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The NP‐complete problem of optimally placing tuples on a hierarchy of secondary storage devices is considered using a heuristic approach. From load specification details captured at database design time, those tuples associated with queries which merit tailored, “set‐in‐concrete”, physical access paths are placed using a two‐level graph partitioning algorithm. Experiments are reported with the pages and cylinders as the two hierarchical levels of storage for a centralised database, but the technique is applicable to an n‐Ievel storage hierarchy—as up to the “different sites” level for distributed databases. The results show up to 39% improvement over single‐level partitioning algorithms for the database considered.

Briefly reviews previous literature by the author before presenting an original 12 step system integration protocol designed to ensure the success of companies or countries in their efforts to develop and market new products. Looks at the issues from different strategic levels such as corporate, international, military and economic. Presents 31 case studies, including the success of Japan in microchips to the failure of Xerox to sell its invention of the Alto personal computer 3 years before Apple: from the success in DNA and Superconductor research to the success of Sunbeam in inventing and marketing food processors: and from the daring invention and production of atomic energy for survival to the successes of sewing machine inventor Howe in co‐operating on patents to compete in markets. Includes 306 questions and answers in order to qualify concepts introduced.

The “Colleague Review of Teaching” programme (CRT) aimed to enhance reviewees’ confidence to teach. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Case studies using mixed-method, interview and questionnaire, repeated measures intervention were employed whereby academics in an Australian university science faculty volunteered to participate in a multi-faceted teaching review programme. Underpinned by confidence and self-determination theory, the CRT included peer coach training, reviewee choice, and a strengths-based approach to peer reviewing and coaching colleagues.

The reviewees declared an enhanced confidence to teach, teaching skills and unit design knowledge in an environment that was supportive of psychological needs. The peer coaches reported the CRT to be a positive experience that should continue. The strengths-based approach to peer observation of teaching and peer coaching facilitated department collegiality and was positively received by all participants who completed the programme.

The indifferent response to the CRT protocol completion reconfirms that peer review is a complex science and needs careful negotiation.

Review, peer coach and mentor training, review practice, choice protocols and the multi-faceted approach (pre-observation meeting, observations, written report and post-observation meeting) were positively received.

This paper provides rich insight into the experiences of a teaching review process.

Develops an original 12‐step management of technology protocol and applies it to 51 applications which range from Du Pont’s failure in Nylon to the Single Online Trade Exchange for Auto Parts procurement by GM, Ford, Daimler‐Chrysler and Renault‐Nissan. Provides many case studies with regards to the adoption of technology and describes seven chief technology officer characteristics. Discusses common errors when companies invest in technology and considers the probabilities of success. Provides 175 questions and answers to reinforce the concepts introduced. States that this substantial journal is aimed primarily at the present and potential chief technology officer to assist their survival and success in national and international markets.

Duncan Bell’s project to restore late-Victorian and Edwardian debates on federative empire or a Greater Britain to international theory emphasizes the “political language” of civilization, race, and character available to fin-de-siècle thinkers on empire. In the process, Bell leaves out the contribution to these debates made by a key figure in the newly emerging discipline of economics: Alfred Marshall. Most recent writings on 19th-century empire similarly ignore the work of late-Victorian economists, as do recent efforts to map the terrain of international theory more broadly. Marshall’s writings on federative empire are not referenced by the advocates of Greater Britain that Bell carefully documents, but it is clear that Marshall followed those debates closely. And though he imagined his contribution as distinctly economic, his work unfolded in a similar language of civilization, race, and character, informed particularly by social evolutionary thought. In conclusion, I stress the dangerous temptation to sort the relevance of thinkers according to contemporary disciplinary boundaries so that more recent economists and the components of earlier political economic work that might be classed as economics are sifted out of our narratives of political thought. Instead, I see the debates on empire that Bell explores as unfolding in a language that, since the 17th and 18th centuries, has engaged issues of commerce and trade, social change, moral virtue, and the nature of political rule: political economy.

William Baumol is best-known as an academic. He was a prodigious researcher and publisher of texts on microeconomic theory, and a highly regarded educator with roles as head of the Department of Economics at Princeton University, director of the C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics and director of the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at New York University. Less well-known were his engagements as a corporate consultant, notably for the telecommunications monopoly AT&T. Baumol’s work as an advisor, expert witness and theorist for AT&T spanned three decades from 1966. His relationship with AT&T arguably forms the context within which we can better understand his work on contestability theory, which he developed with a team of economists working for AT&T’s Bell Telephone Laboratories in the 1970s. Contestability theory was later deployed as a policy tool to justify industry deregulation and even advocate for monopolies and oligopolies on the ground that they were optimally efficient industry structures if potential competitors faced low barriers of entry. Baumol’s intellectual contribution to contestability theory was arguably influenced by the Chicago school and by AT&T’s drive toward the technological integration of telecommunications. Contestability was a rebellion against economic orthodoxies concerning competition and government regulation, and the status quo within AT&T which opposed market competition on the ground that it threatened the technological integration of the Bell system. The outcome was a revolution in industrial organization that would pave the way for the emergence of platform business models incorporating multi-sided and two-sided markets as exemplified by Amazon and Uber.

This chapter does three things. First, it estimates regional gross domestic product (GDP) for three different geographical levels in Switzerland (97 micro regions, 16 labor market basins, and 3 large regions). Second, it analyzes the evolution of regional inequality relying on a heuristic model inspired by Williamson (1965), which features an initial growth impulse in one or several core regions and subsequent diffusion. Third, it uses index number theory to decompose regional inequality into three different effects: sectoral structure, productivity, and comparative advantage.

The results can be summarized as follows: As a consequence of the existence of multiple core regions, Swiss regional inequality has been comparatively low at higher geographical levels. Spatial diffusion of economic growth occurred across different parts of the country and within different labor market regions. This resulted in a bell-shaped evolution of regional inequality at the micro regional level and convergence at higher geographical levels. In early and in late stages of the development process, productivity differentials were the main drivers of inequality, whereas economic structure was determinant between 1888 and 1941. The poorest regions suffered from comparative disadvantage, that is, they were specialized in the vary sector (agriculture), where their relative productivity was comparatively lowest.