Confronting the culture of progress in the 21st century

Disconnected from the social and historical roots of technological progress, technology transfer is embraced on a global level as a tangible solution to the third-world development ‘problem’. Left under-scrutinized is the dehumanizing potential of using technological progress as a gauge for civilizational advancement. The increasing globalization of the link between progress and technology is demonstrated in the case of China, which has accelerated its modernization efforts since the late 1970s. This article examines the ideological influence of progress on third-world development planning and implementation, questioning the validity of accelerating modernization in the context of long-term sustainability. On one hand, alternative models are required for envisioning social and environmental sustainability; on the other hand, strategies for intervention are needed to overcome deep-seated ideological beliefs about progress. Education represents a key site for producing and shaping ideological beliefs, and a potential ‘weak point’ for intervention is suggested.     

Beyond medicine : Health challenges and strategies in the 21st century

The future of health involves much more than the future of medical care since the major factors affecting health are environmental, social and economic ones. Health has generally improved in the past century, but the continuation of this trend is threatened by population growth, urbanization environmental change, poverty, inequity, war, existing communicable and chronic diseases, and possible new ones. New policies and strategies emerging to deal with these challenges include the formulation of healthy public policy, investing in health, and the development of new structures and processes of governance. Integrated national studies focused on human well-being and environmental health are one means through which the futures field could contribute to the improvement of health in 21st century. Visioning workshops and other participatory futures activities are equally important, since they enable people and communities to take part in the definition and achievement of their preferred health futures.     

Payout policy in the 21st century

We survey 384 financial executives and conduct in-depth interviews with an additional 23 to determine the factors that drive dividend and share repurchase decisions. Our findings indicate that maintaining the dividend level is on par with investment decisions, while repurchases are made out of the residual cash flow after investment spending. Perceived stability of future earnings still affects dividend policy as in Lintner (1956. American Economic Review 46, 97–113). However, 50 years later, we find that the link between dividends and earnings has weakened. Many managers now favor repurchases because they are viewed as being more flexible than dividends and can be used in an attempt to time the equity market or to increase earnings per share. Executives believe that institutions are indifferent between dividends and repurchases and that payout policies have little impact on their investor clientele. In general, management views provide little support for agency, signaling, and clientele hypotheses of payout policy. Tax considerations play a secondary role.     

Fiscal multipliers in the 21st century

Fiscal multipliers appear to vary greatly over time and space. Based on VARs for a large number of countries, we document a strong correlation between wealth inequality and the magnitude of fiscal multipliers. In an attempt to account for this finding, we develop a life-cycle, overlapping-generations economy with uninsurable labor market risk. We calibrate our model to match key characteristics of a number of OECD economies, including the distribution of wages and wealth, social security, taxes, and government debt and study how a fiscal multiplier depends on various country characteristics. We find that the fiscal multiplier is highly sensitive to the fraction of the population who face binding credit constraints and also to the average wealth level in the economy. These findings together help us generate a cross-country pattern of multipliers that is quite similar to that in the data.     

Pacific science in the 21st century

‘Science’ is often implied to be something emanating from Western Europe or its derivatives. But the people of the 24 nations and territories of the Pacific Islands also want their unique scientific knowledge recognized and perpetuated. Politically the islands are divided into 24 nations and territories, and culturally their people speak about 1200 different languages—each with some differences of culture. This is much the greatest cultural fragmentation on earth. Each culture has, over thousands of years, experimented and discovered some unique principles and evolved some unique techniques. For example, some principles of Pacific navigation (for many centuries the world's most advanced) and techniques of vessel construction, are unknown elsewhere—even today. Some pharmaceutical remedies are unique, some items of marine and plant science are not known to ‘Western science’ and so on. It is to these that the term ‘Pacific science’ refers. This essay explores the potentials for Pacific science in the future, and for Pacific contributions to global knowledge.     

Medicare in the 21st century.

The authors provide an overview of the Medicare program in terms of how the current program operates, the current issues it faces that may shape possible options for reform, and the implications of these features and issues for employment-based health plans. Current issues include adoption of a premium support model, changes in the eligibility age for Medicare benefits, Medigap insurance, benefits covered and customer service.     

Peru in the 21st century : Challenges and possibilities

The Peruvian 21st century study, initially conceived in 1981 and still going on, is a large programme consisting of several interlinked projects. Simulations have been done on the future of 10 key national sectors, and these simulations have then been integrated to produce scenarios describing alternative feasible futures. At the same time, a group of desired scenarios has been constructed using personal interviews and a consultation process. There has been initial work on a third project examining key external factors affecting Peruvian development. Still to be undertaken are projects identifying specific development strategies and analysing the national planning process. Especially noteworthy products of the study are the user-friendly spreadsheet models, which make the feasible futures component of the study highly accessible to interested decision makers.     

Long waves and geography in the 21st century

Intersecting macrohistorical rhythms provide insights into the processes that will guide geographical change in the first half of the next century. The repetition of long-wave rhythms provides a key to what lies 25 and 50 years ahead, helping us to identify the patterns, determine the processes, and work out their logical consequences. To understand this it is necessary to clarify the concepts of ‘techno-economic systems’ and ‘long waves of prices’ and their interrelationships in ‘growth logistics’. A second key to the next half-century is provided by the baby boom-baby bust generational rhythms that interlock with long waves and growth logistics at double the frequency. Together, the two keys not only provide a macrohistorical framework for unraveling the course of economic and social history; they provide a basis for geographical anticipations.     

