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Policy sciences framework, Ecosystem management, Collaborative resource management, Federal land management, Local, Stakeholders,

Cracks in the US empire: unilateralism, the “war on terror” and the developing world

In this article the author analyses the rise of the unilateralist imperial project of the George W. Bush administration in the United States and its implications for the developing world. He explains the motivation behind the 'war on terror' and the invasion of Iraq. Contrary to prevailing views, the author suggests that US hegemony rests on a fragile economic base. The expanded European Union now represents an economy of the size of that of the US and it enjoys a healthy position in international trade, while the developing Asian region is also gaining ground. The US has been able to engage in deep deficit spending to finance its 'war on terror' due to the US dollar's position as the international currency of deposit. However the Euro is now challenging the pre-eminence of the dollar. These factors combine to form the objective basis for a challenge to US unilateralism, but Asia's development gap and political division in Europe mean that the only possible challenge in the short-term to the prevailing imperialist posture of the US must come from inside the superpower. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Effects of U.S. Public Agricultural R&D on U.S. Obesity and its Social Costs

How much has food abundance, attributable to U.S. public agricultural R&D, contributed to the high and rising U.S. obesity rates? In this paper we investigate the effects of public investment in agricultural R&D on food prices, per capita calorie consumption, adult body weight, obesity, public health-care expenditures related to obesity, and social welfare. First we use an econometric model to estimate the average effect of an incremental investment in agricultural R&D on the farm prices of ten categories of farm commodities. Next, we use the econometric results in a simulation model to estimate the implied changes in prices and quantities consumed of nine categories of food for given changes in research expenditures. Finally, we estimate the corresponding changes in social welfare, including both the traditional measures of changes in economic surplus in markets for food and farm commodities, and changes in public health-care expenditures associated with the predicted changes in food consumption and hence obesity. We find that a 10 percent increase in the stream of annual U.S. public investment in agricultural R&D in the latter half of the 20th century would have caused a modest increase in average daily calorie consumption of American adults, resulting in small increases in social costs of obesity. On the other hand, such an increase in spending would have generated very substantial net national benefits given the very large benefit-cost ratios for agricultural R&D