Mr. Gripsrud and a theory of oligopoly

Conclusions May I sum up my reply to Mr. Gripsrud by noting: (1) I do not believe his critique of my position on differential payments for uncertainty is properly founded. But I readily recognize that a reading of only a single paper and/or even isolated parts of a book could easily cause the concern he had in this regard. I rather imagine, in fact, that had I been him, I too might have had the same concern. (2) As for his critique of my cost curve, here again I can only suggest my belief that what I set forth is appropriate. At the best, I would refer him to the original text for a more complete answer; at the least, the suggestions given above in this reply will hopefully resolve the matter under discussion. (3) As for his objection to my average revenue schedule, I can only propose that in theory we sometimes utilize conceptions which abstract sharply from the true world around us. But this does not make the theory wrong! (4) Possibly his most important critique really goes beyond the paper in question and was answered in the book. I would suggest, accordingly, that he misread my thesis that an unorganized (competitive) oligopoly market is isomorphic to the purely competitive market. What he is suggesting as helpful tools for analysis would be those that I could accept for short-run matters without loss of position. In other words, nothing in my theory of the spatial firm precludes his quest for new paradigms to shed light on selected problems uppermost in his mind.     

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is no longer “talk only,” but is an institutionalized forum of 18 sovereign nation-state based economies. What is APEC? This symposium, based on my recorded conversations with Dr. C. Fred Bergsten, Dr. Suhadi Mangkusuwondo, Mr. Zhao Gong-Da, Mr. Mitsuo Sato, Dr. Lee Tsao Yuan, Hon. Neville Wran, Professor Ross Garnaut, Professor Heinz W. Arndt, Professor Peter Drysdale, Dr. Narongchai Akrasanee, Professor Mohamed Ariff, Dato Dr. Noordin Sopiee, during August–December 1994, may provide a useful answer.     

Recollections of My Careerlections of My Career

Suhadi Mangkusuwondo, Professor Emeritus of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Indonesia (FEUI), was born in Solo, Central Java, in December 1927. After participating in the war of independence, he resumed his secondary education in Malang, completing it in 1949. He then studied economics at the University of Indonesia (UI) and later became a teaching assistant there. Suhadi spent two years doing postgraduate study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later obtained a PhD in economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Returning to Indonesia and his teaching post at FEUI, he became editor of the journal Economics and Finance in Indonesia (EKI). He was Head of the R&D Agency in the Department of Trade from 1973 to 1975 and again in 1983-88, and Director General of Foreign Trade from 1975 to 1983. Professor Suhadi served as the Representative of the Government of Indonesia in the Uruguay Round when it was launched in 1986, and since 1992 has been a member of the Eminent Persons Group of the APEC (Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation) forum. His other activities include membership of Indonesia's National Research Council (DRN), and of organisations such as the Regional Advisory Board of the ASEAN Economic Bulletin, the journal of the ASEAN Economic Research Unit of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. He is now also Vice Chairman of the Jakarta-based Trade and Development Institute. On 8 July 1994, Professor Suhadi talked with H.W. Arndt, Hal Hill and Thee Kian Wie about his views on Indonesia's economic development under the New Order, and particularly about trade policy. On 19 September 1995, in a second interview with H.W. Arndt, Mari Pangestu and Thee Kian Wie, he elaborated further on his work at the Ministry of Trade and his participation in the Uruguay Round and the APEC Eminent Persons Group (EPG).     

Ruth Daroesman

Ruth Daroesman was the first Assistant Editor of the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies. She joined the ANU in 1968 and for the next 15 years worked alongside Professor Heinz Arndt, head of the then Department of Economics in the Research School of Pacific Studies, in building the journal's standard and reputation. As well as editing the content and overseeing production, Ruth pursued her scholarly interest in Indonesian education and its financing, and wrote economic surveys of several Indonesian provinces. This tribute contains contributions from colleagues who were graduate students, academic staff and visitors in the department during Ruth's term there.     

A NOTE ON THE SUPPLY OF ECONOMISTS IN SOUTH AFRICA

If true delight you would afford him You'd give him Adam Smith to read. A deep economist, indeed, He talked about the wealth of nations; The state relied, his friends were told, Upon its staples, not on gold—This subject filled his conversations. His father listened, frowned, and groaned, And mortgaged all the land he owned.     

