Input-Output Tables for Alaska's Economy: A First Look

The specific objectives of this publication are to: ( 1) present a first look in specific detail at the input-output tables of the Alaskan economy, thereby examining Alaskan interindustry interactions and dependencies; and (2) indicate, via relevant examples, how the information contained in these typical input-out tables can be used by private and public policymakers.Geographic isolation, a subarctic climate, large size, and a regionally diverse landscape make Alaska a unique part of the United States. The factors that make Alaska so unique also contribute to her present lack of industrial and agricultural production, which requires shipment into the state of most of the goods necessary for life. In filling the need for such goods, the state of Washington has been, and continues to be, the principal marketing and transportation center for Alaska-associated trade

Self-improving Algorithms for Coordinate-wise Maxima

Computing the coordinate-wise maxima of a planar point set is a classic and well-studied problem in computational geometry. We give an algorithm for this problem in the \emph{self-improving setting}. We have $n$ (unknown) independent distributions \cD_1, \cD_2, ..., \cD_n of planar points. An input pointset $(p_1, p_2, ..., p_n)$ is generated by taking an independent sample $p_i$ from each \cD_i, so the input distribution \cD is the product \prod_i \cD_i. A self-improving algorithm repeatedly gets input sets from the distribution \cD (which is \emph{a priori} unknown) and tries to optimize its running time for \cD. Our algorithm uses the first few inputs to learn salient features of the distribution, and then becomes an optimal algorithm for distribution \cD. Let \OPT_\cD denote the expected depth of an \emph{optimal} linear comparison tree computing the maxima for distribution \cD. Our algorithm eventually has an expected running time of O(\text{OPT}_\cD + n), even though it did not know \cD to begin with. Our result requires new tools to understand linear comparison trees for computing maxima. We show how to convert general linear comparison trees to very restricted versions, which can then be related to the running time of our algorithm. An interesting feature of our algorithm is an interleaved search, where the algorithm tries to determine the likeliest point to be maximal with minimal computation. This allows the running time to be truly optimal for the distribution \cD.Comment: To appear in Symposium of Computational Geometry 2012 (17 pages, 2 figures

Using the Hawthorne Effect to Examine the Gap Between a Doctor's Best Possible Practice and Actual Performance

Many doctors in developing countries provide considerably lower levels of quality to their patients than they have been trained to provide. The gap between best practice and actual performance is difficult to measure for individual doctors who differ in levels of training and experience and who face very different types of patients. We exploit the Hawthorne effect—in which doctors change their behavior when a researcher comes to observe their practices—to measure the gap between best and actual performance. We analyze this gap for a sample of doctors, examining the impact of the organization for which doctors work on the performance of doctors, after controlling for their ability. We find that some organizations succeed in motivating doctors to work at levels of performance that are close to their best possible practice. This paper adds to recent evidence that motivation is at least as important to health care quality as training and knowledge.motivation, practice quality, health care, Tanzania, Hawthorne effect, Health Economics and Policy, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, International Development, I1, O1, O2,

Sinc-Galerkin estimation of diffusivity in parabolic problems

A fully Sinc-Galerkin method for the numerical recovery of spatially varying diffusion coefficients in linear partial differential equations is presented. Because the parameter recovery problems are inherently ill-posed, an output error criterion in conjunction with Tikhonov regularization is used to formulate them as infinite-dimensional minimization problems. The forward problems are discretized with a sinc basis in both the spatial and temporal domains thus yielding an approximate solution which displays an exponential convergence rate and is valid on the infinite time interval. The minimization problems are then solved via a quasi-Newton/trust region algorithm. The L-curve technique for determining an approximate value of the regularization parameter is briefly discussed, and numerical examples are given which show the applicability of the method both for problems with noise-free data as well as for those whose data contains white noise

THE EFFECT OF INTERSTATE BANKING ON FARM LENDER MARKET SHARES IN NEW YORK STATE

Commercial bank loans to New York farmers are significantly overestimated in the reported USDA statistics due to out-of-state lending and reporting of some agribusiness loans as agricultural loans by New York State banks. Correcting for this distortion lowers the 1978-84 average New York agricultural credit market share held by banks from 36 to 24 percent. As deregulation allows more interstate banking activity, the overestimate of agricultural loan volume in states with money center banks and the corresponding underestimate of loan levels and market shares in nonmoney center states could cause increased distortion of state level farm debt statistics.Agricultural Finance,

Colonial and Revolutionary Muster Rolls: Some New Evidence on Nutrition and Migration in Early America

That investment in human capital has made an important contribution to the increase of labor productivity and per capita income during the last several centuries is widely acknowledged. While much of the research on this issue has focused on education, many scholars have also directed attention to the significance of improvements in nutrition. Until recently, efforts to study this subject have been hampered by a lack of evidence, but it now appears possible to construct indexes of nutrition from height-by-age data. This paper employs a relatively underutilized type of historical document to investigate the level of nutrition in early America. The same material also provides a rich source of information about patterns of migration during this period. This paper finds that native-born Americans approached modern heights by the time of the Revolution. On average, colonial Americans appear to have been 2 to 4 inches taller than Europeans, with southerners considerably taller than northerners and the rural population of greater stature than the urban. These differences may indicate that other factors besides nutrition were important in accounting for the dramatic changes in U.S. mortality rates during the nineteenth century.

The cost of checkable deposits in the United States

Checking accounts ; Bank deposits ; Banks and banking - Costs

The Effects of JIT on the Development of Productivity Norms

Low inventory, or just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing systems, enjoy increasing application worldwide, yet the behavioral effects of such systems remain largely unexplored. Operations Research (OR) models of low inventory systems typically make a simplifying assumption that individual worker processing times are independent random variables. This leads to predictions that low-inventory systems will exhibit production interruptions. Yet empirical results suggest that low-inventory systems do not exhibit the predicted productivity losses. This paper develops a model integrating feedback, goal-setting, group cohesiveness, task norms, and peer pressure to predict how individual behavior may adjust to alleviate production interruptions in low-inventory systems. In doing so we integrate previous research on the development of task norms. Findings suggest that low-inventory systems induce individual and group responses that cause behavioral changes that mitigate production interruptions

PRODUCTIVITY AND THE ENACTMENT OF A MACRO CULTURE

This paper reports the puzzling results of a study which examined IT capital investment and productivity at three of the largest IT user sites in the U.S. for the period 1970-1990: Social Security Administration (SSA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Based on detailed IT investment, employment, and output data over twenty years, we found that only one agency had achieved significant productivity benefits, a second agency had modest results, and a third agency achieved no results whatever. These results cannot be explained by traditional theories of productivity of how productivity is produced. We argue that IT-induced productivity results not simply from strategic choice, nor the operation of the invisible hand in the market place, nor simply from keen managers adjusting their organizations to an "objective" environment. Instead we propose instead a new theory in which productivity benefits derive from a larger macro-culture enacted by powerful institutions in an organizational field. We extend this analysis to the larger economy and examine how this new theory helps us understand recent claims that IT is finally having positive productivity benefits at the sector level, and also helps us understand how the current fascination with reengineering and downsizing may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.Information Systems Working Papers Serie