Search results

Toward More Effective Science and Technology Advice for Congress traces the historical roots of science and technology advice for Congress and chronicles the creation and evolution of the four organizations that provided this advice over the past half century.

One: Systems Theory and Energy Planning -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Energy systems and planning -- 3. Policy programming for multiobjective energy planning -- Two: Planning for Energy Park Development -- 4. The energy park concept -- 5. The energy park planning region -- 6. Planning analysis for energy park development -- 7. Conclusions and recommendations for further research -- Three: Appendices -- Appendix A: Generalized input-output analysis -- Index of specialized terms.

Effective science and technology (S&T) assessment capabilities providing advice for Congress must be both credible and suitable to congressional needs. To be credible, from the perspective of those who will use the advice, its provision must be (1) authoritative, (2) objective, and (3) independent. To be suitable, the advice must be (4) relevant, (5) useful, and (6) timely. For S&T advice today, Congress draws on many sources but four traditional options stand out as having been used most frequently: (1) The National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, (2) The Congressional Research Service, (3) the former Office of Technology Assessment, and (4) the Government Accountability Office. This article chronicles the evolution of these four organizations and evaluates their relative strengths and weaknesses in terms of the six defined key characteristics for providing effective S&T advice for Congress, drawing conclusions for organizational improvements.

"We started working on the first edition of this book (Miller and Blair, 1985) in the late 1970s. At that time, input-output as an academic topic (outside of Wassily Leontief's Harvard research group) was a little more than 25 years old - approximately 1952-1979. We use 1952 because that was when the first author was introduced to input-output analysis in a sophomore-year economics class at Harvard taught by Robert Kuenne, who later claimed that was the first time input-output had been included (anywhere) in an undergraduate economics course. In 1962, the first author joined the faculty of the Regional Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania. He was asked by then department chair Walter Isard to teach the graduate course in linear models for regional analysis; this was to include a strong input-output component. At that time coverage of the topic in texts was to be found primarily in two chapters of Dorfman, Samuelson and Solow (1958), in Chenery and Clark (1959), in Stone (1961) and in a long chapter on input-output at the regional level in Isard et al. (1960); later there were texts by Miernyk (1965), Yan (1969), and Richardson (1972)."

This essential reference for students and scholars in the input-output research and applications community has been fully revised and updated to reflect important developments in the field. Expanded coverage includes construction and application of multiregional and interregional models, including international models and their application to global economic issues such as climate change and international trade; structural decomposition and path analysis; linkages and key sector identification and hypothetical extraction analysis; the connection of national income and product accounts to input-output accounts; supply and use tables for commodity-by-industry accounting and models; social accounting matrices; non-survey estimation techniques; and energy and environmental applications. Input-Output Analysis is an ideal introduction to the subject for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in many scholarly fields, including economics, regional science, regional economics, city, regional and urban planning, environmental planning, public policy analysis and public management.

This edition of Ronald Miller and Peter Blair's classic textbook is an essential reference for students and scholars in the input-output research and applications community. The book has been fully revised and updated to reflect important developments in the field since its original publication. New topics covered include SAMs (and extended input-output models) and their connection to input-output data, structural decomposition analysis (SDA), multiplier decompositions, identifying important coefficients, and international input-output models. A major new feature of this edition is that it is also supported by an accompanying website with solutions to all problems, wide-ranging real-world data sets, and appendices with further information for more advanced readers. Input-Output Analysis is an ideal introduction to the subject for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in a wide variety of fields, including economics, regional science, regional economics, city, regional and urban planning, environmental planning, public policy analysis and public management