bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
THE DEFECTIVE DESIGN OF FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE
Authors: SCOTT KENNETH E. 
Published: January 2010

Deposit insurance funds, especially the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, are currently in visible trouble. Two central defects of the existing deposit insurance system are identified: (1) mispricing of the insurance premiums and (2) incentives for both the industry and the insurance agencies to postpone recognizing and realizing losses.Insurance premiums are mispriced because they are assessed at the same rate for all institutions, which creates a bias for banks to take greater risks. Practical difficulties of setting an appropriate risk‐based premium for each bank are real but not necessarily insurmountable. In particular, the sale by the bank of unsecured and uninsured debt could provide a market measure of default risk, under a given failure rule.The choice of a failure rule is also a critical matter. Current failure rules are poorly defined and permit insolvent institutions to continue in operation. Specifying a market value test of insolvency in the statutes would be helpful, but it would have to be supported by market‐value accounting requirements and stronger pressures on banking authorities not to defer action.
DRIFTING APART: CANADIAN AND U.S. LABOR MARKETS
Authors: GRUBEL HERBERT G. 
Published: January 2010

Canadian and U.S. unemployment rates moved together within a narrow margin from 1961 to the mid‐1970s. Since then, Canadian rates have exceeded U.S. rates by large margins—at times as much as 3 percentage points. Throughout this period, interest rates in the two countries have been nearly identical. Aggregate demand stimulation by government deficits has been greater in Canada than in the U.S., and the trade surplus in Canada has added to demand while the trade deficit in the U.S. has subtracted from demand. Therefore, it seems that conventional Keynesian arguments cannot explain the recent differences in unemployment rates.Differences in labor market developments, however, can do so. During a period when real wages rose 35 percent in Canada, they fell 5 percent in the U.S. Since the recession of 1981, U.S. wages have dropped while Canadian wages have remained constant. Differences in labor productivity do not account for these developments. A strong case exists for the argument that the different paths of unemployment rates are due to different paths of real wage developments.It is argued that the causes for these differences in labor market conditions are associated with substantial growth and decreases in unionization rates in Canada and the U.S., respectively. In addition, the unemployment insurance system in Canada is shown to be considerably more generous than that in the U.S.
AFTERMATH OF THE THRIFT CRISIS: BALANCING THE ECONOMY'S BOOKS
Authors: MASCARO ANGELO R. 
Published: January 2010

The thrift crisis has presented the federal government with a cleanup bill of unparalleled magnitude. Estimates of the present‐value cost range from $90 billion to $140 billion. Most observers acknowledge that the economic cost of the crisis already has occurred in the form of lost investment opportunities and a lower capital stock. Fewer acknowledge, however, that full payment of the cost can be made only through a reduction in private sector claims to wealth so as to match the misuse of deposits and soured loans made by thrifts. Some of that reduction has occurred through equity write‐downs in businesses and thrifts, but much of the necessary reduction has yet to occur. The necessary reduction constitutes an increased tax burden.The thrift insolvencies, coupled with deposit insurance and bankruptcy of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC), threw the economy's books out of balance: Claims on real assets in the form of insured deposits exceeded the value of assets owned by thrifts and insurance reserves of the FSUC. In the absence of deposit insurance, a write‐down of claims would have occurred through the market mechanism and the bankruptcy courts. In the presence of deposit insurance, the write‐down must be through taxation and the political mechanism. Recently enacted legislation will effect the writedown by spreading the taxation over time through debt finance, relying primarily on future taxes to service the debt. The desirability of debt finance hinges on whether the legislation also will prevent a recurrence of future crises. Critics maintain that prevention must entail reform of deposit insurance.
UNCERTAINTY AND THE COST OF ACID RAIN CONTROL
Authors: DOWLATABADI HADI , HARRINGTON WINSTON 
Published: January 2010

This paper uses a utility capacity planning and dispatch model to examine the robustness of acid rain mitigation policies. The model meets electricity demand at the lowest economic cost while it responds to price or quantity signals for controlling emissions. The model is unique since it is couched in a risk analysis framework that captures the uncertainty in other economic parameters determining the utility's strategic choices–e.g., demand level and fuel prices. This permits one to compare various institutional settings for pollution control for both a world with perfect foresight and one with imperfect foresight. This exercise provides quantitative results on the cost of pollution control with price and quantity controls. It also provides a measure of the response of these cost functions to the uncertainty in other key parameters.Exploring the performance of various pollution control mechanisms has led to three findings: (i) that the performance of a price control mechanism is dependent on the level of emission reductions that one seeks, (ii) that regionally traded emission permits and emission fees are equally efficient regardless of the level of foresight, and (Hi) that emission fees lead to more stable electricity generation prices. Finally, the sensitivity analysis of the results under imperfect foresight suggest that uncertainties in the level of demand and load management success play an important role in determining future pollution control costs.
POTENTIALS FOR AND BARRIERS TO BUILDING ENERGY CONSERVATION IN CHINA
Authors: HUANG YU JOE 
Published: January 2010

