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This book provides a coherent description of the main concepts and statistical methods used to analyse economic performance. The focus is on measures of performance that are of practical relevance to policy makers. Most, if not all, of these measures can be viewed as measures of productivity and/or efficiency. Linking fields as diverse as index number theory, data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis, the book explains how to compute measures of input and output quantity change that are consistent with measurement theory. It then discusses ways in which meaningful measures of productivity change can be decomposed into measures of technical progress, environmental change, and different types of efficiency change. The book is aimed at graduate students, researchers, statisticians, accountants and economists working in universities, regulatory authorities, government departments and private firms. The book contains many numerical examples. Computer codes and datasets are available on a companion website.--

As the tremors of the great political upheavals in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union continue to rumble through the world, a host of political, economic, and military issues have been raised for Nato. One of the most emotional of these issues is whether Nato should retain its stated option to initiate the use of nuclear weapons in response to an overwhelming conventional attack by an aggressor (sometimes referred to as the "first use" option). President Gorbachev sharpened debate on this question by repeated renunciation of the first use of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union and by his challenge to the United States and Nato to do the same.

There are more than half a million children in foster care in the United States. Some of these children are adopted into loving families, but many are considered hard to adopt and never find a permanent family. Research suggests that the outlook for the teens who exit or age out of foster care without a permanent home or a meaningful adult relationship is bleak. They are more likely to face homelessness, joblessness, drug addiction, early pregnancy, mental health problems, and prison time. With such grim statistics, states should explore every possible permanent family resource for youth in foster care. This Note proposes that, in limited circumstances, it is in the best interest of the child to vacate a final order of termination and reinstate parental rights. It calls for states to adopt a model state statute based on the five state statutes currently in place that already allow for the reinstatement of parental rights.

This Note examines recent interventions in corporate human rights lawsuits by the executive branch from both legal and political perspectives. It first identifies a nascent trend in human rights litigation in U.S. courts-namely, the propensity of the Bush administration to intervene on behalf of corporate defendants accused of violating human rights in the developing world-by examining the factual and procedural history of three contemporary lawsuits. It then explores the role of the political question, act of state, and international comity doctrines in these and similar suits, and advances a method for applying all three doctrines in a "human rights-friendly" manner. Finally, the Note examines the Bush administration's interventions from a human rights policy perspective and concludes that for political, in addition to legal reasons, the executive branch should desist from intervening on behalf of corporate defendants in human rights lawsuits.