Recent Electroweak Results from the Tevatron

Recent electroweak results from the CDF and D0 Collaborations at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider are presented. After a brief description of the \D0 measurements of W/Z production cross sections, W width, W mass and W \to \tau \nu decays, the CDF result on W(pT) distribution is outlined. The comprehensive search for anomalous gauge couplings by \D0 in 1992-96 data is presented along with a detailed description of the WW/WZ \to \mu\nu jj channel.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, Postscript file available from http://phyun0.ucr.edu/~gounder/Public/ewpaper.p

STOCHASTIC FRONTIER ANALYSIS OF NEW ZEALAND'S MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES: SOME EMPIRICAL RESULTS

This paper examines the sources of total factor productivity growth (TFP) in New Zealand's manufacturing industries over the period 1978-98 and over various sub-periods. Examination of the data adopts two stages using a stochastic frontier approach. The first stage involves the specification and estimation of the stochastic frontier production function and the prediction of technical efficiency effects. The second stage involves the specification of a regression model for the predicted technical efficiency effects. The sources of TFP growth have been decomposed into four components; i.e. technical progress, changes in technical efficiency, scale effects, and change in allocative efficiency. The empirical results show that productivity has been largely due to changes in technical progress, technical efficiency and resource allocation effect. The changes in technical progress and resource allocation have improved in the post-reform period, i.e. 1984-98, while technical efficiency has declined in the post-reform period. With respect to scale effect its contribution to productivity growth is quite small.New Zealand Manufacturing Sector, Total Productivity Growth, Technical Progress, Technical Efficiency, Scale Components, Allocative Efficiency, Industrial Organization, D24, C23, O47,

Globalization and the Island Economies of the South Pacific

globalization, aid dependence, growth, South Pacific island economies

Closer economic relations between Australia and New Zealand: specialisation, competitiveness, complementarity

The Australia-New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement (ANZCERTA) came into effect in 1983 and the objective of bilateral free trade in goods between the two countries was achieved in 1990. This study provides a quantitative analysis of the Agreement’s impacts on specialisation, competitiveness and complementarity in trade between the two countries. It is shown that, compared with Australia, New Zealand was able to exploit its comparative advantage and increase its complementarity in trade with Australia to a greater extent in the first time period after free trade was reached (1991-1995). However, subsequent to 1995, the reverse has been true, reflecting the greater effectiveness of Australia’s commercial policies and economic performance in the late 1990s relative to New Zealand

The level and growth effects in the empirics of economic growth

Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992) have extended the Solow (1956) model by augmenting the production function with human capital. Its empirical success is impressive and it showed a procedure to improve the explanatory power of the neoclassical growth model. This paper suggests an empirical procedure to further extend the neoclassical growth model to distinguish between the growth and level effects of shift variables like the human capital. We use time series data from Guatemala to show that while the growth effects of education are small, they are significant and dominate the level effects.Solow Growth Model; Production Function; Shift Variables; Human Capital Level and Growth Effects

Evaluation of the implementation of the Xpert® MTB/RIF assay in Fiji

Setting: All Xpert ® MTB/RIF tests performed in the three TB (tuberculosis) treatment centres in Fiji from June 2012 to February 2013