Impact of telephone and satellite earth station installations on GDP : A model for rural areas of LDCs

Presents a method for estimating the impact on national development of installation of telecommunication facilities in rural areas of developing countries. A methodology developed by Hardy is applied to three groups of developing countries and a hypothetical rural region to estimate the impact on GDP per thin route satellite earth station installed over a ten year period. A logarithmic relationship between telephone density and impact on GDP per earth station is found, so that the impact per earth station increases with lower telephone densities. The model can be used to estimate the impact on national GDP of telephone installations and/or thin route earth stations in regions of low telephone density.     

A development perspective on the role and function of black colleges of education in South Africa

The training of black teachers in South Africa has greatly expanded in recent decades. The expansion resulted from a strong demand for teachers in black schools and from an even stronger and greatly unrealistic demand for places in teacher training colleges. The demand for teachers developed as a result of growing enrolment and an attempt to lower the pupil‐teacher ratios. The demand for places in teacher training colleges in turn developed only partly as a result of the demand for teachers. To a very large extent it developed also as a response to a set of social, economic and political conditions which prevailed in South Africa during the apartheid era. These conditions have influenced not only the numbers of high school graduates seeking training as teachers and the actual numbers of teachers trained, but also the quality and direction of training delivered over the years. The quality of training has been generally poor, and the choice of levels as well as teaching subjects by trainee‐teachers has not been in line with the needs of the schools. To address these three aspects of teacher training — the quantity of teachers trained, the direction in which they are trained, and the quality of their training — it will be necessary to reform the existing system.     

Consumer Information and Education Effects on Knowledge and Choice of Fire Resistant Upholstery

The effects of consumer education and information treatments on choice of alternative products are described. Knowledge of upholstery serviceability and flammability before and after these treatments is measured as well as simulated purchase behavior of 448 Canadian consumers. Subjects show an increase in knowledge between pre- and posttests. The choice of fire resistant upholstery differs among consumer information treatments but not among education treatments. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

Property taxes and the timing of urban land development

This paper develops an optimal timing model which extends our understanding of the effects which property taxes have on the timing of land development. Comparative static effects of changes in property tax rates are investigated and policy rules are developed for the use of differential pre- and post-development tax rates to affect the timing of development. Changes in the property tax rate are found to be non-neutral with respect to the timing of development in most cases, accelerating or delaying development depending upon specific market conditions.     

Management situations and the engineering mindset

This paper uses the method of assumptional analysis to understand the behavior patterns and the problem-solving strategies employed by the engineer/scientist. It is shown that the engineering mindset, although useful for the solution of the problem situations that generally arise in the engineering fields, has serious inadequacies, and is often counterproductive, in handling ill-structured management problems; hence, the often reported, less-than-adequate performance of engineers in management situations. This article moves from the analysis of engineering-problem situations to the basic assumptions underlying the engineer's world picture and thence to the engineer's strategies for problem solution. Comparisons with the nature of management situations, the manager's world picture, and his problem-handling activities are made. The analysis is, in the main part, paradigmatic. It is pointed out that the basic feature of all ill-structured problems is that they network across many and diverse knowledge bases. Further, this article argues that a new and different world view needs to be introduced into the training of future generations of engineers, for with the increased networking of society, not just management but also technological problem situations will move more and more towards the ill-structured end of the spectrum.     

Spurious Regressions in Financial Economics?

Even though stock returns are not highly autocorrelated, there is a spurious regression bias in predictive regressions for stock returns related to the classic studies of Yule (1926) and Granger and Newbold (1974) . Data mining for predictor variables interacts with spurious regression bias. The two effects reinforce each other, because more highly persistent series are more likely to be found significant in the search for predictor variables. Our simulations suggest that many of the regressions in the literature, based on individual predictor variables, may be spurious.     

中国成品油市场月度分析

回顾 1.需求 1月份,受经济危机和春节长假的双重影响,国内经济活动继续萎缩,估计当月出口、固定资产投资和工业增加值三项经济指标会出现显著下滑.