bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Hunting Whales and Other Cetaceans
Authors: Barnes R H
Published: November 2023

An example of how normal mediocre luck can suddenly turn favourable for some may be taken from three days in September 1979. On the 13th all boats came in empty except the Kéna Pukã, which caught a spinner dolphin. There were many whales, but none of the boats managed to harpoon one. On the 14th ten boats went out, of which eight got at least a share in a whale. The Sika Ténã harpooned a large whale which then pulled it under for a quarter of an hour to a half-hour.
Introduction
Authors: Gray Ronald H
Published: November 2023

The Seminar on the Demographic and Biomedical Determinants of Human Reproduction, held in January 1988 at the Johns Hopkins, was intended to be a sequel to a 1977 meeting on Natural Fertility, with particular emphasis on new biomedical developments of relevance to . The objective of the seminar was an exchange: contributors both examined the complementarity between population-based demographic and epidemiological studies and provided on biological derived from clinical or endocrinological investigations. John Bongaarts provided an overview of the relative contributions of biological and social factors in determining natural fertility. In Chapter 2 below, Bongaarts presents a model suggesting that behavioural factors, such as age at marriage, coital frequency, and particularly the duration of breastfeeding, exert the greatest effect on fertility, whereas biological factors, such as sterility, intra-uterine mortality, and conception failure, play a less important role, though they are by no means insignificant.
The Determinants of Adolescent Fertility with Special Reference to Biological Variables
Authors: Becker Stan
Published: November 2023

The initiation of reproductive capacity in humans typically occurs in the second decade of life. Because menarche is a clearly defined event and pregnancy occurs to women, while the onset of male reproductive capacity is less clear and paternity is sometimes unknown, the human female is usually the focus of study for both the timing of entry into reproductivity and for adolescent fertility. Adolescence is usually defined as covering the period from puberty to age 20. The age of puberty itself will be considered in this paper, but for fertility statistics, the 15-19 year age-group is used. Thus, the term adolescence is used in a general sense. There is variation in the age at menarche around the globe. After menarche, there is also wide variation among societies in the intermediate fertility variables (Davis and Blake, 1956), particularly in the age at entry into sexual union and the use of contraception and abortion. Observed fertility levels of adolescents reflect combinations of values of all the intermediate variables. After a brief overview of levels and trends of adolescent fertility, this paper examines the evidence on the age of menarche and its secular trend, fecundability after menarche, as well as observed spontaneous loss rates in the early reproductive years. Age at entry into sexual union and use of contraception and abortion within sexual unions are also considered, but in a perfunctory manner. To structure the discussion on fertility after menarche, the framework of the intermediate fertility variables is utilized.
The Pathophysiology and Epidemiology of Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Relation to Pelvic Inflammatory Disease and Infertility
Authors: Cates Willard , Rolfs Robert T , Aral Sevgi O
Published: November 2023

Unravelling the relationship among sexually transmitted diseases (STD), pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), and infertility is a complex exercise in aetiological reasoning. It involves examining correlations among conditions with varying definitions, imprecise diagnoses, and a two-phase temporal lag in clinical expression, first from STD to PID, and then from PID to infertility. Our discussion of the pathophysiology and epidemiology of these conditions will distinguish these two phases. In addition, we will draw on the existing imperfect evidence to estimate the current proportion of STD-related infertility in the United States.
A Descriptive Epidemiology of Infertility in Costa Rica*
Authors: Oberle Mark W , Rosero-Bixby Luis , Whitaker Pat
Published: November 2023

The prevalence of infecundity in many Latin American countries has been calculated primarily from World Fertility Survey (WFS) data and from clinic-based studies. Vaessen (1984) used the 1976 WFS data to produce the only published estimates of the prevalence of infecundity in Costa Rica. In that study, a woman was considered infecund either if she reported that she was unable to have a child or if she had not had a child in the five years before the interview and had not used contraception during that period. By this definition, the prevalence of infecundity ranged from 5 per cent of women 20--4 years of age to 58 per cent of women 40--4 years of age.
Toxic Substances, Conception, and Pregnancy Outcome
Authors: Rosenberg Michael J
Published: November 2023

The last decade has witnessed a growing interest in the effects of physical, chemical, and biological agents to which people are exposed in the environment, particularly in the workplace. This attention has come about for several reasons. In the United States today some 109 million men and women between the ages of 15 and 44 work with more than 70 000 chemical, biological, and physical agents. Only a small fraction of these have been evaluated for their reproductive toxicity, but dramatic examples of reproductive problems leave little doubt that these agents can exert powerful adverse effects. The magnitude of reproductive problems attributable to these agents cannot be gauged with data presently available. Yet the relationship between occupation and reproduction has become a prominent concern for two reasons. First, the number of women in the work-force has been increasing in both relative and absolute terms. In the United States, for example, women now comprise half the work-force, up from 31 per cent in 1970 (Wessel, 1989). Similar increases are occurring throughout the industrialized world. Second, there are a decreasing number of children in each family, and first pregnancies are being delayed until later in the reproductive years. These trends are placing greater urgency on assuring that each pregnancy occurs when planned and produces a healthy child.
Models of Fecundability*
Authors: Golden Meredith L , Millman Sara R
Published: November 2023

