A macroeconomic potential describing structural change of the economy

For the purpose of describing change in an economy's structure, and addressing issues of transformation, the notion of a time-dependent macroeconomic potential function is introduced. It penalizes deviations from equilibrium (entrepreneurial error) and induces moves toward equilibrium. Thus, from the concept of a potential function is derived the concept of short-term and long-term change forces. We focus here on the long-term structural changes of an economy as distinct from short-term cyclical variations, and we represent economic transformations as phase-transitions between monostable and ambiguous bistable states of the economy. One important feature of the potential function approach is that the parameter of the potential can be determined from empirical data. In particular, the parameters can be regressed for input variables. Hence, a relationship has been established between the structural change force and a set of input variables, some of which are controlled in part by either public or private sector agents. The method has been applied to West German and United States industry data for 1950–1980.     

International cooperation in stockpiles and tariffs for coping with oil supply disruptions

This paper provides a unified treatment of oil stockpiling and demand restraint as policy responses for enhancing energy security and examines the implications of recent changes in the structure and performance of the international oil market for the design of policies. These issues are addressed using a dynamic programming framework in which international policy actions of key oil-importing countries are modeled as a Nash dynamic game. Significant policy implications from the analysis include: (1) the result that, with realistic assumptions about disruption risks and inventory capacities, differences between noncooperative and coordinated stockpile policies appear to be minor and (2) significant mutual gains could be reaped from a modest degree of collective restraint on normal market oil demand. The broader role of international cooperation in enhancing energy security is also discussed.     

The psychosocial needs of the Chinese elderly

Changing Chinese family patterns caused by immigration have contributed to the breakdown of traditional community and familial control in Chinese-American families. As a result, the Chinese-American elderly are faced with unique psychosocial problems that workers must consider when providing services to this population.     

Survey of Voluntary Recreation Workers in New South Wales

Two surveys were conducted of volunteers working for recreation organizations in four New South Wales regions. The results highlight the dependence of these organizations on volunteers. Volunteers were found to be heavily engaged in instructing and organizing recreation activities. Few have any specific training for the role although further training is frequently considered desirable by respondents. Many respondents indicated that the government could assist voluntary work by providing— ? training at the local level, ? general financial assistance, and ? subsidies for equipment and facilities. Generally, responses indicate that the government should play a supportive rather than controlling role in recreation.     

Understanding PTSD: Forgetting "Trauma"

The concept of "psychological trauma" conflates emotional responses to traumatic events such as motor vehicle accidents, muggings, and house fires, responses to natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and responses to war, chronic physical abuse, prolonged torture, and repeated gang-rape as an act of "ethnic cleansing." It is argued that, from a psychological, human, and moral perspective, use of a single construct to describe responses to such a range of horrific happenings makes no sense. The benefits and limits of conceptualizing PTSD as a unifying concept for describing psychological responses to calamitous events are discussed. The consequences (with respect to clinical work, research, and social policy) of failing to distinguish between responses to relatively circumscribed traumatic events, more extreme, prolonged, or repeated individual traumatization, and collectively experienced mass violence against entire communities are examined.     

On the Cycle-Transitivity of the Dice Model

We introduce the notion of a dice model as a framework for describing a class of probabilistic relations. We investigate the transitivity of the probabilistic relation generated by a dice model and prove that it is a special type of cycle-transitivity that is situated between moderate stochastic transitivity or product-transitivity on the one side, and ukasiewicz-transitivity on the other side. Finally, it is shown that any probabilistic relation with rational elements on a three-dimensional space of alternatives which possesses this particular type of cycle-transitivity, can be represented by a dice model. The same does not hold in higher dimensions.     

Tempered Regrets Under Total Ignorance

Several decision rules, including the minimax regret rule, have been posited to suggest optimizing strategies for an individual when neither objective nor subjective probabilities can be associated to the various states of the world. These all share the shortcoming of focusing only on extreme outcomes. This paper suggests an alternative approach of tempered regrets which may more closely replicate the decision process of individuals in those situations in which avoiding the worst outcome tempers the loss from not achieving the best outcome. The assumption of total ignorance of the probabilities associated with the various states is maintained. Applications and illustrations from standard neoclassical theory are discussed.