The demographic transitions here are associated with: 1) The shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture. 2) The industrial revolution. There are puzzles associated with both of these. In the neolithic transition to agriculture, humans became less well-fed, smaller, more prone to disease and lived shorter lives. Why then was this new system chosen? During the second, or “recent,” transition...

A model with six mutually-exclusive compartments related to dengue is studied. Three vector control tools are considered: insecticides (larvicide and adulticide) and mechanical control. The basic reproduction number associated to the model is presented. The problem is studied using an optimal control approach. The human data is based on the dengue outbreak that occurred in Cape Verde. Control m...

International commerce in live organisms presents a policy challenge for trade globalization; sales of live organisms create wealth, but some nonindigenous species cause harm. To reduce damage, some countries have implemented species screening to limit the introduction of damaging species. Adoption of new risk assessment (RA) technologies has been slowed, however, by concerns that RA accuracy r...

Drawing on recent research on allometric scaling and energy consumption, the present paper develops a nutrition-based efficiency wage model from first principles. The biologically micro-founded model allows us to address empirical criticism of the original nutrition-based efficiency wage model. By extending the model with respect to heterogeneity in worker body size and a physiologically founde...