Models of fecundability, reviewed in this paper, contribute to a basic understanding of reproductive processes and provide tools to analyse such processes quantitatively. They have applications in such diverse areas as the treatment of fertility impairments, the study of contraceptive effectiveness, and the evaluation of family-planning programmes. Our aim here is to provide a succinct overview of these models for those working in related fields and to identify directions for the further development of such models. We start by defining our terms, giving both a general sense of what is meant by fecundability and a set of more precise specifications of the several distinct phenomena it encompasses, which are sometimes confused with one another in the literature. Our most extensive section reviews the various efforts that have been made over the last several decades to model fecundability, tracing the gradual development of demographic thinking on this topic and distinguishing those models that treat fecundability as an input into the production of such outcomes as patterns of birth spacing and cumulative fertility and those that take fecundability itself as an outcome and focus on its components or deter-minants. In our concluding section, we attempt to identify issues that require further work and to provide a few suggestions as to the kinds of effort that are likely to contribute most substantially to further progress.
Artificial Insemination with Frozen Donor Semen: A Model to Appreciate Human Fecundity
Authors: Fédération CECOS , Lansac Jaques
Published: November 2023

Since Georges David founded the first sperm-bank in Paris in 1973, a network of twenty sperm-banks called CECOS (Centre for the Study and Preservation of Eggs and Sperm) has been established in France to serve the entire country. The CECOS centres are located in university hospitals, but they do not fall under hospital jurisdiction. Rather, they are managed by an administrative board that includes representatives from each hospital’s administration, social workers, and various related medical disciplines, such as gynaecology, genetics, endocrinology, bacteriology, and epidemiology.
Hormonal Regulation in in Vitro FertiIization
Authors: Hodgen Gary D
Published: November 2023

During the late 1960s Bob Edwards and his colleagues fixed on the idea that in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer in humans would provide enormous therapeutic and scientific opportunities. While this was not altogether a new idea, he, along with the clinician Patrick Steptoe, was-the first to persevere in the face of both peer and public ridicule as well as seemingly insurmountable technical problems. We should recall that, early on, public tolerance for such endeavours was slight indeed. The situation changed dramatically in the summer of 1978 with the birth of Louise Brown in Oldham, England. At last Edwards and Steptoe had succeeded in one case with in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer. While we were all amazed (some were sceptical; others were dubious) at this great achievement, it had arrived not unlike so many other medical advances: that is, through many years of preliminary animal and human studies, ultimately brought to clinical application through heroic effort and rigorous scientific study. But these events are best recorded by Edwards himself. Even so, it must be noted that the practical utility of in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer on a broad scale required radical revisions of the initial procedures in order to achieve anything approaching a reliable treatment. Much of this presentation is taken from earlier summaries (Hodgen, 1986; Veeck, 1986).
Endocrine Detection of Conception and Early Foetal Loss
Authors: Wilcox Allen J , Weinberg Clarice R , Baird Donna D , Canfield Robert E
Published: November 2023

At least 95 per cent of the menstrual cycles of healthy, reproductive-aged women are ovulatory (Vollman, 1977). However, for the average non-contracepting couple, there is only about a 25 per cent chance that an ovum will produce a recognized pregnancy (Leridon, 1977). This gap between the number of available ova and the much smaller number of observed pregnancies presumably reflects some mixture of failure to conceive and early death of the conceptus. The rate of fertilization in humans is unknown, because we have no method to detect the event of fertilization. That, in turn, makes us unable to measure the proportion of fertilized ova lost before pregnancy becomes clinically apparent. In principle, the risk of early loss could range from zero (assuming that 25 per cent of ova are fertilized and all survive) to nearly 75 per cent (assuming that every egg is fertilized but only 25 per cent survive).
Fecundability and Post-Partum Sterility: An Insuperable Interaction?
Authors: Leridon Henri
Published: November 2023

The recent increase of interest in the ‘intermediate variables’ of fertility (a concept already used by Davis and Blake in 1955 and by the first modellers of the reproductive process such as Henry, Potter, and Sheps) has led to an intense scrutiny of birth intervals :,md their components. Attention has first been focused on the duration of the non-susceptible period, which is equated to the duration of post-partum amenorrhoea, especially in relation to breastfeeding, which is acknowledged to be its main determinant. But there are other ingredients contributing to the size of birth intervals, namely the duration of pregnancy (almost constant, at least for live births), the time lost by unreported or undetected abortions, and the waiting time to conception.
Maternal Nutrition, Infant Feeding, and Post-Partum Amenorrhoea: Recent Evidence from Bangladesh*
Authors: Ford Kathleen , Huffman Sandra L
Published: November 2023

