Sustainability and the Bottom Line: The Responsible Collusion of Economics, Social Responsibility, and the Environment

The Interface model has become the paradigm of sustainable manufacturing in a world where there is dwindling disagreement as to the debilitating effects of expanding landfills and increasing CO2 emissions, all of which adversely affect ecosystems and human health. In Mid-Course Correction, CEO Anderson examines the troubled past of Interface and its firm commitment to righting these wrongs while examining ways to actually begin a restorative process

Photon production by charged particles in narrow optical fibers

A charged particle passing through or by an optical fiber induces emission of light guided by the fiber. The formula giving the spontaneous emission amplitude are given in the general case when the particle trajectory is not parallel to the fiber axis. At small angle, the photon yield grows like the inverse power of the angle and in the parallel limiting case the fiber Cherenkov effect studied by Bogdankevich and Bolotovskii is recovered. Possible application to beam diagnostics are discussed, as well as resonance effects when the particle trajectory or the fiber is bent periodically.Comment: Presented at International Conference on Charged and Neutral Particles Channeling Phenomena, Frascati, Italy, July 3-7, 200

Electron acceleration in a helical waveguide

Travelling wave in a helical wave guide is considered for electron acceleration. A first determination of the travelling wave modes using a partial wave expansion (PWE) and a point matching method is presented. It gives a rapid solution for moderate deformation of the guide relative to a straight cylinder. Strong deformations will give higher accelerating gradient but the PWE diverges. Two methods overcoming this difficulties are suggested.Comment: VIII International Symposium Radiation from Relativistic Electrons in Periodic Structure (RREPS-09) Zvenigorod, Russia, September 7-11, 200

Sources of Output and Price Variability in a Macroeconometric Model

There has been much recent discussion about the ultimate sources of macroeconomic variability. A number of authors attribute most of this variability to only a few sources, sometimes only one. Although there may be only a few important sources, this is far from obvious, since economies seem complicated. The purpose of this paper is to provide quantitative estimates of various sources of variability using my U.S. econometric model. Stochastic simulation is used to estimate how much the overall variances of real GNP and the GNP deflator are reduced when various shocks are suppressed in the model. The results show two main things. The first is that the contribution of a given shock to the variance can vary considerably as the length ahead of the prediction varies. What is important for the one-quarter-ahead prediction may not be important for the eight-quarter-ahead prediction, and vice versa. The second is that the results imply that there are many important sources of variability for real GNP. It is not the case that one or two sources dominate. This is less true for the GNP deflator, however, where there are two very important sources, shocks to the price and wage equations and shocks to the price of imports, and one moderately important one, shocks to the government exogenous variables.

A Comparison of FIML and Robust Estimates of a Nonlinear Macroeconomic Model

The prediction accuracy of six estimators of econometric models are compared. Two of rthe estimators are ordinary least squares (OLS) and full-information maximum likelihood. (FML). The other four estimators are robust estimators in the sense that they give less weight to large residuals. One of the four estimators is approximately equivalent to the least-absolute-residual (LAR) estimator, one is a combination of OLS for small residuals and LAR for large residuals, one is an estimator proposed by John W. Tukey, and one is a combination of FIML and LAR. All of the estimators account for the first-order serial correlation of the error terms. The main conclusion is that robust estimators appear quite promising for the estimation of econometric models. Of the robust estimators considered in the paper, the one based on minimizing the sum of the absolute values of the residuals performed the best. The FIML estimator and the combination of the FIML and LAR estimators also appear promising.

Estimated Effects of the October 1979 Change in Monetary Policy on the 1980 Economy

On October 6. 1979, the Federal Reserve announced what most people interpreted as a change in monetary policy. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the effects of this change on the 1980-81 economy. The effects of the change are estimated from simulations with my model of the U.S. economy (1976, 1980b).

Estimated Inflation Costs Had European Unemployment Been Reduced in the 1980s by Macro Prices

This paper uses a multicountry econometric model to estimate what the inflation costs would have been if macropolicies had reduced European unemployment in the 1982:1-1990:4 period. A "non-NAIRU" framework is proposed for thinking about these costs.

The Great Gatsby: Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, Oxford

Where did Fitzgerald get the idea of having Clay's Economics reside in Nick Carraway's library?