Government Pushed Kiewit to Ignore Worker Safety

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Source of book image: http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1369819962l/17934699.jpg

(p. C9) Boston Harbor’s filth is legendary. It was mock-celebrated in the 1966 song “Dirty Water.” The city’s water-treatment plants were hopelessly inadequate, and barely treated sewage had been pouring into the harbor for decades.
. . .
The Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant was supposed to solve these problems. Begun in 1990, the $3.8 billion facility would process human and industrial waste on a small island in Boston Harbor and then send it through a 9.5-mile tunnel into the deep waters of the Atlantic. Fifty-five vertical pipes called risers spurred off the tunnel’s final section to further diffuse waste before releasing it into the sea. Temporary safety plugs, likened to giant salad bowls, had been placed near the bottom of each riser to keep water from seeping in before construction was complete.
These plugs were a source of conflict between the tunnel’s owner, the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA), and the company they hired to build it, Kiewit, “the Omaha-based construction giant” that, Mr. Swidey notes, “had built more miles of the U.S. highway system than any other contractor.” The director of MWRA, Doug MacDonald, had left a job as a partner in a Boston law firm to take over the authority, a behemoth of 1,700 employees and, at the peak of harbor cleanup, an additional 3,000 construction workers. Mr. MacDonald’s job included mollifying various parties who disagreed about how the Deer Island project would reach completion: Kiewit; the tunnel’s designers, mostly out of the picture by 1998; ICF Kaiser Engineers, hired by MWRA to protect its interests and act as Mr. MacDonald’s eyes and ears; the union “sandhogs” who bored out 2.4 million tons of rock to create the tunnel; the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, ostensibly looking out for worker safety but seeming more interested in handing out fines; and, though federal funds for harbor cleanup had long since dried up, “a bow-tied federal judge who served as the cleanup project’s robed referee, threatening stiff fines or worse if the deadlines he imposed were not met.”
. . .
The problem weighed most heavily on Kiewit. The firm was contractually obligated to deliver on time, subject to late-fee penalties of $30,000 a day, and to cover cost overruns. More, Kiewit had fronted the construction costs and would only be paid by selling the tunnel, piece by piece, to MWRA. The contract further obligated Kiewit to provide “lighting and ventilation (or breathing apparatus) for the personnel” that pulled the plugs but, in what seemed a senseless conflict, mandated that the plugs “could be removed only after the tunnel was completed,” writes Mr. Swidey, “meaning after the sandhogs had cleared out, taking their extensive ventilation, transportation, and electrical systems with them.”
Kiewit protested that clearing the tunnel of its life-sustaining infrastructure would make “the risk of catastrophe [to the workers pulling the plugs] . . . exponentially higher !” They offered several sound alternatives. In response, ICF Kaiser accused them of just wanting their payday. After a “year-long memo war,” Kiewit capitulated, cleared the tunnel and hired a commercial dive team to go into a pitch-black airless tube.

For the full review, see:
NANCY ROMMELMANN. “BOOKS; One Mile Down, Ten Miles Out; Their oxygen was starting to get thin. On the verge of passing out, Hoss radioed back to the Humvees. The reply was an expletive, and the line went dead.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat.,March 15, 2014): C9.
(Note: ellipses between paragraphs, added; ellipsis inside last paragraph, in original.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 14, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Trapped Under the Sea’ by Neil Swidey; In 1999, five deep-sea welders had to traverse a tunnel beneath Boston Harbor with no breathable air, no light and no chance for rescue should things go horribly wrong.” )

The book under review is:
Swidey, Neil. Trapped under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles into the Darkness. New York: Crown Publishers, 2014.

A&P Case Shows that Size Can Bring Economies of Scope and Scale

(p. A9) The claim that large, profit-driven firms are harmful to society has a venerable history in the United States. Perhaps no company was ever more vilified for its bigness than the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., which from 1920 to the 1960s was the largest retailer in the world. From the 1910s to the 1950s, as it cut out wholesalers and demanded volume discounts from food manufacturers, A&P was criticized for destroying the local merchants that formed the backbone of small-town America and the satisfying jobs they provided. Federal and state governments tried to cripple its business by prohibiting discounting; the Justice Department even won an antitrust case claiming that the company was selling food too cheaply. The fact that A&P’s economies of scope and scale saved shoppers 15% or 20% on groceries didn’t get much respect, just as Ms. Heffernan doesn’t much value the role that big businesses play in lowering costs today.
Yes, competition drives many companies to act in socially harmful ways, and competition within firms can get in the way of collaboration. But the fact that competition can be dysfunctional does not mean that scope and scale are economists’ fictions. Size does matter, and competition, while no panacea, does force people to find better ways of doing business.