Post-partum amenorrhoea is the time from the end of a woman’s pregnancy until the time that she begins to menstruate. In countries where women breastfeed their infants for long periods of time and levels of contraceptive practice are low, breastfeeding and the amenorrhoea related to breastfeeding are important determinants of fertility levels. The role of nutritional status in lengthening the duration of amenorrhoea has been the focus of research for several years. It has been hypothesized that nutrition may affect the length of post-partum amenorrhoea in two ways. First, inadequate nutrition may have a direct effect on the functioning of a woman’s reproductive system and cause a delay in the return of menses. A second mechanism may be through the pattern of breastfeeding. Women with low levels of nutrition may have reduced milk output so that infants have to suckle more to obtain adequate nutrition. This more intensive suckling may delay the return of menses.
A Theory Of Production
Authors: Scazzieri Roberto
Published: November 2023

This book presents a new theoretical framework for the analysis of production processes. It is based on a rigorous reconstruction of the intellectual heritage of economics, but also considers issues traditionally left aside by economists, such as the distinction between three dimensions of the production process (tasks, capabilities, and materials in process), the organizational approach to scale and size, and the idea that different institutional set-ups may be compatible with the same objective standard of efficiency.
Time-Use Models of Economic Development
Authors: Gershuny Jonathan
Published: November 2023

Having produced an account of change in time use in modern societies, let us now turn back to the core of the issue that was broached in Chapter 1: the development of innovative and informative ways of social accounting. This chapter sets out three sorts of models, each following from discussions earlier in this book. Though the three models in a way take the place of a conclusion to the foregoing discussions, I would suggest that they also constitute appropriate starting points for further work in this area.
The Regional Model
Authors: Forni Mario , Lippi Marco
Published: November 2023

Until now we have analyzed a model describing individual variables. We have studied regional data, but our aim was mainly to obtain information on the number of common shocks in model (1.2). In the present chapter we shift to a generalization of (1.2). We assume that individuals are grouped into sets, which we call regions. Non-idiosyncratic shocks are of two kinds: those affecting all the agents of a particular region (local shocks) and those affecting all the agents in the economy (common shocks). Regions are assumed to be small as compared to the whole nation. By aggregating across agents within each region a dynamic factor model identical to (1.2) is obtained, where agents are replaced by regions and individual components are replaced by local components. We will call this model the regional model.
Aggregating the Common Components
Authors: Forni Mario , Lippi Marco
Published: November 2023

In this chapter we show how the aggregate process can be obtained from the individual processes and analyze the relationship between the aggregate and the individual dynamics. Since the idiosyncratic components play no role in the aggregate, owing to large numbers, we shall concentrate on the common components (j and neglect the lf’s. It is worth noticing that the results in this chapter can also be applied to aggregation of a small number of individual units, by interpreting the (j’s as them micro variables rather than the common components.
The Disaggregated Model
Authors: Forni Mario , Lippi Marco
Published: November 2023

Now we want to establish a general framework which includes the examples analyzed in Chapter 5 as particular cases. Unfortunately some complications, both notational and substantive, cannot be avoided. To compensate for them we will proceed by carefully clarifying each step of the construction.
The Aggregate Model
Authors: Forni Mario , Lippi Marco
Published: November 2023

Just as in Part I, by letting the size of the population grow, under suitable assumptions on the micro model, the variance ratio of the common to the idiosyncratic component can be made bigger than any preassigned real number. The following condition reproduces Assumptions 1.1 and 1.2 for the micro model underlying the aggregate model. Notice that here, unlike in Assumption 1.2, we impose the second condition on the whole r. But this is obviously necessary since the condition is not on the populations but on the set from where the individuals of the populations are picked up. If the second condition did not hold for the whole r, we could form populations for which the idiosyncratic component would not vanish.
The Rank of the Aggregate Vector
Authors: Forni Mario , Lippi Marco
Published: November 2023

In Chapters 6 and 7 we have given general definitions of the micro model and aggregate model. In the remaining chapters of Part II we shall consider convenient specifications or simplifications, which allow a simple application of the Alternative Principle. The reader will be easily convinced that generalization to more complex cases or to additional problems is straight forward.
Granger Causality
Authors: Forni Mario , Lippi Marco
Published: November 2023

