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Four essentially independent conceptions of the population problem are visible in current discussions. One is derived from macroeconomics, one from microeconomics, one from the health sciences, and one from ethical concerns about the just relation between man and nature. After describing these conceptions, this paper addresses the population problem principally using the economic definitions. It cites five reasons why discussions of the economic hazards posed by population growth have become markedly less alarmist in the past decade. Failures of highly quantified input-output models to account for human progress are emphasized. The paper presents examples of how technical demography has shed light on the dimensions of and solutions to the population problem and concludes with a brief discussion of contemporary population problems in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs the modified Wald (MWALD) causality test to re-examine the relationship between crime and its determinants (inflation and unemployment) in the United States from 1960 to 2005. Bounds test approach is employed to investigate the existence of a long-run relationship. The empirical evidence suggests that inflation and crime rates are cointegrated with a positive relationship. Moreover, the causal link is from inflation and unemployment to crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of 'government failure' is central to theories of neoliberal normativity. Rather than focusing on 'market failures' and their correctives, neoliberalism aims to demonstrate ways that government `incompetence', 'inefficiency', and 'graft' pollute or completely block the provision of adequate public services. Little work has been done, however, to determine the extent to which this notion has been accepted within the political mainstream, or the ways in which examples have been deployed to highlight or solve 'government failure'. This study considers the way that one such example, the organization Habitat for Humanity, has been deployed as a challenge to interventionist government and, as such, as an alternative to 'government failure' A qualitative and quantitative content analysis of 1427 news articles that included 'Habitat for Humanity' from six North American newspapers was conducted to determine the extent to which the organization has become normalized as a viable alternative to state-delivered housing in particular, and Keynesian welfarism in general. The paper adds to the argument that neoliberal assumptions, once the purview of a small cadre of right-wing political economists, have permeated mainstream assumptions about the role of government in the provision of public goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper unit-root tests for per capita output of 12 OECD countries are performed. Using traditional unit-root tests, it follows that the unit-root hypothesis cannot be rejected except for the US. However, following the approach of Perron (1989), which takes shifts in mean and/or trend into account, the null hypothesis of a unit-root can be rejected in most countries in our sample. In contrast to Perron, a method suggested by Christiano (1992) is used to determine the break date endogenously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of the present paper is to formulate some piecemeal policy recommendations which would definitely result in a move towards efficiency. In particular, we will prove the following: (a) a policy which reduces all price distortions uniformly will improve the welfare of the economy, if it is stable in the Marshallian sense. (b) a policy which brings the highest distortion to the level of the next highest will improve the welfare of the economy, if the good with the highest distortion is substitutable for all the other goods and if the economy is stable in the Marshallian sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights the concept of political economy coined by well-known socio-economist Horace Greeley. Historians of economic thought, in customarily appointing Henry C. Carey dean of the American School, have generally neglected the high spokesman of discontent, Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the "New York Tribune." Horace Greeley's life and political economy stand out as clearer expressions of a young America in its middle period transition. Greeley was an awakened figure of his time. Never the totally eccentric dreamer he is frequently considered, he found himself aware that narrow parochialisms were breaking up, and he aimed to conform society to the changes under way. He saw his country as the great chance for righting wrongs- and he wished to make it a proving ground for social experimentation. Thus, he devoted his life and his paper to teaching the people to seek freedom by building a wealthy nation in which resources should be correctly utilized and special privileges should be destroyed.

This paper attempts to review and evaluate the concepts of estimating procedures employed in measuring capital input for use in total factor productivity estimation. Where alternative estimating procedures are used an effort is made to determine how sensitive the estimates of capital input is to each alternative. The review and critique are restricted to four estimates of the U.S. economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their otherwise divergent arguments, pluralist, state-centered, and neo-Marxist "relative autonomy" conceptions of political power in capitalist societies share the view that the "capitalist class" is generally incapable of unified political action. Yet, a striking feature of policy struggles in the United States between 1974 and 1981 was the dominant influence of a well-organized and unified business lobby. I examine business unity and political influence in the context of recent U.S. policy history. Tracing the legislative histories of the unsuccessful Labor Law Reform and Consumer Protection Agency bills of the 1970s, and the successful Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, a class-based, corporate power structure perspective is supported. The historical conditions fostering the political mobilization and intraclass cohesion of business in the 1970s, and the theoretical implications of the breakdown of business unity after 1981, are also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few areas of inquiry in the field of economics demonstrate more clearly the importance of an institutional approach to the discipline than the area of social insurance. At a time when one wing of economics is finding more and more uses of mathematics in the development of the theoretical analysis of the behavior of markets and prices, another wing, more concerned in the role of the human factor in the economic equation, is seeking the aid of the full spectrum of social science to discover the interrelations of economic policy and the enhancement of our way of life. It is good that this is so. The traditions of the discipline of economics are broad enough and deep enough to encompass a widely varied attack upon the essential problem of how man organizes his productive efforts to assure the best possible livelihood for himself and his fellows. It is a matter of personal taste and predilection whether one prefers to analyze by the most precise methods the operation of any or all measurable phenomena or to range more widely in the exercise of both analysis and judgment in developing new structures and devices for the improvement of the economic machinery of our society. The economist with a mathematical bent warms to the deductive process of a tightly reasoned demonstration from assumed economic premises. If the premises are approximations of reality and the deductive process is sound, results of much value to understanding are achieved. As in all scientific proof, however, the essential consideration in the evaluation of results is in large measure aesthetic. Is the solution neat and tidy? Is it beautifully symmetrical and simple? Does it "click" into place and fit situations other than those used in the demonstration? On the assumption-the basic faith of all scientists-that this is an orderly world, such an aesthetically satisfying solution may reveal truths of far-reaching application. They may eventually change the premises of all future policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]