124,256 research outputs found

    The Bibliometric Properties of Article Readership Information

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    The NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS), along with astronomy's journals and data centers (a collaboration dubbed URANIA), has developed a distributed on-line digital library which has become the dominant means by which astronomers search, access and read their technical literature. Digital libraries such as the NASA Astrophysics Data System permit the easy accumulation of a new type of bibliometric measure, the number of electronic accesses (``reads'') of individual articles. We explore various aspects of this new measure. We examine the obsolescence function as measured by actual reads, and show that it can be well fit by the sum of four exponentials with very different time constants. We compare the obsolescence function as measured by readership with the obsolescence function as measured by citations. We find that the citation function is proportional to the sum of two of the components of the readership function. This proves that the normative theory of citation is true in the mean. We further examine in detail the similarities and differences between the citation rate, the readership rate and the total citations for individual articles, and discuss some of the causes. Using the number of reads as a bibliometric measure for individuals, we introduce the read-cite diagram to provide a two-dimensional view of an individual's scientific productivity. We develop a simple model to account for an individual's reads and cites and use it to show that the position of a person in the read-cite diagram is a function of age, innate productivity, and work history. We show the age biases of both reads and cites, and develop two new bibliometric measures which have substantially less age bias than citationsComment: ADS bibcode: 2005JASIS..56..111K This is the second paper (the first is Worldwide Use and Impact of the NASA Astrophysics Data System Digital Library) from the original article The NASA Astrophysics Data System: Sociology, Bibliometrics, and Impact, which went on-line in the summer of 200

    Passenger transmission and productiveness of transit lines with high loads

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    Deterministic transit capacity analysis applies to planning, design and operational management of urban transit systems. The Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual (1) and Vuchic (2, 3) enable transit performance to be quantified and assessed using transit capacity and productive capacity. This paper further defines important productive performance measures of an individual transit service and transit line. Transit work (p-km) captures the transit task performed over distance. Passenger transmission (p-km/h) captures the passenger task delivered by service at speed. Transit productiveness (p-km/h) captures transit work performed over time. These measures are useful to operators in understanding their services’ or systems’ capabilities and passenger quality of service. This paper accounts for variability in utilized demand by passengers along a line and high passenger load conditions where passenger pass-up delay occurs. A hypothetical case study of an individual bus service’s operation demonstrates the usefulness of passenger transmission in comparing existing and growth scenarios. A hypothetical case study of a bus line’s operation during a peak hour window demonstrates the theory’s usefulness in examining the contribution of individual services to line productive performance. Scenarios may be assessed using this theory to benchmark or compare lines and segments, conditions, or consider improvements

    The Role of Distributive and Procedural Justice in Predicting Gainsharing Satisfaction

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    This paper tests three competing hypotheses on the relative importance of distributive and procedural justice in predicting satisfaction with productivity gainsharing. The analysis provides support for one of the hypotheses, which states that the payout will determine which type of fairness (procedural or distributive) is more predictive of gainsharing satisfaction

    Optimal Taxation and Monopsonistic Labor Market: Does Monopsony justify the Minimum Wage?

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    Does monopsony on the labor market in itself justify the implementation of a minimum wage when it would not be used in a competitive economy? This issue is studied in a model of optimal taxation. We adopt a definition most favorable to the minimum wage: the minimum wage is useful whenever it can replace a non negligible part of the tax schedule. The minimum wage is useful to correct the inefficiencies associated with the monopsony when there is a single skill. But the minimum wage is not useful any more when there are a continuum of skills.Minimum wage, Optimal taxation, Monopsony.

    Factor Utilisation and Productivity Estimates for the United Kingdom

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    This paper derives series for capital utilisation, labour effort and total factor productivity from a DGE model with variable utilisation and labour adjustment costs. Capital utilisation tracks survey-based measures closely, while movements in total hours worked drive our labour effort series. TFP is less cyclical than the traditional Solow residual, though a weighted average of capital utilisation and labour effort - aggregate factor utilisation - and the Solow residual are not closely related. Rather, aggregate factor utilisation is correlated with detrended labour productivity, providing more evidence that differences in average and marginal labour productivity may be linked to factor hoarding.