Granger causality is a relationship between the components of D(L)zl or D(L)zf. Therefore, as in Chapter 8, there is no loss of generality in assuming D(L) = I. Let us further simplify the matter by considering a two-variable model. With no loss of generality we can write the model as The same is true for the opposite direction of causality. Let us concentrate on the aggregate variables. We have indicated the spectral density by SP(z). In our case, with obvious notation
Permanent Income and the Error Correction Mechanism
Authors: Forni Mario , Lippi Marco
Published: November 2023

In this part we present two applications of the aggregation theory developed in Parts I and II. Chapter 14 contains another application of the method proposed in Part I to determine the number of common components to a large panel of time series. In this chapter, which is mainly based on Forni and Lippi (1994), we return to the consumption model sketched in Section 5.1, i.e. the permanent income hypothesis under rational expectations (PIH), as it was worked out by Hall in 1978.
Introduction
Authors: Patnaik Prabhat
Published: November 2023

Capitalism has in practice proved to be far more durable than most of its critics and many of its admirers had anticipated. Marx certainly would have been surprised at the fact of its surviving in the advanced countries even a century after his death.When he wrote at the fall of the Paris Commune that ‘after whit-Sunday there can neither be peace nor truce possible between the working men of France and the appropriators of their produce’, and that ‘the French working class is only the advanced guard of the modern proletariat’, his pre sumption clearly was that a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism in the advanced countries had come on the historical agenda (Marx 1970, 306). He may have had some misgivings on this score towards the end of his life, when he turned his attention increasingly towards Russia. I But Engels’s remark in 1886 that in England the decennial cycle ‘seems indeed to have run its course, but only to land us in the slough of despond of a permanent and chronic depression in which the unemployed, losing patience, will take their own fate in their own hands’, suggests that belief in the historical imminence of revolution in the advanced countries was never entirely given up (Engels 1967, 6). The Marxist tradition in this century carried over this vision, at any rate until the failure of the German Revolution around the 1920s.
Accumulation and Economic Growth
Authors: Patnaik Prabhat
Published: November 2023

In a world of price-making, output in any period depends upon ex pectations about the future, unlike in conventional equilibrium economics. In the latter, abstracting for simplicity from the problem of heterogeneity of output, expectations may affect the level of money wages and prices for a given nominal supply of money, and the division of output between consumption and investment, but not the level of equilibrium output itself, which is determined entirely by what is producible through the combination of available non-free resources under the existing technology. If all transactions take place at the market-clearing prices, this is the level of output that would actually prevail. If however money wages (or both money wages and prices) are fixed through conglomerate decision-making, output can be less than this level, entailing involuntary unemployment, or can at best be equal to this level, entailing profit-inflation (in which case prices are no longer fixed). While the term ‘unemployment equilib rium’ is sometimes used to describe the former situation, this is a misnomer: the concept of an equilibrium, in the sense of a config uration of economic variables at which different agents, given their endowments, are maximising their objective functions, loses all relevance. I At best, the term equilibrium can be used in this case as denoting merely a state of rest.
Steady Growth and Price Instability
Authors: Patnaik Prabhat
Published: November 2023

The basic objective of each price-making conglomerate agent is to tilt the distribution of income in its favour. The distribution of in come is an area of struggle between different social groups, or classes, and the price that each charges for the commodity that it sells is a weapon in this struggle.This fact is completely obscured by the Walrasian picture of a large number of price-taking individual agents contracting on the market. I To be sure, the ability of each group to fix the price on the commodity it sells is not absolute; this ability itself is conditioned by a host of factors. Likewise since the actual or ex postincome distribution is a result of the configurationof prices fixed by the conglomerate agents representing different social groups, what a particular group thought it would get when it
Monetary Policy as an Instrument of Stabilisation
Authors: Patnaik Prabhat
Published: November 2023

In the last two chapters the possibility of State intervention was not considered. The only way that the State came into the picture was through the assumption that it helped to maintain a certain fixed real rate of interest at which money supply adjusted to the demand for it. And in such a case it was argued that the maintenance of steady output growth together with a steady rate of inflation was impossible through the spontaneous operation of a capitalist economy. But then, it may be asked, why talk about the spontaneous operation of the system?The capitalist system from its very inception has been characterised by State intervention, not only in its external relations, but also directly in its internal functioning. No doubt the scope of State intervention has varied over time, but -it has been there all along. Through State intervention surely the problem of instability mentioned earlier can be overcome, even if the spontaneous opera tion of the system cannot remove it. In other words, the more or less successful functioning of the capitalist system, which explains to a large extent its historical durability, can surely be ensured by, and attributed historically to, judicious State intervention. The purpose of the present chapter, and the following one, is to examine briefly the nature of and the constraints upon State intervention. The pres ent chapter deals with monetary policy while the following one is concerned with intervention through fiscal means.
Capital Accumulation in Conditions of Unequal Interdependence
Authors: Patnaik Prabhat
Published: November 2023