China is distinct among developing countries in that it has significant heating loads over much of the country. Because nearly half of the urban residential buildings are located in climates colder than that of Washington state, the already large demand for space heating will skyrocket if the current building boom continues. Space heating energy use, excluding that for hotels and offices catering to foreigners, is constrained by mandated coal allocations resulting in partially heated buildings with indoor temperatures significantly below design conditions. This underheating, to a significant extent, masks the energy savings obtained from more energy‐efficient boilers and building designs. Even so, computer simulations show that such conservation strategies can reduce current energy use by 40 percent, while dramatically raising indoor temperatures. Economic calculations comparing energy savings with increased construction costs are skewed by the unmet heating loads as well as by government‐subsidized coal prices that are below actual costs. From the perspective of building owners and managers, building energy conservation still is economically attractive in the cold Northeast– where the cost of conserved coal is half that of the subsidized coal price–but is difficult to justify in terms of economic payback in Beijing or Shanghai.
THE FED AND THE POLITICAL BUSINESS CYCLE
Authors: BECK NATHANIEL 
Published: January 2010

This study asks whether the Federal Reserve has actively made monetary policy so as to aid the president's reelection. Using Shiller's smoothness “prior” to estimate the shape of cycles, the study finds a political business cycle in unemployment and a preelection increase in growth of the money supply. But the timing of these two cycles is inconsistent. Furthermore, little evidence exists of a cycle in the instruments of monetary policy. Thus, the Fed is not actively creating a political business cycle. Apparently, movements in real money that are not caused—but are not offset—by the Fed are an important cause of the political business cycle.Elections influence Fed behavior. Monetary tightness occurs early in a presidential term, before reelection incentives become critical. This is due to the Fed's political weakness. Thus, the Fed's independence only partly insulates it from electoral pressures.
FOREIGN TAKEOVERS AND NEW INVESTMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES
Authors: RAY EDWARD JOHN 
Published: January 2010

This study is unique in several respects. First, it reviews the characteristics of the top 10 industries targeted for foreign direct investment (FDI) activity in the United States between 1979 and 1987. It analyzes both overall FDI activity and new plant and expansion FDI activity. The study summarizes and tests alternative hypotheses regarding the determinants of FDI in the United States by all countries, by the United Kingdom, by the European Community, by Japan, and by Canada.Large and growing product markets in an expanding economy have attracted FDI in the United States. Exchange rate movements have prompted opportunistic decisions to invest in U.S. production facilities. Investors' superior management skills appear to have prompted takeovers, while efforts to realize technological advantages of new physical capital and of relatively large operating plants have fostered plant and expansion investments.Evidence exists that a desire to circumvent current—but not potential—trade restrictions has motivated foreign direct investment. FDI activities are not associated with concentrated or heavily unionized industries. Highly protected industries have attracted heavier equity FDI by Japan and heavier new plant FDI by all sources and Canada. No evidence exists that FDI in the United States by Japan or anyone else is targeted to undercut union‐dominated firms or to arrest the spread of protectionist trade policies.
CHINA'S RESISTANCE TO ECONOMIC REFORMS
Authors: TINARI FRANK D. , LAM DANNY KIN‐KONG 
Published: January 2010

After 10 years of institutional and structural change, expanded economic activity, and subsequent economic difficulties, China adopted an austerity program in 1988. Underlying the ostensible economic reasons for the austerity program, however, was growing political resistance to economic reforms among Communist party members.This paper puts forth two explanations. One is that the leadership misunderstands the market system, and this leads to errors in economic policy. The second explanation is that rent seeking by strategically situated groups is responsible for much of the resistance.Because market‐oriented reform makes redundant both bureaucrats and job slots for apparatchik appointments, strong resistance to reform exists at the micro level.Two scenarios could lead to real economic reform: (i) gradual self‐limitation by the Communist party as economic decline continues and as the costs of maintaining the existing system increase, or (ii) a breakdown of consensus within the ruling stratum. In this paper, the dual thesis for resistance to reform serves to reinforce the latter scenario.
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DRUG ENFORCEMENT IN CALIFORNIA
Authors: PHILLIPS LLAD 
Published: January 2010