For the full commentary, see:
MARC LEVINSON. “BOOKSHELF; When Size Does Matter; We glorify the local, but smallness didn’t stop the country’s savings and loans from needing a federal bailout in the 1980s.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., April 18, 2014): A9.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 17, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘A Bigger Prize’ by Margaret Heffernan; We glorify the local, but smallness didn’t stop the country’s savings and loans from needing a federal bailout in the 1980s.”)

Levinson’s own book (not the one he is reviewing in the passages quoted above), is:
Levinson, Marc. The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America. New York: Hill and Wang, 2011.

Aloysius Siow’s Obituary for Gary Becker

My friend Aloysius Siow and I were graduate students at the University of Chicago in the mid to late 1970s, where we took courses from Gary Becker, and attended his workshop. In the past, I have posted several entries on Becker on this blog that appear under the Category “Becker, Gary.” I expect to write some thoughts on his passing, but am not ready to do so yet. Aloysius drafted an obituary without delay, and kindly said it was OK for me to post it as an entry on this blog.

Obituary: Gary Becker
The Father of Economics Imperialism

By Aloysius Siow, Professor of Economics
University of Toronto
May 4, 2014

Gary Becker, an American economist, died on May 3 at the age of 83.
His major contribution was the systematic application of economics to the analysis of social issues. Before his work, economists primarily studied how markets and market economies worked. He used economics to study discrimination, criminal behavior, human capital, marriage, fertility and other social issues.
He won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1992. He also won the John Bates Clark medal, awarded to the best American economist under 40, in 1967; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor award by the US president to a civilian, in 2007.
Becker’s father, Louis William Becker, migrated from Montreal to the United States at age sixteen and moved several times before settling down in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Becker’s mother was Anna Siskind. He was born in Pottsville in 1930. At age five, Gary and his family moved to Brooklyn. He studied in Princeton University as an undergraduate. He did his PhD at the University of Chicago where he met Milton Friedman who would have an enormous influence on his intellectual development. After he obtained his PhD, Becker spent a few years as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and then moved to Columbia University.
His path breaking 1955 dissertation was on the economics of discrimination. It was the first systematic study of a non-traditional economic topic using economics. In it, he argued that the difference in wages between a majority and a minority group can be used to measure the extent of discrimination in the labor market. When one points out today that it is unfair that women earn 80 percent of what men make, they are channeling Becker. His thesis analyzed how the South African system of apartheid benefited Whites at the expense of Blacks in South Africa. This analysis predated the Anti-apartheid Boycott Movement of the West which started in 1959.
The methodology and concern of his thesis previewed his research career. At the time of the publication of his thesis in 1957, economics was a conservative discipline, restricting itself to the study of the behavior of markets and market economies. Becker set for himself the task of systematically applying the tools of economics to the study of social issues. At the beginning, his work was generally ignored if not actually denigrated within the profession. Economists were supposed to study more important concerns.
After studying discrimination, he provided a modern economic theory of criminal behavior. Together with his study on discrimination, this work inspired the development of the law and economics movement.
At Columbia University, he began a systematic study of human capital, the study of the allocation of time and other topics in labor economics. Together with his colleague Jacob Mincer, they wrote many of the important papers in labor economics and also produced many successful graduate students. For example, their graduate student, Michael Grossman, wrote his thesis on health economics where he applied economics to the study of individual maintenance of health. Today, health economics is a major field of study and a central pillar of health policy. Due to the topics they worked on, they also attracted and successfully supervised many female PhD students. Claudia Goldin of Harvard University is perhaps his most illustrious female PhD student.
In 1970, Becker returned to the University of Chicago where he remained as a professor until his death. He continue to apply his economics to the study of the family, including the behavior of marriage markets, allocation of resources within the family and fertility behavior. The discussion of how economics can affect fertility anticipated government policies which seek to increase their native fertility rates. For example, Singapore has over 30 programs which seeks to increase her fertility rate.
Today, Becker’s approach is known as the rational choice approach in the social sciences. As the economics profession grew to appreciate his contributions, other social sciences have mixed feelings about his influence. On the one hand, they appreciate how he led economists to study different social issues. On the other hand, other social scientists often feel threatened by the invasion of economists.
Economists systematically use mathematical methods, statistical analysis and often large data sets. They prioritize cost benefit calculus over other factors which may also affect individual behavior. They had little patience with qualitative studies. Thus some social scientists felt that their contributions were unfairly ignored and so resisted the application of economics to their fields. For example, the Critical Legal Studies movement was developed in the 1970s in part in reaction to the success of the law and economics movement in law schools. In political science, rational choice theory is now a core field of study. Yet there are many political scientists who reject this approach.
Interestingly, motivated by the work of psychologists, economists have also begun to reject the purely rational calculus model of Becker as too narrow. Rather, these behavioral economics researchers argue that individuals have bounded rationality and are subject to systematic biases in their behavior. For example, Robert Shiller, a Nobel economist, has argued that bubbles occur in asset markets due to psychological biases. Thus the success of Becker has led to qualifications which is a hallmark of progress in science.
Contrary to many successful economists, Becker did not spend much time consulting for either the government or business. He was a conservative but unlike his mentor Milton Friedman, his direct influence on policy was minimal. Rather, the various economic fields which he instigated have had and continue to have significant influence on public policy. For example, every politician who wants to spend more resources on public education says that they are investing in the human capital of their society. Today, economists systematically contribute to policy discussions on maternity leaves, subsidies for child care and other social issues.
On a personal note, I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago in the late seventies where I met Gary Becker. I was interested in social issues. But because he was so intimidating as a scholar, I did not write my thesis under him nor was it on those concerns. Ten years after I obtained my PhD, and after I had moved to the University of Toronto, I wrote my first paper on the economics of the family motivated by a discussion in evolutionary psychology. Our interest on the economics of the family overlapped and we subsequently have had many professional interactions. I also began to realize that he did not know everything and that it is fine to work on topics which he had worked on.
Later in his life, he would sometimes introduce me as a former PhD student. At first I would correct him. But later I did not because perhaps he was right.

