What happened after Bell spilled the acid?: Telecommunications history: a view through the literature

The article is an extensive review of the literature covering the history of telecommunications, primarily the telephone and telegraph. Much of the history itself is discussed in the process, including the politics of inventions, monopolies and anti-trust pressures, and industry interaction with government. The ignorance of many authors on the actual workings of the telephone is decried, and many sources for gaining an understanding of the technology are indicated.     

Supply response of U.K. milk producers

Short‐run own‐price response elasticities are estimated from two samples of panel data for specialist dairy farms in the Northwest and Southwest of England. Although these farms are subject to milk marketing quotas, the free tradability of quotas enables them individually to adjust the output quite rapidly. Model specifications have been chosen to test the ability of panel data to directly reveal behavioral responses without the imposition of theoretical restrictions. Significantly, the two independent samples generate quite similar results, especially in terms of supply response measures. Stable and promising estimates are obtained with simultaneous models giving higher elasticities than single equation models.     

Why Democracies Cooperate More and Fight Less: The Relationship Between International Trade and Cooperation

This paper provides an economics-based interpretation of the standard finding in the literature that democracies rarely fight each other. A general theory of conflict between two countries is presented and empirical analysis applies this theory to the question of why democracies rarely fight each other. The results show that the fundamental factor in causing bilateral cooperation is trade. Countries seek to protect wealth gained through international trade, therefore trading partners are less combative than nontrading nations. Democratic dyads trade more than nondemocratic dyads, and thus exhibit less conflict and more cooperation.