We have argued so far that a capitalist economy in which organised workers face organised capital cannot achieve both output stability in the sense of a steady rate of growth and price stability in the sense of a steady rate of inflation on the basis of its spontaneous working and that even State intervention would not be able to combine both kfods of stability owing to the social constraints on the State. Even if it does manage to do so, it could be at a level of unemployment and of growth rate which would be socially destabilising. If capitalist economies have managed over long periods of their history both to perform well as well as to achieve output and price stability, the reason for it lies elsewhere, in their being coupled to pre-capitalist and semi-capitalist economies of the outlying regions.This coupling has taken the form of an ‘unequal interdependence’ (a term used by Bagchi 1982) that has ensured high growth as well as economic stability for the capitalist countries, and, as a consequence, social stability and durability of the system. A stylised picture of how this coupling works is the subject matter of the present chapter and of the one that follows.
Technological Progress and Uneven Development
Authors: Patnaik Prabhat
Published: November 2023

So far we have discussed the problem of capital accumulation with out introducing technological progress in any essential way. In the case of the backward economy it did not figure at all; in the case of the advanced economy it figured only in the sense that labour pro diuctivity growth was recognised, but there was no discussion of the process underlying it.The present chapter is devoted to a discussion of technological progress. Needless to say, the objective here is not to analyse the process of innovation per se,but rather to draw atten tion to a few limited aspects of it which are necessary for carrying forward the argument of the present book.
A Theory of Imperialism
Authors: Patnaik Prabhat
Published: November 2023

The argument developed over the last few chapters suggests that capitalism at its core is indeed a reasonably coherent, durable and successful system. But these characteristics arise for reasons quite different from what either the Walrasians, or neoclassical economists of other persuasions, or even the Keynesians think.They arise be cause of its coupling with outlying regions, with pre-capitalist or semi-capitalist economies. This confers on the system at its core certain benefits of tremendous significance.First, by providing external markets it keeps up the level of activity at a reasonably high tempo for long stretches of time, and thereby boosts the domestic inducement to invest at the core.This results not only in impressive growth rates in output and productivity, which permit significant increases in real wages at the core, but also in a situation where resort to external markets via export surpluses do not have to be a perennial feature of the system.
The Market Question in a Historical Setting
Authors: Patnaik Prabhat
Published: November 2023

In the present chapter and the one that follows, we shall discuss certain historical aspects of the development of capitalism at the core in the light of our stylised picture of imperialism, both to establish that our stylisation has not been an altogether irrelevant or meaning less one, as well as to fill in certain gaps which a stylised picture inevitably contains.Under the general rubric of the problem of aggregate demand at the core, one can distinguish between three quite distinct problems.The first is what might be called the aggregate expenditure problem, which states that given the mark-up, in any period at the desired level of capacity utilisation, I+ Xmust equal S+M.This was the problem, namely the possible insufficiency of aggregate expenditure to absorb the full capacity (or the desired capacity) output if it was produced, which was highlighted by Keynes and Kalecki.
Diffusion of Activities and the Terms of Trade
Authors: Patnaik Prabhat
Published: November 2023

The theoretical discussion in chapters 7 and 8 assumed that the manufactured good produced in the backward economy could not be exported. Such an extreme assumption is not necessary for our argument. Even if the workers in the advanced economy spend a fixed proportion of their consumption expenditure on the backward economy’s manufactured good, the argument remains unscathed, as indeed it does if the capitalists in the backward economy wish to spend a fixed fraction of their consumption expenditure on this good; this fraction does not have to be zero. In either case the growth rate of the backward economy gets tethered to that of the advanced economy, which is all that is needed for our argument.The argument would not hold, namely the growth rate of the former would get untethered from that of the latter only if the backward economy could keep expanding its market share.The present chapter discusses why it cannot do so.
Beveridge in the Longue Durée
Authors: Baldwin Peter
Published: November 2023

I come neither to bury Beveridge nor to honour him, although the temptation to strive for one or the other of these two extremes is great at the half-century mark after his most lasting achievement.1 Any retrospective evaluation not wholly in thrall either to ritual encomium or denunciation is likely to hover ambiguously between honouring and burying. Examining Beveridge and his influence in the comparatively longue durée we have put behind us since the publication of Social Insurance and Allied Services is no exception. The longue durée is a concept usually attributed to the French historian Femand Braudel. It marks an attempt to situate historical events in their broadest possible context, in a flow of time that is almost geological in its imperceptible movement.
The Profitability of Innovating Firms*
Authors: Geroski Paul A
Published: November 2023

