Why Do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output per Worker than Others?

Output per worker varies enormously across countries. Why? On an accounting basis, our analysis shows that differences in physical capital and educational attainment can only partially explain the variation in output per worker we find a large amount of variation in the level of the Solow residual across countries. At a deeper level, we document that the differences in capital accumulation, productivity, and therefore output per worker are driven by differences in institutions and government policies, which we call social infrastructure. We treat social infrastructure as endogenous, determined historically by location and other factors captured in part by language.

The Value of Life and the Rise in Health Spending

Health care extends life. Over the past half century, Americans have spent a rising share of total economic resources on health and have enjoyed substantially longer lives as a result. Debate on health policy often focuses on limiting the growth of health spending. We investigate an issue central to this debate: can we understand the growth of health spending as the rational response to changing economic conditions---notably the growth of income per person? We estimate parameters of the technology that relates health spending to improved health, measured as increased longevity. We also estimate parameters of social preferences about longevity and the consumption of non-health goods and services. The story of rising health spending that emerges is that the diminishing marginal utility of non-health consumption combined with a rising value of life causes the nation to move up the marginal-cost schedule of life extension. The health share continues to grow as long as income grows. In projections based on our parameter estimates, the health share reaches 33 percent by the middle of the century.

The value of life and the rise in health spending

Health care extends life. Over the past half century, Americans spent a rising share of total economic resources on health and enjoyed substantially longer lives as a result. Debate on health policy often focuses on limiting the growth of health spending. We investigate an issue central to this debate: Is the growth of health spending the rational response to changing economic conditions - notably the growth of income per person? We develop a model based on standard economic assumptions and argue that this is indeed the case. Standard preferences - of the kind used widely in economics to study consumption, asset pricing, and labor supply - imply that health spending is a superior good with an income elasticity well above one. As people get richer and consumption rises, the marginal utility of consumption falls rapidly. Spending on health to extend life allows individuals to purchase additional periods of utility. The marginal utility of life extension does not decline. As a result, the optimal composition of total spending shifts toward health, and the health share grows along with income. This effect exists despite sharp diminishing returns in the technology of life extension. In projections based on the quantitative analysis of our model, the optimal health share of spending seems likely to exceed 30 percent by the middle of the century.

The integrated hydrologic and societal impacts of a warming climate in Interior Alaska

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2014In this dissertation, interdisciplinary research methods were used to examine how changes in hydrology associated with climate affect Alaskans. Partnerships were established with residents of Fairbanks and Tanana to develop scientific investigations relevant to rural Alaskans. In chapter 2, local knowledge was incorporated into scientific models to identify a socialecological threshold used to model potential driftwood harvest from the Yukon River. Anecdotal evidence and subsistence calendar records were combined with scientific data to model the harvest rates of driftwood. Modeling results estimate that between 1980 and 2010 hydrologic factors alone were responsible for a 29% decrease in the annual wood harvest, which approximately balanced a 23% reduction in wood demand due to a decline in number of households. The community's installation of wood-fired boilers in 2007 created a threshold increase (76%) in wood demand that is not met by driftwood harvest. Modeling of climatic scenarios illustrates that increased hydrologic variability decreases driftwood harvest and increases the financial or temporal costs for subsistence users. In chapter 3, increased groundwater flow related to permafrost degradation was hypothesized to be affect river ice thickness in sloughs of the Tanana River. A physically-based, numerical model was developed to examine the importance of permafrost degradation in explaining unfrozen river conditions in the winter. Results indicated that ice melt is amplified by increasing groundwater upwelling rates, groundwater temperatures, and snowfall. Modeling results also suggest that permafrost degradation could be a valid explanation of the phenomenon, but does not address the potential drivers (e.g. warming climate, forest fire, etc.) of the permafrost warming. In chapter 4, remote sensing techniques were hypothesized to be useful for mapping dangerous ice conditions on the Tanana River in interior Alaska. Unsupervised classification of high-resolution satellite imagery was used to identify and map open water and degraded ice conditions on the Tanana River. Ninety-five percent of the total river channel surface was classified as "safe" for river travel, while 4% of the channel was mapped as having degraded ice and 0.6% of the channel was classified as open water (overall accuracy of 73%). This research demonstrates that the classification of high-resolution satellite images can be useful for mapping hazardous ice for recreational, transportation, or industrial applications in northern climates. These results are applicable to communities throughout the North. For people that rely upon subsistence activities, increased variability in climate cycles can have substantial financial, cultural, recreational, or even mortal consequences. This research demonstrates how collaborations between scientists and local stakeholders can create tools that help to assess the impacts of increased environmental variability (such as flooding) or to detect or predict unsafe conditions (such as thin or unpredictable ice cover). Based upon this research, I conclude that regional-scale adaptations and technological advances (such as modeling and remote sensing tools) may help to alleviate the effects of environmental variability associated by climate

