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A study was conducted as a part of continuing investigation of the effect of soil moisture on the sequestration of organic compounds aged in the soil. Here, experiments focused on the effects of moisture changes within the soil before, during, and after contaminant addition. The extractability of aged (68 d) phenanthrene was greater from soil that had been subjected to wetting and drying cycles prior to solute addition as compared to soil initially maintained at constant moisture. The recovery of phenanthrene added to moist soil was increased relative to extractability from soil that was air-dried at the time of the contaminant addition. Repeated wetting and drying of soil after the addition of atrazine or phenanthrene resulted in decreased extractability of the compounds as compared to samples maintained at constant moisture. A method for rapidly sequestering contaminants is proposed and may be useful in limiting the time required for laboratory studies involving "aged" contaminants. These data build upon the findings of earlier work from our laboratory and indicate that changes in the moisture conditions of soil can affect the availability of sequestered contaminants possibly through alterations in the structure of the natural solid. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.

Foxwoods, which started as a Binge gaming facility, has become the largest casino in the western world. It is one of the most competitive tourist destinations in the world and can teach a few lessons about managing competitiveness. The visionary entrepreneurial activity, strategic management decisions of its owners and the Mashantucket Pequots are the reasons for its existence and its success, not some circumstantial fluke. The Pequots understood the destination's potential initial advantage. They then sought to avoid that Foxwoods casino and resort slip into McGambling or wither in the face of increasing competition for the entertainment/leisure dollar in the eastern United States by modifying its market positioning. They are now nudging it toward a broadly diversified base of entertainment. All along they empowered their employees to support their clear mission for the resort. Part of their strategy is to transform southeastern Connecticut into a synergistic tourist destination for their and the region's benefit. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

The United States Supreme Court ushered in a new era in American history on May 17, 1954 in its monumental ruling in Brown v Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas. Brown is not only the Court's most significant decision on race and equal educational opportunities, but also ranks among the most important cases it has ever decided. In Brown a unanimous Court struck down the pernicious doctrine of “separate but equal” in holding that the de jure segregation of students in public schools on the basis of race deprived minority children of equal educational opportunities in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In addition to its impact on school desegregation, Brown has been the catalyst for revolutionary change influencing just about every facet of American society. Given the breadth of changes that it spawned, this article briefly reviews the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown before turning to the two most important educational areas where it has been the key, namely special education and sexual harassment.

On 26 November 2001, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced that the US economy had officially entered into a recession in March 2001. This decision was a surprise and did not end all the conflicting opinions expressed by economists. This matter was finally settled in July 2002 after a revision to the 2001 real gross domestic product showed negative growth rates for its first three quarters. A series of political and economic events in the years 2000-01 have increased the amount of uncertainty in the state of the economy, which in turn has resulted in the production of less reliable economic indicators and forecasts. This paper evaluates the performance of two very reliable methodologies for predicting a downturn in the US economy using composite leading economic indicators (CLI) for the years 2000-01. It explores the impact of the monetary policy on CLI and on the overall economy and shows how the gradualness and uncertainty of this impact on the overall economy have affected the forecasts of these methodologies. It suggests that the overexposure of the CLI to the monetary policy tools and a strong, but less effective, expansionary money policy have been the major factors in deteriorating the predictions of these methodologies. To improve these forecasts, it has explored the inclusion of the CLI diffusion index as a prior in the Bayesian methodology. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

We examine the spillover wealth effects of the Orange County, California bankruptcy announcement in December 1994 on municipal bonds, municipal bond funds, and bank stocks. This bankruptcy is prominent because of unprecedented losses and because it was caused by a highly leveraged derivatives strategy rather than a shortage of tax revenues and excess spending. We find contagion in the bond market with significantly negative abnormal returns for municipal bond funds without direct exposure to Orange County and for non-Orange County municipal bonds. In addition, our findings suggest the contagion spills over to the common stocks of investment and commercial banks that deal in or use derivatives; however, the equities of banks unexposed to derivatives are not affected. © 2004 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Currency substitution represents a shift from domestic currency to foreign currency and is often related to times of high and variable inflation. In this paper, we investigate the extent of currency substitution in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico using a vector error correction (VEC) model. We empirically test this hypothesis by introducing artificial shocks to the system of equations and find that M1 response to a one standard deviation increase in that country's interest rate is negative and significant for Argentina and Brazil but not for Mexico. An artificially introduced one standard deviation increase in nominal exchange rate results in a statistically significant increase in M1 in Argentina and Brazil but again not for Mexico. Based on the patterns of the impulse response functions (IRFs) and the magnitude of the coefficients, we conclude that currency substitution occurs to a greater extent in Argentina and Brazil than Mexico. This is reflective of the implementation of relatively more credible macroeconomic policies in Mexico after the December 1994 crisis. Thus from a policymaking perspective, it is important to consider that the greater the degree of currency substitution, the more sensitive a country's monetary aggregates are to sudden movements in exchange rates, productivity and interest rates. (C) 2003 Society for Policy Modeling. Published by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

This paper estimates the demand for money (M2) in Ghana for the period 1960 to 1996. The hypothesis is that the different macroeconomic adjustment policies (privatization, removal of foreign exchange controls etc.) which began in the mid 1980s would alter the demand for money function. The results of the study clearly show a structural break in the demand for money function in 1983.

The author developed a simple computer program for the in-class simulation of the repeated prisoner's dilemma game with student-designed strategies. He describes the basic features of the software and presents two examples for the use of the program in teaching the problems of cooperation among profit-maximizing agents.

This paper develops a model of exchange rate determination in partially liberalized post-socialist economy that operates under soft budget constraints in nontradable sectors. The model captures the factors that determine the evolution of a country's external balance during the initial phase of economic liberalization. Three types of disturbances are the center of analysis: liberalization of trade and foreign exchange regime, devaluation, and price liberalization. We show that the real exchange rate appreciation may either improve or worsen the trade balance depending on the sources of this appreciation. Thus, we argue that the real exchange rate cannot reflect true country's competitiveness unless all sectors are equally exposed to hard budget constraints. The model implications are further analyzed through the empirical evidence on the relationship between the real exchange rate and trade balance in three selected East European countries.