A Blessing of Women

O-17: Female Genital Mutilation: A Curse or Blessing among Women of Reproductive Age in Nigeria

Background: Female genital mutilation (FGM) practice is mostly carried out by traditional circumcisers, who often play other central roles in communities, such as attending childbirths. Increasingly, FGM is also performed by health care providers. However, FGM is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women. The study investigates a broad cross-cultural study...

The elimination of disease: a mixed blessing.

The increase in life expectancy that would result from the elimination of certain diseases and the resulting change in hospital utilization vary, depending on the disease. In some cases, life expectancy would rise and total days spent in hospital would decline, while in others, the gain in life expectancy would be accompanied by an increase in hospital days. For instance, if mental health disor...

Arbitrage Opportunities: a Blessing or a Curse?

This paper shows that arbitrage is limited if rational agents face uncertainty about completing their arbitrage portfolios. This “execution risk” arises in our model because there are slippages in asset prices as arbitrageurs compete for the limited supply of assets needed for a profitable arbitrage portfolio. This is distinct from the existing limits of arbitrage such as noise trader risk, fun...

Our Environment: A Blessing to Cherish 1 OUR ENVIRONMENT: A BLESSING TO CHERISH

On the blessing of abstraction.

The "blessing of abstraction" refers to the observation that acquiring abstract knowledge sometimes proceeds more quickly than acquiring more specific knowledge. This observation can be formalized and reproduced by hierarchical Bayesian models. The key notion is that more abstract layers of the hierarchy have a larger "effective" sample size, because they combine information across multiple spec...