Botswana's Macroeconomic Management of Its Mineral-Based Growth: It Used Mining Revenues for Development and Services but Must Now Broaden the Beneficiaries

Abstract . The economic performance and the political history of Botswana during 1974-84 contrasted significantly with the experience of virtually every other African country. The South African republic, immediately north of the Republic of South Africa, achieved steady real economic growth with improved social services and provision for its people's basic needs. This was achieved in spite of world recession and drought because its mineral wealth Was reserved for the people and mining companies had to pay for the privilege of extracting that wealth through a tax program limited to appropriating its surplus, while assuring the investors and entrepreneurs an adequate long-term return on capital and enterprise. But sound macroeconomic policies failed to provide even reasonably equitable benefits for the majority of the people. Sound micropolicies are needed to widen access to employment and earned income and to asset accumulation.     

Assessment of Interjudge Reliability in the Open-Ended Questions Coding Process

In the process of coding open-ended questions, the evaluation of interjudge reliability is a critical issue. In this paper, using real data, the behavior of three coefficients of reliability among coders, Cohen’s K, Krippendorff’s α and Perreault and Leigh’s I _r are patterned, in terms of the number of judges involved and the categories of answer defined. The outcome underlines the importance of both variables in the valuations of interjudge reliability, as well as the higher adequacy of Perreault and Leigh’s I _r and Krippendorff’s α for marketing and opinion research.     

Henry George's Theory of State's Agenda: The Origins of His Ideas on Economic Policy in Adam Smith's Moral Theory

Abstract . The tension between Henry George's reformism and his laissezfaire liberalism was resolved through a system of natural liberty George derived from the relation between Adam Smith's ethics and economics. Crucial for George's nonutilitarian philosophy of government was the interdependence between the moral sense (sympathy) and the prevailing socioeconomic order. In the appropriate institutional environment, the role of the government was diminished since the pervasive moral sense insured justice by monitoring the individual's pursuit of economic self-interest. In contrast, a defective socio economic order required government intervention. For example, land monopoly and the maldistribution of income undermined the role of sympathy, promoted excessive self interest and the breakdown of the system of natural liberty. Government action through the single tax eliminated the “fear of want,” restored an operative moral sense and guaranteed justice in society. Under these conditions, government can provide additional services for a growing society without being susceptible to “corrupt and tyrannous” behavior.     

Exact local Whittle estimation of fractionally cointegrated systems

Semiparametric estimation of a bivariate fractionally cointegrated system is considered. We propose a two-step procedure that accommodates both (asymptotically) stationary (δ<1/2)$(\delta <1/2)$ and nonstationary (δ≥1/2)$(\delta \ge 1/2)$ stochastic trend and/or equilibrium error. A tapered version of the local Whittle estimator of Robinson (2008) is used as the first-stage estimator, and the second-stage estimator employs the exact local Whittle approach of Shimotsu and Phillips (2005). The consistency and asymptotic distribution of the two-step estimator are derived. The estimator of the memory parameters has the same Gaussian asymptotic distribution in both the stationary and the nonstationary case. The convergence rate and the asymptotic distribution of the estimator of the cointegrating vector are affected by the difference between the memory parameters. Further, the estimator has a Gaussian asymptotic distribution when the difference between the memory parameters is less than 1/2.     

Some Determinants of Property Crime: Economic Factors Influence Criminal Behavior But Cannot Completely Explain the Syndrome

Abstract . An empirical analysis of the property crimes, robbery, burglary and larceny, is presented for all 120 counties in Kentucky. While this analysis is based on an economic model of crime, certain sociological and legal variables are included as well in the system of equations. Overall, the empirical results support prior studies’findings with the exception that a quadratic relationship is found to exist between urbanization and each of the property crimes. Furthermore, neither the economic nor the non economic influences measured appear more important for affecting crime rates. Specifically, results indicate that the level of poverty, the degree of tourism, the presence of police, the unemployment rate and the apprehension rate all affect property crimes. In contrast, the length of sentence, the degree of industrialization, the level of public assistance payments and the proportion of youth in the county have no affect on property crime rates in these areas.     

Henry George and His Philosophy: He Sought Equality of Opportunity to Use the Earth's Resources as Well as the End of Land Monopoly

Abstract . The George scholars today appear to be interesting the academic community in re-evaluating Henry George and his ideas. George, the 19th century American economist and social philosopher, dedicated himself to ending poverty by giving everyone equal access to the earth and its resources. He believed that land monopoly could be ended by taking the economic rent of all land and natural resources to meet the costs of government in lieu of taxes on labor and capital. George's writings revived interest in the ethos of the early settlers a time when sight was being lost of Pioneer America's contribution to the world's march toward freedom.     