Speculations about geopolitics in the late 21st century

Speculations are made about the global power balance in the next century. The time frame is 50–100 years and the driving forces are economic, technological, and natural resource availability. It is believed that three dominant coalitions will emerge: a Western hemisphere maritime grouping led by the US and including the UK; a European grouping dominated by France and Germany; and an East and South Asia grouping led by Japan and including India. The underlying motivation for these alignments is the postulated failure of the World Trade Organization to achieve long-term global free trade. A short-term policy recommendation to upgrade the buying power of Western hemisphere consumer populations is developed from the analysis.     

Expansion and consolidation of bancassurance in the 21st century

Bancassurance has received much attention from both researchers and policymakers, as it is a major step towards the creation of universal financial markets in the 21st century which are no longer segregated based on industry operations. This study is the first comprehensive study to identify and measure the determinants of bancassurance using a sample of firms from 28 developed and developing countries. Our results complement the existing literature on bancassurance demand, insurance demand, and international insurance services, while also providing additional insight in key areas. The empirical results, based on panel analysis, indicate that reduction in company risk, the size of the company, reductions in company costs and increases in company revenues, the size of the national banking industry, the level of financial deregulation within a country, and the national inflation rate all play significant roles as determinants of bancassurance.     

A vision for communities in the 21st century: back to the future

Globalization, in its capitalistic and popular cultural form, is impacting communities around the world. This paper uses two models to show how globalization actually arose several millennia ago and how the process has greatly accelerated in recent times. One model describes the ‘information technology system’ and the second is James Miller’s living systems model. Using these models as a foundation, this paper argues that globalization can severely weaken communities and is antithetical to future-oriented perspectives. If current globalization trends continue unabated, globalization may result in a future world characterized by satiated consumers whose every desire is met by a totally efficient but completely impersonal economic system. In this world, people do not depend directly upon face-to-face interaction for their economic well being. Because of this, community and even culture collapses. Contrasted to this soulless world, it is argued that a new future could evolve where concern about the future replaces individualistic and market-oriented concerns as the prime motivator of public policy. This future has a good probability of occurring since current populations are being socialized to understand the broad concept of globalization. Additionally, new technologies will allow the development of small, mostly self-sufficient communities which will facilitate the re-emergence of community life and obligations.     

Poland's development dilemmas on the verge of the 21st century

This article briefly summarizes a prognostic Report, ‘Towards modern Poland—development dilemmas on the verge of the 21st century’ of the Poland 2000 Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences. It further comments on the changes of perspective that have occurred since the Report was written. The study consisted of the development and analysis of three scenarios of socioeconomic development based on societal aspirations. Key drivers influencing these scenarios and their likelihood are discussed here.     

National 21st century studies : Model for an effective approach

National 21st century studies are being carried out in most parts of the world today and are gaining considerable attention. These studies share certain key characteristics that set them apart from many future studies, yet they also exhibit quite a variety of differences, including ones in sectoral coverage, methodology, and purpose. The significance of these variations is discussed in this article, which also outlines, on the basis of the studies to date, a model for an effective national 21st century study.     

Transforming markets in the 21st century: Socially responsible investing as a tool

The evolution of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) and its current discourse is premised on markets as a positive and creative means for allocation of resources. It is also founded on the view that the market mechanism is not a law of physics but instead a human-construct, which can be molded and tweaked to work in different ways. Thus SRI is of interest even to those who have a sharp critique of the prevailing form of market driven globalization but are keen to deploy varied means to contain its socially and environmentally destructive trends. SRI is merely one-dimension of the unfolding process of altering the operating system of Markets-so that externalities are more clearly accounted for and paid for, by both producers and consumers. This could potentially encourage more realistic pricing of both natural resources and nature's sinks, thus making way for sustainable prosperity.     

Fusion of science and culture key to the 21st century

This essay takes as its premise that long-term human survival requires development of a new alliance between science and culture to the point of fusion. Geopolitical rupture with the past and cultural diversity will shape the norms and values underlying future development of science and technology, with a shift occuring from previous science and technology development models. Science will thus require new models of cultural communication, based on reciprocal relations among all humanity without the hegemony of western values, in order that humanity can live peacefully with itself and the environment.     

Increased market response to earnings announcements in the 21st century: An Empirical Investigation

We examine the role of concurrent information in the striking increase in investor response to earnings announcements from 2001 to 2016, as measured by return variability and volume following Beaver (1968). We find management guidance, analyst forecasts, and disaggregated financial statement line items are more frequently bundled with earnings announcements, and each of these items explains part of the increase in market response. Furthermore, collectively, these concurrent information releases explain a substantial fraction of the increase in market response to earnings announcements since 2001. This is in contrast to the decline in market response to management guidance issued separately from earnings and the much smaller increase in market response to analyst forecasts issued separately from earnings over this time. The findings indicate that information arrival at earnings announcement dates has increased significantly over the past two decades, and that key components of this are increased disclosures by management of guidance and financial statement line items and forecasts by analysts.