Bidisha Chakraborty

Trade in Intermediate Goods, Endogenous Growth and Intellectual Property Rights

The present paper develops a product cycle model of North South trade and integrates Romer (1990) model and Helpman (1993) model. In this paper, North innovates the variety of intermediate good and South immitates it. Final goods are not traded while variety of capital intensive intermediate goods are traded. The effect of intellectual property rights on economic growth is studied. It is shown that there may exist a unique steady state balanced growth equilibrium or there may exist multiple steady state equilibria and tighter intellectual property rights may lead to both higher and lower steady state balanced growth rate depending on the human capital endowment of both the countries. This contradicts the result obtained by Helpman (1993).

Human Capital Accumulation, Environmental Quality, Taxation and Endogenous Growth

We consider a Lucas-type model (1988) of endogenous growth in which the environmental quality positively affects the rate of human capital accumulation, and the environmental quality itself is positively affected by human capital accumulation and is negatively affected by physical capital accumulation. We analyse the effects of taxation on the steady-state equilibrium growth rate in this model. We also analyse the transitional dynamic properties of this model.

Evaluation of the physical and psychological reactions of indian parents with female children suffering from cancer in a pediatric oncology center: A pilot study

Objectives: The aim of the research was to study interpersonal experiences, attitudes and contraceptive behavior of high-school students in Slovenia. Study Methods: The research was done on 4706 high-school students in Slovenia aged 15-19 years. The data were obtained by self-administered questionnaire in April 1996. Results: The average age of the students was 17.2 years, the same for both genders. The majority of the students have had experiences in kissing (70%), caressing (59%), and less in petting (43%). Sexual intercourse have ever had 38% of the students. By the age of 19.0 years 58% of the girls and 50% of the boys have experienced the first sexual intercourse. The main reasons for the first sexual intercourse were love (45%), incident (22%) and curiosity (15%). Contraceptive methods currently used were condom (60%), pills (14%), withdrawal (4%), other methods (3%) and no method (19%). The most appropriate sources of information on sexuality were friends (26%), parents (19%), different sources (19%) and professionals (15%); less appropriate were books (9%), individual experiences (7%), school (3%) and media (2%). Conclusions: By the age of 18.5 years about a half of high-school students in Slovenia have experienced sexual intercourse. The majority (74%) of the students currently use effective contraception, condom being the most popular. Peer education could be the most appropriate form of sex education in Slovenia.