Assessing the information content of the technology achievement index in the presence of the human development index

This paper supports the proposition that the indexes of technological achievement and of human development exhibit similar information validity and similar country rankings, thus questioning the need for the existence of two indexes rather than one.human development index

Distinguishing the Best from the Rest

This essay examines the notion of "best practices", summarizes key studies on this theme, and discusses methodological concerns related to empirical studies of best management practices

Preparation of an extruded fish snack using twin screw extruder and the storage characteristics of the product

A value-added extruded fish product was prepared with corn flour (80%) and fish (sciaenid) powder (20%), using a twin-screw extruder. The effect of different parameters like moisture, temperature, fish powder concentration, speed of the extruder and die-diameter on expansion ratio and crisp texture were studied. The storage characteristics of the final product were studied using three different types of packaging under nitrogen flushing. The study revealed that aluminum foil is the best packaging material to keep the product acceptable for more than three months

Interest Rates and Environmental Pollution

While there is a growing body of theoretical and empirical literature examining the effects of such macroeconomic variables as growth of gross domestic product, international trade, incomes distribution and foreign direct investment on environmental pollution, one dimension lacking in the current literature is the impact of interest rates on pollution. If interest rates decline (rise), firms with capital-intensive technologies will invest more (less) relative to firms with labor-intensive technologies. Additionally, according to Rybczynski theorem, in a situation of full employment and a competitive labour market, labor will shift towards the capital-intensive industries from labor –intensive ones. Consequently, the products of capital-intensive industries will expand (contract) relative to products of labor-intensive industries. The capital-intensive industries are generally deemed to be polluting while labor-intensive industries are perceived to be non-polluting. This suggests that the movements of interest rates may have a discernible environmental outcome which has been neglected in the literature so far. To begin to fill this gap, in this paper, we construct a two-good and two-factor closed economy model to show the impact of interest rates on environmental pollution in a formal way. The theoretical results of the paper are illustrated numerically