Merchants Of Death Research Articles

Merchants of Death: The Effect of Credit Supply Shocks on Hospital Outcomes

This study examines the link between credit supply and hospital health outcomes. We use bank stress tests as exogenous shocks to credit access for hospitals that have lending relationships with tested banks. We find that affected hospitals shift their operations to increase resource utilization following a negative credit shock but reduce the quality of their care to patients across a variety of measures, including a significant increase in risk-adjusted readmission and mortality rates. The results indicate that access to credit can affect the quality of health care hospitals deliver, pointing to important spillover effects of credit market frictions on health outcomes. (JEL G21, G32, I11, I18)

A Forgotten ‘Merchant of Death’. Auguste Schriever, the deal-maker of Liège

Most scholarship on the arms trade of the late nineteenth century has focused on the big players in the industry; the ‘Merchants of Death’ whose activities are said to have made war inevitable. However this article focusses on a smaller, but no less troubling, aspect of the arms business: the trade in new and surplus military rifles and on one largely forgotten dealer; Auguste Schriever of Liège. Using contemporary reporting and the order records of the mighty ŒWG at Steyr, I will outline some of the deals that made him a significant figure in the arms trade. He was trusted by Ferdinand Mannlicher and was so respected by his rivals that they felt the need to spy on him. He was also accused of selling rifles to pirates in the far east and to an Emperor who used them to resist colonial powers and enslave his own people. My article begins to shine a light on this enigmatic figure and on to the complex and hidden trade in military rifles in this period.

Merchants of death: The effect of credit supply shocks on hospital outcomes

Merchants of death: The effect of credit supply shocks on hospital outcomes

Michael Genovese. The Problem of Profit: Finance and Feeling in Eighteenth-Century British Literature.

Michael Genovese. <i>The Problem of Profit: Finance and Feeling in Eighteenth-Century British Literature</i>.

Merchants of death: Arms imports and terrorism

Do arms imports fuel terrorism? Despite the high human, economic and political toll associated with terrorism, the effect of a country’s arms trade on the propensity to experience terrorist attacks has received scant attention so far. We argue that arms imports affect a country’s institutional landscape, increasing grievances due to corruption, exclusion and human rights violations; these grievances, in turn, incite terrorism. We leverage plausibly exogenous variation in global arms trade patterns as an instrument to provide causal evidence of a significant positive effect of arms imports on terrorist activity for 179 countries between 1992 and 2018. We also show that arms imports indeed increase corruption and political exclusion, which may explain why arms imports ultimately encourage terrorist activity. Finally, the adverse effect of arms imports on terrorism is strongest among countries characterized by low levels of fiscal capacity and high levels of political inequality and authoritarianism.

Merchants of Death: The Effect of Credit Supply Shocks on Hospital Outcomes

This study examines the link between credit supply and hospital health outcomes. Using detailed data on hospitals and the banks that they borrow from, we use bank stress tests as exogenous shocks to credit access for hospitals that have lending relationships with tested banks. We find that affected hospitals shift their operations to enhance their profit margins in response to a negative credit shock, but reduce the quality of their care to patients across a variety of measures. In particular, affected hospitals exhibit significantly lower attentiveness in providing timely and effective treatment and procedures, and are rated substantially lower in patient satisfaction. This decline in care quality is reflected in health outcomes: affected hospitals experience a significant increase in risk-adjusted, unplanned 30-day readmission rates of recently discharged patients and in risk-adjusted 30-day patient mortality rates. Overall, the results indicate that access to credit can affect the quality of healthcare hospitals deliver, pointing to important spillover effects of credit market frictions on health outcomes.

