Future S&T management policy issues—2025 global scenarios

This article presents four scenarios depicting science and technology (S&T) management dilemmas of the next two decades. The scenarios concern the balance between risk and promise, between the need to steer the directions of S&T, to minimize risk, and the need to maintain a free and unconstrained S&T agenda. These scenarios were constructed in the third year of the Millennium Project's study of this topic. The scenarios were formed in an interactive process with the project's international participants. The key policies that were found to be useful in all of the scenarios include (1) when considering the possibility of the misuse of weapons of mass destruction by terrorists, include the possibility of misuse by a single individual, acting alone; (2) establish mechanisms and techniques for making possible the explicit unintended consequences of scientific research and technology, including malicious uses; (3) for desirable technologies, where it may not be possible to avoid significant risks, develop mitigation strategies in parallel; (4) teach science ethics.     

Chromosomes and the Slutsky Equation: Lessons from 21st Century Genetics for 20th Century Economics

Reductionist scientific methodology has been at the forefront of economics research for much of the past 50 years. This short essay argues that recent discoveries in genetic engineering show that the study of complex phenomena might not be best served by such an approach, but rather by one that takes into consideration more evolutionary approaches. This provides a tremendous opportunity for the field of bioeconomics to establish itself as a major school of though, going into the future.     

THE SAVING RATE IN JAPAN: WHY IT HAS FALLEN AND WHY IT WILL REMAIN LOW*

Japan is in the midst of a demographic transition that is larger and more rapid than other OECD countries. We are interested in understanding the role of lower fertility rates and aging for the evolution of Japan's national saving rate. We use a computable general equilibrium model to analyze the response of the saving rate to changes in demographics and total factor productivity. In our model demographic factors account for 2–3 percentage points of the 9% decline in the saving rate between 1990 and 2000 and persistently depress the saving rate in future years.     

Approximate tâtonnement processes

Summary We introduce a probabilistic model for price adjustment in an exchange economy which approximates the classical Walras tâtonnement process while avoiding many of its unrealistic features. The model is decentralized in that the trades permitted to an agent and the resulting price changes depend only on the commodity vector currently held by that agent, and not on the commodity vectors held by the other agents in the economy. Our results will show that the Walras tâtonnement process can be decentralized without changing its behavior on the macroeconomic scale. Our model has a finite set of commodities, a market maker who adjusts prices, and a large finite set of agents who trade only with the market maker. Each agent has a demand function depending on his commodity vector and the price vector. At each discrete time, one agent is chosen at random and exchanges his current commodity vector for his demand vector. Then the market maker adjusts the price vector by an amount which depends on the selected agent's commodity vector and the current price. Prices are adjusted rapidly enough to avoid prolonged trading at the wrong price, but slowly enough so that a substantial price change will depend on a significant simple of agents. The main result shows that with probability arbitrarily close to one the price will rapidly approach and then remain close to an equilibrium value, following a path which is close to the price path of the corresponding tâtonnement process.     

Can we reject linearity in an HAR-RV model for the S&P 500? Insights from a nonparametric HAR-RV

This article tests the linearity assumption underlying the popular heterogeneous autoregressive model for realized volatility (HAR-RV). We implement a consistent model specification test that is robust to both distributional and model misspecification. We find that, using a nonparametric HAR-RV (NPHAR-RV), we are unable to reject the null of linearity.     

REPORTING GUIDELINES FOR META-ANALYSIS IN ECONOMICS

Meta-analysis has become the conventional approach to synthesizing the results of empirical economics research. To further improve the transparency and replicability of the reported results and to raise the quality of meta-analyses, the Meta-Analysis of Economics Research Network has updated the reporting guidelines that were published by this Journal in 2013. Future meta-analyses in economics will be expected to follow these updated guidelines or give valid reasons why a meta-analysis should deviate from them.     

Comments on Warren Samuels's "Why the Georgist Movement Has Not Succeeded"

A BSTRACT . The 16^th Amendment and the formation of the European Union were major political/economic reforms that should be seen as affirmations of the fundamental principles and teachings of Henry George. That these are not matters of interest to the self-defined Georgist movement reveals an excessively narrow focus of that movement and suggests its members' unfamiliarity with much of George's teachings.     

Utilization and productivity of the Duke physician's associate

The objectives of this study were as follows: (1) Formulate a theoretical model of the typical medical practice as a system for producing medical care, with particular attention to the role of middle-level health workers such as graduates of Duke University's Physician's Associate Program. (2) Develop a methodology for collecting data necessary to estimate the relevant parameters in the model, and to describe current patterns of utilization of Duke PA's. (3) Draw substantive conclusions, insofar as the model and data collection methodology permit, about the actual and potential productivity of Duke PA's.As of October 1971 Duke University had graduated 68 PA's from its Physician's Associate Program. Of these, 34 are employed as assistants in family practice or general medicine in a variety of private and institutional settings. Data were collected on eleven of these 34 PA's. No attempt was made to study the other 34 graduates engaged in clinical specialties, administration, or other functions. Neither was any attempt made to collect data on or draw inferences about the utilization and productivity of graduates of any other program such as the MEDEX Program.⁴