Local authority assistance to ethnic minority owned small firms: Some recent survey evidence from Britain

This article reports the results of a questionnaire survey of assistance to ethnic minority businesses by United Kingdom local authorities with large ethnic minority populations. The majority of respondents had no special provision for ethnic minorities. A variety of initiatives were found in the third of authorities who had any provision at all; a small number of authorities emerged as having considerably more experience and more initiatives than others.     

Education,society and development: Some main themes and suggested strategies for international assistance

The evidence of recent years demonstrates clearly that the education of large numbers of people will not alone create jobs for them. This failure of education to generate employment is in our view but an example of a wider phenomenon, namely that educational systems are to a large extent determined by the societies they must serve and cannot be expected to reshape those societies in fundamental ways. The relationships between education and employment in developing nations should be viewed in this wider context.     

Constraints in Access to and Demand for Rural Credit: Evidence from Uganda

Abstract: Like in most developing countries, Uganda's financial sector is largely underdeveloped and concentrated in urban areas, leaving the majority of the agricultural producers in the rural population with no access. However, agriculture forms a significant part of the lives of the rural households, who constitute about 85 per cent of the population. This study uses the Uganda household surveys conducted in 1992/93 and 1999/2000 to shed some light on access to, and the characteristics of demand for credit among the rural population. We employ the probit, tobit and multinomial logit model estimations and we analyse demand for credit and find that Uganda's credit market is highly segmented. The rural peasant producers are largely served by relatives/friends and self‐help credit associations and their loan applications are less likely to succeed, and of those that do, smaller loans are granted. The educated and the young are more likely to demand credit while women are less likely to, and to apply for smaller loans. Therefore, while government's agricultural modernization policy considers credit as an important input to its success and as the government plans to roll out the ‘wealth‐for‐all’ programme, more needs to be done to get credit to the sector and to ensure that it can be usefully utilized. Programmes to promote skills and vocational training to enhance production and training in appropriate use of credit are also needed.     

Uganda: Constraints on Economic Growth

Abstract: This paper utilizes a three-gap model to evaluate the three macroeconomic constraints, domestic saving, foreign exchange and public sector resource availability, faced by Uganda as it attempts to rehabilitate and reconstruct its war-shattered economy. Using 1987 as a base year, the resulting three-gap equations demonstrate a sharp trade off between investment (economic growth) and capacity utilization under foreign exchange constraint. The model is simulated over the period 1988–92–a period closely corresponds to the Uganda's structural adjustment facility program as well as for the period 1993–97. The size of the foreign exchange gap, $634 and $545 per year during the first and second five years period, illustrates quite vividly the centrality of the foreign exchange constraint facing the Ugandan economy. The results also show that fiscal balances are not going to be restored before 1993.     

英国对苏丹殖民政策:特点与影响

英国统治苏丹半个多世纪,实行的一系列政策给苏丹带来深远影响。经济上重北轻南的政策造成中心地区与边缘地区的对立,而重农抑工则使苏丹经济严重依赖农业。政治上扶持宗教领袖和部落领导人,打击新兴力量,使苏丹保守力量始终占据主导地位。保守力量与英国人撤离时为苏丹引进的议会民主制相互结合,这使苏丹形成政党宗教化、宗教政党化的局面。基于南北差异实行的分而治之政策强化了南北文化特色,埋下了苏丹南北分裂的种子。     

县级图书馆文化帮扶策略探析——以柳州市图书馆为例

在新的历史时期,随着我国科学技术与信息技术的快速发展,我国多地区都呈现出多元化的发展。对口帮扶是我国一项新的扶贫政策,各级图书馆积极响应国家的号召,参与到公共文化服务体系建设中去,充分体现其社会化服务功能。文章以柳州市图书馆为例,对县级图书馆存在的问题以及帮扶的策略进行具体分析与研究,从而推进公共文化体系的良好建设。     

机构投资者角色发凡:2004～2007年部分上市公司样本

随着机构投资者的壮大,机构投资者在公司治理是扮演何种角色已成为我国制定相关政策的基础。利用2004～2007年沪深两市机构持股的上市公司为样本进行的实证研究发现,越高比例的机构持股及长线机构有助于提升公司业绩,表现为投资者角色;与预期相反,短线机构也表现为投资者角色。进一步的研究发现,机构表现出投机者或投资者角色,主要由其在公司的持股比例决定。现阶段应积极推进公司持股的机构化和机构持股的长期化。     