Merchants of Death: The Effect of Credit Supply Shocks on Hospital Outcomes

Merchants of Death: The Effect of Credit Supply Shocks on Hospital Outcomes

Death, Sex, and Nylon

Death, Sex, and Nylon Christine Hume (bio) The invention of plastic plummeted us into a collective dream, an occult heritage we thought dead, now coming to life in perplexed new forms. We projected ourselves into plastic's material will to change. Yet plastic is, Roland Barthes notes, "the first magical substance which consents to be prosaic. […] for the first time, artifice aims at something common." ________ Twenty days after Wallace Hume Carothers applied for the "fiber 6-6" (nylon polymer) patent in April 1937, he checked himself into a Philadelphia hotel room and drank a cyanide cocktail. He had been wearing a capsule of potassium cyanide on his watch chain during the synthetic fiber's development, and as a chemist, he knew dissolving cyanide in a citric solution would quicken the poison's effect. His suicide took place at the crossroads of the biological: two days after his forty-first birthday, in the first trimester of his wife's pregnancy, less than a year into mourning his beloved sister's sudden death, and several years before the word 'nylon' burst into being. These elements bonded to form a chain of reactions, an exchange of properties. Carothers was prone to wandering off, sometimes for weeks at a time. In those blank moments of his biography, we see him at a distance, walking away, barely visible, on the other side of the river, or tracks, or highway. We know a few things: he didn't want children. He felt bereft in the wake of his sister's fatal car accident. With the Depression cutting into DuPont's budget, the company officially modified its expectations [End Page 411] for Carothers, demanding he work toward commercial goals. And the more DuPont pressured him to produce commercial applications of his ideas, to shift from pure to practical research, the harder he failed to find meaning or inspiration in his work. This era also marks DuPont's move away from its original market in manufacturing explosives in an attempt to rid itself of the 'merchant of death' image and to avoid antitrust concerns over its stronghold on the defense industry. In doing so, the company transformed the old science of war explosives into the mythical modernity of polymer chemistry. When we say 'chemistry,' we mean the effort to turn creativity into money, waste into worth, and sex and death into a consumer good. ________ Carothers's patent's approval—his fiftieth for DuPont—came posthumously. Immediately newspapers reported that "one of the ways to prepare the new synthetic silk fiber might be to make it out of human corpses" by using cadaverine, a reeking chemical excreted from decaying flesh. Gunpowder and dynamite residue, the traces of wartime death and suicide, it turns out, is hard to shake off. Just like DNA, nylon is a polymer, but instead of cracking the code of life, it impersonates life. At the 1939 World's Fair, "Princess Plastic," modeling nylons, emerged from a giant test tube, as DuPont's press release sought a rebirth of nylon's image: "wholly fabricated from coal, water, and air" yet "fashioned into filaments as strong as steel, as fine as the spider's web." Using organic metaphors to outdo nature, DuPont heralded the nylon stocking industry and the Age of the Leg. With it came a chemical industry revelation, proof that polymers uniquely could be predicted and engineered, which sparked a vision of a world to come. On May 15, 1940, officially known as Nylon Day (N-Day), five million pairs of brown nylons landed in department stores. They sold out in two days. ________ Nylons emblemized a technologically rich tomorrow, in step with the dream of air conditioning and television. They evoked the electrified utopian dreams of American empire extended into the natural world, which would be colonized and perfected through science. Our domestication [End Page 412] of the atom meant a Faustian manipulation of creation itself. The life cycle of organic materials no longer mattered: death to silk and cotton, long live synthetics! By returning us to nylon's early affiliation with death, a reminder of how much thanatos is wrapped up in eros, nylons carried a mystique of otherworldly enchantment, a...

Alfred Nobel and His Prizes: From Dynamite to DNA.

