Export instability and concentration in the less developed countries: A cross-sectional analysis

A model to explain export instability in the less developed countries is formulated and tested on a sample of 48 less developed countries between 1957 and 1969. The explanatory variables suggested are commodity and geographic concentration and the importance of oil in the export sector. These variable are defined in a variety of ways to determine the sensitivity of the results to variable definitions. The results suggest that all three explanatory variables are significant in explaining export instability, although a considerable proportion of the variance in export instability remained unexplained.     

THE AUTUMN STATEMENT

The short-term prospects for output are weaker than our October forecast suggested - manufacturing output fell 1.8per cent in the third quarter and the CBI survey indicates a sharp decline in business confidence. This is reflected in the Treasury's Autumn Statement forecast of GDP growth this year of only 1 per cent followed by 0.5per cent in 1991. With inflation now passing its peak, there would be a case for lowering interest rates but this is not possible with the pound below DM2.90 - the ill-judged reduction in base rates on ERM entry combined with the challenge to Mrs. Thatcher's leadership has pushed sterling deep into its lower ERM band. The principal unknown in the Autumn Statement forecast is the level of interest rates which, in the Treasury's judgement, will be necessary to keep sterling at or close to DM2.95. The Treasury may envisage only a very modest decline in base rates to 13 per cent next year. This could explain why their forecast is relatively gloomier than ours; alternatively the Treasury's underlying view could simply be more pessimistic. Nevertheless we show that the gap between the two forecasts can be eliminated if we change a limited number of assumptions - notably on interest rates, North Sea oil output, general government consumption and stock-building.     

Marginal Abatement Cost Curves for UK Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Emissions

This article addresses the challenge of developing a ‘bottom‐up’ marginal abatement cost curve (MACC) for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from UK agriculture. An MACC illustrates the costs of specific crop, soil and livestock abatement measures against a ‘business as usual’ scenario. The results indicate that in 2022 under a specific policy scenario, around 5.38 Mt CO₂ equivalent (e) could be abated at negative or zero cost. A further 17% of agricultural GHG emissions (7.85 Mt CO₂e) could be abated at a lower unit cost than the UK Government’s 2022 shadow price of carbon [£34 (tCO₂e)^?1]. The article discusses a range of methodological hurdles that complicate cost‐effectiveness appraisal of abatement in agriculture relative to other sectors.     

Fear,Loathing and the Everyday Geopolitics of Encounter in the Arizona Borderlands

This paper argues for the importance of attending to both affective and emotional experience in analysing the origins and effects of border and immigration efforts in the US/Mexico border region. We do so by engaging with theoretical understands of the politics of affect and emotion among cultural and feminist geographers and social scientists. We then examine Arizona's SB 1070 and its connection to a larger history of border and immigration enforcement in Arizona. Drawing from ethnographic work, interviews, and media and policy analysis, we engage with narratives provided by border area ranchers to unpack how these ranchers' encounters with unauthorised migrants have changed over time. We then examine how the everyday fear and anxiety associated with these encounters drive political activism and state intervention in the region. We conclude by discussing how this intervention, in turn, reproduces racial and gender hierarchies, hierarchies that are themselves affectively mediated.     

Resort Morphology Research: History and Future Perspectives

This paper adopts a geographical perspective to understand the conceptual and theoretical issues of resort morphology. Resort morphology refers to “the forms and associated functions of a destination area and their development”. Resort towns are differentiated from other urban areas in terms of morphology because of their functional emphasis on tourism. The literature reflects the significant interest of European geographers in the morphological study of coastal resort towns. However, limited attention has been given to resort morphology in developing countries, including those in Asia. It is argued that the complex of contextual factors that influence the morphological character of resorts needs to be considered and, furthermore, there is a great need to develop a systematic approach for investigating resort morphology. Although the morphological approach to the study of resorts is transferable, it is likely that Asian morphologies will differ from their western counterparts because of their time, scale and pace of development.     

Flooding and Liquidity on the Bayou: The Capitalization of Flood Risk into House Value and Ease‐of‐Sale

The existing literature focuses on how perceived flood risk affects house value. Search theory, however, implies that flood risks will be capitalized into both house price and liquidity. This article draws on search theory to develop an empirical approach for estimating flood risk capitalization into both price and selling time. The results show the mix of price and liquidity capitalization varies by level of flood risk as well as across housing market phases. Regardless of the specific capitalization pattern, the results illustrate that focusing solely on price without allowing for concomitant liquidity capitalization can yield estimates that understate the full impact of flood risk on house transactions.