Irrational Expectations, Unclearing Markets and a Business Cycle That Won't Go Away: The Recent School of New Classical Economists Comes a Cropper on Basic Economic Facts

Abstract . The assumptions and conclusions of New Classical Macroeconomics (NCM) are critically examined. NCM grew out of the alleged failure of the Keynesian school to deal with the problems of stagflation of the 1970s. The two fundamental ideas of the NCM are the rational expectations hypothesis and the theory of instantaneous market clearing. According to the NCM, fiscal and monetary policies will achieve desired results if they are unanticipated. Business cycles are thought to be results of imperfect information on the part of rational agents (people). The NCM has been severely criticized by such prominent economists as Arrow, Tobin and Thurow.     

Biases,variances and covariances of raking ratio estimators for marginal and cell totals and averages of observed characteristics

Summary On the basis of a simple random sample from a population, on which a cross-classification is defined with known marginal frequenciesN _i. andN _.j , one wishes to estimate the cell frequenciesN _ij , as well as cell totalsY _ij , marginal totalsY _i. andY _.j , and the grand totalY for characteristics measured on the units. Various authors have discussed so-called raking ratio estimators, which are built up from the estimated cell values by addition. They have given the bias and variance of this estimator ofY. This paper derives biases, variances and covariances for the corresponding estimators of the cell and marginal totals and of the corresponding marginal averages.     

Ready or Not? Homosexuality,Unit Cohesion,and Military Readiness

The U.S. military argues that homosexuals are unfit for service because their presence compromises military readiness and unit cohesion. Based on this assumption, it continues to discharge homosexuals at an average rate of approximately 925 per year. On the other hand, the extant research suggests that homosexuals are no more disruptive to military life than their heterosexual counterparts. By integrating the legal and scientific literature, this paper examines the soundness of the military’s assumptions and aims to improve our understanding of the issues involved. Within this context, the efficacy of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” policy and whether it is in the best interest of the military and its soldiers and sailors is discussed.

Henry George and Europe: As Dissident Economist and Path-breaking Philosopher, He was a Catalyst for British Social Reform

Abstract . Henry George's influence was greater in the United Kingdom than in the United States. The 80s and 90s there were particularly favorable for the reception of his revolutionary ideas. Though, thanks to such thinkers as Alfred Russell Wallace and James and John Stuart Mill, a land reform movement already existed, its sudden rise to national significance was due to George. George's writing and speaking skills and his dedication moved many serious citizens into the political Left and heavily influenced men and women who became leaders of British non-Marxian socialism, at the formation and consolidation of their movement. While George's followers broke with both the Wallace and socialist movements, George's rhetorical talents awakened the broad circles of thinking people to a consciousness of the full range of the social question.     

Nonlinear Thermodynamics and Social Science Modeling: Fad Cycles, Cultural Development and Identificational Slips

The paper argues that the application of nonlinear dynamics borrowed from thermodynamics for the study of the evolution of institutions amounts to an identificational slip. While the paper welcomes the importation of techniques from the natural sciences, thermodynamic feedback is simply an inappropriate technique for the study of evolutionary change. Thermodynamic feedback is only appropriate for the study of social dynamics like mob behavior, stock market gyrations, and fad cycles. One should rather appeal to the evolution of species-as recorded by change of gene frequency and phenotypic traits—as the appropriate metaphor for the study of evolution of culture—as manifested by change of rules and principles and their consequent order.     

Core and competitive equilibria of a coalitional exchange economy with infinite time horizon

The core and competitive equilibria of a large exchange economy on the commodity space ?^∞${?}^{\infty }$ will be discussed. We define the economy as a measure on the space of consumers’ characteristics following Hart and Kohlberg (1974), and prove the existence of competitive equilibria and their equivalence with the core without assuming the convexity of preferences.     

Estimation in the first-order moving average model through the finite autoregressive approximation: Some asymptotic results

To estimate α in the model y_t = u_t+αu_t?1, we consider a proposal by Durbin (Biometrika, 1969). It consists in fitting an autoregression of order k to the data, and deriving from there an estimate α^. The probability limit and the variance of the limiting normal distribution of α^ are presented and discussed in detail, when the sample size T → ∞, but k remains fixed. The differences between the resulting values and those corresponding to the maximum likelihood estimator are exponentially decreasing functions of k. Several modifications of the estimator are discussed and found consistent, but asymptotically inefficient.     

