The New Classical Counter-Revolution: False Path or Illuminating Complement?

In this paper the author responds to Laurence Seidman’s recent article, ‘The New Classical Counter-Revolution: A False Path for Macroeconomics’. The author challenges the view that new classical macroeconomics has been a false path and provides a critique of Seidman’s arguments with respect to his interpretation of the 1970s ‘stagflation’, the relevance of new classical macroeconomics for practical policymaking, the contribution of real business cycle theory, and the new classical content of contemporary macroeconomic textbooks. The author concludes that the new classical counter-revolution has had an extremely productive influence on the current mainstream new neoclassical synthesis framework.

Towards a Unified Theory of Economic Growth: Oded Galor on the Transition from Malthusian Stagnation to Modern Economic Growth

An interview with Oded Galor on the development of unified growth theory.Unified Growth Theory; Population; Technology; Demographic Transition; Sustained Growth

Outside the mainstream: an interview with Axel Leijonhufvud

In this article the author discusses with Axel Leijonhufvud, one of the world’s leading macroeconomists, a wide range of issues relating to disequilibrium dynamics, the costs of inflation, and the development of macroeconomics after Keynes. Leijonhufvud’s innovative work emphasises the importance of institutions, adaptive behaviour and bounded rationality

Electronic Commerce Strategy in the UK Electricty Industry: The Case of Electric Co and Dataflow Software

This paper analyses the strategic business and IT response of Electric Co, a large electricity company, to deregulation and increased competition in the UK electricity industry. In common with deregulation in other markets such as North America and Australia, the UK regulator has specified strict regulations on how power generators, distribution and supply companies should interact with each other, and with business and consumer customers. In order to compete effectively Electric Co has implemented a novel dataflow solution that enables it to connect diverse internal systems to the external marketplace. An overview of changes in the market is related to the business and IT strategies of Electric Co. The link between the high-level business strategy and the actual use of IT architecture and systems is the design and management of the business processes that dictate how information is shared throughout the supply chain. The implementation of the regulator’s business process framework has been achieved through a novel use of a business process management solution. The major benefits are shown to be increased business flexibility. An outline of the broader implications of the research is given, in particular how developments in technical standards and business process management are related to communication theory and electronic markets

Support for Evolving Software Architectures in the ArchWare ADL

Software that cannot evolve is condemned to atrophy: it cannot accommodate the constant revision and re-negotiation of its business goals nor intercept the potential of new technology. To accommodate change in software systems we have defined an active software architecture to be: dynamic in that the structure and cardinality of the components and interactions are changeable during execution; updatable in that components can be replaced; decomposable in that an executing system may be (partially) stopped and split up into its components and interactions; and reflective in that the specification of components and interactions may be evolved during execution. Here we describe the facilities of the ArchWare architecture description language (ADL) for specifying active architectures. The contribution of the work is the unique combination of concepts including: a {\pi}-calculus based communication and expression language for specifying executable architectures; hyper-code as an underlying representation of system execution that can be used for introspection; a decomposition operator to incrementally break up executing systems; and structural reflection for creating new components and binding them into running systems.Comment: 4th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA'04) pp.69-78, IEEE Computer Society, 200

Falls, Depression and antidepressants in Later Life: A Large Primary Care Appraisal

Background: Depression and falls are common and co-exist for older people. Safe management of each of these conditions is important to quality of life. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was used to examine medication use associated with injurious and non-injurious falls in 21,900 community-dwelling adults, aged 60 years or over from 383 Australian general practices recruited for the DEPS-GP Project. Falls and injury from falls, medication use, depressive symptoms (Primary Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9)), clinical morbidity, suicidal ideation and intent, health status (SF-12 Health Survey), demographic and lifestyle information was reported in a standardised survey. Findings: Respondents were 71.8 years (sd 7.7) of age and 58.4% were women. 24% 11% and 8% reported falls, fall related injury, and sought medical attention respectively. Antidepressant use (odds ratio, OR: 1.46; 95% confidence interval, 95%CI: 1.25, 1.70), questionable depression (5–14 on PHQ OR: 1.32, 95%CI: 1.13, 1.53) and clinically significant symptoms of depression (15 or more on PHQ OR: 1.70, 95%CI: 1.14, 1.50) were independently associated with multiple falls. SSRI use was associated with the highest risk of multiple falls (OR: 1.66, 95%CI: 1.36, 2.02) amongst all psychotropic medications. Similar associations were observed for injurious falls. Over 60% of those with four accumulated risk factors had multiple falls in the previous year (OR: 3.40, 95%CI: 1.79, 6.45); adjusted for other demographic and health factors. Interpretation: Antidepressant use (particularly SSRIs) was strongly associated with falls regardless of presence of depressive symptoms. Strategies to prevent falls should become a routine part of the management of older people with depression

Anxiety, depression and comorbid anxiety and depression: risk factors and outcome over two years

Background: This study aimed to determine: (1) the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and depression associated with anxiety (DA); (2) the risk factor profile of depression, anxiety, and DA; (3) the course of depression, anxiety, and DA over 24 months. Methods: Two-year longitudinal study of 20,036 adults aged 60+ years. We used the Patient Health Questionnaire and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale anxiety subscale to establish the presence of depression and anxiety, and standard procedures to collect demographic, lifestyle, psychosocial, and clinical data. Results: The prevalence of anxiety, depression, and DA was 4.7%, 1.4%, and 1.8%. About 57% of depression cases showed evidence of comorbid anxiety, while only 28% of those with clinically significant anxiety had concurrent depression. There was not only an overlap in the distribution of risk factors in these diagnostic groups but also differences. We found that 31%, 23%, and 35% of older adults with anxiety, depression, and DA showed persistence of symptoms after two years. Repeated anxiety was more common in women and repeated depression in men. Socioeconomic stressors were common in repeated DA. Conclusions: Clinically significant anxiety and depression are distinct conditions that frequently coexist in later life; when they appear together, older adults endure a more chronic course of illness