Empowering statistical methods for cellular and molecular biologists.

We provide guidelines for using statistical methods to analyze the types of experiments reported in cellular and molecular biology journals such as Molecular Biology of the Cell. Our aim is to help experimentalists use these methods skillfully, avoid mistakes, and extract the maximum amount of information from their laboratory work. We focus on comparing the average values of control and experimental samples. A Supplemental Tutorial provides examples of how to analyze experimental data using R software

Dependent children and aged parents: funding education and social security in an aging economy

In the last few decades in the United States birth rates have declined and longevity has risen while productivity growth has slowed. Given such changes, the increasing burden of funding programs for the elderly is likely to shift resources away from the young and toward the elderly. This paper uses an overlapping generations framework to examine the effects of tax policies on an aging economy. We find that if the quality of the education system is sufficiently high then shifting tax resources away from social security and toward education is both growth and welfare enhancing.Education ; Social security

Reforming Social Security: a welfare analysis

Social security ; Welfare

A simple model of international capital flows, exchange rate risk, and portfolio choice

This paper examines international capital flows in the context of a simple Diamond-Dybvig model in which there are neither moral hazard nor adverse selection problems, thus isolating exchange rate risk as the propagator of capital flows. The model shows that adverse changes in exchange rate expectations can result in "hot money" flows even when a bank's balance sheet is perfectly transparent and its assets have a positive net present value in local currency terms. The model also indicates that foreign deposit guarantees even in the absence of a change in the bank's portfolio can increase the chance of bank runs.Capital movements ; Foreign exchange

The effects of annuities, bequests, and aging in an overlapping generations model of endogenous growth.

In this paper, we examine the effects of introducing actuarially fair annuity markets into an overlapping generations model of endogenous growth. We find the complete annuitization of agents' wealth is not, in general, dynamically optimal; that the degree of annuitization that is dynamically optimal depends nonmonotonically on the expected length of retirement and on the pay-as-you-go social security tax rate. We find that the government has an incentive to restrict the availability of actuarially fair annuities contracts, and that it can often move the economy from a pay-as-you-go to a fully-funded social security system via voluntary contributions to a government sponsored, actuarially fair pension today accompanied by reductions in social security taxes tomorrow.Wealth ; Old age

Aging, myopia and the pay-as-you-go public pension systems of the G7: a bright future?

The public pension systems of the G7 countries were established in an era when the number of contributors far outweighed the number of beneficiaries. Now, for each beneficiary there are fewer contributors, and this trend is projected to accelerate. To evaluate the prospects for these economies we develop an overlapping generations model where growth is endogenously fueled by investments in physical and human capital. We analyze individuals' behavior when their expectations over their length of life are rational or myopic and examine whether policies exist that can offset the effects of aging, should they be adverse. We find that while perfectly anticipated aging is welfare improving and does not threaten the solvency of public pension systems, myopia worsens welfare, puts pension systems at risk, and cannot be easily remedied by public policy.Social security

Rescue litter flotation assembly Patent

Development and characteristics of rescue litter with inflatable flotation device for water rescue applicatio

Better by design: Business preferences for environmental regulatory reform

We present the preferences for environmental regulatory reform expressed by 30 UK businesses and industry bodies from 5 sectors. While five strongly preferred voluntary regulation, seven expressed doubts about its effectiveness, and 18 expressed no general preference between instrument types. Voluntary approaches were valued for flexibility and lower burdens, but direct regulation offered stability and a level playing field. Respondents sought regulatory frameworks that: are coherent; balance clarity, prescription and flexibility; are enabled by positive regulatory relationships; administratively efficient; targeted according to risk magnitude and character; evidence-based and that deliver long-term market stability for regulatees. Anticipated differences in performance between types of instrument can be undermined by poor implementation. Results underline the need for policy makers and regulators to tailor an effective mix of instruments for a given sector, and to overcome analytical, institutional and political barriers to greater coherence, to better coordinate existing instruments and tackle new environmental challenges as they emerge