Supply,Factor Shares and Inflation Persistence: Re‐examining Euro‐area New‐Keynesian Phillips Curves*

Using euro‐area data, we re‐examine the empirical success of New‐Keynesian Phillips curves (NKPCs). We re‐estimate with a suitably specified optimizing supply side (which attempts to treat non‐stationarity in factor income shares and mark‐ups) that allows us to derive estimates of technology parameters, marginal costs and ‘price gaps’. Our resulting estimates of the euro‐area NKPCs are robust, provide reasonable estimates for fixed‐price durations and discount rates and embody plausible dynamic properties. Our method for identifying the underlying determinants of NKPCs has general applicability to a wide set of countries as well as of use for sectoral studies.     

Re‐activating lapsed donors: a case study

This paper discusses Sight Savers International's experience of using the telephone to re‐activate lapsed donors. The paper identifies that lapsed re‐activation should be an important part of any donor recruitment and development strategy. It compares the success of telemarketing to lapsed and active supporters, in the process raising questions about the validity of such distinctions as far as the donors themselves are concerned. Copyright © 2000 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Neither Romance Nor Regulation: Re‐evaluating Community

As the realm of the community has grown increasingly important in the contemporary political economy, the theoretical debates surrounding community have also grown in importance and volume. Too often this literature has been either celebratory or dismissive; either romanticizing the concept and thereby elevating it to primary rank as the focal point of societal initiatives, or objecting to its regulated limits and contradictions and thereby dismissing its importance and political utility. There are important contributions being made by both those who dismiss community and those who celebrate it. But for those interested in understanding the potential for emancipatory social change in the contemporary political economy of neoliberalism there are also severe limitations imposed by these perspectives. After critiquing these literatures and debates, we put forward an understanding of community that is neither dismissive nor celebratory, but instead argues that communities need to be understood as simultaneously products of both their larger, and largely external, contexts, and the practices, organizations and relations that take place within them. Thus, communities, because of their central place in capitalist political economies, can be vital arenas for social change. But they are also arenas that are constrained in their capacities to host such efforts.     

Urban Symbolic Violence Re‐Made: Religion,Politics and Spatial Struggles in Istanbul

The symbolic and physical map of Istanbul has undergone dramatic shifts over the past four decades. Squatters—the persistent underdogs in this huge metropolis—have mounted an attack against established economic and cultural hierarchies. This challenge has transformed the structures of symbolic violence through the production of an alternative urban space (contentious neighborhoods and districts, teahouses, innovative district and street layouts, and ‘Islamic’ internal and external architecture). In the process, the meanings of urbanity and provinciality, of secularity and Islam, have been altered—and stigma, along with urban rent, has been systematically redistributed (although redistribution has been far from egalitarian). The dominant sectors ultimately absorbed the attack: squatters remained subordinated, but the terms of subordination have changed. A synthesis of Bourdieu and (a geographically revised) Gramsci sheds light on this process of challenge and absorption in and through urban space.     

Post‐Reunification Restructuring and Corporate Re‐bundling in the Bitterfeld‐Wolfen Chemical Industry,East Germany

While earlier research has shown that regional restructuring after reunification has led to broad de‐industrialization processes in eastern Germany's chemical industry, this article focuses on how re‐bundling processes at the corporate level have stimulated adjustments to the changing economic and political environment leading to a renewed regional development trajectory. The analysis is based on a conceptualization that assesses diachronic processes of rupture and re‐bundling by applying a bottom‐up perspective of how corporate adjustments and restructuring processes generate re‐bundling types that manifest themselves in broader regional re‐bundling scenarios. The empirical analysis focuses on a qualitative case study of Bitterfeld‐Wolfen, the eastern region with the largest chemical industry. The research provides evidence that, although new firm formation has remained weak and acquisitions of chemical multinationals have generated structures only tenuously embedded in the regional economy, modernization and re‐bundling process have contributed to a renewed, smaller yet stable, regional chemical industry. The analysis further shows that the associated processes depended on the roles of individual industrial leaders in the region, who acted as network builders, mobilized joint action and stimulated the development of a collective regional spirit.     

Currency Unions and Trade: A PPML Re‐assessment with High‐dimensional Fixed Effects

Recent work on the effects of currency unions (CUs) on trade stresses the importance of using many countries and years in order to obtain reliable estimates. However, for large samples, computational issues associated with the three‐way (exporter‐time, importer‐time, and country pair) fixed effects currently recommended in the gravity literature have heretofore limited the choice of estimator, leaving an important methodological gap. To address this gap, we introduce an iterative poisson pseudo‐maximum likelihood (PPML) estimation procedure that facilitates the inclusion of these fixed effects for large data sets and also allows for correlated errors across countries and time. When applied to a comprehensive sample with more than 200 countries trading over 65 years, these innovations flip the conclusions of an otherwise rigorously specified linear model. Most importantly, our estimates for both the overall CU effect and the Euro effect specifically are economically small and statistically insignificant. We also document that linear and PPML estimates of the Euro effect increasingly diverge as the sample size grows.     

Re‐reading Castells: Indifference or Irrelevance Twenty Years On?

This essay considers the relevance of The City and the Grassroots to contemporary debates within critical urban analysis. It argues that the book addresses many of the same empirical topics as more recent scholarship, but that shifts in the kinds of questions asked about those topics may make the book seem less relevant to contemporary debates. In particular, Castells’ attempt to abstract from local experience to understand the process of political and social change in something specifically ‘urban’ may be at odds with the goals of contemporary research and of researchers outside Europe, many of whom attempt to provide a differentiated analysis attuned to context and the positionality of agents within social movements. So, while the book makes important contributions to theoretical and empirical arguments because of its deep and rich comparative analysis, intellectual debates and approaches over the past 20 years may have shifted focus.     

