South Carolina in a Globalized Economy: How We Got Here and Where We Go Next

International Relations/Trade,

Significance testing without truth

A popular approach to significance testing proposes to decide whether the given hypothesized statistical model is likely to be true (or false). Statistical decision theory provides a basis for this approach by requiring every significance test to make a decision about the truth of the hypothesis/model under consideration. Unfortunately, many interesting and useful models are obviously false (that is, not exactly true) even before considering any data. Fortunately, in practice a significance test need only gauge the consistency (or inconsistency) of the observed data with the assumed hypothesis/model -- without enquiring as to whether the assumption is likely to be true (or false), or whether some alternative is likely to be true (or false). In this practical formulation, a significance test rejects a hypothesis/model only if the observed data is highly improbable when calculating the probability while assuming the hypothesis being tested; the significance test only gauges whether the observed data likely invalidates the assumed hypothesis, and cannot decide that the assumption -- however unmistakably false -- is likely to be false a priori, without any data.Comment: 9 page

Location, Firm Size and International Trade: Simultaneous Measurement of the Effects of Internal and External Scale Economies on Exporting

International Relations/Trade,

Sarcoidosis Presenting as Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome.

Sarcoidosis is a multisystem granulomatous disease of unknown origin. It typically involves the lungs and mediastinal lymph nodes in a chronic fashion. However, acute syndrome has been reported possibly in response to systemic release of proinflammatory cytokines. Acute pulmonary manifestations, especially acute respiratory failure or acute respiratory distress syndrome, remain extremely uncommon in individuals without a prior diagnosis. We present the case of a 41-year-old African American female, who presented with ARDS. An extensive workup into the cause of her illness remained negative, and she subsequently succumbed to her illness. A diagnosis of sarcoidosis was made upon autopsy, after exclusion of other granulomatous illness. The case highlights the need to consider this uncommon diagnosis in patients with unexplained ARDS to guide therapy

ASSET FIXITY, ASSET SPECIFICITY AND REGIONAL ECONOMIC CHANGE: HYPOTHESIS AND IMPLICATIONS

That asset specificity and asset fixity are impediments to economic adjustment is well understood in the literatures of industrial organization and agricultural economics. In this paper, we show that spatial factors can plausible be expected to be arguments in functions that define asset fixity and specificity and, hence, asset fixity may be systematically related to space. The implications with regard to differences across space in rates of adjustment to market signals suggest that the short run is longer in remote than in less remote places, which may prove useful in explaining the behavior of a spatial economic system during times of rapid technological change.Industrial Organization,

THE NEW ECONOMICS OF DISTANCE: LONG-TERM TRENDS IN INDEXES OF SPATIAL FRICTION

Distance-related costs have changed at different rates across categories of resource flows and across modes and media between 1960 and 1998. The cost of moving knowledge/information has dropped much faster than the costs of moving people or materials. The costs of processing and moving information have dropped by 98% and 92% respectively, in real terms since 1960. In addition, there are big differences in the rates of change within the real costs of moving people using different travel modes--just as big differences exist within the real costs of moving materials using different modes. For example, the real costs of moving materials by domestic rail and inland waterway have decreased by 58% and 42% in real terms, respectively, while inter-city trucking costs have not changed significantly in real terms since 1960. Thus, this paper suggests that the 'new economics of distance' is not about the disappearance of distance nor the demise of borders as factors in economics. Rather, 'the new economics of distance' is about the increasing role played by logistics management and the adjustment processes that are occurring as firms creatively seek to substitute between types of resources and between the modes and media for moving those resources.Industrial Organization,

Attorneys

This article is part of the District of Columbia Survey

Criminal Law

This article is part of the District of Columbia Survey