System Dynamics

What if Last Week’s Stock Market Tumble Wasn’t Due or Not Entirely to Coronavirus?

March 2, 2020 Disease

My friend Tom Fiddamon (@tomfid), a System Dynamicist of the first order, just published Stock markets and coronavirus – an endogenous perspective – MetaSD. His summary point is: Coronavirus may indeed be the proximate cause of this week’s decline, in the same sense as the straw that broke the camel’s back. However, the magnitude of he […]

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Boom and Bust in the Supply of U.S. Air Force Pilots

May 7, 2018 Aviation

This past fall in San Antonio, I was part of a small group of former Air Force pilots briefed on the current pilot shortage.. Now the issue is written up in Foreign Policy:  USAF pilot shortage: What’s Driving the U.S. Air Force Pilot Shortage? Folks in the System Dynamics (SD) community are quite familiar with this […]

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The Rich Get Richer … Connecting the Economic, Political & Social Dots

September 29, 2015 Economics

Just a reminder. I first published this in 2006 under a my old SignalHealth label and again here in 2011. It seems to get more current every day. Certainly, there are a lot of tax “plans” being floated that confirm one of the self-reinforcing loops depicted (influencing changes in public policy to the advantage of […]

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Jorgen Randers in Albany to Discuss 40 Year Global Forecast

January 25, 2013 Energy

Jorgen Randers is coauthor of the classic, The Limits to Growth (1972) and also of The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (2004). In early February, Randers will be in Albany, discussing his new book, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years. I’ve never heard him speak, but I’ve read the first two […]

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North Carolina Needs King Cnut

May 30, 2012 Forecasting

And speaking of science and politics, North Carolina is considering prohibiting, by law, sea level rise. Here’s House Bill 819. And here’s an appropriately snarky, commentary by Scott Huler in Scientific American. According to North Carolina law, I am a billionaire. I have a full-time nanny for my children, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, […]

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From Sustainability to Resilience?

April 2, 2012 Economics

Ali Hibbs points us to Is it Too Late for Sustainable Development? On March 2, 1972, a team of experts from MIT presented a groundbreaking report called The Limits to Growth to scientists, journalists and others assembled at the Smithsonian Castle. Released days later in book form, the study was one of the first to […]

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What Will the Client Transition from Fee-for-Service to Managed Long Term Care Look Like?

December 20, 2011 Forecasting

We’ve already talked a little bit about how New York is undertaking a fundamental change in its Medicaid program. Similar changes are underway in many states. As part of this change, Medicaid clients in long term care are being transitioned from fee-for-service programs to various forms of managed care, including managed long term care. How […]

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What Happened to Health Coverage Around 1980, What happened the Last Dozen Years and Why it Still Makes a Difference

December 12, 2011 Economics

Interesting chart (the second one) posted by Lane Kenworthy today and some interesting debates and here on when the US healthcare system performance began to look different from the rest of the world. Kenworthy’s chart depicts the relationship between health expenditures per capita and life expectancy. Here’s my contribution from a while back, while I […]

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The Shin Bone’s Connected to the Thigh Bone

December 7, 2011 Business

My friend and colleague, Tim Maniccia, who runs Policy Innovation, noted some interesting connections yesterday. What triggered Tim’s observations was the bankruptcy of American Airlines. The first thing he noted was that American’s four pension plans cover almost 130,000 participants, but they have only $8.3 billion in assets to cover $18.5 billion in benefits. Were […]

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The Rich Get Richer … Connecting the Economic, Political & Social Dots

November 8, 2011 Economics

Inequality is both effect and cause. Inequality of income and resources is indeed a significant, even profound social, political and economic problem. But this did not just happen suddenly and, by itself, it’s not enough to explain the current unrest. That’s more because a large proportion of the public has come to the conclusion (rightly, […]

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