Putting ‘merchants of debt’ in their place: the political economy of retail banking and credit-based financialisation in Germany

Why did household debt in Germany not increase after the year 2000? This article offers a supply-side explanation for this deviant debt trajectory by tracing the historical evolution of retail banking in the German political economy. It argues that at the end of the 1990s and in the light of European Monetary Union, profitability issues and banking fragmentation became severe enough to interrupt the path towards credit-based financialisation as prevalent among other capitalist economies. These factors interacted with a traditional lack of tools and incentives for rapid credit expansion, even though they were renegotiated in the processes of financial liberalisation, internationalisation and innovation. By employing historical-qualitative as well as statistical evidence for the argument, the paper’s contribution becomes twofold. First, it introduces and conceptualises retail banking as a focal point in the analysis of national financial systems and their transformation. Second, it complicates the standard accounts of German non-financialisation and reveals the ‘contested’ character of financial reform.     

农村土地细碎化治理及制度变革启示——安徽省怀远县“一户一块田”的实践探索

土地细碎化是当前我国农业生产的基本格局，也是农业适度规模经营和农业现代化的主要障碍之一。土地细碎化表面上是地块的细碎化。实质上是土地产权的细碎化，而无论是土地流转还是土地整治，都未能从根本上整合细碎化的土地产权。怀远县基于方便农民耕种的需要，在基层大胆创新的基础上，充分发挥集体组织调整土地的功能，通过“三不变、两提倡、一调整”形成了“一户一块田”的耕种模式，有效解决了土地细碎化难题。我国农村土地细碎化治理及制度变革，必须强化集体组织的土地统筹权利和能力，赋予其相应的土地（地块）调整职能，并加强农村基层组织建设；要立足于小农经济为主的基本国情，保护耕作者的利益，为满足现代化小农生产提供服务；既要尊重各地群众的意愿和创造性，也要规范指导，有序推进。     

国有部门与非国有部门的工资差异及影响因素研究

基于CGSS数据，利用Heckman样本选择模型对中国国有部门与非国有部门的工资差异和影响因素进行系统研究。回归结果显示，国有部门员工的教育收益率高于非国有部门，教育收益率与学历水平呈现正相关关系，与非国有部门相比，国有部门中大学本科及以上学历员工的教育收益率更高。工资差异分解结果表明，两部门全样本工资差异中市场歧视占比高于特征差异占比，与全样本相比，大学本科及以上学历员工的工资总差异和特征差异占比更高，系数差异占比更低，说明高学历群体中部门间工资差异更为明显，而且两部门中仍存在较严重的劳动力市场分割和就业歧视问题。因此，政府应努力消除劳动力的流动性障碍，深化国有部门市场化改革，制定更为合理的工资机制，以促进中国经济的持续健康稳定增长。     

A Gendered Model of the Peasant Household: Time poverty and Farm Production in Rural Mozambique

Using insights from a case study on the allocation of labor in subsistence households in Mozambique, this study develops a conceptual framework for examining linkages between time poverty and farm production. An unexpected event such as a health crisis increases the demand for labor provided by women, thus making them more time poor. The model and numerical simulations show that a deterioration in a woman's time constraint will have an adverse effect on agricultural output of the household. This occurs because most women respond to an increase in household work by reducing their work hours on the farm and by reducing their leisure time. The latter outcome is expected to have a negative effect on women's physical and mental health, which will then cause a decline in their productivity on the farm.     

Three Short Stories of Progressive Institutional Change

The process of institutional change is a fundamental theme in institutional economics. There are multiple avenues for forging institutional change — policies, laws, cultural norms, social movements, and social practices. I analyze three examples of progressive institutional change. While there are many to choose from, the three short stories focus on: (i) accounting for measures of housework and care work in GDP; (ii) transforming legal values through adoption of marriage equality in the United States; and (iii) interrogating the fresh-tomatoes food supply chain in order to achieve a penny-a-pound more in earnings for migrant field workers. Each of these examples of progressive institutional change involves changing values, a cumulative process.     