The question of whether private rates of return are too low to encourage enough innovation by firms has been a perennial concern of UK industrial policy-makers, and numerous schemes have been (and continue to be) developed to help stimulate the generation and diffusion of innovations. In this chapter, we propose to cast some light on this problem by measuring the effect that the production of major innovations has on the profitability of innovation-producing firms (and their rivals).
Expectations and Behavior
Authors: Sargent Thomas J
Published: November 2023

The idea of rational expectations has two components: first, that each person’s behavior can be described as the outcome of maximizing an objective function subject to perceived constraints; and second, that the constraints perceived by everybody in the system are mutually consistent. The first part restricts individual behavior to be optimal according to some perceived constraints, while the second imposes consistency of those perceptions across people. In an economic system, the decisions of one person form parts of the constraints upon others, so that consistency, at least implicitly, requires people to be forming beliefs about others’ decisions, about their decision processes, and even about their beliefs.
Data Structures
Authors: Sargent Thomas J
Published: November 2023

Statistics studies methods of making inferences and decisions when we aren’t sure what is happening. For economists, statistics has long been the place to go prospecting for hypotheses to understand how people behave under conditions of uncertainty and ignorance. It must be our starting place, because we propose to make our agents even more like statisticians or econometricians than they are in rational expectations models.
Adaptation in Artificial Economies
Authors: Sargent Thomas J
Published: November 2023

This chapter puts adaptive agents into five different environments that have been analyzed in the rational expectations literature, thereby illustrating some of the different structures and possibilities in economic systems composed of such agents.
Applications
Authors: Sargent Thomas J
Published: November 2023

We have studied several examples in which systems of adaptive agents eventually find their way to a rational expectations equilibrium, and we know from results in the literature that there is a big class of other models where convergence will also occur. The examples in this book have all been ones that are simple enough for us to compute equilibria beforehand, then watch how fast and to which equilibrium the adaptive system converged. The idea of evolutionary programming is to use the equilibrium-finding tendency of collections of adapting agents to compute equilibria for us.
The History of the Distillers Company, 1877–1939
Authors: Weir Ronald
Published: November 2023

The Distillers Company (DCL) existed from 1877 until 1986 when it was acquired by Guinness. This book covers DCL's history from its founding as the merger of six firms to its position as one of Britain's largest manufacturing companies with diversified interests around the world. It is an extraordinary story of growth, acquisition, and diversification. By the 1920s DCL dominated the whisky industry in Scotland eventually acquiring the then big three blending firms - James Buchanan, John Dewar, and John Walker. With unfettered access to company records Dr Weir has been able to piece together the story of the company that was once described as concealing its activities behind a `tartan curtain'. He traces the role of key individuals like William ross; its lobbying and campaigning activities against drink controls; its international marketing in North America, where its partners included Joseph Kennedy; and its later diversification into industrial alcohol, fuel alcohol, and chemicals to meet the demands of the growing science-based industries. This book is the first full-length study of DCL based on the company's own archives and will appeal to a wide range of readers - those interested in the history of whisky and the Scottish distilleries; economic and business historians concerned with the growth of major corporations; and management analysts studying the processes of growth, diversification, entrepreneurship, and R D that are the necessary ingredients of the sustained growth of successful companies.
The Management of the Distillers Company: How Palsied was the ‘Visible Hand’?
Authors: Weir Ronald
Published: November 2023

The inter-war years were a key period in the evolution of industrial organization in Britain, when the large-scale company became increasingly accepted as the most appropriate form of enterprise. Mergers laid the foundations of ‘the corporate economy’. Giant firms like Unilever, Imperial Tobacco, ICI, Courtaulds, and Distillers came to dominate their industries. The capitalization of the large-scale firm increased both absolutely and relatively. In 1905 an issued capital of £1.3m. ensured entry to the league table of the fifty largest manufacturing companies. In 1919 a market value of £3.8m. was required, and, by 1930, £6.3m. DCL’s league position fluctuated, but by 1930 mergers had made it Britain’s sixth-largest manufacturing firm with a market value of £45.Sm. (see Table 14.1). By 1948, DCL would be the fourth-largest manufacturing firm and the largest in the drinks industry.
Chemicals 2: Encirclement-Union Carbide to the Rescue?
Authors: Weir Ronald
Published: November 2023

In November 1935 responsibility for the Research and Development Committee was given to Sir Alexander Walker with Torn Board as his deputy. Walker immediately launched a review of chemical activity. It was prompted by several factors: the dispute with Commercial Solvents, the poor financial performance of British Industrial Solvents, the threat posed by synthetic alcohol, the unsettled state of relations with ICI, dissatisfaction with the quality of advice about chemicals available to the Management Committee, and Walker’s feeling that his fellow blenders were incapable of grasping just how different chemicals were from potable spirits. All these issues related to the opportunities associated with one of the major contemporary advances in industrial chemistry, the production of organic chemicals by synthetic means.
Differential Mortality
Authors: Wunsch Guillaume
Published: November 2023