More on the dynamics of agricultural contribution to economic growth-Reply

In his note on my recent two articles in this journal, Professor Addington Coppin states that the results obtained for estimating agricultural contribution to economic growth in various economies are sensitive to employing annual average growth rate data, end-of-period output shares, and geometric “weights” in some of the calculations. He suggests that the results would have been more accurate by employing (1) simple percentage changes in the level variables over the entire period of consideration; (2) beginning-of-period data on output shares; and (3) arithmetic weights. This reply addresses the logic and correctness of the approach undertaken in my research that strengthen the confidence in the results offered in my articles.     

An economic rationale for a system of loglinear asset demand functions

Summary In this paper we derived a system of asset demand functions from an expected utility maximization model, in which the utility function satisfies both the decreasing absolute risk aversion as well as the increasing relative risk aversion criteria. The rates of return are assumed to be distributed as a multivariate log-normal distribution. It is shown that a system of log-linear asset demand functions follows from the exact model as an approximation and performs better than similar types of linear asset demand functions which follow from a negative exponential utility function.I am grateful to Professor A. R. Bergstrom and Mr. R. E. Bailey for their comments on an earlier draft. Comments from the referee of this journal helped me to improve my presentation. I am also grateful to Professor R. Bandyopadhyay for his comments. I am solely responsible for any errors.     

Phillips ‘loops’ in South Africa∗

Professor Phillips published his famous Phillips curve article in 1958. In his research, however, he observed that wages were rising more rapidly during the upswing of the business cycle, when unemployment was falling, than during the downturn, when unemployment was rising. When data on the respective variables was plotted, a distinct ‘loop’ was found. In the analysis of South African labour statistics, it was found that such a ‘loop’ existed in the White labour market. However, in the case of the Black labour market, only a weak image of a ‘loop’ was found. The real economic forces producing such a ‘loop’ were almost completely absent. This has implications not only for labour management and economic policy in general, but also for development strategies, because it implies that if Black labour had been left to market forces only, they would have been worse off than they are now.     

The debts of James VI of Scotland1

James VI (1567–1625) was chronically indebted, and this caused him frequent problems. This article presents two series of systematic data that together indicate the main contours of his indebtedness: (1) end‐of‐year deficits, and (2) hived‐off debts which the Crown left unpaid for long periods (sometimes permanently). The hived‐off debts, reconstructed individually, constitute a narrative of fiscal policy‐making. Instead of a large and catastrophic bankruptcy, James in effect had numerous small bankruptcies. He benefited from an emerging structure of Scottish domestic credit. He eventually repaid many of his debts after succeeding to the English throne in 1603.     

SEHR & IEHA — the early years

Abstract

In January 1952, Professor Astrid Friis asked me to accompany her and our colleague Aksel E Christensen to Stockholm for the inaugural meeting of a closed circle of Nordic historians who had set themselves the task of publishing an English-language journal of economic history. The meeting was arranged by Professor Ernst Söderlund. By way of introduction he brought us greetings from Eli F Heckscher, who by his work and debating ability had done more than anyone else to create respect for the subject of economic history in Sweden, and whose name was also renowned internationally thanks in part to his book on mercantilism. His latest achievement was the second volume of his mammoth work of Swedish economic history. Heckscher was in hospital at the time and died shortly afterwards. Thus it came about that the torch was passed on, but still it was clear that the Heckscher era was ebbing to its close.     

Finnish mortality in the eighteenth century: A reply

Abstract

In SEHR No.2, 1978, Eino ]utikkala took issue on a number of points with my article published in SEHR No.2, 1977, and I should like to make several comments in reply, Firstly, I have found it misleading to call the results of my data adjustments as ‘correction coefficients’. This term tends to suggest that my corrections produce precise results, an impression which the caveats explicitly stated in my text were designed to prevent. My purpose was to provide a rough suggestion of, and an approximation to the extent of errors, since it would have profited no one had I concluded the study with the simple acknowledgment of gaps in the registers and the admission that there is no way of determining their extent. Because this type of research is still relatively new, and because there seemed to be no other way of assessing the number of infants who died below one year of age, but were omitted from the registers of ‘baptised’ and ‘buried’, the national figures were used for the corrections, and an attempt was made to ensure that this approach did not lead to an overestimation of error.     