反贫困语境下面向农村地区的图书馆信息援助研究

文章介绍了反贫困与信息贫困、信息援助的关系,针对农村地区的信息贫困问题,分析了反贫困语境下图书馆面向农村地区开展信息援助的必要性,通过研究农村地区信息贫困的成因及其影响,最后提出了在反贫困语境下图书馆面向农村地区提供信息援助的途径。     

Currency Unions: Some Lessons from the Euro-Zone

Whilst there are many sizeable benefits from currency union, the main disadvantage is often the difficulty of adjusting to an asymmetric shock. Such adjustment is easier when the separate countries (regions) in such a union have flexible labour markets, and when there is a federal fiscal system to ease the adjustment process. The euro-zone has neither. We show that the trends in relative unit labour costs have in several recent cases been worsening relative competitiveness, thereby putting the euro-zone under greater centrifugal pressure. Nevertheless the costs of ‘exit’ are so high that it would only probably occur as a consequence of political mis-calculation.

A note on closing the windows: Some lessons from queuing theory

Consider two departments of a government each serving customers of a particular type. We explore conditions under which a reorganization leading to both departments serving both types of customers leads to an enhancement of "efficiency" defined in terms of the expected queue size in a stochstic equilibrium.     

法国投资部主席：为中国企业量身定做投资建议书

中国是华伟立非常熟悉的国家。1993～2001年,他曾作为法国领事馆经济处主任在香港及台北两地任职。此次,法国投资部主席华伟立先生到访北京的任务是,推介法国与德国联袂打造的“欧洲吸引力排行榜”,向中国投资者推介欧洲,推介法国。     

Managing the Indonesian economy: Some lessons from the past

This paper draws some tentative lessons for the management of Indonesia's economy from recent political–economic history. After a brief review of the economy under the present government, the paper then puts the picture in the longer term perspective of post-independence Indonesia. Some lessons are then drawn. They include the need to maintain awareness of the close connection between economics and politics, constant vigilance about economic stability and the budget, a solid economic team, a coherent overall strategy and a focus on institutions and governance.     

Constraints to the economic development of the Republic of Transkei

A number of general constraints to the economic development of less developed countries are also to be found in Transkei. They include political fragility, conflict between traditionalism and modernization, shortage of skilled manpower, lack of clearly defined economic development strategies, inappropriate economic policies, and a shortage of capital.

In addition, there are constraints particular to Transkei's development, such as recent socio‐political developments in South Africa, the absence of an organizational structure to facilitate the formulation of relevant policies, a decline in the inflow of private sector investment, and a shortage of technical and managerial expertise. The author proposes a number of principles to maximize manpower productivity in Transkei.     

Public assistance and job search behavior of the rural poor-evidence from the mississippi delta

This study explores whether prolonged welfare experience reduces the job search commitment of the unemployed. More specifically, an attempt is made to determine whether participation in a government assistance program induces the unemployed to prolong their job search activities, either through reduced search effort or by asking a higher reservation (acceptance) wage. The data were obtained from a semistructured interview with 120 food stamp recipients participating in a pilot workfare project in Coahoma County, Mississippi. The interview questionnaire was designed to elicit the degree to which there was a relationship between welfare use and commitment to job search activities. The most important finding of the study was that in at least one economically depressed community, extended participation in a public assistance program did not appear to have a significant impact on the job search behavior of the unemployed. However, as important as this finding is, the small size of the sample and the uniqueness of the county (77 percent black) limit the applicability of the results to other rural communities across the nation. Therefore, there is a need to replicate and expand the study, utilizing a much larger sample representing a cross section of the counties in Mississippi and elsewhere in the United States.     

Compensation and the abandoned property of the 1948 Palestinian refugees: Assessment and implications

This paper extends the analysis of “Agricultural Property and the 1948 Palestinian Refugees: Assessing the Loss” [Lewis, F.D., 1996. Agricultural Property and the 1948 Palestinian Refugees: Assessing the Loss, Explorations in Economic History 33, 169-194] to non-agricultural property. The urban property abandoned by refugees is valued on the basis of transfer prices, tax payable, and inferences about rent. The estimated value of the property is much higher than was reported by the United Nations Conciliation Commission in 1951. Still the total implied by this paper and [Lewis, 1996] is such that if Israel were to pay the overall loss as compensation, the transfers are unlikely to have a serious impact on its economy.