There are strongly pronounced differentials between survival chances for different social classes in less developed countries. This book gives insight into the variety of factors-biological, social, economic and cultural-associated with these inequalities in mortality rates. Certain of the papers deal with new conceptual approaches and methodological issues, while others cover particular countries in Asia and Latin America, providing overall an important and provoking study of inequality in death. Contributors: L. Ruzicka, J. Duchene, G. Wunsch, R. H. Gray, S. Horiuchi, S. D'Souza, E. E. Arriaga, J. M. Guzman, B. Utomo, M. B. Iskandar, N. H. Fisek, A. Palloni, G. C. Myers, A. Bouckaert, P. Kane
The Disembedded Regional Economy: The Transformation of East German Industrial Complexes into Western Enclaves
Authors: Grabher Gernot
Published: November 2023

Years after the events of autumn 1989, it appears that only ‘half a revolution’ took place in eastern Germany. Although the ‘revolutionary subjects’ of 1989 triggered the implosion of the old tired-out system, they played hardly any role in the creation of the new. Moreover, the revolutionary developments almost completely lacked innovative, future-oriented ideas (Habermas 1990: 181). In this vacuum, instead of the development of new social visions, the immediate implementation of the blueprint of western German society and economy rose to the top of the agenda. This obvious preference for the successful western German model was clearly endorsed by an overwhelming majority of eastern Germans in the 1990 elections, for various reasons such as the hope for a quick improvement in living conditions, distrust of all eastern German elites, and fear of regressive developments in the Soviet Union. This decision reduced the transformation of eastern Germany to a mere cloning of the western German institutional framework. The new economic and social institutions of eastern Germany were to be set up simply as branches of the western German institutions—at a speed and with a vigour, however, that precluded any self-organization. In political terms, this rigorous cloning has led to a subject-less society (Haussermann 1992: 4), a representative democracy in an apathetic society. In economic terms, the vacuum resulting from blocked economic and social self-organization was abruptly and vigorously filled by foreign actors, above all western investors.
Processes Facilitating Reliance on Trust in Inter-Organizational Networks
Authors: Ring Peter Smith
Published: November 2023

From a review of the organization and strategic management literatures of the past five years, two conclusions can be drawn. First, for managers who want to achieve sustained competitive advantage (SCA) for their firms, capitalizing on, and leveraging, firm-specific resources is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition (see e.g. Amit and Schoemaker 1993; Barney 1991; Lado and Wilson 1995; Mahoney and Pandian 1992; Prahalad and Hamel 1990). Secondly, in attempting to achieve SCA, many of these same managers now see co-operation between organizations as a useful means to gain access to critical resources beyond the boundaries of their own firms (see e.g. Gulati 1995; Hakansson and Snehota 1995; Nohria and Eccles 1993; Parkhe 1991; Powell 1990; Ring and Van de Ven 1992).
Research and Development Alliances: Ensuring Trust by Mutual Commitments
Authors: Laat Paul De
Published: November 2023

Firms increasingly form alliances with external partners that involve co¬ operation in the sphere of research and development (R&D). Glossing over the intricate details, available statistics about European firms yield roughly the following picture. About 40 per cent of the companies performing some R&D nowadays co-operate with partners external to the firm. As is to be expected, the percentage is higher for large companies than for small and medium-sized companies (Kleinknecht and Reynen 1992; Dutch statistics). About one-tenth of the total R&D budget is destined for external co-operation (7 per cent for large companies, 16 per cent for small and medium-sized companies). These external funds concern co-operation with other companies as well as with research organizations and universities, in a two-to-one ratio (Riedle 1989; German statistics). Moreover, these alliances are not only national ones, but regularly cross borders. If larger firms are considered, it is not unusual to be involved in tens of alliances at the same time, many of which are with the same partners (Hagedoorn and Schakenraad 1990, 1992; Freeman 1991). Philips, Siemens, and Olivetti even manage hundreds of alliances simultaneously.
Introduction
Authors: Swann G M Peter , prevezer Martha
Published: November 2023

This book aims to provide an analysis of the dynamics of industrial clustering in high-technology industries. This analysis is illustrated by reference to the emergence of clusters in the cases of computing and biotechnology, in the USA and the UK. We use the word cluster in both a geographical and technological sense: In what follows, a clustermeans a large group of firms in related industries at a particular location. We should emphasize from the outset that our focus is on high technologyindustry and dynamics.Clustering is not exclusively the preserve of high-technology industries, nor is it even a new phenomenon. Clusters are found in a wide variety of traditional industries (textiles in northern Italy, shipbuilding in Glasgow, steel in Pittsburgh, car manufacture in Detroit).
Cost Management in Sweden: From Modern to Post-Modern
Authors: Urban Ask , Christian Ax , Sten Jonsson
Published: November 2023