    A review of the characteristics of 108 author-level bibliometric indicators

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    An increasing demand for bibliometric assessment of individuals has led to a growth of new bibliometric indicators as well as new variants or combinations of established ones. The aim of this review is to contribute with objective facts about the usefulness of bibliometric indicators of the effects of publication activity at the individual level. This paper reviews 108 indicators that can potentially be used to measure performance on the individual author level, and examines the complexity of their calculations in relation to what they are supposed to reflect and ease of end-user application.Comment: to be published in Scientometrics, 201

    "The Firm and its Profits"

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    What sets the firm apart from other producers is the commercial nature of its operations. The firm produces for the market and only for the market. It produces goods and buys them not in order to consume them but in order to sell them or their products. While economic agents other than the firm sell commodities, the sale of commodities is not the end of their exchange transactions. They "sell in order to buy" instead of "buying in order to sell." Workers engage in exchange to acquire "necessities," landlords do so to get "luxuries," and "factor" owners exchange their goods to get ones that have a higher utility than their endowments. Exchanging for the purpose of selling is exchanging for the purpose of money making. For, as Marx emphasized, buying in order to sell is rational, benefits those that do it, only if commodities can be purchased for less money than can be made through their sale or the sale of goods which can be produced with them. The difference between the money spent on their purchase and the money made through their sale or that of their products is the profit from the transaction, and this profit or monetary gain is the objective of the firm's operations. Money acquisition, although necessary for the purchase of goods, is not the same as goods acquisition. Instead of giving one goods, money gives one the power of purchasing them, a title to a certain portion of society's wealth. In striving for profit the firm strives to extend its claim over the wealth of nations. Firms want not to consume this wealth but to own it, to acquire it not use it. The firm's profit end is the end of wealth acquisition. Firms differ from other economic agents not only in the way they relate to the wealth of nations, but, also, in the way they obtain it. Others get a part of this wealth by contributing to its production. Their incomes are "earned," the market values ("measures") of productive services. Profit, in contrast, while a component of price, is not itself a price, the market worth of any good or service; It is the "unearned" component of the nation's income and is viewed as such in all traditions of economic thought. The unearned nature of profit income stems from its roots in purchase and sale transactions. These transactions result in a monetary gain only when 1) goods are sold (bought) for a price greater (less) than their market value or 2) goods are sold for a price higher than their cost of production. The first case is the mercantilist one of profit through goods "alienation," through cheating in exchange. Profit comes at the expense of others, of those who bought goods for more than their worth or sold them for less than their value. In the second case, the one traditionally dealt with in income distribution theories profit is the surplus of the product's value over that of its inputs. Profit, here, is the "residual" income from sales proceeds, the income which remains after paying for all the factor services which contributed to the product's production. In neither case is profit "earned," received in return for a service rendered, for goods supplied or any "effort or sacrifice" incurred in their production Insofar as profit is not a "reward," the price of any productive contribution, profit seeking activities are not necessary for production. But if they are not necessary for production, if "entrepeneurship" is not one of production's "factors," then what are they necessary for? What is the firm's role in the economy and does what it does with its profits or how it makes them justify their receipt? How does the accumulation of wealth further the economic ends of society, enhance the wealth of nations? The following turns to economic thought for an answer to these questions. It examines the arguments for the firm and explanations of its profit.

    MEASURING THE PRODUCTIVITY OF CAPITAL IN UNITED STATES AGRICULTURE

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    The agricultural sector has operated in a period of high real interest rates for over half a decade. Some are concerned that this has limited capital availability and stagnated the historic capital for labor substitution occurring in the sector. This study proposes new procedures for estimating the aggregate production function of United States agriculture. Improvements include incorporation of total returns and revised measures of both durable and nondurable capital inputs. Results indicate increasing capital productivity has occurred, but encouraging further capital substitution may not benefit agricultural producers.Agricultural Finance,

    What's Wrong with Libertarianism: A Meritocratic Diagnosis

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    Some people may think that libertarianism and meritocracy have much in common; that the libertarian's ideal world looks like the meritocrat's ideal world; and that the public policies guiding us to each are one and the same. This is wrong in all respects. In this essay I explain why. After providing an overview of meritocratic justice, I argue that meritocracy is a more compelling theory of distributive justice than libertarianism. Meritocracy better protects the core value of personal responsibility; incorporates efficiency-enhancing regulation which libertarianism cannot; provides more positive liberty; and solves salient, real-world debates about distributive justice
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