Alfred Nobel was one of the most successful chemists, inventors, entrepreneurs, and businessmen of the late nineteenth century. In a decision later in life, he rewrote his will to leave virtually all his fortune to establish prizes for persons of any nationality who made the most compelling achievement for the benefit of mankind in the fields of chemistry, physics, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace among nations. The prizes were first awarded in 1901, five years after his death. In considering his choice of prizes, it may be pertinent that he used the principles of chemistry and physics in his inventions and he had a lifelong devotion to science, he suffered and died from severe coronary and cerebral atherosclerosis, and he was a bibliophile, an author, and mingled with the literati of Paris. His interest in harmony among nations may have derived from the effects of the applications of his inventions in warfare (“merchant of death”) and his friendship with a leader in the movement to bring peace to nations of Europe. After some controversy, including Nobel’s citizenship, the mechanisms to choose the laureates and make four of the awards were developed by a foundation established in Stockholm; the choice of the laureate for promoting harmony among nations was assigned to the Norwegian Storting, another controversy. The Nobel Prizes after 115 years remain the most prestigious of awards. This review describes the man, his foundation, and the prizes with a special commentary on the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The Gunning of America: Misrepresenting Sources, Ignoring Racism

Pamela Haag’s The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture (Basic Books, 2015) devotes some energy to discussing the firearms industry as “Merchants of Death,” pointing to the interwar hostility towards armaments manufacturers with no awareness that her sources are explicitly not talking about firearms manufactured for individuals, but the governmental purchases of weapons of war. She also shows a selective blindness to existing published work on the role that racism played in the development of gun control.

English

Addiction damages compensation for the non-acceptance of the human population is below the break in economic, social, political, cultural life, increased crime and insecurity. Growing trend of drug abuse and promotion has occupied the mind. It is currently research in recent years. To get rid of addiction requires scientific and practical investigation. This study aims to describe how drug is used in the provinces of Iran using content analysis. In the review of the literature of three papers, respondents’ cosmic perception on drug abuse was selected. The most appropriate method of content analysis was used to select the 1999 year study of the most important event in the political, social and economic year. According to statistical data, heroin was mostly used in Fars and Yazd provinces, followed by morphine, cannabis and opium; the highest percentage of drug was found in Khorasan, Sistan and Baluchestan provinces. Most of the users were arrested in Tehran Province. The highest percentage of merchant of deaths is recorded in the province. The highest percentage of drug discovery area is airports. Most trafficking gangs have been arrested in the province, and most of the drugs are found in cars. More youths are involved in drug use and burning materials. Congress measures and decisive actions of the government are being taken. Key words: State, drugs, arrests, merchants of death, place of discovery.

Sir Basil Zaharoff and Sir Vincent Caillard as Instruments of British Policy towards Greece and the Ottoman Empire during the Asquith and Lloyd George Administrations, 1915–8

The notorious arms trader Sir Basil Zaharoff is remembered as the archetypal ‘merchant of death’. During the First World War, he is alleged to have exercised a malign influence over statesmen in London and Paris. Recently released Foreign Office files now allow us to document Zaharoff's wartime activities on behalf of the British government as an agent of influence in the Levant. The new sources reveal that Sir Vincent H.P. Caillard, the financial director of the arms-maker Vickers, played a key role in making Zaharoff's services available to prime ministers Asquith and Lloyd George. While Zaharoff has often been portrayed as a sinister force, manipulating statesmen into pursuing his financial and political interests, the reality was the reverse. Zaharoff was a convenient tool of two prime ministers rather than a powerful political manipulator in his own right.

A perspective on the PCPNDT Act

Background:An important modern diagnostic tool, used for monitoring pregnancy and genetic defects; the ultrasound machine, has also become a selective killer of the female child. The male child preference in India was responsible for female infanticides in the past. With easy availability and accessibility of USG, a shift has occurred from infanticide to feticide, although female infanticides still continue. In the process doctors are blamed as “merchants of death”. Peeved and pressed by national and internal agencies for the declining female child ratio (0-6 years), the Government of India reacted by enacting a stringent PC-PNDT Act almost solely aimed at doctors to prevent them from advertising and disclosing the sex of the fetus to the pregnant woman or her relatives. Since the enactment, hundreds of cases have been launched against the doctors.Aims:1. In order to stand up to the law important sections and rules of the PC-PNDT Act have been analyzed for the benefit of our colleagues. 2. The Indian legal system rests the burden of proof on the prosecution. In two sections of The Act, these have been done away with. Instead, the accused doctor has to prove himself innocent. Therefore a demand has been made to make suitable amendments to The Act in this regard. 3. The inclusion of column numbers 9-19 in the form ‘F’ is not relevant for USG clinics/ imaging centers; inaccurate filling of which may attract a prison sentence of 3 years. This irrelevance has to be deleted. 4. Some suggestions.