The Atlanta Experience Re‐examined: The Link Between Agenda and Regime Change

In recent years, Atlanta appears unable to move from diffuse problem recognition to the framing of a broad program of action, despite major problems associated with a high level of poverty. With its exceptionally fragmented structure of local government, a tradition of business wariness of a strong governmental sector, and continued reliance on personal and informal collaboration, the city has failed to put together a plan to address the city's social‐investment needs. Atlanta's once‐vaunted biracial coalition shows signs of a declining ability to adapt to emergent issues and frame purposes accordingly. Récemment, Atlanta s'est révélée incapable de passer de la reconnaissance d'un problème plus ou moins identifiéà la conception d'un programme d'action d'envergure, malgré d'énormes difficultés liées à un niveau de pauvretéélevé. Compte tenu de la structure exceptionnellement fragmentée de son autorité locale, d'une tradition de défiance des milieux d'affaires à l'égard d'un puissant secteur public local, ainsi que d'une confiance persistante dans une collaboration personnelle informelle, la ville n'a pas réussi à mettre sur pied un plan capable de répondre aux besoins locaux en matière d'investissement social. La coalition biraciale d'Atlanta, autrefois si célèbre, montre des signes de défaillance quand il s'agit de s'adapter aux problèmes émergents et de définir des objectifs en conséquence.     

Between Institutional Learning and Re‐legitimization: Italian Mayors in the Unending Reform

Direct election of the mayor, introduced in Italy in 1993 as a result of anti‐party attitudes and ‘modernization’, is one aspect of the broad redefinition of local authorities which recently culminated in an ambiguous revision of the constitutional text aimed to promote vertical subsidiarity. The impact of such a profound revision of the mayor's role is under debate. Beyond the radical changes in party labels and systems, a stronger territorial differentiation in the pattern of recruitment, a slight positive discrimination in favour of marginal categories in re‐election — possible forerunners of a deeper transformation — and the dominant social profile of current mayors (gender, age, education, work experiences, party training), it is not very different from that of their colleagues of 30 years ago. Their new role marks, nevertheless, significant progress towards greater accountability, activism and ambition among mayors, which is related to their increasing detachment from party politics and to an increased weakness of the other participants in local democracy. But such an excessive individualization of power and visibility in Italian local authorities threatens to reduce the possible positive impact of the reform on the efficiency of policy‐making and legitimization of local politics. L'élection du maire au suffrage direct, mise en place en 1993 en Italie suite à une ‘modernisation’ et à des attitudes anti‐partis, constitue l'une des facettes de la vaste redéfinition des autorités locales, laquelle a récemment menéà une révision ambiguë du texte constitutionnel visant à promouvoir la subsidiarité verticale. L'impact d'une telle refonte du rôle du maire est l'objet de discussions. Malgré les changements radicaux dans les étiquettes et systèmes des partis, un renforcement de la différentiation territoriale dans le schéma de recrutement, une légère tendance anti‐discriminatoire en faveur des catégories marginales lors des réélections (présageant peut‐être une transformation plus profonde), et le profil social dominant des maires actuels (sexe, âge, instruction, expérience professionnelle, formation par le parti), leur rôle n'est pas très différent de celui de leurs prédécesseurs d'il y a 30 ans. La formule nouvelle présente néanmoins une importante avancée vers une responsabilité, un activisme et une ambition plus marqués des maires, évolution liée à leur désintérêt croissant pour la politique des partis, ainsi qu'à un affaiblissement des autres participants à la démocratie locale. Toutefois, cette individualisation excessive du pouvoir et de la visibilité au niveau des autorités locales italiennes menace d'atténuer la possible incidence positive de la réforme sur l'efficacité des décisions de politique publique et la légitimation des politiques locales.     

The Relationship between Unemployment Benefits and Re‐employment Probabilities: Evidence from Spain*

We provide the first Spanish evidence about the effects on re‐employment probabilities of variations in benefit levels and time‐to‐exhaustion. Increases in unemployment insurance (UI) benefit levels had a small disincentive effect on the re‐employment hazard on average. Around this average, there were larger disincentive effects for men with elapsed durations between 4 and 18 months, whereas for men unemployed longer than 18 months, or for men resident in the south, the effect was negligible. Re‐employment hazards increased when UI exhaustion was imminent, but the change was small. Extensions to unemployment assistance eligibility in 1989 for men aged 45+ years lowered re‐employment probabilities.     

Iterative Project Processes Within Temporary Multi‐Organizations in Construction: The Self‐, Eco‐, Re‐Organizing Projects

Theory‐based studies claim that informal processes interfere with the formal mechanisms and structures of projects in the construction sector. These processes structure and transform multi‐organizations. This four‐year case study reveals empirical evidence about how processes effectively evolve over time and affect formal mechanisms and structures. The results show: (1) the significant differences between what is planned and what actually unfolds in project processes; (2) how iterative processes overshadow linear ones; (3) how informality and “iterativity” eventually end up as self‐, eco‐, and re‐organizing projects and organizations, confirming that projects (re)create the very processes and structures that initiate them.     

Resolving the Economic Puzzle: Two Reviews by Stephan Barton and Fred Foldvary Re‐solving the Economic Puzzle by Walter Rybeck London: Shepheard‐Walwyn, 2011, pp.xv, 238, $29.95. ISBN 978‐0‐856‐32819

Walter Rybeck makes the case for land value taxation, explains how he came to understand its importance, and describes his involvement in the Henry George movement in the United States over the last 50 years. While the book demonstrates the virtues of land value taxation, it also illustrates some of the limitations of contemporary Georgism.