THE POLITICAL ELEMENT IN THE WORKS OF W. ARTHUR LEWIS: THE 1954 LEWIS MODEL AND AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT

William Arthur Lewis, the Nobel Prize awardee in 1979, was actively involved in politics and policymaking. During World War II, Lewis was appointed to be a young advisor to the British Colonial Office where he came into direct collision with the mainstream laissez‐faire philosophy. After the War, Lewis took the lead in a Fabian conference on colonial question, and his encounter with Kwame Nkrumah eventually compelled him to write an important monograph on the prospect of plural governance in Africa. Through a rereading of Lewis's original texts, it is demonstrated that his emphasis on peasant‐led agricultural development and advocacy of political pluralism were consistently manifested in his academic and nonacademic writings on tropical regions, especially on Africa, contrary to the conventional interpretation of his 1954 model of “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour,” which has tended to pin much faith on top‐down industrialization.     

A theorist on basic questions of economic history

Abstract

The author of this slim, essay-like book—now translated into Swedish¹—s-is a leading economic theoretician, noted for his contribution to the development of Keynesian theory and to the theory of the short-run dynamics of the trade cycle, as well as to modem theory of macro-economic growth. He is, however, known to a generation of modern economists above all as a ‘market’ theorist within the Walrasian tradition. In the present book he abandons his role as a strict market theorist, concerned with such things as the ‘existence’ and ‘stability’ of market equilibria, and attempts to explain the historical emergence and development of the market system or economy as an institution or set of institutions. He disarmingly forfeits any claims to expertise on this topic, and I think wisely so; but he is far from being altogether a layman or a newcomer to economic history. He professes an early love of the subject, and although it was a romance that never resulted in marriage, he has, through constant association with leading British economic historians and through his own writings in the history of economic thought, preserved and developed some of the faculties of a historian. Yet, this book-as its title indicates-is essentially theoretical. Hicks develops a set of interpretative hypotheses mainly by a priori reasoning. The empirical references must be looked upon more as illustrations of his theses than as evidence in support of their empirical validity.     

Helge W. Nordvik In Memoriam

Abstract

Professor Helge W. Nordvik died suddenly on October 18, only 55 years old. He was trained both as historian and as economist at the Universities of Oslo and Bergen, and at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration. Most of his post-graduate education was spent at the LSE in London, where he obtained his MSc in economic history.     

Recollections of My Career

Editorial Note:Professor Sumitro Djojohadilcusomo is one of the principal architects of Indonesia's post-independence economic policy. He has held key economic portfolios in both the immediate post-independence era and in the New Order. In addition, as Professor of Economics at the University of Indonesia, and as a tireless lecturer and writer on economic issues, he has been instrumental in shaping the education of several generations of economics students in Indonesia, many of whom are now in key government positions. At the end of August, Professor Sumitro generously agreed to be interviewed on his long career by two members of the BIES editorial board, Anne Booth and Thee Kian Wie. In preparing this interview for publication, the editors have tried to preserve Professor Sumilro's own words to the greatest extent possible; his lucid and entertaining remarks are thus reproduced with a minimum of editing. The interview began with a question to Professor Sumitro about his early training in economies.     

Do Several Winning Coalitions Exist in a State for Senators of the Same Party? Evidence from an Event Study

We argue that U.S. senators from the same state and in the same party form different winning coalitions. We also develop a theory that stipulates that parties encourage these senators to form very distinct constituency coalitions. Parties use committee assignments as a carrot to give these senators an incentive to represent different groups. In our empirical analysis, we find that there are fewer overlapping committee assignments among senators in the same state when they are from the same party. We also consider the case of John Heinz and Arlen Specter, both Pennsylvania Republicans. When John Heinz died in a plane crash, Political Action Committees (PACs) that bought influence from Specter but not Heinz now had the possibility that the new senator replacing Heinz would include them in his resource constituency. The resulting competition by the new Pennsylvania senator and Specter for campaign resources would lower the price these firms had to pay for representation, thus improving their expected future earnings.     

最美乡医刘庆民

“我要尽自己所能,为父老乡亲们看好病、服好务,除此之外别无所求。”这是一位身患癌症、在山区坚守35年、被村民称为“健康守护神”的普通乡村医生,在受到表彰时说出的最大的心愿。他就是被授予“山东省卫生计生系统服务标兵”称号的济宁市泗水县苗馆镇隈泉庄乡村医生刘庆民。刘庆民是泗水县苗馆镇隈泉庄人。苗馆镇隈泉庄地处山东省泗水县东部,位于泰沂山区南麓,在大山深处。