A note on detecting biases in assessing the use of FTAs

There has been much confusion, rather than debate, on the use of free trade agreements (FTAs). Unfortunately, a large part of the confusion is caused by the absence of consensus on the meaning of key terms such as the “utilization rate” and “usage rate” of FTAs, and the lack of knowledge on upward or downward biases from various data sources regarding the use of FTAs. Rather than making an original empirical contribution, this article reviews existing studies and attempts to identify the relevant methodologies for assessing the use of FTAs.     

The measurement of poverty: A review of attempts to quantify the poor, with special reference to India

Poverty can be measured relatively, but a measure of absolute poverty is more useful for making cross-cultural comparisons. Unfortunately, the measurement of absolute poverty is difficult, because of inter-individual and intra-individual variations in minimum needs over time. As a result, simplistic assessment methods and confusion have marked many of the estimates of absolute poverty in less-developed countries. Using Indian material as an example, this paper attempts to trace the progress of the methodology; to explain how widely varying poverty estimates have come about; and to draw some tentative conclusions about the extent and pattern of absolute poverty in India today.     

营销范式转换:营销史考察的新视角

对营销理念运用的关注远大于理论本身,这使得我们难以把握营销学发展的脉络及趋势。本文尝试把范式理论和营销史相结合,首先回顾营销史研究的传统视角,然后界定营销范式,进而分析营销范式转换的过程。从范式转换的角度看,营销史就是循环中的阶段史;这一新视角有助于我们认识营销学发展各阶段的特征及脉络,有助于避免实践中因营销理念的涌现带来的混乱。     

The challenges of policy coordination at a programme level: Why joining-up is hard to do

This article examines obstacles to policy coordination to promote development at a programme level. Contemporary efforts to promote coordination or ‘joined-up’ working across government entities highlight attempts to promote policy synergy and resource maximisation for achieving objectives that straddle the sector-specific boundaries of multiple departments. This paper assessed efforts to coordinate the actions of multiple departments towards achieving a single cross-cutting policy objective. Programme-level analysis of the Expanded Public Works Programme in South Africa revealed various reasons why joining-up is difficult to negotiate in practice. This consisted of policy goal and operational incompatibility between specialised entities, which appears sensitive to the specificity and stringency of policy goals and implementation regimens; as well as a host of difficulties related to how coordination is formally defined and designated. This included role definition and confusion, as well as the nature and locus of coordination mandates across and within individual departments.     

The Sacrifice Ratio and Central Bank Independence Revisited

Several recent studies make use of cross-country data to examine the relationship between a country's sacrifice ratio and the extent to which its central bank is insulated from political influence. These studies report a positive correlation between these two variables. However, these studies employ econometric methodologies that do not account for the measurement error which contaminates their proxies for central bank independence. This paper makes use of an alternative econometric methodology, one that does account for this measurement error, and finds a strong negative relationship between the sacrifice ratio and Central Bank independence.     

ASSESSING MONETARY POLICY IN SOUTH AFRICA IN A DATA‐RICH ENVIRONMENT

This paper examines the efficacy of monetary policy in the South African economy using a data‐rich framework. We use the Factor‐Augmented Vector Autoregressive (FAVAR) methodology, which contains 110 monthly variables for the period 1985:02‐2007:11. The results, based on impulse‐response functions, provide no evidence of the price puzzle observed in traditional Structural Vector Autoregressive analysis and confirm that monetary policy in South Africa is effective in stabilising prices. Unlike the traditional vector autoregressive approach, the FAVAR methodology allows further analysis of a large number of variables. Variables from real and financial variables react negatively to a contractionary monetary policy shock. Finally, we find evidence of the importance of a confidence channel transmission following a monetary policy shock.     

ON SOCIO-ECONOMIC STRUCTURE OF IRANIAN VILLAGES — With Special Reference to Deh—

In Iran the peasant (ra'yat) lives and works in a small village called a deh. His production and living in this village are under the rigid control of the landlord (mālik). From the point of view of the landlord, the deh is primarily a peasant community-control mechanism; in fact, it is the base of the mālik-ra'yat land system. This study attempts to place the socioeconomic structure of the deh in theoretical perspective by analysing how the mālik manages to control his land as well as the patterns of social relationship which exist among the peasants.     

Shifting the mainstream: Lawson's impetusEconomics and Reality tony lawson routledge, 1997, 364 pp.

