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Most research on social movements and the Internet has focused on pre-existing movements which have recently adopted on-line tactics. This body of research has applied classic social movement theories to such movements, focusing on the faster communication, broader reach, and the expanded mobilization capacity facilitated by the Internet for pre-existing movements. Using the on-line strategic voting movement during the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election as a case study, we argue that the application of prior theory often overlooks the ways in which movements that emerge and thrive on-line function differently from conventional movements. Specifically, we argue that movement entrepreneurs, instead of social movement organizations, were largely responsible for organizing the strategic voting movement. This more entrepreneurial movement infrastructure brought with it changes in decision making processes and concerns. Decision making became more discretionary, the importance of leadership declined, decisions about organizational form became less problematic, and ideological and Internet-related concerns informed decision making in lieu of organizational or more standard social movement concerns. However, we argue that e-movements, and the strategic voting movement in particular, are not so exotic that they constitute fundamentally new forms of action; instead, such movements are still usefully thought of as social movements.

The study considers annual health care utilization and costs associated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and the autoimmune disease syndrome (AIDS) complex by applying the previously developed disease and disease combination-specific cost of illness methodology. This study documents changes in age-specific mortality rates indicating the decline in age groups “20–39”. We estimate annual economic losses resulting from twenty-four HIV/AIDS-related diseases among the U.S. population to be $18.2 billion. This estimate includes direct medical cost of almost $9.2 billion, 80% of which is compensated by Medicaid. We demonstrate that an add-on therapy with additional mean cost of $7,100 per person per year would be justifiable if it could reduce the risk of progression to AIDS by 19%.

We study changes in age-specific diabetes-related mortality and annual health care utilization. We find that half of the estimated 16% increase of diabetic mortality falls within employable age groups. We estimate that disease combination-specific increase in case fatality has resulted in premature diabetic mortality costing $3.2 billion annually. The estimated annual direct cost of treating high-risk diabetics reaches $36 billion, of which Medicare and Other Federal Programs compensate 54%. Respiratory conditions among diabetics comprise the same proportion of high-risk diabetics as do the disease combinations including coronary heart diseases. Treating of general diabetic conditions has become more efficient as indicated by the estimated declines in per unit health care costs.

The experimental parliamentary subsidy on knights' fees and freehold incomes from lands and rents of 1431 was the only English direct lay tax of the Middle Ages which broke down. As such, this subsidy has a clear historiographical significance, yet previous scholars have tended to overlook it on the grounds that parliament's annulment act of 1432 mandated the destruction of all fiscal administrative evidence. Many county assessments from 1431–1432 do, however, survive and are examined for the first time in this article as part of a detailed assessment of the fiscal and administrative context of the knights' fees and incomes tax. This impost constituted a royal response to excess expenditures associated with Henry VI's “Coronation Expedition” of 1429–1431, the scale of which marked a decisive break from the fiscal-military strategy of the 1420s. Widespread confusion regarding whether taxpayers ought to pay the feudal or the non-feudal component of the 1431 subsidy characterized its botched administration. Industrial scale under-assessment, moreover, emerged as a serious problem. Officials' attempts to provide a measure of fiscal compensation by unlawfully double-assessing many taxpayers served to increase administrative confusion and resulted in parliament's annulment act of 1432. This had serious consequences for the crown's finances, since the regime was saddled with budgetary and debt problems which would ultimately undermine the solvency of the Lancastrian state.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.