The indexes of multifactor productivity for two-digit manufacturing sectors prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for sectors in manufacturing have been revised and extended to cover the 1949–92 period. These indexes, also called the “KLEMS” multifactor measures, compare changes in output to changes in a composite of all the inputs used in production—capital, labor, energy inputs, nonenerg...

We study the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita together with the market capitalization (MCAP) per capita as two indicators of the effect of globalization. We find that g, the GDP per capita, as a function of m, the MCAP per capita, follows a power law with average exponent close to 1/3. In addition, the Zipf ranking approach confirms that the m for countries with initially lower values of...

Imagine a meeting convened to avert a global financial crisis where none of the finance ministers had access to reliable information on changes in the stock market, national gross domestic product or international trade flows. It is hardly conceivable. Yet the infinitely more existence-threatening planetary social and ecological crisis we refer to as 'global change' (comprising the linked issue...

Amid widespread reports of deforestation, some nations have nevertheless experienced transitions from deforestation to reforestation. In a causal relationship, the Forest Identity relates the carbon sequestered in forests to the changing variables of national or regional forest area, growing stock density per area, biomass per growing stock volume, and carbon concentration in the biomass. It qu...

Two stylized facts about poverty in Africa motivate this article: female-headed households tend to be poorer, and poverty has been falling in the aggregate since the 1990s. These facts raise two questions. First, how have female-headed households fared? Second, what role have they played in Africa's impressive recent aggregate growth and poverty reduction? Using data covering the entire region,...

Abstract It is argued that compared with large countries, small countries rely more on trade and therefore are more likely to adopt liberal trading policies. The present paper extends this idea beyond the conventional trade openness measures by analyzing the relationship between country size and the number of documents required to export and import, a measure of trade facilitation. Three import...

In this article, levels and changes in health care expenditures for Canada, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States are analyzed. First, the levels and changes in the share of gross domestic product (GDP) devoted to health are reviewed in terms of the health-to-GDP ratio, nominal health expenditure and GDP growth, and changes in populatio...

BACKGROUND Financing for malaria control has increased as part of international commitments to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). We aimed to identify the unmet financial needs that would be biologically and economically equitable and would increase the chances of reaching worldwide malaria-control ambitions. METHODS Populations at risk of stable Plasmodium falciparum or Plasmod...

Coastal wetlands reduce the damaging effects of hurricanes on coastal communities. A regression model using 34 major US hurricanes since 1980 with the natural log of damage per unit gross domestic product in the hurricane swath as the dependent variable and the natural logs of wind speed and wetland area in the swath as the independent variables was highly significant and explained 60% of the v...

Maximizing science achievement is a critical target of educational policy and has important implications for national and international economic and technological competitiveness. Previous research has identified both science interest and socioeconomic status (SES) as robust predictors of science achievement, but little research has examined their joint effects. In a data set drawn from approxi...