Gilder’s Information Theory of Capitalism Will Boost Morale of Innovative Entrepreneurs

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Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) Individuals like Ford and Jobs are key figures in the economic paradigm that George Gilder lays out in “Knowledge and Power.” He calls for an “information theory of capitalism” in which the economy is driven by a dynamic marketplace, with information widely (and freely) distributed. The most important feature of such an economy, Mr. Gilder writes, is the overthrow of “equilibrium,” and the most important actors are inventors and entrepreneurs whose breakthrough ideas are responsible for “everything useful or interesting” in commercial life.
. . .
Aspiring owners shouldn’t look to “Knowledge and Power” for practical advice on starting a company, but Mr. Gilder’s case for the central role of entrepreneurship might boost their morale. Certainly his argument could not be more timely. Census Bureau data show that startups were responsible for nearly all new job creation from 1996 to 2009. Yet entrepreneurship itself (as measured by new business formation) has been stagnant for about two decades. Thus the important question for America’s future may well be, as Mr. Gilder says, “how we treat our entrepreneurs.” He persuasively shows that creating a more supportive climate for entrepreneurs–by clearing away burdensome regulations and freeing information from its current imprisonment–will result in a more prosperous and vigorous society, creating not only more jobs but more Jobs.

For the full review, see:
MATTHEW REES. “BOOKSHELF; The Real Market-Maters; Economists as far back as Adam Smith have undervalued entrepreneurs–the restless, inventive, job-creating engines of the economy.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., March 18, 2014): A13.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 17, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Knowledge and Power’ by George Gilder
Economists as far back as Adam Smith have undervalued entrepreneurs–the restless, inventive, job-creating engines of the economy.”)

The book under review is:
Gilder, George. Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How It Is Revolutionizing Our World. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2013.

Strategic Conversations: Vital to Creative Adaptation or Reinforcers of Lazy Consensus?

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Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A15) “Moments of Impact” is at its best on the importance of promoting different perspectives. Businesses need to look at the world through as many disciplinary lenses as possible if they are to cope with the fast-changing threats that confront them. But day-to-day corporate life is all about fences and silos. Strategic conversations give companies a chance to examine their business models from the outside–and, as the authors put it, to “imagine operating within several different yet plausible environments.”
. . .
Mr. Ertel and Ms. Solomon argue that companies increasingly face a choice between what Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction and what they call creative adaptation–and that strategic conversations are vital to creative adaptation. Perhaps so. But strategic conversations can also reinforce lazy consensus, as people try to justify their jobs and protect their turf. Many bold decisions are driven by the opposite of “conversations”–by senior managers deciding to lop-off functions or take the company in a radically new direction.

For the full review, see:
ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE. “BOOKSHELF; Go Ahead, Strategize; The best ‘strategy meetings’ unleash fresh thinking and offer maverick views; the worst and dull, unstructured time-sucks.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., March 27, 2014): A15.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 26, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Moments of Impact,’ by Chris Ertel and Lisa Kay Solomon; The best ‘strategy meetings’ unleash fresh thinking and offer maverick views; the worst and dull, unstructured time-sucks.”)