Lawson'sEconomics and Reality is a deeply informed attempt to liberate economics from its usually tacit, metaphysical presuppositions inherited from Newtonian physics and enlightenment epistemology. Lawson fears that the economics profession faces declining prosperity due to its decreasing public credibility and the increasing annexation of its traditional ground of inquiry by other disciplines. Lawson's book attempts to revamp economic methodology in order to reverse these trends. This article examines the recent philosophical ideas informing Lawson's project, considers his critique of contemporary economics, and relates his ideas for reform to those of other economists.     

The Economics of Suicide,Revisited

Only a small fraction of suicide attempts are fatal. Nonfatal attempts might elicit resources and care from others, enhancing economic prospects for those who survive. I expand the standard utility-maximizing model of suicide to include a nontrivial probability of survival and the possibility that the utility function may be affected by the suicide attempt. This expanded model predicts that suicide attempts are more likely when future income may be positively affected by the attempt, conditional on survival. Data from the National Comorbidity Survey show that ex post, individuals who made a suicide attempt had higher incomes than peers who seriously considered suicide but who never made a suicide attempt. Moreover, those who reported making the most serious attempts experienced the largest subsequent effects on income.     

Measurement of Capital Flight: Methodology and Results for Sub‐Saharan African Countries*

Abstract: This paper presents the methodology for the computation of capital flight and reports new estimates of the magnitude and timing of capital flight from 33 sub‐Saharan African countries from 1970 to 2004. Our methodology calculates capital flight as the residual difference between inflows and outflows of foreign exchange recorded in the balance of payments, with corrections for the magnitude of external borrowing, trade misinvoicing, and unrecorded remittances. We find that total capital flight from these countries in this period amounted to $443 billion (in 2004 dollars). With imputed interest earnings, the accumulated stock of flight capital amounted to $640 billion. These numbers exceed these countries’ external debts, which in 2004 amounted to $193 billion, indicating that sub‐Saharan Africa is a net creditor to the rest of the world.     

The Quality of Smallholder Cloves in Maluku: The Local Response to Domestic Demand for a High-Quality Product 1

Indonesia's cloves meet higher quality Standards than most of her other agricultural commodilies. This paper presents the results of research on Ambon, Maluku, whose smallholder clove farming System is representative of the principal system used by Indonesien clove producers, in which cloves form part of a well-diversified agricultural portfolio. The paper examines the clove marketing system, the factors involved in clove quality, and the system of quality premia and penalties applied in the marketing of cloves. The largest buyers of cloves, the major kretek cigarette companies, demand high-quality produce, because of the highly competitive domestic market and their more recent attempts to penetrate the international market. These buyers transmit their preferences along the marketing chain through the well-defined incentive system, while poorer quality cloves are bought by smaller kretek producers. The result is a system in which high quality standards are maintained.     

群体选择与个体主义方法论

群体选择在经济学中运用的合法性长期受到质疑,许多学者认为它与个体主义方法是冲突的。通过研究群体选择理论的传统不足与现代发展,深入辨析个体主义方法论的实质内涵和拓展,本文尝试论证两者的可兼容性,从而理清群体选择在经济学运用中的方法论障碍。本文指出,群体选择的方法论与个体主义方法论是兼容的,它不仅能够解释利他个体的演化,也能够从新的视角解释社会制度的演化,进而还能够为个体与制度的共同演化提供解释框架。     

Debt relief and fiscal sustainability

In this paper I analyze the relationship between fiscal policy,aggregate public sector debt sustainability, and debt relief. I develop a methodology to compute the fiscal policy path that is compatible with aggregate debt sustainability in the post-HIPC era. The model explicitly considers the role of domestic debt and quantifies the extent to which future debt sustainability depends on the availability of concessional loans at subsidized interest rates. The working of the model is illustrated for the case of Nicaragua, a country that in 2002 had one of the highest net present value of public external debt to GDP ratios. JEL no. F3, F34, F35.     