Military economics: the interaction of power and money

Introduction Economics The Military Values Facts Theories Power and Money Producing Security Militarism Economic Concepts Uncertainty Economic-Security Interactions Security: Are we Safe? Individual Security National Security Global Security War Oil Arms Races and Arms Control Military Spending: How Much is Enough? Measures of Military Expenditure Motives for Arming Economic Functions of US Military Spending Hard Choices: UK and France An Arms Race: India and Pakistan Military Prices Military Balance Sheets Force Acquisition I, Demand: The Biggest Bang for a Buck? Labour Weapons Procurement Technology Force Acquisition II, Supply: The Merchants of Death? The Arms Industry Evolution of the Arms Trade Regulation Military Capability: How to Win? Force Employment Morale Logistics Peacekeeping Economic Choices: Swords or Plowshares? Budget Constraints Economic Effects Technological Spin-off Economic Warfare Understanding Military Economics Acknowledgements, Abbreviations, References, Index

Tobacco Industry Use of Corporate Social Responsibility Tactics as a Sword and a Shield on Secondhand Smoke Issues

The tobacco industry has used corporate social responsibility tactics to improve its corporate image with the public, press, and regulators who increasingly have grown to view it as a merchant of death. There is, however, an intractable problem that corporate social responsibility efforts can mask but not resolve: the tobacco industry's products are lethal when used as directed, and no amount of corporate social responsibility activity can reconcile that fundamental contradiction with ethical corporate citizenship. This study's focus is to better understand the tobacco industry's corporate social responsibility efforts and to assess whether there has been any substantive change in the way it does business with regard to the issue of exposure to secondhand smoke. The results show that the industry has made no substantial changes and in fact has continued with business as usual. Although many of the tobacco companies' tactics traditionally had been defensive, they strove for a way to change to a more offensive strategy. Almost without exception, however, their desire to appear to be good corporate citizens clashed with their aversion to further regulation and jeopardizing their legal position, perhaps an irreconcilable conflict. Despite the switch to offense, in 2006 a federal judge found the companies guilty of racketeering.

