Categoria: wp2010

The Biomedical Workforce in the US: An Example of Positive Feedbacks

Paula E. Stephan
Georgia State University, NBER and ICER1

ABSTRACT
This paper makes the case that the biomedical workforce in the United States is characterized by positive feedbacks. The paper begins by setting out background information on (1) the way in which research is structured in the biomedical sciences; (2) the reward structure among biomedical researchers; and (3) the funding enterprise for biomedical sciences.

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL THOUGHTS OF IVAN POSOSHKOV (1652-1726)

Ivan Pososhkov (1652-1726) is credited with writing Russia’s first systematic economic
treatise. A study on Pososhkov’s economic and social ideas is interesting for no fewer than three
reasons.

First, it would introduce the elements of diversity, originality and distinctiveness which non-
Western European writers bring into the evolution of economic thought, inasmuch as economic and
social thought is a reflection of peculiarities in economic development and inasmuch it is the fruit of
the development of economic ideas.

THE EMERGENCE OF RECIPROCALLY BENEFICIAL COOPERATION

This paper offers a new and robust model of the emergence and persistence of cooperation. In the model, interactions are anonymous, the population is well-mixed, and the evolutionary process selects strategies according to material payoffs.

The cooperation problem is modelled as a game similar to Prisoner’s Dilemma, but there is an outside option of nonparticipation and the payoff to mutual cooperation is stochastic; with positive probability, this
payoff exceeds that from cheating against a cooperator.

THE BULGARIAN ECONOMIC THOUGHT SINCE 1989: A PERSONAL VIEW

Abstract: The objectives of this paper could be brought to three. First, a methodological one, to
explain how economic knowledge disseminates and what its channels are, as well as the basic
transmission mechanisms of economic theory in Bulgaria after the disintegration of the socialist bloc.

Second, a purely informational objective, to present the major topics and issues studied over the period
1989-2009, and, of course, the economists working on them. And a third and parallel task to interpret
theoretically the development of the Bulgarian economic thought during that period, its character and
specificities.