The number of studies examining how species diversity influences the productivity of ecosystems has increased dramatically in the past decade as concern about global loss of biodiversity has intensified. Research to date has greatly improved our understanding of how, when, and why species loss alters primary production in ecosystems. However, because experiments have been performed at rather sm...

BACKGROUND Over the last decade, the prevalence of obesity (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2) in Thailand has been rising rapidly and consistently. Estimating the cost of obesity to society is an essential step in setting priorities for research and resource use and helping improve public awareness of the negative economic impacts of obesity. This prevalence-based, cost-of-illness study aims to estimate the econ...

A fundamental puzzle for productivity driven business cycle theories is that labor productivity and hours are negatively correlated. I refine the empirical puzzle and provide a theory to account for it. I emphasize that hours per worker and individual hours relative to usual hours move counter to productivity. In the cross-section, I find that almost all workers increase their hours when produc...

SUMMARY This paper shows how measures of relative efficiency performance could promote yardstick competition between port infrastructure operators. The illustration is based on a study of the efficiency effects of the Mexican 1993 Port Reform. It covers the 1996-1999 period and relies on a stochastic production frontier to show that Mexico's ports achieved 2.8-3.3% average annual efficiency gai...

Affirm our commitment to equity in health and recognize that the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition. We recognize that governments have a responsibility for the health of their people and that equity in health is an expression of social ...

BACKGROUND: Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a chronic incapacitating illness that affects between 400,000 and 800,000 Americans. Despite the disabling nature of this illness, scant research has addressed the economic impact of CFS either on those affected or on the national economy. METHODS: We used microsimulation methods to analyze data from a surveillance study of CFS in Wichita, Kansas, a...

BACKGROUND Two decades of research showing that increasing plant diversity results in greater community productivity has been predicated on greater functional diversity allowing access to more of the total available resources. Thus, understanding phenotypic attributes that allow species to partition resources is fundamentally important to explaining diversity-productivity relationships. METHO...