Productivity,mechanization and skills: A test of the Hirschman hypothesis for Latin American industry

This paper attempts to test the paradoxical Hirschman hypothesis relating to the suitability of certain capital-intensive industries for less industrialized countries based on the ‘process-centred’ or ‘machine-paced’ nature of those industries which makes their productivity less dependent on the quality of local labour. Following extensive discussion of the methodology (e.g. problems of selection and specification of the variables explaining productivity differentials, and problems in specifying the appropriate variables to be explained), the author presents and analyses results for seven Latin American countries. These countries were chosen because of their more highly developed industrial structure, i.e. higher industrial value added per capita and a more diversified product mix, in order to provide a more severe test of the hypothesis. Although the results are not definitive, they seem to indicate that the industries which did better in relative productivity terms were those based on abundant local resources or of a traditional character on the whole; rather a reaffirmation of comparative advantage with little paradox.     

A REVIEW OF THE CONCEPT OF THE “DUAL ECONOMY”*

The primary object of this paper is to present a methodological study which is concerned with how to clarify and evaluate the characteristics of that social and economic structure which is called “dual economy” in today's developing countries. It attempts a critical review of the concepts developed by J. H. Boeke, J. van Gelderen, J. S. Furnivall, H. Frankel, H. Myint, G. Myrdal and C. Geertz, among those who have taken the view of “social dualism.” It concludes that the concept of a dual economy should be perceived in terms of “colonial social dualism” as a system; and that it is solely from this point of view that the nature and direction of economic development in the context of economic nationalism in developing countries can adequately be explained.     

Structural change in the Dutch trade with the baltic in the eighteenth century

Abstract

Affluence easily veils failure and cripples creativity. In the eighteenth century, the Dutch Republic probably enjoyed the world's highest national per capita income. The Republic was the first state to ascend beyond the modest pre-industrial income levels, interestingly enough without itself industrializing. Yet, economically the Republic stagnated visibly. Ships on the international routes increasingly passed Amsterdam by and trade — the old foundation of prosperity — declined in the midst of a general revival of North and West European commerce. The stagnation affected all walks of economic life and created a feeling of resignation that baffled many attempts at redress.¹ The fascination with the fate of the Dutch Republic in the eighteenth century arises in part from this juxtaposition of affluence and decay. Did structural change cause the decline of Dutch trade or was it precisely the want of structural adjustments that became fatal? There is a great deal of confusion in Dutch historiography on this issue. Johan de Vries — to start with the Nestor among the historians of the Dutch decline — speaks of ‘structural alterations in the trade’ that ultimately undermined the position     

Dispersion of engineers in a transitional society; Teknologins nytta

Abstract

The increasing interest shown in recent years by economic historians in the role of technology and technicians in industrial development has produced surprisingly few attempts to analyse technical phenomena within their social context, i.e. utilising the theories and methods of social science. These attempts include a group of Swedish projects under the heading ‘Technicians and Scientists in Swedish Industrialisation’ located at the History Institute ofUppsala University and financially supported by The Bank. of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. Rolf Torstendahl publishes in Dispersion of Engineers in a Transitional Society the results of those parts of the studies particularly concerned with the social mobility of Swedish engineers during the period before and especially during industrialisation. His other project report, Teknologins nytta, deals mainly with aspects of the political background to the growth of technicians' training during the decades before the industrial breakthrough. The publication of other reports by participants in the studies may be expected soon.     

DETERMINANTS OF SOUTH AFRICA‐US INTRA‐INDUSTRY TRADE IN SERVICES: A WILD BOOTSTRAP DYNAMIC PANEL DATA ANALYSIS1

The study attempts to empirically identify factors that determine South Africa–US intra‐industry trade (IIT) in selected services during the period 1994‐2002. The study utilises Liu‐Davidson‐Flachaire wild bootstrap, which is robust to heteroscedasticity and provides estimates of the degree of parameter bias. The empirical results, in principle, show that South Africa–US IIT in the selected services is determined by factors similar to goods‐based “North‐South” IIT studies. Specifically, differences in per capita income and differences in market size negatively affect IIT. The study also indicates that US foreign direct investment in South Africa positively contributes to the unaffiliated IIT in services.     

国外消费者混淆研究综述

混淆的研究源于商标权的保护,目前研究视角转到了消费者身上,成为西方消费者研究领域新的关注点,相关研究在国内还是空白。文章就西方学者对消费者混淆的研究进行了归纳总结：首先根据西方营销学者对于消费者混淆的不同认识,探讨其内涵,总结其分类;然后讨论影响消费者混淆的因素,总结消费者面对混淆时所采取的不同策略;最后,分析消费者混淆研究对于营销学者和管理人员的启示,提出未来优先的研究领域,指出未来的研究方向。