We use a difference-in-differences strategy that compares Communist with Western European countries to test the effect of the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe on the flow of book translations between countries. We find that translations of Western European titles into former non-Soviet Communist countries increased by a factor of eight with the fall of Communism and reached Western level...

Even though most clinical data on cachexia have been reported from Western countries, cachexia may be a growing problem in Asia as well, as the population in this area of the world is considerably larger. Considering the current definitions of obesity and sarcopenia in Japan, which are different from the ones in Western countries, the lack of a distinct cachexia definition in Japan is strinking...

Scotland’s health, when compared to other Western European countries is relatively poor. As judged by life expectancy at birth, only Portugal has a lower life expectancy for males and there are no Western European countries whose females have a lower life expectancy. Figure 1 shows the trend in male life expectancy during the 20 century in Scotland and in 16 other Western European countries. It...