In this paper, we measure productivity growth of the information technology (IT) industries in fourteen OECD countries over the thirteen-year period of 1978 through 1990. The IT industries are the providers of IT capital goods, and this macro-level analysis seeks to find out how efficiently IT capital goods are produced. The basic unit of analysis employed is the Malmquist Total Factor Producti...

This paper introduces the problem of coresets for regression problems to panel data settings. We first define several variants with and then present efficient algorithms construct size that depend polynomially on 1/$\varepsilon$ (where $\varepsilon$ is error parameter) number parameters - independent individuals in or time units each individual observed for. Our approach based Feldman-Langberg ...

BACKGROUND Since 2001 the Netherlands has shown a sharp upturn in life expectancy (LE) after a longer period of slower improvement. This study assessed whether changes in healthcare expenditure (HCE) explain this reversal in trends in LE. As an alternative explanation, the impact of changes in smoking behavior was also evaluated. METHODS To quantify the contribution of changes in HCE to chang...

Abstract Achieving economic growth, as one of the essential purposes in each country, needs appropriate tracing of government as one of the important and effective sections in that economy. Nowadays, unlike the 80s, economists concentrate on objectives such as explanation of the relationship between size of the government and economic growth and delineation of optimum size of the government w...

BACKGROUND It is not clear whether recent increases in life expectancy are accompanied by a concurrent postponement of activity limitations. The objective of this study was to give best estimates of the trend in the prevalence of activity limitations among the non-institutionalized population aged 55-84 years over the period 1990-2007 in The Netherlands. METHODS We examined self-reports on 12...

OBJECTIVE To estimate the relative number of deaths in member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) from international terrorism and road crashes. METHODS Data on deaths from international terrorism (US State Department database) were collated (1994-2003) and compared to the road injury deaths (year 2000 and 2001 data) from the OECD International Road ...

This paper uses newly available long-span data on real per capita incomes from 1900-2001 to test for stochastic convergence in a diverse group of 29 countries. To perform our tests, we utilize the two-break LM unit root test of Lee and Strazicich (2003) and endogenously determine two distinct structural breaks in level and trend for each country. Despite including both OECD and non-OECD countri...

Our society’s dependence on chemicals is a comparatively recent phenomenon. The chemical industry today is a US$1.55 trillion global industry, nearly four times as big as it was just 30 years ago. World-wide, the industry employs some 12 million people. The chemical industry in OECD Member countries accounts for 76 per cent of world-wide production. Chemicals and related products represent 14 p...