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Counseling and Drama: Psychodrama a Deux. By Marvin G. Knittel, EdD. Xlibris, 2009.

In this paper, we share our experience with merger simulations using a Random Coefficient Logit model on the demand side and assuming a static Bertrand game on the supply side. Drawing largely from our work in Knittel and Metaxoglou (2008), we show that different demand estimates obtained from different combinations of optimization algorithms and starting values lead to substantial differences in post-merger market outcomes using metrics such as industry profits, and change in consumer welfare and prices.

This article argues that the overwhelming success of the television drama Il cuore nel pozzo (Alberto Negrin, 2005) signals a shift in the conception of national history and identity in the Italian popular imagination. In conjunction with Negrin's earlier film Perlasca: un eroe italiano (2002), the film can be read as a calculated and politically motivated attempt to re-code the memory of the Second World War as one of heroism and shared victimhood. Ultimately, Il cuore nel pozzo forms part of the broader movement to establish the foibe as the 'Italian Holocaust', deflecting attention away from the crimes of Fascism. The crucial difference between the two films is that Perlasca is based on the real historical person of Giorgio Perlasca, whereas the characters in Il cuore nel pozzo are purely fictional and their story is merely set against a specific historical backdrop. The film nevertheless makes various explicit and implicit claims to historical veracity, for example the interpolation of ostensibly documentary footage, which, however, turns out to be a fabrication. The intrusion of this documentary idiom into this fictional representation in fact mirrors the ongoing campaign to superimpose a fictional narrative on the historical record more generally in contemporary Italy.

This article addresses features of spontaneity, the power of life scripts, and surplus reality. A psychodrama unfolds wherein Jean, a 22-year-old woman, confronts the issue of being pulled across the generational boundary by her mother, who has used Jean to solve her struggles in her marriage as well as stresses in her life. Jean resolves the issue by disengaging from her mother in a dramatic scene in which the entire group assists by empowering Jean.

This paper takes Milo Rau's Europe Trilogy as a prism through which to examine the potential of theater as a medium not only for political and social critique, but also for presenting an alternative European imaginary and community of memory. The Civil Wars (2014), The Dark Ages (2015), and Empire (2016) explore the foundations of European memory and identity against the backdrop of war and genocide, religious fundamentalism, exile and displacement. Structured around the points of intersection between the actors' own lives and key events in recent European history, the trilogy troubles the distinction between reality and artifice, representation and reportage, and deconstructs the single narrative of European memory by multiplying voices and stories, emphasizing the transcultural interconnectedness of present-day Europeans.

"Empirical exercises in economics frequently involve estimation of highly nonlinear models. The criterion function may not be globally concave or convex and exhibit many local extrema. Choosing among these local extrema is non-trivial for a variety of reasons. In this paper, we analyze the sensitivity of parameter estimates, and most importantly of economic variables of interest, to both starting values and the type of non-linear optimization algorithm employed. We focus on a class of demand models for differentiated products that have been used extensively in industrial organization, and more recently in public and labor. We find that convergence may occur at a number of local extrema, at saddles and in regions of the objective function where the first-order conditions are not satisfied. We find own- and cross-price elasticities that differ by a factor of over 100 depending on the set of candidate parameter estimates. In an attempt to evaluate the welfare effects of a change in an industry's structure, we undertake a hypothetical merger exercise. Our calculations indicate consumer welfare effects can vary between positive values to negative seventy billion dollars depending on the set of parameter estimates used"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

Introduction -- Part I -- Remembering euthanasia : Grafeneck as heterotopia -- Bridging the silence, part I : the disabled enabler -- Bridging the silence, part II : the vicarious witness -- Interlude -- Lethal trajectories : perpetrators from Grafeneck to the Risiera -- Part II -- Black holes and revelations : the Risiera, the foibe, and the making of an "Italian tragedy" -- A severed branch : the memory of fascism on stage and screen -- Bridging the silence, part III : Trieste and the language of belonging -- Conclusion

The price of oil increased more than 650 percent from 1972 to 1980. I review the policy discussion of the time through the lens of the printed press. I pay particular attention to whether gasoline taxes were "on the table" and how consumers viewed the different policies. Meaningful changes in gasoline taxes were on the table, but polling evidence at the time suggests that consumers preferred price controls, rationing and vehicle taxes. Given the saliency of rationing and vehicle taxes, it seems difficult to argue that these alternative polices were adopted because they hide their true costs.

This paper estimates the technological progress that has occurred since 1980 in the automobile industry and the trade-offs faced when choosing between fuel economy, weight, and engine power characteristics. The results suggest that if weight, horsepower, and torque were held at their 1980 levels, fuel economy could have increased by nearly 60 percent from 1980 to 2006. Once technological progress is considered, meeting the CAFE standards adopted in 2007 will require halting the trend in weight and engine power characteristics, but little more. In contrast, the standards recently announced by the new administration, while attainable, require nontrivial "downsizing." JEL: L50, L60

"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the US have relied on Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards and Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS). Economists often argue that these policies are inefficient relative to carbon pricing because they ignore existing vehicles and do not adequately reduce the incentive to drive. This paper presents evidence that the net social costs of carbon pricing are significantly less than previous thought. The bias arises from the fact that the demand elasticity for miles travelled varies systematically with vehicle emissions; dirtier vehicles are more responsive to changes in gasoline prices. This is true for all four emissions for which we have data-nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon, and greenhouse gases-as well as weight. This reduces the net social costs associated with carbon pricing through increasing the co-benefits. Accounting for this heterogeneity implies that the welfare losses from $1.00 gas tax, or a $110 per ton of CO2 tax, are negative over the period of 1998 to 2008 even when we ignore the climate change benefits from the tax. Co-benefits increase by over 60 percent relative to ignoring the heterogeneity that we document. In addition, accounting for this heterogeneity raises the optimal gas tax associated with local pollution, as calculated by Parry and Small (2005), by as much as 57 percent. While our empirical setting is California, we present evidence that the effects may be larger for the rest of the US"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site