Meteor fireball sounds identified

Sounds heard simultaneously with the flight of large meteor fireballs are electrical in origin. Confirmation that Extra/Very Low Frequency (ELF/VLF) electromagnetic radiation is produced by the fireball was obtained by Japanese researchers. Although the generation mechanism is not fully understood, studies of the Meteorite Observation and Recovery Project (MORP) and other fireball data indicate that interaction with the atmosphere is definitely responsible and the cut-off magnitude of -9 found for sustained electrophonic sounds is supported by theory. Brief bursts of ELF/VLF radiation may accompany flares or explosions of smaller fireballs, producing transient sounds near favorably placed observers. Laboratory studies show that mundane physical objects can respond to electrical excitation and produce audible sounds. Reports of electrophonic sounds should no longer be discarded. A catalog of over 300 reports relating to electrophonic phenomena associated with meteor fireballs, aurorae, and lightning was assembled. Many other reports have been cataloged in Russian. These may assist the full solution of the similar long-standing and contentious mystery of audible auroral displays

Resource Intensive Production and Aggregate Economic Performance

The main objective of this paper is to determine whether specialization in resource intensive production had a positive impact on the performance of the aggregate Canadian economy over the 1970-2005 period. Specialization is simply measured as the proportion of aggregate employment, the aggregate fixed capital stock, and G.N.P. that may be attributed to Canada's energy, fishing, forestry, and mining industries. Direct contributions to intensive, or per capita performance are measured in terms of the resource industries' profitability, productivity, and capital intensity. Indirect contributions to economic performance are measured in terms of spill overs, or linkages to other non-resource intensive industries through raw material price advantages and demand generation. The possibility that resource intensive production may have been crowding out other sectors in the economy through input price inflation or currency appreciation is also investigated. Based on the evidence, I argue that Canada's resource industries were making a substantial positive impact on aggregate economic performance after 1970, but this conclusion depends on the inclusion of the energy industries in resource sector.Resource Dependence, Spill Overs, Crowding Out, Resource Based Growth

An Empty Promise: Average Cost Savings and Scale Economies Among Canadian and American Manufacturers, 1910-1998

During the debate that led up to the implementation of a bilateral free trade agreement between Canada and the U.S. on January 1, 1989, much was made of economists' claims that both nations could expect significant welfare improvements as a result of the removal of tariffs on traded goods. The welfare gains were expected to flow from average cost savings associated with the exploitation of scale economies. In this paper we show that it was overly optimistic to predict substantive reductions in average costs in the response to any increases in the scale of production among Canadian or American manufacturing firms. Therefore, ex ante we should have expected trade liberalization between Canada and the U.S. to have had only muted scale, average cost, and welfare effects.Economic History, Technology and Scale, Growth and Fluctuations

Resource Rents and their Impact on Institutional and Economic Development

Over the twentieth century, Canada's energy, forestry, and mining industries played a substantial and increasing role in the growth and development of the aggregate economy. Despite the improving fundamentals that were underlying their increased contributions to the size, capital intensity, and productivity of the aggregate economy, the relative profitability and equity market performance of the resource industries deteriorated over the twentieth century. Without having to invoke entrepreneurial failure among the resource industries or equity market inefficiency, I am able to illustrate that falling relative output prices played the key role in a reconciliation of what, at first glance, appears to be a surprising relationship between the resource industries' fundamentals, resource rents, and equity market performance.