The war on drugs has placed new pressures on the criminal justice system. In recent years, arrests for drug violations have been growing more rapidly than arrests for the FBI index crimes in both the United States as a whole and California. By the year 1988, in California, the ratio of adult felony drug arrests to adult felony arrests for all seven major offenses in the FBI index had grown to 0.65.The analysis in this article concerns the impact that the war on crime and the war on drugs has had on the corrections system in California. Part of this analysis is descriptive. It details the rising proportion of felons newly entering prison after drug law convictions. In addition to swelling the volume of prisoners and changing their composition by offense, the war on drugs has changed the nature of flows between felons on parole and felons in prison. By 1988, for the first time, the number of felons returned to prison for parole violation exceeded the number of felons newly entering prison after court convictions. The analysis develops how the behavior of parole officers and the special significance of drug offenders contribute to this phenomenon. The result has been to circulate more felons between parole and prison, thus reducing discharges as a proportion of total felons on parole and unnecessarily increasing the stock of prisoners.
A MACROECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE OF AFTA'S PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS
Authors: SIMONE FRANCISCO D. A. NADAL DE 
Published: January 2010

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the impressive economic performance of most of its members have increased the weight of the region's views in world fora. However, ASEAN has been unsuccessful in fostering a regional integration arrangement (RIA) leading to an increase in intraregional trade and foreign direct investment. In January 1992, ASEAN launched the Asean Free Trade Area (AFTA) seeking to establish a free trade area (FTA) by 2008.Market integration increases economic interdependence and thereby raises the need for policy integration and discipline. This paper argues that a number of difficulties that ASEAN faced in promoting intraregional trade are likely to continue to affect AFTA (e.g., low economic complementarity and macroeconomic imbalances requiring large changes in equilibrium real exchange rates). The experience of other RIAs suggests other potential problems.AFTA's prospects of evolving into deeper forms of sustainable integration are remote. Some cooperation in areas of common interest seems likely.
PHYSICIANS' COST SHIFTING BEHAVIOR: MEDICAID VERSUS OTHER PATIENTS
Authors: SHOWALTER MARK H. 
Published: January 2010

Much of the debate about rising health care costs in the United States centers on the notion of “cost shifting.” Cost shifting is loosely defined as charging one set of patients a higher price to offset losses on another set of patients. One aspect of the cost shifting debate that the empirical work has ignored is whether or not doctors—as opposed to hospitals—practice cost shifting. The analysis here investigates this question using the Physicians' Practice Costs and Income Survey, 1983–1985 (PPCIS, expanded version)Using variation across states in Medicaid reimbursements, the analysis finds that lower Medicaid reimbursements tend to lower the fees physicians charge, contradicting the standard cost shifting story. Evidence also suggests that lower Medicaid reimbursements tend to cause physicians to treat fewer Medicaid patients. These results are consistent with profit maximizing behavior for physicians and also with the hypothesis that physicians exert some monopoly power.
SUPER‐SPECIALIZATION AND THE GAINS FROM TRADE
Authors: ARNDT SVEN W. 
Published: January 2010

An important facet of “globalization” is the spread of cross‐border production, which is variously known as intro product specialization, super‐specialization, or production fragmentation. This advanced stage in the international division of labor works particularly well between high‐wage developed and low‐wage emerging economies. But it is precisely this context in which the practice has been criticized for destroying jobs and undermining wages.This paper examines the welfare implications of this type of specialization on the part of labor‐intensive, import‐competing industries in advanced countries. The results will surprise the skeptics, for when import‐competing industries abandon production of labor‐intensive components, wages rise and industry employment and output expand. National welfare increases. For a large country, the terms of trade improve, raising national welfare still further.
THE DYNAMIC FACTOR IN MARSHALL'S ECONOMIC SYSTEM
Authors: JENNER R. A. 
Published: January 2010

SummaryWe have shown that Marshall's model of the competitive economy was fundamentally both an evolutionary and a dynamic structure. Two elemental variables that are subject to the pressure of continual change in this model are product and production methods. The impulse of this change is channeled and controlled by a carefully counterbalanced series of forces that Marshall designated “external and internal economies.” The initial mover behind this dynamic system is the struggle for competitive survival which forces a continually increasing level of efficiency. This spiraling movement toward greater efficiency is triggered by the activity of substitution, which works much like a “chain reaction,” and which, in turn, is governed ultimately by consumer demand. Taken together, these acts of substitution form a rightly controlled and carefully counterbalanced system of dynamic competition in which successful product and price competition ensures survival.
DEFENSE‐SPACE EXPENDITURES AND WESTERN ECONOMIC GROWTH: THE NONMANUFACTURING IMPACT
Authors: HOUSTON DAVID B. 
Published: January 2010

