Developing nations like Namibia are aiming to industrialize much like developed nations and use the gross domestic product to measure their progress. However, this development path has been largely unsustainable. For Namibia to develop into a sustainable society, a different approach is needed. This study aimed to find entry points toward such an approach. Surveys were conducted in Windhoek, Na...

Metrics on resource productivity currently used by governments suggest that some developed countries have increased the use of natural resources at a slower rate than economic growth (relative decoupling) or have even managed to use fewer resources over time (absolute decoupling). Using the material footprint (MF), a consumption-based indicator of resource use, we find the contrary: Achievement...

In this study, we hypothesize that the worldwide distribution of cognitive ability is determined in part by variation in the intensity of infectious diseases. From an energetics standpoint, a developing human will have difficulty building a brain and fighting off infectious diseases at the same time, as both are very metabolically costly tasks. Using three measures of average national intellige...

BACKGROUND Evidence on immunization costs is a critical input for cost-effectiveness analysis and budgeting, and can describe variation in site-level efficiency. The Expanded Program on Immunization Costing and Financing (EPIC) Project represents the largest investigation of immunization delivery costs, collecting empirical data on routine infant immunization in Benin, Ghana, Honduras, Moldova,...

* Corresponding author. ** This research was performed in the framework of the EC project GEO-BENE (www.geo-bene.eu), led by IIASA. Abstract – Earthquakes on global scale cause considerable losses both in terms of economic impact and human lives. A proper coordination of disaster response activities requires observation of affected areas for evaluation of spatial distribution of damage. We use ...

Analyses by Cuddington in 1993 and forthcoming work from Cuddington and Hancock model the macroeconomic effects of the AIDS epidemic using a modified Solow growth model. This single-sector framework rests upon the assumption that labor and capital are always efficiently allocated throughout the economy with neither market failures nor policy-induced distortions resulting in resource misallocat...

Vast quantities of data on human behavior are being created by our everyday internet usage. Building upon a recent study by Preis, Moat, Stanley, and Bishop (2012), we used search engine query data to construct measures of the time-perspective of nations, and tested these measures against per-capita gross domestic product (GDP). The results indicate that nations with higher per-capita GDP are m...

How did US housing markets articulate both with global financial flows and US domestic politics? During the long 1990s, the US economy benefited from a system of global financial arbitrage in which the US economy as a whole borrowed short term, at low interest rates, from the rest of the world, while lending back long term at higher returns. A temporarily self-sustaining housing market boom in ...

Free trade agreements have been on the rise in all regions of the world in the past decade. This has allowed for global distribution and marketing of products in an international market. Products once produced for domestic markets must now be able to compete in international markets without trade barriers. Increased international commerce and manufacturing have forced many packaging and logisti...

INTRODUCTION Studies in high-income countries suggest that mortality is related to economic cycles, but few studies have examined how fluctuations in the economy influence mortality in low- and middle-income countries. We exploit regional variations in gross domestic product per capita (GDPpc) over the period 1980-2010 in Colombia to examine how changes in economic output relate to adult mortal...