The New Economics Tests for the College and Pre-college Levels: A Comment

The authors examine the recently revised Test of Understanding of College Economics (TUCE) available from the Joint Council on Economic Education. The article examines its reliability, validity, norms, and item statistics with attention to limitations.     

Misinterpretations of the Second Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics: Barriers to Better Economic Education

Textbooks regularly interpret the second fundamental theorem of welfare economics by claiming it asserts that any desired Pareto optimum can be achieved by market prices.     

Looking Backward at Feasible Socialism: Using Bellamy to Teach Schumpeter

This article demonstrates the parallels between Bellamy's fictional society in Looking Backward and Schumpeter's socialist blueprint Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. The socialist system Joseph Schumpeter describes is nearly identical to that in Edward Bellamy's utopia. Because Bellamy's society is a concrete one set within the readable confines of a novel, it provides a useful benchmark for students analyzing Schumpeter.     

Comparative Research Productivity Measures for Economics Departments

The typical profit-maximization solution for the joint-production problem found in intermediate texts, managerial texts, and other texts concerned with optimal pricing is oversimplified and inconsistent with profit maximization, unless there is either no excess of any of the joint products or no costs associated with dumping. However, it is an inappropriate method of solution where excess does exist and the costs of dumping are explicitly recognized and, with respect to such cases, is at least nongeneral. The authors present a more realistic alternative method of solution, although more complex, as a substitute for the textbook method of solution typically offered.     

Defence conversion: the westinghouse experience

This pape briefly reviews defence industry trends and how defence contractors are attempting technology conversion, with specific examples.     

Industrial Policy and Corporate Power

A central piece of regulatory policies governing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has been the creation of expert bodies aiming at evaluating the risks of releasing these organisms into the environment. Taking into account an institutionalist approach based on the legal-economic nexus, the aim of this paper is to present the Brazilian experience in the regulation of GMOs. This experience is revealed as a biased process by which democratic principles, such as transparency and public participation, are obliterated by a technocratic model of regulation aiming at guaranteeing legitimacy for a decision-making process aligned with interests of technology providers.