inhibited by several means: transdominant negative expression vectors, antisense oligodeoxynucleotides, adenovirus-mediated gene transfer, antibodies and inactivating drugs. Results of our study show that local administration of 3',5'-cyclic AMP and phosphodiesterase-inhibitor drugs (aminophylline and amrinone) to rats markedly inhibits neointima formation after balloon injury in vivo and in smooth muscle cells in vitro. The growth inhibitory effect of aminophylline was completely reversed by the inhibition of cAMP-dependent protein kinase A (PKA). These findings indicate an alternative approach to the treatment of diseases associated with injury-induced cell growth of the arterial wall, as stimulation of cAMP signaling is pharmacologically feasible in the clinical setting.
The chemokine receptor CXCR4 is widely expressed in human cancers and regulates cell invasion, proliferation and survival. Because mutations in the CXCR4 gene could regulate its function we sequenced ...the coding region of the CXCR4 gene in 18 human melanoma and 3 human colon carcinoma cell lines. The same somatic point mutation (G574A; V160I) in the fourth trans-membrane region of CXCR4 was detected in one colon cancer cell line (PD) and one melanoma cell line (LB). CXCR4 was expressed and functional in both PD and LB cells, PD and LB cells migrated specifically toward the receptor ligand, CXCL12 and P-Erk was specifically induced by CXCL12. To give insight into the function of the mutant CXCR4 receptor, human A431, epidermoid carcinoma cells, were stably transfected with both mutant and wild type CXCR4. In vitro, A431 cells harboring CXCR4
G574A
migrated specifically toward CXCL12 and CXCL12 induced ERK phosphorylation. Interestingly, in vivo studies showed that the growth of A431 tumors harboring CXCR4G574A was delayed compared to those harboring WT CXCR4. As expected, treatment with AMD3100, a specific CXCR4 inhibitor, reduced the in vivo growth of CXCR4
G574A
tumor b
G574A
rprisingly, increased the growth of CXCR4
G574A
A431 cells. This is the first report of a spontaneously occurring, functionally active CXCR4 mutation in human cancer cells. While the mutation impairs cell growth in vivo, the CXCR4 inhibitor, AMD3100, stimulated the growth of cells harboring CXCR4
G574A
.
Proliferation of smooth muscle cells of the arterial wall in response to local injury is an important aetiologic factor of vascular proliferative disorders such as atherosclerosis and restenosis ...after angioplasty. Ras proteins are key transducers of mitogenic signals from membrane to nucleus in many cell types. We investigated the role of ras proteins in the vascular response to arterial injury by inactivating cellular ras of rats in which the common carotid artery was subjected to balloon injury. DNA vectors expressing ras transdominant negative mutants, which interfere with ras function, reduced neointimal formation after injury. Our results indicate a key role for ras in smooth muscle cell proliferation and show that the local delivery of transdominant negative mutants of ras in vivo might prevent some of the acute vascular injury caused by balloon injury.
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