The book under review is:
Ertel, Chris, and Lisa Kay Solomon. Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Government Wire Inspectors Only Showed Up to Get Their Pay

(p. 121) Edison had originally planned to offer service to the entirety of south Manhattan, south of Canal Street and north of Wall Street, but engineering considerations forced him to carve out a smaller district, bounded by Wall, Nassau, Spruce, and Ferry Streets. Still, his company had to place underground some eighty thousand linear feet of electrical wire. This had never been attempted before, so it should not have been a surprise when H. O. Thompson, the city’s commissioner of public works, summoned Edison to his office to explain that the city would have to be assured that the lines were installed safely. Thompson was assigning five inspectors to oversee the work, whose cost would be covered by an assessment of $5 per day, per inspector, payable (p. 122) each week. When Edison left Thompson’s office, he was crestfallen, anticipating the harassment and delays ahead that would be caused by the inspectors’ interference. On the day that work began, however, the inspectors failed to appear. Their first appearance was on Saturday afternoon, to draw their pay. This set the pattern that the inspectors followed as the work proceeded through 1881 and into 1882.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

One Way to Appreciate All We Take for Granted

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Source of book image: http://knowledge.dsruptiv.net/en-gb/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/The-Knowledge-Full-Cover_lowres.jpg

(p. 8) Over the past generation or two we’ve gone from being producers and tinkerers to consumers. As a result, I think we feel a sense of disconnect between our modern existence and the underlying processes that support our lives. Who has any real understanding of where their last meal came from or how the objects in their pockets were dug out of the earth and transformed into useful materials? What would we do if, in some science-fiction scenario, a global catastrophe collapsed civilization and we were members of a small society of survivors?

My research has to do with what factors planets need to support life. Recently, I’ve been wondering what factors are needed to support our modern civilization. What key principles of science and technology would be necessary to rebuild our world from scratch?
. . .
. . . there are the many materials society requires: How do you transform base substances like clay and iron into brick or concrete or steel, and then shape that material into a useful tool? To learn a small piece of this, I spent a day in a traditional, 18th-century iron forge, learning the essentials of the craft of the blacksmith. Sweating over an open coke-fired hearth, I managed to beat a lump of steel into a knife. Once shaped, I got it cherry-red hot and then quenched it with a satisfying squeal into a water trough, before reheating the blade slightly to temper it for extra toughness.
. . .
. . . , it needn’t take a catastrophic collapse of civilization to make you appreciate the importance of understanding the basics of how devices around you work. Localized disasters can disrupt normal services, making a reasonable reserve of clean water, canned food and backup technologies like kerosene lamps a prudent precaution. And becoming a little more self-reliant is immensely rewarding in its own right. Thought experiments like these can help us to explore how our modern world actually came to be, and to appreciate all that we take for granted.

For the full commentary, see:
LEWIS DARTNELL. “OPINION; Civilization’s Starter Kit.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., MARCH 30, 2014): 8.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date MARCH 29, 2014.)

Dartnell’s commentary, quoted above, has been elaborated in his book:
Dartnell, Lewis. The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch. New York: Penguin Press, 2014.

Little Estonia Prepares Defense Against Russia’s Evil Empire

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Toomis Hendrick Ilves, President of Estonia. Source of photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) Perched alone up in eastern Baltic are Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Their fear of Moscow propelled them to become the first and only former Soviet republics to seek the refuge of NATO. But now doubts are appearing. The West has responded tepidly to the Crimean aggression. Military budgets are at historic lows as a share of NATO economies. The alliance, which marked its 65th anniversary on Friday, has never faced the test of a hot conflict with Moscow.

In this new debate over European security, Mr. Ilves plays a role out of proportion to Estonia’s size (1.3 million people) and his limited constitutional powers. A tall man who recently turned 60, he has the mouth of a New Jersey pol–he grew up in Leonia–and wears the bow ties of a lapsed academic. Americans may recall his Twitter TWTR -0.15% feud two years ago over Estonia’s economy with economist Paul Krugman, whom Mr. Ilves called “smug, overbearing & patronizing.”
. . .
Estonia managed on Thursday to get NATO’s blessing to turn the brand-new Amari military airfield near Tallinn into the first NATO base in the country. This small Balt tends to be proactive. While European governments axed some $50 billion from military budgets in the last five year amid fiscal belt-tightening, Estonia is only one of four NATO allies to devote at least 2% of gross domestic product to defense, supposedly the bare minimum for security needs.
“It lessens your moral clout if you have not done what you have agreed to do,” Mr. Ilves says of defense budgets. His barb hits directly at neighboring Lithuania and Latvia, which both spend less than 1% of GDP on their militaries.

