Phylogenetic classification of the world's tropical forests

Knowledge about the biogeographic affinities of the world’s tropical forests helps to better understand regional differences in forest structure, diversity, composition, and dynamics. Such understanding will enable anticipation of region-specific responses to global environmental change. Modern phylogenies, in combination with broad coverage of species inventory data, now allow for global biogeographic analyses that take species evolutionary distance into account. Here we present a classification of the world’s tropical forests based on their phylogenetic similarity. We identify five principal floristic regions and their floristic relationships: (i) Indo-Pacific, (ii) Subtropical, (iii) African, (iv) American, and (v) Dry forests. Our results do not support the traditional neo- versus paleotropical forest division but instead separate the combined American and African forests from their Indo-Pacific counterparts. We also find indications for the existence of a global dry forest region, with representatives in America, Africa, Madagascar, and India. Additionally, a northern-hemisphere Subtropical forest region was identified with representatives in Asia and America, providing support for a link between Asian and American northern-hemisphere forests.</p

Destabilizing Factors in Contemporary Monetary Policy

Destabilizing Factors in Contemporary Monetary Policy This paper reviews the contemporary history of monetary policy in the United States. Official statements by the Chairmen and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System are used as primary source material. These statements reflect certain theoretical precepts and principles, and attempt to justify the policy actions taken by the Federal Reserve during the ten-year period, 1964- 1974. Federal Reserve policies and the principles supporting them are subjected to critical analysis in this paper, with the purpose of determining how the relatively stable monetary economy of the early 1960s became the unstable economy of the early 1970s. It was found that political factors weighed heavily in determining central bank actions, and that appropriate economic arguments were then adduced to rationalize the policies taken. The controversy over “money market indicators” (interest rates) versus “the aggregates” (monetary stocks) as guides to policy is a significant reflection of this pattern of central bank behavior. The compatibility of an easy money policy with the wage-price freeze of August 15, 1971 is another example of political domination of monetary policy. Other subsidiary principles of Federal Reserve policy are also examined for their destabilizing influences. The most serious indictment of these policies lies in the fact thatthe Federal Reserve made inflation control by monetary means look difficult, if not impossible, and thus encouraged ubiquitous interventions by the federal government that, continue to hamper economic productivity and jeopardize economic freedoms in other sectors of the economy

The tale of another chairman

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.) ; Federal Reserve System - History ; Federal Reserve System

Reply to Hortlund's "Defense of the Real Bills Doctrine"

IN A CRITIQUE OF MY PAPER ON “GOLD STANDARDS AND THE Real Bills Doctrine in U.S. Monetary Policy†that appeared in Econ Journal Watch (August 2005), Per Hortlund has raised several interesting issues about the Real Bills Doctrine (RBD). As Hortlund observes, my article had two major themes, first, the innocence of the gold standard for the monetary infelicities that caused the Great Contraction of 1929-1933, and, second, the culpability of the RBD for the debacle. Hortlund accepts my defense of the gold standard. However, he finds some arguments to support a case for the RBD, and he raises an important issue concerning the substance of the RBD and its implementation as policy during 1929-1933, part of which I thoroughly accept.

Private Production of Scrip-Money in the Isolated Community.

This paper examines the appearance of one type of privately-produced currency, which had the generic label "scrip." This money appeared at widely different times and places in the United States between 1820 and 1940 in spite of federal laws prohibiting its issue. The most sophistic ated and best developed example of scrip seems to have occurred in th e coal mining regions of Appalachia, especially in West Virginia. Thi s experience and its implications for monetary behavior are examined here. Copyright 1987 by Ohio State University Press.