Key Economic Issues

Women’s Economic Empowerment: Key Issues and Policy Options

Key Issues for the Economic Viability of Magnetic Fusion Power

This paper examines the economics of magnetic fusion power generation, makes comparisons with other generation sources, and draws attention to some key issues. For other generation sources, the data presented are drawn from published references, but specific studies have been made for magnetic confinement systems. The magnetic fusion costs are benchmarked by comparison with those for ITER, sinc...

Public Capital and Economic Growth: Key Issues for Europe

Governments can try to improve future living conditions in various ways: they can, e.g. stimulate private (foreign) investment, spend more on education and health programs in order to enhance human capital, preserve the environment, or they can add to the stock of infrastructure. According to the World Bank (1994), public capital represents the ‘wheels’ – if not the engine – of economic activit...

Nanofluids Research: Key Issues

Nanofluids are a new class of fluids engineered by dispersing nanometer-size structures (particles, fibers, tubes, droplets) in base fluids. The very essence of nanofluids research and development is to enhance fluid macroscopic and megascale properties such as thermal conductivity through manipulating microscopic physics (structures, properties and activities). Therefore, the success of nanofl...

Key Issues Review

This short review presents a selected history of the mutual fertilization between physics and economics—from Isaac Newton and Adam Smith to the present. The fundamentally different perspectives embraced in theories developed in financial economics compared with physics are dissected with the examples of the volatility smile and of the excess volatility puzzle. The role of the Ising model of pha...