Two key measures of U.S. economic growth—the annual rate of change in real output and in productivity—have improved considerably in recent years.1 Between 1996 and 1998, growth in productivity in the largest segment of the economy, the private nonfarm business sector, averaged nearly 2 percent. This growth rate, the strongest sustained pace since 1983-85, appears to signal some fundamental impr...

Areas affected by land degradation in Sub-Saharan West Africa between 1982 and 2012 are identified using time-series analysis of vegetation index data derived from satellites. The residual trend (RESTREND) of a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time-series is defined as the fraction of the difference between the observed NDVI and the NDVI predicted from climate data. It has been wid...

This paper compares parametric and non-parametric estimates of productivity change in European banking between 1994 and 2000. Productivity growth has also been further decomposed into technological change, or change in best practice, and efficiency change. Both the parametric and non-parametric approaches consistently identify those systems that have benefited most (and least) from productivity...

Today scientists are producing large volumes of data that they wish to explore and visualize. In this paper we describe a system that combines range-based queries with fast lookup to allow a scientist to quickly and efficiently ask “what if?” questions. Unique to our system is the ability to perform “cumulative queries” that work on both an intraand inter-time step basis. The results of such qu...

Facebook has established itself as one of the major players in social networking, claiming that it helps members connect and share with the people in their lives. But what if the people you want to connect and share with are your artistic collaborators? Can Facebook be used creatively, as a collaborative artistic environment? This paper explores the creative use of Facebook as a tool for creati...

Economists have been puzzled by the recent trends in real wage and productivity growth. While productivity has risen steadily, the popular press has lamented that real wages have failed to keep pace. Some argue that the inclusion of benefits explains the disparity. Others suggest that labor has lost much of its bargaining power with the firm, as evidenced by a decline in unionization rates, and...