Technology Adoption and Growth

Technology change is modeled as the result of decisions of individuals and groups of individuals to adopt more advanced technologies. The structure is calibrated to the U.S. and postwar Japan growth experiences. Using this calibrated structure we explore how large the disparity in the effective tax rates on the returns to adopting technologies must be to account for the huge observed disparity in per capita income across countries. We find that this disparity is not implausibly large.

A unified theory of the evolution of international income levels

This essay develops a theory of the evolution of international income levels. In particular, it augments the Hansen-Prescott theory of economic development with the Parente-Prescott theory of relative efficiencies and shows that the unified theory accounts for the evolution of international income levels over the last millennium. The essence of this unified theory is that a country starts to experience sustained increases in its living standard when production efficiency reaches a critical point. Countries reach this critical level of efficiency at different dates not because they have access to different stocks of knowledge, but rather because they differ in the amount of society-imposed constraints on the technology choices of their citizenry.Income

Monopoly rights: a barrier to riches

Our thesis is that poor countries are poor because they employee arrangements for which the equilibrium outcomes are characterized by inferior technologies being used, and being used inefficiently. In this paper, we analyze the consequences of one such arrangement. In each industry, the arrangement enables a coalition of factor suppliers to be the monopoly seller of its input services to all firms using a particular production process. We find that the inefficiencies associated with this monopoly arrangement can be large. Whereas other studies have found that inefficiencies induced by monopoly are at most a few percent of output, we find that eliminating this monopoly arrangement could well increase output by roughly a factor of 3 without any increase in inputs.Wealth

Analysis of X-ray spectra emitted from laser-produced plasmas of uranium

In this paper, we used the multiconfiguration Dirac-Fock method to generate theoretical X-ray spectra for Co-, Ni-, Cu-, Zn-, Ga-, Ge-, As-, Se-, Br-, Kr-, and Rb-like uranium ions. Using the distribution of these ions in a laser-produced plasma, for different plasma temperatures, we generate theoretical spectra, which are compared to experimental data

Book Review: Virginia at War 1863

Review of the book Virginia at War 1863, edited by William C. Davis and James I. Robertson Jr. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2009

Design for Territories as Practice and Theoretical Field of Study

Design for Territories is a rather recent field of study and research. It began to be outlined at the end of the ‘90s and was initially established as a direct application to real situations through action research activities or educational experimentations. Thus, situated design methods are applied and verified, models and processes are improved and specific tools are developed. The aim of this paper is to describe this field of study’s state-of-the-art in order to fulfil the goal of outlining the distinctive features of design for territories from a theoretical point of view. What does Design for Territories deal with? What are its strategies and its methods? The paper aims to answer these questions through a review of design research experiences and the debate with experts in the field, who have been involved in this study through interviews and focus groups