The Impact of Enlightened Shareholder Value

This paper documents and analyses the findings of a study conducted in relation to selected reports of all of the retail companies that are listed on the FTSE 100 in order to ascertain the impact of enlightened shareholder value on UK corporate governance. The findings are also analysed in light of other studies and commentary

An evaluation of sustainability in large British companies

This article undertakes an assessment of the sustainability efforts of some of the largest companies that are listed on the FTSE 100 (a share index composed of the 100 largest companies that are listed on the London Stock Exchange according to market capitalisation). It provides empirical insights into how large listed British companies are addressing sustainability and their efforts in terms of incorporating sustainability factors into their business operations. The study was based on an extended content analysis of each company’s annual and sustainability reports. Our findings demonstrate that companies are trying to integrate sustainability in their business strategies even though there are variations in their efforts. There are indications that the majority of the companies have been able to embed sustainability in their strategy and operations and are now attempting to establish goals for further improvement. We found strong evidence of willingness to engage with relevant stakeholders to evaluate which sustainability issues are of importance to the particular companies and then to communicate to those relevant stakeholders the measures that have been taken to integrate sustainability in their business strategies. However, our findings also revealed areas where there is a need for further improvement such as compliance with international standards for sustainability reporting and establishment of better frameworks to enhance their sustainability efforts

Financial Markets and Twentieth Century Industrialization: Evidence From U.S. and Canadian Steel Producers

Despite the diverse and developed nature of twentieth century U.S. and Canadian financial markets, the history of both economies is replete with claims of inefficiency and inadequacy among financial intermediaries, particularly the banking sectors. In Canada it has been argued that banks were oligopolistic and favoured an entrenched merchant class over industrialists. In the U.S. the unit banking system has been perceived as unstable and of an inefficiently small scale. This paper examines the experiences of a set of firms from a large and economically important manufacturing industry; primary steel production; in an effort to determine the impact differences in macro financial markets have had on micro financial decision making. We find statistically significant, but not necessarily economically important, relationships among national capital market characteristics, firms' financing decisions, and firms' capital costs.North American Industrialization, Capital Market Development, Financial Intermediation

Assessing Economic Performance among North American Manufacturing Establishments, 1870/71: Data, Methodology and Measurement Issues

A number of conceptually robust and empirically practical approaches are available to assess relative economic performance among producers who operate on either side of an international border. In this paper we discuss the impact that data compilation, methodological choice, and variable definitions may have on the quantitative and qualitative assessment of cross-border performance comparisons. As an illustrative example we use manuscript census data from 1870/71 to compare total factor productivity (TFP) among a sample of manufacturing establishments located along the Canada-US border. We briefly discuss issues associated with the preparation of manuscript census data for the measurement of cross-border TFP differentials and the establishment of industry selection criteria. We also review TFP measurement techniques, such as growth accounting calculations, cost and production function index number approaches, and econometric estimation. However, the central focus of the paper is an investigation of the impact that variable definitions have on our assessment of TFP performance. In particular, we probe the relationship between the size of cross-border TFP differentials and the reliance on a variety of common definitions for labour, capital, output, input weights, and prices.Productivity Measurement, International Performance Comparisons, North American Industrialization

Enabling the Visible Hand

In this paper we use data from more than 2,500 industry-years, reported by the Ohio Division of Labor Statistics, to track changes in employment and weekly wages among male and female production workers and clerical workers between 1914-1937. We find that among Ohio's manufacturing establishments female employment and real wages were rising throughout this period, particularly within clerical occupations. Increases in women's share of the total manufacturing workforce were nearly monotonic between 1914-1937, while after having been, at best, stagnant until the mid- 1920s, women's relative wages increased through the last half of the 1920s and into the 1930s. After matching our employment and wage data with information from the Census of Manufactures for the state of Ohio, we estimate translog production functions which indicate that Ohio manufacturers were adopting new organizational structures and technologies that were biased in favor of female clerical labor. This non-neutrality in technological and organizational change (like the employment and wage patterns) was driven primarily by larger firms that had relatively complex production processes. A simple counterfactual exercise indicates that the adoption of non-neutral technological and organizational change over this period can explain much of the observed increase in demand and remuneration for educated female manufacturing workers. This conclusion emphasizes the role women played channeling early twentieth century organizational and technological change, in effect enabling Chandler's "visible hand".US manufacturing, Female labor force participation, Technological change