The present paper revisits the path by which Coase came to set down result now generally known as theorem in his 1960 article. I draw on both published record and archival resources an effort clear away some of mist and, it will emerge, dispel mythology. As good traditional story is—thanks no small part Stigler’s hyperbole—the reality is far more interesting, for what tells us about Coase’s our...

In this response the statistical contours of the so-called knowledge economy are first described. This description does not constitute a capitulation to the hyperbole of those who see the dawning of a utopia in the knowledge era. Rather it merely provides a context to introduce the contributors to this theme and their analyses of the social and cultural issues implicit in the globalization of k...

The specter of a return to an era in which infectious disease looms as a significant threat to human health is not just hyperbole; there are serious concerns about the widespread overuse and misuse of antibiotics contributing to increased antibiotic resistance in pathogens. The recent discovery of a new enzyme, first identified in Klebsiella pneumoniae from a patient from New Delhi and denoted ...

OBJECTIVES To determine the effects of erectile dysfunction and to explore the impact of treatment with sildenafil (Viagra). DESIGN An exploratory qualitative study with semistructured interviews. SETTING Men's health clinic in NHS hospital. PARTICIPANTS 40 men who had had erectile dysfunction and had attended the clinic during the year before interview. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Impact of ...

This paper presents the first systematic analysis of estate agent language and employs Aristotle’s ponderings on the art of persuasion as a means of classifying the peculiar parlance of property peddlers. “Des. Res.”, “rarely available”, “viewing essential” – these are all part of the peculiar parlance of housing advertisements. The question is whether the selling agent’s penchant for rhetoric ...

This article comments on the Najman, Dunne, Purdie, Boyle, and Coxeter (2005) study on the relationship between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and later sexual functioning in an Australian national sample. We note the value of the Najman et al. study, being well conducted and using a generalizable sample, but critique Najman et al.'s interpretation that their study showed "significant impairment"...

Introduction A distinctive feature of William Melody’s contribution has been his concern with the role of established institutions as agents promoting or inhibiting social, economic and technological change. He has been particularly concerned with the contribution of university-based critical research in shaping policy in relation to the information society, including issues of uneven economic ...

Virtual experience and other technology-dependent methods of describing products online are frequently touted as the way of the future in e-commerce. However, despite the hyperbole, these claims have actually not been tested rigorously on systems used by major online retailers. This paper reports the results of an experiment that assesses user perceptions of the informativeness and ultimate use...

American industry rushed to adopt the personal computer during the 1980s, but it is not clear that they were wise in doing so. As that decade ended, economists were perplexed to discover that the information age had not brought with it any discernible increase in productivity (David 1990; Roach 1987; Bailey and Gordon 1988). The expectation that computers would save time, money, and paper had b...

The interpretation of metaphorical utterances often results in the attribution of emergent properties; these are properties which are neither standardly associated with the individual constituents of the utterance in isolation nor derivable by standard rules of semantic composition. For example, an utterance of ‘Robert is a bulldozer’ may be understood as attributing to Robert such properties a...