Contractors: The New Element of Military Force Structure

Mercenaries, merchants of death, coalition of the billing, national disgrace all have been used to describe the use of contractors in war. The extensive use of contractors on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan has engendered strong emotion and calls for change. An ever-expanding literature and much larger volume of opinion pieces have led the discussion, most expressing shock and disappointment that such a situation has occurred. Unfortunately, little of this literature is useful to planners trying to design future forces in a world characterized by extensive commitments and limited manpower. The purpose of this article is to examine what battlefield contractors actually do, consider how we got to the situation we are in today, and provide force planners with some useful insight regarding the future. Some general conclusions related to this assessment: * Most jobs performed by contractors on the battlefield are unobjectional and should not be done by military personnel. * With regard to the provision for bodyguards, the function where the most problems have occurred, viable options for change do exist. * Following the Cold War, the Services, especially the active Army, were structured with an emphasis on combat units at the expense of support units. As a result there is a large and enduring shortage of support units. The use of contractors on the battlefield is no longer an optional or marginal activity. The bottom-line for planners is that contractors are an integral and permanent part of US force structure. As a permanent part of US military force structure, contractors should be treated as such. Just as there are plans, preparations, and procedures for using reserve forces, the same needs to be done in the case of contractors. Contractors and Their Role How many contractors are there on today's battlefields and what are their functions? For the first years of the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan no one really knew how many contractors were present in theater. Estimates were proposed, but, because agencies did their own hiring and no central database existed, there was a great deal of uncertainty. When the number of contractors became an operational and political issue, the Congress directed that an accurate accounting be made. As a result there is now, as of the second quarter of fiscal year 2008, a fairly reliable count, 265,000 personnel. Unfortunately, this number has created as much confusion as clarity. Because so much media attention has focused on security contractors, many assume that the majority of these 265,000 contractors are gun-toting Americans. In fact, few are armed, and 55 percent are Iraqis. Figure 1 depicts how the numbers break out and a brief description of the functional areas. Reconstruction Almost half of all contractors are in support of some sort of reconstruction. These contractors assist in the rebuilding of infrastructure, from oil fields to roads and schools. Most of the personnel are local nationals. No sensible person would propose replacing these contractors with US military personnel. True, there have been instances where local contractors are sometimes tainted by corruption and inefficiency, and it would appear to be administratively easier just to substitute military engineers. But these contractors also hire local labor, and are responsible for putting large numbers of local men to work, a fact aiding the broader counterinsurgency effort. Work removes the bored and unemployed from the streets. Men who might otherwise join the insurgency for ideological or economic reasons now have a stake in maintaining stability. A job also has significance in traditional societies such as Iraq and Afghanistan, a fact that is sometimes difficult for westerners to appreciate. A job means that a man can get married and leave his family's home. Traditionally in these societies, unmarried children do not move out and get apartments on their own. …

Stand Tall and Speak Up: Work and Your Other Life - Navigating the Course

My favorite adage about work/life balance is not the oft-quoted saying, "No one on their deathbed ever wished they'd spent more time at the office." Instead, I prefer the advice to "write your own obituary." Although the first is a good warning, it doesn't provide much guidance. In contrast, the second supplies a technique to help you plan your life even at an advanced age. Alfred Nobel made a fortune by inventing and manufacturing dynamite. In 1888, when his brother Ludvig died, a newspaper misattributed the work of Alfred to his brother and printed the headline, "The Merchant of Death is Dead!" Disgusted by the obituary of himself, Alfred Nobel decided to use his wealth to alter his legacy. When he died 8 years later, he provided funds for awards for people whose work was of benefit to humanity and in doing so successfully turned around society's assessment of him. Today, almost no one associates Nobel Prizes with death from the use of dynamite. The exercise of writing your own obituary and thinking about what you want to accomplish is a good way to clarify your priorities. Then, you can work the inverse problem to identify the steps you must take. As Alfred Nobel's story illustrates, even if you are in the sunset of your life, it is not too late to ask yourself what you want to accomplish with the remaining time you have. Meshing career planning with work/life balance issues is challenging, because we each have different dreams and priorities. One person's perfect job is another person's worst nightmare. Also, since our family situations and goals change with time, the ideal job at one point in our life may be totally unacceptable at another time. People are not mind readers, so we must not expect someone else to intuit what we want. We must be willing to tell them what we want or to figure out for ourselves how to execute an alternative plan. We must also recognize that the choices we make may cost us promotions or rapid advancement. For me, this is the central premise of being responsible for your own career. Experience is cumulative. If, for work/life balance reasons, we choose to seek positions that do not provide the opportunities to develop certain skills, we must recognize the consequences of our actions. Later, it will be difficult to secure a job that has those skills as a prerequisite, unless we can convince people that we have equivalent competencies. Alternatively, we may be willing to take on the responsibilities of a position, but not be selected for a role that provides the experience we desire. In either case, to get past the roadblock we need to take independent action.

Televising sin: efforts to restrict the televised advertisement of cigarettes and alcohol in the united states, 1950s to 1980s

Near the end of 2001, the National Broadcasting Company announced a departure in its advertising policy: the network would effectively break the taboo against spirits advertising on television by a...

