This first historical study of U.S. budget policy covering the last three decades places the budget at the center of modern American politics and adds an important dimension to the understanding of recent events.

"Chen focuses on the effects of age structure changes on the size of budget deficits of national governments. More specifically, he determines whether differences in age structure can account for the observed differences in budget deficits across countries as well as across time. By way of an extension of the untested theory of negative bequest motives advocated by Cukierman and Meltzer (1989), the author argues that the commonly accepted notion that population aging tends to increase the budget deficits of economies is theoretically consistent. However, preliminary results from country and time fixed-effects panel regressions, estimated from 1975 to 1992 over 55 industrial and developing countries, indicate statistical evidence for this postulation is present only in the developing countries but not in the industrial countries. This paper--a product of the Knowledge for Development Program, World Bank Institute--is part of a larger effort in the institute to study the economic and social effects of population aging"--World Bank web site.

Current demographical patterns predict an aging worldwide population. It is projected that by 2050, more than 20% of the US population and 40% of the Japanese population will be older than 65. A dramatic increase in research on memory and aging has emerged to understand the age-related changes in memory since the ability to learn new information and retrieve previously learned information is essential for successful aging, and allows older adults to adapt to changes in their environment, self-concept, and social roles. This volume represents the latest psychological research on different aspects of age-related changes in memory. Written by a group of leading international researchers, its chapters cover a broad array of issues concerning the changes that occur in memory as people grow older, including the mechanisms and processes underlying these age-related memory changes, how these changes interact with social and cultural environments, and potential programs intended to increase memory performance in old age. Similarly, the chapters draw upon diverse methodological approaches, including cross-cultural extreme group experimental designs, longitudinal designs assessing intra-participant change, and computational approaches and neuroimaging assessment. Together, they provide converging evidence for stability and change in memory as people grow older, for the underlying causes of these patterns, as well as for the heterogeneity in older adults’ performance. Memory and Aging is essential reading for researchers in memory, cognitive aging, and gerontology.

This edition looks at how risky behaviour can lead to disaster in private markets, with colourful examples from Lloyd's of London and Sumitomo Metals. Krugman also considers the collapse of the Mexican peso, and the burst of Japan's 'bubble' economy.

This unique text presents a systematic study of a proven method for increasing the memory and reading comprehension of older adults by using a program based on discourse processing. The program facilitates the encoding and retrieval of information through a reading strategy plan utilizing top-level structures in the text. The authors of this volume provide student and teacher training manuals for the program as well as a review of the literature, data tables and graphs; an extensive bibliography; and five 1 1/2 hour sessions to improve memory and reading comprehension.

Alzheimer's disease is a primary neurodegenerative disease whose incidence and prevalence is rapidly approaching epidemic proportions. A major reason for this is that man is living longer than he has ever lived before and the likelihood of contracting the disease is significantly greater within the elderly portion of the population. The problem becomes even more acute in the light of recent estimates which predict that the number of people living beyond the age of 65 is expected to continue to increase. The impact of these statistics on the family and the health care industry in terms of time, effort and cost are staggering. A recent report issued by the Michigan Task Force on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Conditions (1987) effectively underscores this last point. "Each person with a dementing disease requires an average of seven years of care, either at home or in a residential care facility. Care provided at home is estimated to cost about $12,000 annually, for a total of $84,000 per person. This is a conservative figure, however, because many persons with dementia spend their last few years in a nursing home at an average 'cost of $22,000 per year, and some spend from 10 to 15 years in a nursing home, for a total cost of $220,000 to $330,000.

The authors present relevant data that open up new directions for those studying cognitive aging.

This book is a major revision and extension of my earlier book, Experimental Psychology and Human Aging, which appeared in 1982. The intervening years have seen a remarkable expansion of psychological research on human aging, especially on topics dealing with cognition. They have also seen research on cognitive aging gain increasing importance within the mainstream of basic cognitive research. As my lecture notes for my course in the psychology of aging grew, so did my apprehension regarding the task ahead of me in revis ing the first edition. The research explosion in cognitive aging forced several major changes in content from the first to the second edition. Two chapters on learning and memory in the first edition were necessarily expanded to six chapters in the present edition. Similarly, the single prior chapter on percep tion and attention became two chapters, as did the single prior chapter on thinking. Another change from the first edition is in the addition of some review of the effects of abnormal aging on various cognitive processes, parti cularly in regard to memory functioning. To keep the revision within reason able length, some sacrifices had to be made. The multiple chapters on metho dology and theory in the first edition were condensed into the present, single chapter. However, the major topics from the first edition were retained and, in fact, added to by the inclusion of important topics and issues that emerged over the past eight years.

Over the last decade, the topic of prospective memory the encoding, storage and delayed retrieval of intended actions has attracted much interest, and this is reflected in a rapidly growing body of literature: 350 scientific articles have been published on this topic since the appearance of the first edited book in 1996. In addition to the quan