Combining information for prediction in linear regression

This article deals with the prediction problem in linear regression where the measurements are obtained using k different devices or collected from k different independent sources. For the case of k=2, a Graybill-Deal type combined estimtor for the regression parameters is shown to dominate the individual least squares estimators under the covariance criterion. Two predictors ŷ _c and ŷ _p are proposed. ŷ _c is based on a combined estimator of the regression coefficient vector, and ŷ _p is obtained by combining the individual predictors from different models. Prediction mean square errors of both predictors are derived. It is shown that the predictor ŷ _p is better than the individual predictors for k≥2 and the predictor ŷ _c is better than the individual predictors for k=2. Numerical comparison between ŷ _c and ŷ _p shows that the former is superior to the latter for the case k=2.     

Performance Measures in Dose-Finding Experiments

In the first phase of pharmaceutical development, and assuming that the probability of positive response increases with dose, the main statistical goal is to estimate a percentile of the dose–response function for a given target value $\mathrm{\Gamma }$. We compare the Maximum Likelihood and centred isotonic regression estimators of the target dose and we discuss several performance criteria to assess inferential precision, the amount of toxicity exposure and the trade-off between them for a set of some exemplary adaptive designs. We compare these designs using graphical tools. Several scenarios are considered using simulation, including the use of several start-up rules, the change of slope of the dose-toxicity function at the target dose and also different theoretical models, as logistic, normal or skew-normal distribution functions.     

The impact of public regulation on housing quality and on structural changes

This paper represents a theoretical investigation of profit maximizing behavior of a landlord under rent control. The situation envisioned is one that the landlord owns, free and clear, either two housing units ready to merge or one large one ready to convert into two small ones; in each case the units are already in place, such that capital costs are sunk and treated as bygones. Each unit has a technology of production of housing services with a fixed input of quantity of space (shelter) and a variable input of quality, that is affected by physical ageing (non-controllable) and by maintenance (controllable). At starting time t₀, we have a state of quality and a historical state of initial quality Q?_i, at the time the building was built, with the implicit constraint that Q_i(t) < Q?_i, for all t> t₀. The analysis addresses the general question of housing structural changes—conversion or merger—and how these changes are being accelerated under the threat of rent control.     

Criterion-robust optimal product designs for discrimination between nested response surface models

Consider the problem of discriminating between two rival response surface models and estimating parameters in the identified model. To construct designs serving for both model discrimination and parameter estimation, the M _γ-optimality criterion, which puts weight γ (0≤γ≤1) for model discrimination and 1 − γ for parameter estimation, is adopted. The corresponding M _γ-optimal product design is explicitly derived in terms of canonical moments. With the application of the maximin principle on the M _γ-efficiency of any M _γ'-optimal product design, a criterion-robust optimal product design is proposed.     

Hypothesis testing and parameter estimation based onM-statistics ink samples with unequal variances

Summary Ink samples with unequal variances,M-tests for homogeneity ofk location parameters are proposed. The asymptoticχ ²-distributions of the test statistics and the robustness of the tests are investigated. NextM-estimators (ME’s) of parameters are discussed. Furthermore positive-part shrinkage versions (PSME’s) of theM-estimators for the location parameters are considered along with modified James-Stein estimation rule. In asymptotic distributional risks based on a special feasible loss, it is shown that the PSME’s dominate the ME’s, and preliminary test and shrinkageM-versions fork≧4.     

Explaining the American Dream: Telling Chinese Academics What'Liberty and Justice For All'Means Taxes Even an Eager Audience

Abstract . For more than a generation, contemporary mainland Chinese have lived under first a military dictatorship and now a political party dictatorship. How to explain to an eager Chinese academic audience what the American dream of ‘liberty and justice for all’—realized only in part in some areas but approached progressively nearer in others—really means? The U.S. has predominantly a capitalist system but its people are committed to equality of opportunity. It tempers ‘rugged individualism’ by concern for the poor, the handicapped and the unfortunate. It has many serious economic, social and cultural problems but its citizens, drawn from most of the peoples of the world—not the special interest groups trying to benefit at the expense of others—are determined to solve them equitably and rationally. The trade and budget deficits are related to government instrumentalities.