Regional integration agreements (RIAs) are examples of second best and have an ambiguous impact on welfare. This paper builds a model where RIAs unambiguously raise welfare by correcting for externalities. It assumes that trade between neighboring countries raises trust between them and reduce the likelihood of conflict. The optimum intervention in that case is a subsidy on imports from the nei...

The immune system's quieter side went unnoticed for some time, while inflammation inducing proteins soaked up all the attention. Fiona Powrie stepped in just after the concept of inflammation-reducing " suppressor " cells had emerged. In Don Mason's laboratory at the MRC Cellular Immunology Unit in Oxford, Powrie and her colleagues lent the vaguely described cells definition, by showing that on...

CAN VACCINATIONS HELP TO RESOLVE CONFLICTS AND NURTURE DIPLOMACY? LATER THIS MONTH, Indonesia, the world’s most populous Islamic country, will host U.S. President Obama, a visit that could establish important scientifi c ties between the United States and Indonesia and implement a potentially powerful piece of vaccine diplomacy. The oral polio vaccine is a substantive example of how vaccination...

preventive diplomacy, a concept promoted more than fifty years ago by dag hammarskjöld, former un secretary general, is now being institutionalized through united nations regional center for preventive diplomacy for central asia (unrcca), which is established for the purpose of peaceful settlements of disputes, and prevention of conflicts by using preventive and early warning mechanisms. the ce...

BACKGROUND Global health diplomacy (GHD) is a burgeoning field bridging the priorities of global health and foreign affairs. Given the increasing need to mobilize disparate global health stakeholders coupled with the need to design complex public health partnerships to tackle issues of international concern, effective and timely cooperation among state actors is critical. Health Attachés repres...