Alvarez is banking that fewer, more robust partnerships will yield economies of scale: As each distributor carries more product into stores, the overall per-unit cost of distribution will drop.

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In addition, aggregated demand in, say, Madagascar, with a population of 17m, is unlikely to yield the same economies of scale as in India.

ECONOMIST: MONITOR: Beyond the digital divide | The

Working either through the charter movement or the home schooling movement would enable a tablet textbook project to start small, yield immediate returns to participants, and scale easily, while largely ignoring the interests of incumbent institutions.

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The FDA has long considered that even minor changes in the production of biological drugs--including exactly the same isolation and purification procedures applied at significantly larger scale than previously--yield a distinct and new drug that must undergo an independent demonstration of safety and efficacy.

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Yet Mr Prescott's new policy is unlikely to yield enough money for infrastructure projects of that scale.

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