Out-of-Pocket Health Expenditure: Impact on the Consumption of Indian Households

This paper examines whether out-of-pocket health expenditure affects the composition of household consumption. Based on Indian data, conditional Engel curves for 10 broad categories of goods and services, namely food, intoxicants, fuel, clothing and footwear, education, entertainment, travel, rent, durables and other goods have been estimated. Conditional Engel curves show whether the share of a particular good is increased or decreased in household consumption due to health expenditure. The findings suggest that poor households decrease the share of clothing and education and increase the share of food, fuel and travel. It has also been found that households from less developed states and from states with lower public health expenditure were more affected.     

Producing Localized Commodity Frontiers at the End of Cheap Nature: An Analysis of Eco‐scalar Carbon Fixes and their Consequences

There is no single ‘great’ commodity frontier whose exploitation under current socio‐technical conditions could fuel capital accumulation at the global scale. According to Jason Moore, this represents the ‘end of Cheap Nature’ and signals a terminal crisis for capitalism as we know it. In this article we complicate this assertion by showing how, in the context of global environmental governance frameworks of carbon control, a diverse range of actors situated at multiple scales are intensifying the use of cities and their hinterlands for the production/transgression of localized commodity frontiers. We draw on scholarship on uneven geographical development, state‐led restructuring and eco‐scalar fixes to present two case studies from different segments of the carbon cycle in the global South. The first case demonstrates how the introduction of waste‐to‐energy technology in Delhi facilitated the generation of ‘carbon credits’ while waste matter itself became a commodity. The second discusses attempts by the Brazilian state of Amazonas (Amazônia) aspiring to shift from rainforest exploitation to financialized conservation supported by the ‘green global city’ functions of metropolitan Manaus. These cases demonstrate that although the global carbon‐control regime may enable accumulation, implementation remains speculative, and localized commodity frontiers provoke social resistances that jeopardize their durability.     

Strategic redirection in large management buyouts: The evidence from post-buyout restructuring activity

This study examines the nature of post-transaction restructuring activities for 32 large U.S. corporations that underwent management buyouts between 1983–89. This study (i) provides evidence on the extent and type of divestment and acquisition activities under private ownership; (ii) documents the outcomes associated with MBOs and the longevity of the buyout organization; and (iii) investigates the claim that buyouts are primarily mechanisms for breaking up public corporations and selling the pieces to related acquirers. The balance of the evidence indicates that restoring strategic focus is an essential function of the buyout for these large firms. However, the evidence also indicates that the buyout organization does continue to operate significant parts of the prebuyout firm. By far the majority of firms continue to meet their debt obligations satisfactorily during the buyout phase. Finally, the evidence indicates that asset sales to related acquirers derive more from efficiency considerations than market power.     

Director Networks and Credit Ratings

We explore the effect of director social capital, directors with large and influential networks, on credit ratings. Using a sample of 11,172 firm‐year observations from 1999 to 2011, we find that larger board networks are associated with higher credit ratings than both firm financial data and probabilities of default predict. Near‐investment grade firms improve their forward‐looking ratings when their board is more connected. Last, we find that larger director networks are more beneficial during recessions, and times of increased financial uncertainty. Our results are robust to controls for endogeneity. Tests confirm that causality runs from connected boards to credit ratings.     

Forms of talk in policy dialogue: distinguishing between adversarial and collaborative discourse

Uncertainty, the precautionary principle and scenario are three important concepts in current regulatory debates concerned with risk management. In this paper, each concept is described in relation to its regulatory context and a linkage between the three concepts is established. Three scenarios relating to increasing scientific and technical uncertainty are presented. The most obvious regulatory approach to uncertainty is to ban a product, process or substance under the aegis of the precautionary principle. However, this may not be appropriate in all cases and a range of other possible policy responses to uncertainty are discussed and avenues for further research suggested.     

Optimal Growth with Endogenous Technical Progress: Hicksian Bias in a Macro Model

If productivity growth is endogenous, the question of whether to allocate some resources to increase the efficiency of capital needs to be examined in spite of the conventional wisdom that only Harrod-neutral technical progress is compatible with the steady state. This paper describes the crucial role that the production technology and research sectors play in determining the allocation of resources for accumulating physical capital and enhancing the productivity of inputs. We develop a model of biased growth, where, even in the steady state, the efficiency of capital and labour are increasing due to the allocation of resources to the research sector.
JEL Classification Numbers: C62, O31.     

Florida in the Global South: How Eurocentrism Obscures Global Urban Challenges—and What We Can Do about It

According to Richard Florida, the world is in the grip of a ‘New Urban Crisis’. In his most recent book Florida recounts a visit to Medellín that provoked an epiphany in which he realized that the New Urban Crisis is global in scope. Unfortunately, Florida's discovery of the global South is informed by a deeply Eurocentric understanding of urbanization. This leads him to conclude that Southern cities should ‘unleash’ creativity, and he proposes that the United States should develop a global urban policy that would export a version of American urbanism. In this essay we deconstruct Florida's notion of the New Urban Crisis and show that its Eurocentric assumptions obscure the very real environmental, economic and political challenges facing cities in the global South and their residents.     

Labor Earnings in One-Company Towns: Theory and Evidence from Kazakhstan

One-company towns, characterized by the presence of a largeemployer in a local labor market, are a frequent legacy of state-leddevelopment strategies. How will downsizing or closing unprofitablestate-owned enterprises affect these towns?This article developsa simple model combining monopsony power in the labor marketwith a Keynesian closure of the product market and uses it tointerpret the findings of previous studies. The article evaluatesthe impact of the company's employment level on the town's laborearnings in Kazakhstan, where one-company towns are still prevalent.The evaluation is based on data from the 1996 Living StandardsMeasurement Survey. The results show that labor earnings inthe town decrease roughly 1.5 percent when the share of itspopulation working for the company decreases 1 percent. Theresults are robust to changes in the definition of labor earningsand to the inclusion of a variety of other community characteristicsin the analysis. These results and the theoretical model arecombined to evaluate the welfare impact of company downsizingand, consequently, to derive the optimal extent of labor retrenchment.