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Mending Malpratice
THE SOURCE: “Dropped Medical Malpractice Claims: Their Surprising Frequency, Apparent Causes, and Potential Remedies” by Dwight Golann, in Health Affairs, July 2011.
It's a common enough headache for American doctors: Treat a patient using a routine procedure, but instead of getting a check in the mail, get served legal papers. To add insult to injury, much of the cost and conflict of malpractice litigation is unnecessary. A surprising number of cases “simply disappear, as plaintiffs abandon them,” writes Dwight Golann, a professor at Suffolk University Law School, in Boston. Golann studied 2,094 malpractice cases in Massachusetts that closed between 2006 and 2010. Almost half—46 percent—were dropped by the plaintiff. (The remainder resulted in a settlement or went to court.)
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Brazil’s Popularity Problem
THE SOURCE: “A Leader Without Followers? The Growing Divergence Between the Regional and Global Performance of Brazilian Foreign Policy” by Andrés Malamud, in Latin American Politics and Society, Fall 2011.Checkpoints, Not Checks
THE SOURCE: “Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines” by Eli Berman, Michael Callen, Joseph H. Felter, and Jacob N. Shapiro, in Journal of Conflict Resolution, Aug. 2011.Capitalism, Chinese Style
THE SOURCE: “China’s Changing Guanxi Capitalism: Private Entrepreneurs Between Leninist Control and Relentless Accumulation” by Christopher A. McNally, in Business and Politics, Aug. 2011.