The calculative practices in an economy can be described on several levels. Understanding may be enhanced by descriptive levels providing mutual support. One may distinguish between an institutional level, at which norms and standards are developed and argued for; a collective level, at which populations are described in terms of statistics on the use of different methods; and the level of individual organizations. Different factors explain changes on those levels. On the institutional level, growing strength of the unions, wars, free-trade agreements, or majority shifts in Parliament may generate conditions of opportunity. On the collective or industry level, corporatist arrangements may yield a committee that will seize the opportunity to focus attention on joint problem solving, or consultancy firms specializing in selling a ‘package’ or literature and conferences may drive diffusion. In the individual firm, specific contingencies may explain how practices have evolved.
Management Accounting in the UK Reflections on Research, Practice, and the Profession
Authors: Bhimani Alnoor
Published: November 2023

The management accounting literature in Britain has recently documented calls for extensive changes. Exhortations to change management accounting systems echo those which, with a longer history, have aimed at altering enterprise management practices themselves. Thus, whereas company executives now deploy the language of management gurus (‘de-layering’, ‘empowerment’, ‘right-sizing’, ‘multi-functionality’), accountants also increasingly appeal to the rhetoric of their avant-garde masters (‘cost-drivers’, ‘activity-analysis’, ‘backflush’, ‘Kaizen costing’). As the interface between management and accounting ideals evolves, its potential for engendering management accounting change continues to be voiced. Management accounting practices, research, and the management accounting profession seem to be affected. Accounting practices in some organizations are being altered as novel prescriptions for accounting change emerge. But in other enterprises they remain highly organization-specific and even tradition-bound (Ezzamel et al. 1995). For some management accounting researchers, observed changes in management accounting practices and theorizing about normative management accounting approaches form important foci of interest, and open new possibilities for forging a more diverse research agenda in the field. The management accounting profession in the United Kingdom has likewise heeded calls for management accounting reforms, and espouses in the main a progressive outlook predicated on modern precepts for effective enterprise management.
Consequentialist Decision Theory and Utilitarian Ethics
Authors: Hammond Peter J
Published: November 2023

Normative social choice theory seems to have started out as a discussion of how to design suitable political systems and voting schemes-as in the work of well..known writers like Borda (1781), Condorcet (1785), Dodgson (1884), Black (1948), and Arrow (I95I; I963). Yet, in its attempt to aggregate individual preferences or interests into some kind of collective choice criterion, it would appear equally suited to the general issue of how to make good decisions which affect several different individuals. This, of course, is the subject of ethics in general, rather than just of political philosophy. After all, the design of suitable political systems is just one particular kind of ethical issue. So is the design of economic systems, and even the adjustment of features like tax rates within an existing system.
Co-operative Research in Japanese Manufacturing Industries
Authors: Goto Akira
Published: November 2023

Since the ‘success ‘ of the VLSI Research Association in Japan, co-operative research has attracted wide attention not only inside but also outside the country. In the USA, the creation of the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) and the passage of the National Cooperative Research Act of 1984 seem to have been motivated at least partly by the Japanese experience. In Europe, this appears to be true of various research consortia such as ESPRIT, EURECA, and JESSI.
Dutch Free-Standing Companies, 1870 1940
Authors: Gales Ben P A , Sluyterman Keetie E
Published: November 2023

Mira Wilkins coined the term ‘free-standing company ‘, identifying it as a typical mode of British direct investment abroad. Describing the British situation between 1870 and 1914, Wilkins concluded that freestanding companies were to be found as investors in many different countries and in such widely differing activities as agriculture, timber, cattle-raising, mining, oil production, manufacturing, transportation, public utilities, mortgage banking, and land development. In many instances, the free-standing company served as an alternative to the extension abroad of the British home-based operating companies. Free-standing companies were often part of networks of promoters, bankers, financiers, solicitors, accountants, engineers, politicians, and traders. These networks provided the services the home office could not give because of its smallness. Wilkins supposed that the mortality rate was high among the free-standing companies, because the headquarters and networks failed to provide the necessary financial and managerial services. For this reason, the British free-standing companies were inferior to US multinational companies.
The Significance of the Concept and a Future Agenda
Authors: Wilkins Mira
Published: November 2023

In the years from 1830 to 1870 the world economy became more integrated. By 1870-1914 numerous companies were crossing national frontiers. If any reader had doubts, the chapters in this volume should be convincing. The First World War interrupted the globalization pattern. The 1920s saw, however, a revival of business over borders, only to be tempered by the heightened nationalism of the 1930s. Then came the Second World War and the cold war. Yet in the 1950s and 1960s, and to an even greater extent in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, there was a renewal of internationalization, initially including principally non-communist countries and then extending to cover once more the entire world.