Unlikely Bedfellows

This chapter details that following the collapse of Nethersole's scheme, Elizabeth Stuart's strategy was in tatters. The Swedes had taken both Frankenthal and Heidelberg, and they were refusing to hand them over because of Charles's actions. Not only had her brother failed to authorise the voluntary contribution Elizabeth's political advisors had striven so hard to effect, destroying their careers in the process, but he had also refused to provide Sweden with direct military support. Compelled to try to find alternative ways to both raise money and to placate the Swedes, Elizabeth immediately came up with two promising schemes: the first reliant on yet another of Charles's financial promises; the second an attempt to collect on previous investments. In March of 1632, Charles had promised Elizabeth his share of their Danish grandmother's estate as recompense for her having inherited nothing from their mother, Anna. As Charles had not yet honoured his promise, Elizabeth went directly to source and pursued the money in Denmark. Simultaneously, she managed to extort troops from Wilhelm V, Landgrave of Hesse. However, her uncle, Christian IV, refused to give Elizabeth her share of the inheritance, regarding her as an extension of her brother, who he claimed was still in debt to the Crown of Denmark. Moreover, although Elizabeth had persuaded the Landgrave of Hesse to lend her his troops, they had difficulty reaching the Palatinate.

Biodiversity Protection in Private Forests: PES Schemes, Institutions and Prosocial Behavior

The overall research question addresses the effectiveness of incentive mechanisms in poli -cies that enhance private forest owners’ biodiversity protection. In particular, the paper focuses on the link between forest owners’ motivations, incentives, and institutions, and questions the incentives of the current biodiversity protection policies. Our hypothesis is that the purely monetary nature of the incentives can cause a “crowding out effect”, i.e., forest owners may reduce their voluntary contribution to biodiversity protection that is driven by prosocial motivations (altruism, self-image, etc.). With this in mind, as well as the knowledge acquired via this project about forest owners’ motivations, we looked for the most effective combinations of “incentive mechanisms” (monetary and non-monetary) and “institutions” (national and local authorities, NGOs, etc.) to encourage forest owners to adopt biodiversity protection measures in their forests.

From Lurkers to Workers: Predicting Voluntary Contribution and Community Welfare

In an online community, users can interact with fellow community members by voluntarily contributing to existing discussion threads or by starting new threads. In practice, however, the vast majority of a community’s users (∼90%) remain inactive (lurk), simply observing contributions made by intermittent (∼9%) and heavy (∼1%) contributors. Our research examines increases and decreases of types of user engagement in online communities, characterizing user engagement based on trace user activity or lack of activity. Some lurkers later become workers (i.e., engaged in the community), but some will not. Differentiating lurkers who can be engaged from those who cannot enables managers to anticipate and proactively direct their resources toward the users who are most likely to become or remain workers (i.e., heavy contributors), thereby promoting community welfare. Our research, based on analysis of 533,714 posts from an online diabetes community, can thus guide managerial interventions to increase online community welfare.

Considering voluntary contribution of medical students to tackle COVID-19 crisis at hospitals in Bangladesh & similar settings

We read with interest the correspondence by Representatives of the STARSurg Collaborative, EuroSurg Collaborative, and TASMAN Collaborative1 about the involvement of medical students in response to worldwide COVID-19 crisis. There is a positive correlation between inadequate health-care resources and COVID-19 related mortality.2 As this pandemic is ravaging through countries worldwide, even the most competent health systems are facing a dire need of workforce demand,3 likes of which have never been seen before. While developed countries are still skirmishing to get to grip with this crisis, developing nations like Bangladesh with comparatively incapacitated healthcare system is of no exception, and is in urgent need of innovative and outrageous ideas to tackle.

Partial Versus General Compulsory Solidarity: an Experimental Analysis

We focus on ways and means of solidarity and their more or less voluntary and involuntary character. Alternative ways of redistribution are modeled by combining redistribution as emergent from a non-discriminatory voluntary contribution mechanism, VCM, with an outside option for a “super-rich”, R, participant to donate to VCM participants. The outsider may discriminate between participants of the VCM on the basis of information accessible at a cost to her. Inclusion in and exclusion from the VCM are involuntary while contributions in it are voluntary. How involuntary inclusion of R in VCM affects her discriminatory voluntary donations and contribution behavior is explored experimentally.