Crowdsourcing Civics Instruction to Improve Student Civic Knowledge, Skills, and Citizen Engagement

Secondary students’ lack of civic knowledge, skills, and engagement is well documented in the literature. States continue to address the issue through an increase in mandated civics requirements, but a striking improvement has not been confirmed. Improving civics instructional delivery through crowdsourcing holds promise in addressing deficits in students’ acquisition of civic knowledge, skills, and engagement. Crowdsourcing is the act of using the internet to obtain information and input from multiple parties on specific topics and to find solutions to problems. The purpose of this study was to determine if crowdsourcing may be an effective instructional tool that civics teachers could use in their classrooms to close the civics achievement gap. The following research questions guided this study: What are civics teachers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of crowdsourcing as an instructional tool in high school civics courses, and how can crowdsourcing be implemented into high school civics curriculum? A case study design was determined to be the appropriate methodology to use to answer the research questions. A survey instrument with both Likert Scale and open-ended questions was administered to civics teachers in seven urban school districts in Florida. Results from the data analysis indicate that crowdsourcing can be an effective instructional tool for teaching civics. However, survey bias inhibited the study’s ability to determine what other examples of crowdsourcing can be implemented in the civics classroom

A study of the effect of co-deposited cobalt and copper on the magnetic properties of cylindrical permalloy thin films

The quest for faster and more compact memory elements for data processing systems has generated considerable interest in ferromagnetic films

Bitter Medicine: A Critical Look at the Mental Health Care Provider’s Duty to Warn in Texas

A quarter of a century has passed since Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California first imposed a duty of care upon mental health care professions for third parties. In Tarasoff, the California Supreme Court held that once a therapist determines, or reasonably should have determined, a patient poses a significant danger of violence to others, the therapist bears a duty to exercise reasonable care to protect the foreseeable victim from that danger. Tarasoff has since been widely accepted by both legislatures and courts as the basis for imposing the duty of reasonable care upon mental health care professionals to provide a warning to likely victims of their dangerous patients. While most states have adopted some variation of the Tarasoff duty to warn, the Texas Supreme Court recently has declined to impose such a duty. This refusal has been steadfast even though the mental health care professional-patient relationship is the type that has traditionally given rise to such a duty and the imposition of such a liability would advance the public policy goal of preventing harm to foreseeable victims. A statutory recognition of such a duty in Texas would resolve the confusion regarding the duty owed by the mental health care professional to third parties. Specifically, a statute, thorough in its consideration of the issue, would provide clear guidelines as to when a therapist’s disclosure, in an effort to protect a third party, violates the physician-patient privilege. Analysis of the Tarasoff duty, history, and legacy shows that legislation that would statutorily impose a duty upon mental health care providers to warn third parties is long overdue in Texas

Results and current status of the NPARC alliance validation effort

The NPARC Alliance is a partnership between the NASA Lewis Research Center (LeRC) and the USAF Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) dedicated to the establishment of a national CFD capability, centered on the NPARC Navier-Stokes computer program. The three main tasks of the Alliance are user support, code development, and validation. The present paper is a status report on the validation effort. It describes the validation approach being taken by the Alliance. Representative results are presented for laminar and turbulent flat plate boundary layers, a supersonic axisymmetric jet, and a glancing shock/turbulent boundary layer interaction. Cases scheduled to be run in the future are also listed. The archive of validation cases is described, including information on how to access it via the Internet