Items on the Left Are Better Remembered

We report evidence of a new phenomenon from three experiments: a leftward bias when people try to remember visually presented information. Experiments 1 and 2 showed lateral leftward biases in memory in a large (total N>60000) sample of participants, with data collected via the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) web site. Experiment 3 replicated the findings of a leftwards bias in short-term memory with a more intensive data collection

World Real Interest Rates

We think of the expected real interest rate for ten OECD countries (our counterpart of the world economy) as determined by the equation of aggregate investment demand to aggregate desired saving. Stock-market returns isolate shifts to investment demand, and changes in oil prices, monetary growth, and fiscal variables isolate shifts to desired saving. We estimated the reduced form for CDP-weighted world averages of the expected short-term real interest rate and the investment ratio over the period 1959-88. The estimates reveal significant effects in the predicted direction for world stock returns, oil prices, and world monetary growth, but fiscal variables turned out to be unimportant. Structural estimation implies that an increase by one percentage point in the expected real interest rate raises the desired saving rate by onethird of a percentage point. Simulations of the model indicated that fluctuations in world stock returns and oil prices explain a good deal of the time series for the world average of expected real interest rates; specifically, why the rates were low in 1974-79 and high in 1981-86. The model also explains the fall in real rates in 1987-88 and the subsequent upturn in 1989. The fitted relation forecasts an increase in the world average of real interest rates in 1990 to a value, 5.6 %, that is nearly a full percentage point above the highest value attained in the entire prior sample, 1958-89. We estimated systems of equations for individual countries' expected real interest rates and investment ratios. One finding is that each country's expected real interest rate depends primarily on world factors, rather than own-country factors, thereby suggesting a good deal of integration of world capital and goods markets.

Quality Improvements in Models of Growth

Technological progress takes the form of improvements in quality of an array of intermediate inputs to production. In an equilibrium that is standard in the literature, all research is carried out by outsiders, and success means that the outsider replaces the incumbent as the industry leader. The equilibrium research intensity involves three considerations: leading-edge goods are priced above the competitive level, innovators value the extraction of monopoly rents from predecessors, and innovators regard their successes as temporary. We show that, if industry leaders have lower costs of research, then the leaders will do all the research in equilibrium. However, if the cost advantage is not too large, then the equilibrium research intensity and growth rate depend on the existence of the competitive fringe and take on the same values as in the standard solution. We discuss the departures from Pareto optimality and analyze the determination of the economy's rate of return and growth rate.

Examining the Effects of School-Level Variables on Elementary School Students\u27 Academic Achievement: the Use of Structural Equation Modeling

School finance scholars have called for the alignment of accountability policies with state finance formulae to allocate resources toward student learning goals (Adams, 2008; Ryan, 2008; Superfine, 2009; Verstegen, 2002). With the presence of accountability policies that focus on improving students’ academic achievement, state finance systems must be repurposed to allocate educational resources to schools based on research-based practices that are linked to student achievement. The purpose of this study is to test the sufficiency of a new conceptual model of the effects of educational resources on student achievement using structural equation modeling. The goal of this study is to provide further clarity to the discourse on whether researchers can model how variations in educational resources allocated specifically to schools, rather than school districts, affect variations in student achievement

Ecophysiological Responses of Three Riparian Graminoids to Changes in the Soil Water Table

We examined the effect of changes in soil water table on the water relations, leaf gas exchange, and aboveground biomass of three riparian graminoids native to the semiarid western United States: Carex lanuginosa, Juncus balticus, and Carex nebrascensis. All three species co-occur at the wettest microhabitats within riparian corridors, but J. balticus and C. nebrascensis extend into drier areas. Lowering the water table to 1 m had little effect on the leaf gas exchange characteristics of the three graminoids. In the greenhouse, experimental reductions of the water table when plants had three fully mature leaves did not affect gas exchange rates or water potential in any of the three species. Lowering the water table when plants had one fully mature leaf resulted in limited differences between plants grown under high and low water table in J. balticus and C. lanuginosa. Further, these differences were only apparent after long periods of depressed water table (19 wk). In the field, rates of leaf gas exchange did not differ between plants growing near the creek from those occurring distant from the creek. Three factors contribute to the ability of these riparian graminoids to maintain favorable gas exchange and water relations across a range of water table depths. Each species appears to adjust rooting depth to, or just above, the shallow saturated zone. In the held, C. nebrascensis and J. balticus exhibited reductions of aboveground live biomass at locations far from the creek compared to those near the creek. Small adjustments of osmotic potential and the bulk modulus of elasticity help cells of C. nebrascensis and J. balticus maintain turgor as water table drops during the season. The limited distribution of C. lanuginosa near the creek may result, in part, from a higher biomass allocation to leaves and a less efficient water transport from roots to leaves, particularly when depressions of the water table occur during early growth stages

Righteous Adam, Sinister Eve

Supplementary Materials (Appendix 1-3) for "Righteous Adam, Sinister Eve", by Sergio Della Sala & Robert D McIntosh