Henry George and His Philosophy: He Sought Equality of Opportunity to Use the Earth's Resources as Well as the End of Land Monopoly

Abstract . The George scholars today appear to be interesting the academic community in re-evaluating Henry George and his ideas. George, the 19th century American economist and social philosopher, dedicated himself to ending poverty by giving everyone equal access to the earth and its resources. He believed that land monopoly could be ended by taking the economic rent of all land and natural resources to meet the costs of government in lieu of taxes on labor and capital. George's writings revived interest in the ethos of the early settlers a time when sight was being lost of Pioneer America's contribution to the world's march toward freedom.     

A sequential selectivity model of the decisions of arbitrators

The study investigates arbitrator gender and grievant gender effects on the decisions of 146 arbitrators rendered on a hypothetical drug-testing case. The effects are estimated using a sequential selectivity model. This approach takes into account the sequential and conditional nature of arbitrators' decisions. The results indicate that arbitrators are more likely to overturn terminations when the grievant is female, and that female arbitrators are less likely to fully reinstate grievants when the termination is overturned. Other results include the finding that older arbitrators treated grievants more harshly by more often awarding only partial reinstatements. When suspensions are given, however, we find that older arbitrators award shorter suspensions than do younger arbitrators. It is also found that more experienced arbitrators awarded longer suspensions than less experienced arbitrators.     

Design considerations for neyman-pearson and wald hypothesis testing

Summary The Neyman-Pearson Lemma describes a test for two simple hypotheses that, for a given sample size, is most powerful for its level. It is usually implemented by choosing the smallest sample size that achieves a prespecified power for a fixed level. The Lemma does not describe how to select either the level or the power of the test. In the usual Wald decision-theoretic structure there exists a sampling cost function, an initial prior over the hypothesis space and various payoffs to right/wrong hypothesis selections. The optimal Wald test is a Bayes decision rule that maximizes the expected payoff net of sampling costs. This paper shows that the Wald-optimal test and the Neyman-Pearson test can be the same and how the Neyman-Pearson test, with fixed level and power, can be viewed as a Wald test subject to restrictions on the payoff vector, cost function and prior distribution.     

Russian Nanotechnology Market: High-Technology Industry or Statistical Phenomenon

This article presents a medium-term forecast of the development of the Russian nanoindustry, taking into account the assumed transition of the industry from the formation stage to the investment growth stage. Problems associated with the estimated output volumes of products in the Russian nanoindustry are considered, since the trends recorded in the primary statistical data are very far from reflecting the real situation due to the imperfection of the system of statistics of nano-containing products, as well as a reduction of state funding and a decline in the intensity of research in the industry. It is concluded that a full-fledged industry has not been yet completely formed in Russia and it actually exists only as a statistical phenomenon; in addition, the project really set different objectives from the declared creation of a breakthrough high-technology branch.     

Tourism in Tropical Africa A review of literature in English and research agenda

Literature on tourism in tropical Africa is reviewed to indicate the current and future roles of tourism in tropical African countries. Attention is then directed to research issues whose investigation may lead to the development of guidelines for the extension, regulation, and management of tourism. These issues are arranged under the following headings: inventory, demand, types of tourism, economic impacts, socio-cultural impacts, environmental impacts, infrastructure, regional patterns, international cooperation, and tourism futures.     

Measuring Serious Leisure in Chess: Model Confirmation and Method Bias

The serious leisure inventory and measure (SLIM) was tested with 348 chess players to confirm the factors, assess the effects of method bias, and propose a set of the best-performing items for the 18 factor SLIM. The 54-item SLIM demonstrated acceptable fit and reliability values. The effect of method bias was evidenced in the sample and explained one-third of the variance. Inspection of factor loadings, when controlling for method bias, yielded one best-performing item per factor. Findings indicate method bias continues to be problematic for self-report measures such as the SLIM.     

Sample bias in contingent valuation: A comparison of the correction methods

Abstract

This article compares various methods for correcting contingent valuation aggregate benefits when the sample is known to be biased. A sample is defined as the population, and response rates are simulated on the basis of a measure of salience. The simulated response rates suffer from nonresponse bias and selection bias. Coefficient and benefit estimates that result from weighting and self‐selection correction approaches are compared with the true coefficient and benefit estimates. Our results indicate that at both low and high response rates the standard approach leads to bias, and either correction approach will reduce the bias in coefficient and benefit estimates.