Sue Anne Batey Blackman

Electronics, the cost disease, and the operation of libraries

This article analyzes the prospects for costs of computerized operation of libraries relative to costs of more conventional operation. Conventional library operation is labor intensive and not readily amenable to cumulative increases in labor productivity. This helps to explain the rapid and cumulative rise in cost per volume and/or student served relative to the rise in the economys price level during the earlier postwar period. Because the price of computer hardware has been falling at a spectacular rate, it has been expected that computerized operation of libraries would become increasingly inexpensive relative to conventional procedures. Yet the evidence indicates that such a differential has not materialized. It is shown why the costs of computerized operation should in fact not be expected to fall along with the price of computer hardware. The reason is that the very decline in computer hardware prices has increased the share of software and other labor‐intensive activities in the total budget of computer operation. The implications of this relationship for library operations are analyzed.

Modified fiscal incentives in environmental policy

The present paper investigates the political feasibility of policies to control pollution and fishing. It first hypothesizes the following: when common or usufruct property rights are changed to full ownership, the new policy is not an unadulterated ...

Is the United States Becoming an Information Economy

Baumol and his team of economists have concerned themselves with the study of productivity in national economies. In the book in which the selection below is drawn, they look at the role of technology, service sector, and information as sources of insight in explaining why various national economies experience increases or flat levels of productivity. In the process of doing that, they had to concern themselves with the question of the role of information. They provide an explanation-linked to issues of productivity-as to how advanced economies are evolving and the effects on productivity. The first two authors-economists at Princeton-and the third, also an economist, but at New York University, continue the line of research begun by Machlup.

Unprofitable energy is squandered energy

Massive government subsidies are proposed for unprofitable energy sources, but this unprofitability should be seen as a warning that the energy source may, itself, be energy-wasteful. Innovative energy sources which use more energy than they contribute should be considered undesirable. Subsidies to selected energy systems could, then, be geared to reducing US oil dependence. Total energy costs, direct and indirect, should be calculated and linked with dollar costs in any technology evaluation. When solar energy and subways are analyzed in this manner, they are shown to be unprofitable and not likely candidates for subsidized expansion. Financial returns can be lost, however, if the risks to a firm exceed those of society and because of the patent protection system. These situations sometimes justify subsidies to carefully selected unprofitable energy projects. (DCK)