Paul S. Steif is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He received a Sc.B. in engineering from Brown University (1979) and M.S. (1980) and Ph.D. (1982) degrees from Harvard University in applied mechanics. He has been active as a teacher and researcher in the field of engineering education and mechanics. His research has focused on student learning of mechanics co...

We elucidate a powerful yet simple method for deriving comparative statics conclusions for a wide variety of models: Monotone Comparative Statics (Milgrom and Shannon 1994). Monotone comparative static methods allow researchers to extract robust, substantive empirical implications from formal models that can be tested using ordinal data and simple nonparametric tests. When these methods apply, ...

A novel 5-DoF parallel manipulator (PM) with two composite rotational/linear active legs is proposed and its kinematics and statics are studied systematically. First, a prototype of this PM is constructed and its displacement is analyzed. Second, the formulas are derived for solving the linear/angular velocity and acceleration of UPS composite active leg. Third, the Jacobian and Hessian matrice...

This is one of the text-books of Physical Chemistry edited by Sir Willam Ramsay. It views chemistry from the standpoint of the explanation of its phenomena by the physical laws which govern appreciable weights of substances, and it is shown that they operate equally in the changes which take place between individual mollecules during chemical reaction. It is pleasant to find that sharp distinct...

In aggregative games, each player’s payoff depends on her own actions and an aggregate of the actions of all the players (for example, sum, product or some moment of the distribution of actions). Many common games in industrial organization, political economy, public economics, and macroeconomics can be cast as aggregative games. In most of these situations, the behavior of the aggregate is of ...

An important set of questions in economics concern how changes in the distribution of economic parameters (income, wealth, productivity, distortions, information, etc.) impact individual choices and market outcomes. We currently do not have tools to answer such questions. In this paper, I develop a theory of distributional comparative statics that addresses this set of issues. Central to the de...