For the full commentary, see:
MATTHEW KAMINSKI. “THE SATURDAY INTERVIEW; An American Ally in Putin’s Line of Fire; Estonia’s president, who was raised in New Jersey, on how Crimea has changed ‘everything’ and what NATO should do now.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., April 5, 2014): A13.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 4, 2014.)

In the Gilded Age Moguls Cleaned Up Their Own Mess and the Economy Was Not Hurt

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Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) Takeover wars seem to have lost their sizzle. What happened to the battles of corporate goliaths? Where have they gone, those swaggering deal makers? “Harriman vs. Hill” is a corporate dust-up that takes us back to the beginning of the 20th century, when tycoons who traveled by private rail merrily raided each other’s empires while the world around them cringed.
. . .
Mr. Haeg conveys a vivid picture of the Gilded Age in splendor and in turmoil. Champagne still flowed in Peacock Alley in the Waldorf-Astoria, but fistfights erupted on the floor of the exchange, and a young trader named Bernard Baruch skirted disaster with the help of an inside tip, then perfectly legal. There were scant rules governing stock trading, the author reminds us–no taxes, either. “If you won in the market, you kept it all.”
In that era, moguls were left to clean up their own mess.   . . .
. . .
Though hardly a cheerleader, Mr. Haeg is admiring of his cast, nostalgic for the laissez-faire world they inhabited. Observing that the economy wasn’t upset by the stock market’s mayhem, he concludes that, “in a perverse way, the market had worked.”

For the full review, see:
ROGER LOWENSTEIN. “BOOKSHELF; When Titans Tie the Knot; Businessmen of a century ago didn’t place ‘competition’ on a revered pedestal. Merger and monopoly were considered preferable.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Feb. 14, 2014): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Feb. 13, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Harriman vs. Hill,’ by Larry Haeg; Businessmen of a century ago didn’t place ‘competition’ on a revered pedestal. Merger and monopoly were considered preferable.”)

The book under review is:
Haeg, Larry. Harriman Vs. Hill: Wall Street’s Great Railroad War. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.

Arc Lights Leapfrogged Gas Lights Before Incandescents Leapfrogged Them Both

(p. 85) The gas interests had been dealt a number of recent setbacks even before Edison’s announcement of a newly successful variant of electric light. An “enormous abandonment of gas” by retail stores in cities, who now could use less expensive kerosene, was noticed. The shift was attributed not to stores’ preference for kerosene but as a means of escaping “the arrogance of the gas companies.” Arc lights had now become a newly competitive threat, too. The previous month, Charles Brush had set up his lights in an exhibition hall in New York and then added a display in Boston. Sales to stores followed in several cities; then, as word spread, other establishments sought to obtain the cachet bestowed by the latest technology. William Sharon, a U.S. senator for and energetic booster of California, retrofitted the public spaces of his Palace Hotel in San Francisco with arc lights that replaced 1,085 gas jets.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

Edison, Not Antitrust, Reduced Power of Hated Gas Monopolies

Counterbalancing the angst of those hurt by the death of an old technology is sometimes the triumph creative destruction provides to those who were less well-served by the old technology. Some look to governments to restrain a dominant technology; but sometimes a more effective way is to replace the old technology through creative destruction’s leapfrog competition.

(p. 84) Gaslight monopolies had few friends outside of the ranks of shareholders. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, gaslight had been viewed as pure and clean; seventy years later, its shortcomings had become all too familiar: it was dirty, soiled interior furnishings, and emit-(p. 85)ted unhygienic fumes. It was also expensive, affordable for indoor lighting only in the homes of the wealthy, department stores, or government buildings. The New York Times almost spat out the following description of how gas companies conducted business: “They practically made the bills what they pleased, for although they read off the quantity by the meter, that instrument was their own, and they could be made to tell a lie of any magnitude…. Everybody has always hated them with a righteous hatred.”

Edison credited the gas monopoly for providing his original motivation to experiment with electric light years before in his Newark laboratory. Recalling in October 1878 his unpleasant dealings years earlier with the local gas utility, which had threatened to tear out their meter and cut off the gas, Edison said, “When I remember how the gas companies used to treat me, I must say that it gives me great pleasure to get square with them.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle printed an editorial titled “Revenge Is Sweet” in which it observed that the general public greatly enjoyed the discomfort of the gas companies, too: “To see them squirm and writhe is a public satisfaction that lifts Edison to a higher plane than that of the wonderful inventor and causes him to be regarded as a benefactor of the human race, the leading deity of popular idolatry.”

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.
(Note: ellipsis in original.)