SUMMARYThe five considerations just discussed– (1) the regional variation of direct defense contracts awarded to nonmanufacturing industries; (2) the special distribution and impact of R&D expenditures; (3) the varying proportions of value added in, and the indirect employment tied to nonmanufacturing versus manufacturing industries; (4) the possible variation in the input requirements from nonmanufacturing industries under defense versus nondefense contracts; and (5) the induced impact of nonmanufacturing defense expenditures – all encourage analysis of the nonmanufacturing sector separately from the manufacturing sector. The determination of whether or not this is necessary in a particular regional study should be one of the first questions decided. For example, having answered in the affirmative the basic question “Are aggregate defense expenditures a significant part of the economic activity in this region?” we should next examine the importance of the nonmanufacturing sector. If it is significant, then special studies are necessary. If direct awards to nonmanufacturing industries are not important, the fourth of the problems mentioned above remains, namely: Are there any unique indirect impacts on the nanmanufacruring industries as a result of defense contracts?The foregoing analysis has emphasized the need for studying nonmanufac‐turing industries in regional defense expenditure analyses. This of course is only a particular example of a more general problem. Whether the study is regional or national, defense oriented or not, it is generally the case that the nonmanufac‐ruring sectors (with the exception perhaps of agriculture and construction) are inadequately studied. All too often imputations take the place of observations, and heroic assumptions abound. This is particularly serious when we observe the high percentages of employment in SIC groups 40–89. Contemporary regional studies resemble icebergs, with small segments well perceived and outlined, but with larger parts obscured by the murky depths of proportionality and linearity assumptions. Input‐output analysis or variants thereof undoubtedly provide the most powerful framework for analyzing regional economic structure. However, the fact that this type of analysis is applied more easily to manufacturing industries than to nonmanufacturing industries, which produce less well‐defined goods and services, is not a sufficient reason to ignore the latter.
Insertion site‐based polymorphism markers open new perspectives for genome saturation and marker‐assisted selection in wheat
Authors: Paux Etienne , Faure Sébastien , Choulet Frédéric , Roger Delphine , Gauthier Valérie , Martinant Jean‐Pierre , Sourdille Pierre , Balfourier François , Le Paslier Marie‐Christine , Chauveau Aurélie , Cakir Mehmet , Gandon Béatrice , Feuillet Catherine 
Published: January 2010

SummaryIn wheat, the deployment of marker‐assisted selection has long been hampered by the lack of markers compatible with high‐throughput cost‐effective genotyping techniques. Recently, insertion site‐based polymorphism (ISBP) markers have appeared as very powerful new tools for genomics and genetic studies in hexaploid wheat. To demonstrate their possible use in wheat breeding programmes, we assessed their potential to meet the five main requirements for utilization in MAS: flexible and high‐throughput detection methods, low quantity and quality of DNA required, low cost per assay, tight link to target loci and high level of polymorphism in breeding material. Toward this aim, we developed a programme, IsbpFinder, for the automated design of ISBP markers and adapted three detection methods (melting curve analysis, SNaPshot® Multiplex System and Illumina BeadArray technology) for high throughput and flexible detection of ISBP or ISBP‐derived SNP markers. We demonstrate that the high level of polymorphism of the ISBPs combined with cost‐effective genotyping methods can be used to efficiently saturate genetic maps, discriminate between elite cultivars, and design tightly linked diagnostic markers for virtually all target loci in the wheat genome. All together, our results suggest that ISBP markers have the potential to lead to a breakthrough in wheat marker‐assisted selection.
Expediency‐based practice? Medical students' reliance on Google and Wikipedia for biomedical inquiries
Authors: Judd Terry , Kennedy Gregor 
Published: January 2010

AbstractInternet usage logs captured during self‐directed learning sessions were used to determine how undergraduate medical students used five popular sites to locate and access biomedical resources. Students' perceptions of each site's usefulness and reliability were determined through a survey. Google and Wikipedia were the most frequently used sites despite students rating them as the least reliable of the five sites investigated. The library—the students' primary point of access to online journals—was the least used site, and when using Google less than 40% of pages or resources located by students were from ‘high’ quality sources. Students' use of all sites' search tools was unsophisticated. Despite being avid users of online information and search tools, the students targeted in this study appeared to lack the requisite information‐seeking skills to make the most of online resources. Although there is evidence that these skills improved over time, a greater emphasis on information literacy skills training may be required to ensure that graduates are able to locate the best available evidence to support their professional practice.