Arms and the State: Sir William Armstrong and the Remaking of British Naval Power, 1854-1914 (review)

Reviewed by: Arms and the State: Sir William Armstrong and the Remaking of British Naval Power, 1854–1914 Kurt Hackemer (bio) Arms and the State: Sir William Armstrong and the Remaking of British Naval Power, 1854–1914. By Marshall J. Bastable. Aldershot, Hants., and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2004. Pp. xii+300. $89.95. Marshall Bastable's subtitle suggests that his subject is the Royal Navy's modernization and expansion in the decades before World War I, but his book offers much more than that. In challenging the prevailing historiography that sees Sir William Armstrong (1810–1900) as representative of the failure experienced by Victorian entrepreneurs, Bastable offers a valuable glimpse at the origins of military-industrial-political relationships from the British perspective and suggests that Armstrong's acumen in managing technological change put him ahead of his time. Armstrong was an established engineer when the Crimean War broke out. Responding to obvious shortcomings in British artillery, he proposed a revolutionary new breech-loading wrought-iron field piece that quickly earned a reputation as one of the world's best. Proving that to be true, especially against the equally innovative cannon designed by Joseph Whitworth, required not only engineering expertise but also the ability to navigate the social and political environment of the time. Armstrong prevailed, becoming the Engineer of Rifled Ordnance at the Woolwich Arsenal while preserving [End Page 652] the independence of Elswick, his private company that also sold ordnance to the British government. The relationship abruptly ended in 1863, when, despite the impressive technological advantages that Armstrong's guns offered, the government canceled its contract with Elswick because it could see no discernable strategic threats on the horizon. Rather than leave the ordnance business, Armstrong refocused and began selling cannon and warships globally. In doing so, Bastable argues, he was among the first to develop a world market for his wares, and he changed the armaments business forever. Even as Armstrong's fortunes waned in Britain, he made Elswick an international financial success. Britain was at peace, but much of the rest of the world was at war in the 1860s and 1870s. Armstrong capitalized on the absence of British governmental restrictions on his ability to export arms and aggressively marketed his technologically superior ordnance and innovative warships around the globe. As competitors like Krupps challenged Elswick with equally sophisticated technology, Armstrong's ability to navigate the political and social landscape became as important as technology in determining the company's success. Although it suffered occasional setbacks, Elswick succeeded more often than not and flourished abroad even as many of its Victorian counterparts floundered in rough economic times at home. This success also ensured that the company maintained an active research and development program when its domestic competitors and government arsenals did not. Elswick found itself well-positioned for the naval arms race that preoccupied the major and emerging powers from the late 1880s until 1914. Its expertise was appropriated by the British government for national goals, changing yet again how the company did business. Rather than managing its own affairs and selling to all available customers, Elswick found that the government now decided not only who got to buy what, but also what designs would be manufactured. Industrial capacity became more important than technological innovation; the company's interests could barely be distinguished from those of the state. In return, Elswick profited from increasingly large arms appropriations, much as it had before 1863, and the largesse continued through the Great War. However, when hostilities ended and the British government no longer needed Elswick's wares, the company could not make up lost sales by selling elsewhere, for the world was generally at peace, or at least pretended to be. Elswick tried to diversify into nonmilitary production, but, despite all its technological expertise, it could not overcome the economic downturn of the 1920s and 1930s or popular disdain for the "merchants of death" on whom the Great War was blamed. The social, political, and economic context in which the company operated ultimately exerted more influence on its fortunes than its ability to produce innovative technology, and Elswick disappeared in 1937. Armstrong's story is interesting, and Bastable's...

Merchants of Death: Media Violence and American Empire

In this article, David Trend illuminates the centrality of violent narratives in U.S. popular culture. He describes the ubiquity of violent imagery and the popular discourse it has generated. Trend argues that research on media violence has created a large academic subculture that has done little to advance our understanding of who is watching violent media and why. He draws on multidisciplinary sources and calls for scholars to collaborate across fields to reframe the discussion. He concludes that the mass production of violent media may be wasting an enormous resource that might otherwise be used for tremendous public good.