FAST FOOD NATION: THE DARK SIDE OF THE ALL-AMERICAN MEAL; A BOOK REVIEW DISCUSSION

This document contains the outline of a book review given on Eric Schlosser's book: Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, published by HarperCollins, January 8, 2002. The review was given by the author at the 2002 WCC-72 meetings.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Structural Weight of Aircraft as Affected by the System of Design

Various details of design or arrangement of the parts of airplane structures are shown and discussed, the use of these devices having resulted in the production of structures of adequate strength, yet of a weight less than one-half of the usual construction

Is the United States Falling Apart?

This is a preprint (author's original) version of the article published in Daedalus 126(2):183-209. The final version of the article can be found at http://www.jstor.org/stable/20027433 (login required to view content). The version made available in Digital Common was supplied by the author.Author's Origina

A Comparison of the Performance of SMEs in Korea and Taiwan: Policy Implications for Turbulent Times

A comparison of the role and performance of SMEs in Korea and Taiwan during the 1990s and early 2000s shows that the reputation for SMEs to be flexible in the face of adversity is well deserved, but should not be take for granted. Both Taiwan and Korea have built much of their economic success on SMEs. Both economies are very open to external shocks; both were affected by the 1997 Asian Crisis, and to a lesser extent, the "tech wreck" of 2001. Both economies have faced the need to restructure their industrial competitiveness, and both have active policies to support entrepreneurship and SMEs. Within this broad context of similarities, there are also some differences in approach and structure. All of this can give a better understanding of how managers and policy makers can help to create jobs and build a more competitive economy. SMEs provide about 80 percent of private sector employment in both economies, so SME performance is an important economic and social issue. The paper shows, for example, that Korean SMEs were subject to rather bigger devaluation shocks and currency volatility than their Taiwanese counterparts. However SME exporters in both economies showed considerable resilience in the face of shocks and SMEs in both economies have significantly improved their liquidity and debt ratios since 1997, suggesting they are better prepared now than before. They have done so in the face of a sharp decline in bank lending to SMEs. Over the decade there has been a steady structural decline in the importance of manufacturing SMEs in both economies. The paper examines the relative performance of SMEs in Taiwan and Korea over a turbulent decade, and it examines the SME policies and initiatives adopted. It seeks to extract some lessons for other economies seeking to develop an entrepreneurial and resilient SME sector in the face of global turbulence.small and medium enterprises, Taiwan, Korea, performance

Formulation of the linear model from the nonlinear simulation for the F18 HARV

The F-18 HARV is a modified F-18 Aircraft which is capable of flying in the post-stall regime in order to achieve superagility. The onset of aerodynamic stall, and continued into the post-stall region, is characterized by nonlinearities in the aerodynamic coefficients. These aerodynamic coefficients are not expressed as analytic functions, but rather in the form of tabular data. The nonlinearities in the aerodynamic coefficients yield a nonlinear model of the aircraft's dynamics. Nonlinear system theory has made many advances, but this area is not sufficiently developed to allow its application to this problem, since many of the theorems are existance theorems and that the systems are composed of analytic functions. Thus, the feedback matrices and the state estimators are obtained from linear system theory techniques. It is important, in order to obtain the correct feedback matrices and state estimators, that the linear description of the nonlinear flight dynamics be as accurate as possible. A nonlinear simulation is run under the Advanced Continuous Simulation Language (ACSL). The ACSL simulation uses FORTRAN subroutines to interface to the look-up tables for the aerodynamic data. ACSL has commands to form the linear representation for the system. Other aspects of this investigation are discussed

The Value of Life and the Rise in Health Spending

Health care extends life. Over the past half century, Americans have spent a rising share of total economic resources on health and have enjoyed substantially longer lives as a result. Debate on health policy often focuses on limiting the growth of health spending. We investigate an issue central to this debate: can we understand the growth of health spending as the rational response to changing economic conditions---notably the growth of income per person? We estimate parameters of the technology that relates health spending to improved health, measured as increased longevity. We also estimate parameters of social preferences about longevity and the consumption of non-health goods and services. The story of rising health spending that emerges is that the diminishing marginal utility of non-health consumption combined with a rising value of life causes the nation to move up the marginal-cost schedule of life extension. The health share continues to grow as long as income grows. In projections based on our parameter estimates, the health share reaches 33 percent by the middle of the century.

Why Do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output per Worker than Others?

Output per worker varies enormously across countries. Why? On an accounting basis, our analysis shows that differences in physical capital and educational attainment can only partially explain the variation in output per worker we find a large amount of variation in the level of the Solow residual across countries. At a deeper level, we document that the differences in capital accumulation, productivity, and therefore output per worker are driven by differences in institutions and government policies, which we call social infrastructure. We treat social infrastructure as endogenous, determined historically by location and other factors captured in part by language.

The value of life and the rise in health spending

Health care extends life. Over the past half century, Americans spent a rising share of total economic resources on health and enjoyed substantially longer lives as a result. Debate on health policy often focuses on limiting the growth of health spending. We investigate an issue central to this debate: Is the growth of health spending the rational response to changing economic conditions - notably the growth of income per person? We develop a model based on standard economic assumptions and argue that this is indeed the case. Standard preferences - of the kind used widely in economics to study consumption, asset pricing, and labor supply - imply that health spending is a superior good with an income elasticity well above one. As people get richer and consumption rises, the marginal utility of consumption falls rapidly. Spending on health to extend life allows individuals to purchase additional periods of utility. The marginal utility of life extension does not decline. As a result, the optimal composition of total spending shifts toward health, and the health share grows along with income. This effect exists despite sharp diminishing returns in the technology of life extension. In projections based on the quantitative analysis of our model, the optimal health share of spending seems likely to exceed 30 percent by the middle of the century.