A Study of the LEP and SLD Measurements of AbA_b

A systematic study is made of the data dependence of the parameter $A_{\rm{b}}$, that, since 1995, has shown a deviation from the Standard Model prediction of between 2.4 and 3.1 standard deviations. Issues addressed include: the effect of particular measurements, values found by individual experiments, LEP/SLD comparison, and the treatment of systematic errors. The effect, currently at the 2.4$\sigma$ level, is found to vary in the range from 1.7$\sigma$ to 2.9$\sigma$ by excluding marginal or particularly sensitive data. Since essentially the full LEP and SLD Z decay data sets are now analysed the meaning of the deviation, (new physics, or marginal statistical fluctuation) is unlikely to be given by the present generation of colliders.Comment: 15 pages 7 figures 7 table

Globalization, Crop Choice and Property Rights in Rural Peru, 1994-2004

This paper describes the results of initial work analysing a panel of rural households in Peru between 1994 and 2004 to determine household responses to changes in relative prices of traditional versus export-oriented products. Our principal interest was to better understand how household responses to external economic shocks influenced rural welfare, income distribution and poverty. Since a large percentage of Peruvians living in poverty are located in rural areas, learning more about how these households respond to a changing external environment provides insights into the factors that influence their ability to improve their absolute and relative economic position. The results of our analysis indicate that changes in relative prices had a significant impact on the adoption of new agricultural products, and the magnitude of response was mitigated by households? degree of tenure security and access to regional and local markets. Analyses of household expenditures over the period indicate that those who adopted export crops experienced a significant growth in consumption proportional to the change in acreage devoted to exportable products, and were less likely to be classified as impoverished at the end of the period. Instrumental variables estimates suggest that this association is causal.agricultural households, microeconomic, international trade, structural adjustment, technology adoption, poverty,

The Most Technologically Progressive Decade of the Century

Because of the Depression’s place in both the popular and academic imagination, and the repeated and justifiable emphasis on output that was not produced, income that was not earned, and expenditure that did not take place, it will seem startling to propose the following hypothesis: the years 1929–1941 were, in the aggregate, the most technologically progressive of any comparable period in U.S. economic history.1 The hypothesis entails two primary claims: that during this period businesses and government contractors implemented or adopted on a more widespread basis a wide range of new technologies and practices, resulting in the highest rate of measured peacetime peak-to-peak multifactor productivity growth in the century, and secondly, that the Depression years produced advances that replenished and expanded the larder of unexploited or only partially exploited techniques, thus providing the basis for much of the labor and multifactor productivity improvement of the 1950’s and 1960’s

Clock-transport synchronisation for neutrino time-of-flight measurements

A method to synchronise, at the sub-nanosecond level, clocks used for neutrino time-of-flight measurements is proposed. Clocks situated near the neutrino source and target are compared with a moveable clock that is transported between them. The general-relativistic theory of the procedure was tested and verified in an experiment performed by Hafele and Keating in 1972. It is suggested that use of such a synchronisation method may contribute to a precise test of the Sagnac effect ---a measured velocity greater than $c$--- for neutrinos of the proposed LBNE beam between Fermilab and the Homestake mine.Comment: 11 pages 5 figures 2 table