A novel methodology for designing a household waste collection system for insular zones

This paper addresses the problem of designing a household waste collection system for rural insular areas using a barge for transportation, based on a novel mixed integer programming model that simultaneously integrates decisions of waste collection sites selection within the islands to be served, visit schedule for each selected collection site, and multi-period vehicle routing. An application to a real-world instance consisting of small rural islands located in the south of Chile shows the effectiveness and complexity of the model, along with the advantages of using a waste compactor instead of transporting the waste using bins onboard a barge.     

Tourism expenditure patterns in China

Using China’s urban household survey data for 2002–2009, this study compares the impacts of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of urban household expenditure on tourism in different age cohorts. The life cycle age profiles of group-tour and non-group tour expenditures are obtained by decomposing total household expenditure. The results show that the age profile of total tourism expenditure is hump-shaped, which conforms to consumers’ income discretionary expenditure cycles. The age profile of group-tour expenditure is hump-shaped whereas that of non-group tour expenditure is S-shaped, corresponding to the substitution of group and non-group tours as children grow older. The implications are discussed in the context of tourism marketing with a view to providing useful segmentation information for tourism decision makers.     

Sustainability of fish pond culture in rural farming systems of Central and Western Cameroon

In Sub-Saharan Africa, fish ponds are often an integral part of farming systems but have suffered from a lack of viability and sustainability. The present study aims to understand the strategies used by fish farmers to overcome economic and environmental constraints. In 2008 and 2009, fish farmers were surveyed in Central and Western Cameroon, and the fish production systems were classified by cluster analysis. Four broad types were identified according to the complexity of household operations. The development of extensive systems (large-scale and low-input) in rural areas of central Cameroon is induced mainly by abundant available land. For semi-intensive systems in both regions (small-scale and high-input in the Western Region, large-scale and high-input in peri-urban areas of the Central Region), horizontal integration is not sufficient to make fish production profitable and sustainable. More intensive fish farms tend towards vertical integration, in which farmers establish close links with input suppliers. Main causes of low productivity of semi-intensive systems (1–2?t/ha/yr) are both lack of knowledge of fish farming principles by farmers and lack of technical improvement by extension agents and researchers which need to consider the local complexity of farming systems to develop and intensify fish production. The adaptation of development strategies to socio-economic and environmental contexts is a necessity to hope for an increase in fish pond aquaculture production in Africa.     

农户行为层面生态环境问题研究进展与述评

采用文献回顾法和归纳法,从研究内容、研究视角、研究区域、研究方法和手段、数据获取等方面对农户层面生态环境问题的相关研究进行梳理与分析,最后总结了现有研究存在的问题,并探讨了未来农户层面生态环境问题研究发展的方向。主要结论如下:(1)研究内容涉及农户行为引起的农业环境问题类型、农户行为的生态环境效应、农户环境保护行为与生态建设行为、农业环境保护政策创新等方面;(2)研究视角主要包括以农业生产行为决策者农户为中心内生视角和以农户需求与以农户行为为出发点的外部视角,研究区域主要集中在经济发达地区;(3)在研究方法方面,早期主要是采用一般描述、定性分析和"事前"估计法,近年来"事后"计量模型的研究逐步增多,趋于多样化和综合性;(4)数据获取主要是农户问卷调查和参与式农村评估方法;(5)今后研究应加强农户行为对环境影响的定量评价与跟踪研究、农户环境保护响应决策机制、基于农户行为的环境政策设计等方面的研究,在数据获取方面,应将地理空间信息与问卷调查、社会经济状况结合起来,并进行农户行为与生态环境变化的长期跟踪。     

Urban Politics as the Unfolding of Social Relations in Place: The Case of Sexually Transmitted Disease Investigation in Mid‐Twentieth‐Century Gay Seattle

Recent debates in urban politics stress the need to broaden conceptions of what counts as urban politics, as well as of where they take place. This means shifting attention to include more quotidian and prosaic social relations, including those taking place in spaces of civil society. We answer this call with a case study of the relations between an emerging gay male community in mid‐twentieth‐century Seattle, USA and the local public health department’s disease investigators (DIs). We focus on both the biopolitics and cultural politics of the investigation process, from the perspectives of both DIs and gay men. We point out certain tensions and paradoxes in these processes as a form of governmentality, and interpret them through a ‘noir’ cultural lens that is consistent with a notion of urban politics as the unfolding of social relations in place. We conclude by stressing how our findings and framework can augment urban political inquiry both intellectually and empirically.