The determinants of election to the Presidency of the American Economic Association: Evidence from a cohort of distinguished 1950’s economists

Data have been collected on 55 members of the AEA Executive Committees for the years 1950–1960 (inclusive) on a variety of variables that measure the merit and non-merit characteristics of the economists. A logit is estimated in which the dependent variable is a dummy variable for whether an Executive Committee member was ever elected President of the American Economic Association (AEA). The number of publications and citations are important determinants of election. Receiving a PhD from one of the top three schools does not help and living in the South does not hurt. Economists who were older in 1956 were more likely to have eventually been elected to the AEA Presidency.     

On Hirsch’s h,Egghe’s g and Kosmulski’s h(2)

In recent issues of the ISSI Newsletter, Egghe [2006a] proposed the g-index and Kosmulski [2006] the h(2)-index, both claimed to be improvements on the original h-index proposed by Hirsch [2005]. The aim of this paper is to investigate the inter-relationships between these measures and also their time dependence using the stochastic publication/citation model proposed by Burrell [1992, 2007a]. We also make some tentative suggestions regarding the relative merits of these three proposed measures.     

Yesterday’s dreams and today’s reality in telecommunications

Twenty-five years ago the telecommunications industry had its vision of the future. There were three dreams that, given the right technology, they could achieve: (1) the Dick Tracy wristwatch phone; (2) the Picturephone; and (3) the set-top box for the home television which could access an information store maintained by the telephone company. None of these dreams turned out as planned, but it is interesting to compare the original concepts with what has actually transpired in the last quarter-century. Today, having achieved some form of each of these three dreams, it seems as if, looking ahead to tomorrow’s technology, the industry has no similar vision.     

Daguerre’s Abstraction

The understanding of abstraction in so-called Western art theory is usually a narrative ‘towards’ purism or universalism. The impact of photography on these discourses is usually related to this in its function of representational realism, and attempt to join modernist discourses through a tern to abstraction. Photography is more rarely examined in terms of its contribution to abstraction. This paper turns to that question by looking at the early role of photography in constructing abstraction, notably in pictures made by Louis Daguerre.     

Editor’s Note

Editorial

Editor’s Note     

Editor’s Note

Editorial

Editor’s Note