A Free Market for Medical Care? It’s Been Tried

Alternative medical practitioners and Jacksonian populists found common cause in an open market for medicine, write Jacob Habinek and Heather A. Haveman

Macroeconomic Performance and the Poverty Rate: A Return to Normalcy?

Since the mid-1980s, several important studies have established the statistical relationship between the poverty rate and overall economic performance. Most of these studies focused on the apparent break in this relationship beginning in the late 1970s or early 1980s. In this paper, we present the results of our study of the relationships reported in these studies, using annual time-series data on macroeconomic variables such as the unemployment rate and per capita GDP growth from 1959 through 1997. Like these earlier studies, we too find that economic performance seems to have had a smaller antipoverty effect during the 1970s and 1980s than it did in earlier years. However, our estimates suggest that the weakened growth-poverty relationship may have been an aberration of this period, and that the “normal” relationship of the 1960s has again been reestablished in the 1990s. This is true even after accounting for changes in earnings inequality over the entire period.

Developed Country Trade Barriers and the Least Developed Countries: The Economic Results of Freeing Trade

Least Developed Countries, Generalized System of Preferences, Doha Round

The Clinton welfare reform plan: Will it end poverty as we know it

The central elements in President Clinton's proposal to reform the welfare system are: increasing the earned income tax credit, improving the child support system, educating and training the poor, and limiting the amount of time people can receive assistance. The authors commend the first two components of the president's plan but question the likely effectiveness of the last two: even with the education, training, and child care programs that the president has proposed, few welfare recipients will be able to command wages that would lift them out of poverty, and successful education and training programs would cost more than the government appears willing to spend. They recommend that the president consider giving tax credits to, and subsidizing the wages paid by, employers who hire low-wage workers and assist young people and poor families to save for future opportunities. In their view, poverty will not be alleviated by only getting tough on welfare recipients; instead, labor market interventions should be adopted so as to expand opportunities for low-wage, low-skilled workers.

Developed country trade barriers and the least developed countries: The economic results of freeing trade

The Doha Ministerial Declaration emphasized that priority should be given to improving market access for products originating in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). In this paper, we analyze the importance of this proposition with respect to market access in the Triad economies. We first present a brief history of non-reciprocal preferences granted by the Triad. This covers Generalized System of Preference (GSP) programmes in each, and further preferences granted to African, Caribbean and Pacific countries by the EU and preferences granted to Caribbean Basin, Andean, and African countries by the US. This history is followed by an assessment of trade generated by these preferences in the year 2000, and of the extent to which LDC exports might be expected to increase should the preferences be made comprehensive. Preferences in 2000 are shown to have led to an increase of US$3.5 billion in LDC exports, while a complete duty-free treatment could expand LDC exports by as much as US$7.6 billion, 90 per cent of which will be absorbed by the US. As this represents a doubling of LDC exports to these countries, we interpret these results as an endorsement of this priority in the Doha Round of negotiations

Fluid Fascinations

De Art & Science show “Fluid Fascinations��? omvat een presentatie over de wetenschappelijke context, inclusief een live experiment (ontworpen samen met kunstenaar/designer Wout Zweers); en, gemengde media en olieverfschilderijen, en digitale fotowerken van kunstenares Valerie Zwart. De show is gebaseerd op de collectie van dia’s en foto’s van Professor Howell Peregrine (1938-2007). Howell was een Brits toegepast wiskundige inzonderheid voor stromingsleer en watergolven, een redacteur van het fameuze tijdschrift Journal of Fluid Mechanics gedurende 28 jaar, en een begaafd amateurfotograaf. Het boeiende van Peregrine’s dia’s en foto’s zit hem in hun iconische wetenschappelijke waarde. Hij gebruikte zijn eigen beelden dikwijls om ideeën over brekende golven en uiteenspattend water te introduceren en uit te werken in zijn onderzoeksartikelen. Wij hebben ons er door laten inspireren. De introductie (pdf-bestand) in de eprints is tweetalig. Beelden van de kunstwerken zijn te vinden op: http://www.zw-artprojects.nl/fluidgallery.html The Art & Science show “Fluid Fascinations��? consists of a presentation on the scientific context, including a live experiment (made together with artist/designer Wout Zweers); and, mixed media and oil paintings, and digital photoworks of artist Valerie Zwart. The show draws from the photographic images of the late Professor Howell Peregrine (1938-2007). Howell was a British applied mathematician on fluid mechanics and water waves, an editor of the famous Journal of Fluid Mechanics for 28 years, and a gifted amateur photographer. The quality of Peregrine’s slides and photographs lies in their iconic scientific value. He was known for using his images to convey and introduce key ideas on breaking waves and splashing fluids in his research articles. We are inspired by his work. The introduction (pdf-file) in these eprints is bilingual. Images of the art works are found at: http://www.zw-artprojects.nl/fluidgallery.htm

Rheological Behavior of a Dispersion of Small Lipid Bilayer Vesicles

Rheological behavior of a dispersion of small nearly-unilamellar phospholipid bilayer vesicles has been investigated. We conducted steady-state shear experiments and linear viscoelastic experiments. In the dilute and semidilute regime the rheological behavior is similar to that of a hard-sphere dispersion as reported in the literature for viscoelastic measurements, but now also observed in steady shear experiments. The effect of the main acyl-chain phase transition, taking place at 23 °C, can be described with an increase of the effective volume fraction. As a result, with temperature variation one can obtain effective volume fractions larger than the maximum packing fraction for hard spheres. Near and above the maximum packing fraction a dynamic yield stress ty and a frequency independent storage modulus G' develop. In this concentration regime the rheological behavior is determined by the interplay between vesicle deformation and the intervesicle interaction, and so far, there is no indication which phenomenon is dominant. A comparison with recently reported measurements suggests that G' is proportional to a-3, where a is the vesicle radius. Furthermore, we show that ty = γcG' which is in agreement with theory. Here tγ is the dynamic yield stress and γc the critical strain which indicates the transition to nonlinear behavior in a viscoelastic experiment. There is a striking resemblance between our high concentration results and those reported in literature for vesicles in the so-called onion phase. To the best of our knowledge this is the first rheological study for concentrated nearly-unilamellar vesicle dispersions with volume fraction and temperature as variables

Does the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit Create Jobs at Subsidized Firms?

This paper uses the results of a survey of more than 3,500 private employers to determine whether use of the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit (TJTC) alters the level of a firm\u27s employment and/or whom the firm hires. We estimate that each subsidized hire generates between .13 and .3 new jobs at a participating firm. Use of the program also appears to induce employers to hire more young workers (age 25 and under). Our results suggest, however, that at least 70 percent of the tax credits granted employers are payments for workers who would have been hired even without the subsidy. Such payments represent mere transfers to employers