Industrial growth and the quality of institutions : what do (transition) economies have to gain from the Rule of Law?

The authors empirically test the link between industrial growth and indicators of institutional quality. They find significant evidence that institutional quality affects inindustrial growth in 27 Asian and Latin American countries. Their results suggest that the development of the legal and regulatory framework works its way to industrial growth through both investment and total factor productivity. The implications for policymakers in transition economies: Institution building should complement privatization, public and private investment in education, research and development, and measures to promote foreign direct investment. Specifically, policymakers should try to reduce corruption, eliminate bureacratic barriers, and improve the legal environment and contract enforcement. Special attention should also be given to measures to deepen financial intermediation, improve the financial sector infrastructure, and increase the efficiency of financial transactions.Governance Indicators,Environmental Economics&Policies,Achieving Shared Growth,Economic Theory&Research,Trade and Regional Integration

Factors affecting attendance of junior high school and middle school students

The study examines the effect that implementation of California State Law establishing School Attendance Review Boards has had on Junior High and Middle School Students in the Central Valley of California. The legislation deals with students who have problems of truancy and student misconduct. The study focused on the effect that referral to the School Attendance Review Board had on pupil attendance in the counties of San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Fresno, Kings, and Kern in the San Joaquin Vallev of California. A questionnaire was administered to principals of 36 junior high and middle schools in three geographical sections of the San Joaquin Valley. Part I of the questionnaire requested data on general attendance procedures; Part II elicited information on individual pupils referred to the School Attendance Review Board. The test design utilized descriptive and correlational analyses to determine the effectiveness of referral to SARB. Computations were made to note differences in attendance due to sex and ethnicity. Data were further analyzed to determine whether attendance, counseling, class program changes, and alternate class assignments significantly alter the attendance patterns of truants, using an analysis of variance. T-tests determined significant differences in attendance of students before and after referral to the School Attendance Review Board. T-test analyses of the effectiveness of referral to SARB showed that all pupils as a group had significantly improved attendance in each of the regions studied as well as overall. Analyses by sex showed that male subjects as well as female subjects improved attendance significantly. Separate analyses by ethnicity indicated improvement regardless of this variable. Regarding the rate of referral, Whites were referred in lower numbers than general pupil population would warrant, whereas Blacks and Hispanics were referred in larger numbers than their proportion to the general population. Males were referred at higher rates than females to the School Attendance Review Board. Analysis of the data dealing with the question of post-SARB treatment (counseling, class program change, alternative schooling, and no treatment) indicated that there was no significant difference between treatments. There also was no difference between any treatment and no treatment

Report on the Reed, Stimson and Kelley copper and iron banks of Phelps County, Mo.

PRELIMINARY STATEMENT with reference to the formation of limonite and hematite, the principal iron ores of the Ozark District. Iron and copper in solution as sulphides, coming in contact with lime or magnesium carbonates, will be precipitated as pyrite or marcasite and chalcopyrite. Hence the origin of this class or ores. These will in time oxidize to magnetite or hematite, and these in turn will form limonite, and the copper sulphide, or chalcopyrite, is oxidized to the carbonates, malachite and azurite --page 1

The Saddlepoint Approximation: Unified Random Coding Asymptotics for Fixed and Varying Rates

This paper presents a saddlepoint approximation of the random-coding union bound of Polyanskiy et al. for i.i.d. random coding over discrete memoryless channels. The approximation is single-letter, and can thus be computed efficiently. Moreover, it is shown to be asymptotically tight for both fixed and varying rates, unifying existing achievability results in the regimes of error exponents, second-order coding rates, and moderate deviations. For fixed rates, novel exact-asymptotics expressions are specified to within a multiplicative 1+o(1) term. A numerical example is provided for which the approximation is remarkably accurate even at short block lengths.Comment: Accepted to ISIT 2014, presented without publication at ITA 201