The Political Economy of Urban Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan African cities in the late 1990s face a daunting set of problems including rapid growth, increasing poverty, deteriorating infrastructure, and inadequate capacity for service provision. Even as a renewed debate is shaping up around issues of urban development, there is little attention given to the question of urban food security. Whereas in the 1970s and 1980s, urban food problems in Africa commanded political attention, the nature of urban food insecurity in the 1990s is such that it has tended to lose political importance. This is largely because in the 1970s, the problem was one of outright food shortages and rapid price changes that affected large portions of the urban population simultaneously. The impact of structural adjustment, continued rapid growth, and an increase in poverty make urban food insecurity in the 1990s primarily a problem of access by the urban poor. Under circumstances where the urban poor spend a very large portion of their total income on food, urban poverty rapidly translates into food insecurity. The lack of formal safety nets, and the shifting of responsibility for coping with food insecurity away from the state towards the individual and household level has tended to atomize and muffle any political response to this new urban food insecurity. This paper briefly reviews urban food insecurity and generates a set of empirical questions for an analysis of food and livelihood security in contemporary urban sub-Saharan Africa, and then examines historical and contemporary evidence from Kampala, Uganda, and Accra, Ghana, to suggest some tentative conclusions.     

重庆可持续发展与循环经济的建立

在资源有限的前提下,人类生存环境与经济发展之间存在矛盾,人们必须对资源的分配做出选择和取舍,两者的矛盾在短期似乎不可调和。发展循环经济可以解决经济和环境之间长期存在的矛盾,为经济与环境协调发展提供了新思路。     

日本封建时代晚期消费需求变动的总体考察

本文认为日本在经济近代化之前，国民消费需求总体上呈现缓慢增长的变动趋势，消费水平和消费层次有轻微上升，消费结构有所改善，已达到日本前资本主义时代的最高水平。这种状况源于１８世纪以来日本国内社会经济的发展和实际工资水平的提高。     

Population and Poverty in Africa

This paper sets out the position in Sub-Saharan Africa [SSA] regarding poverty and population. Africa has as much danger of starvation and depopulation [due to Aids] as of over population. The paper sets out a model of poverty based on the twin concepts of capabilities and entitlements. This is micro level approach and points to the importance of health and education as well as physical assets in analysing poverty. Issues of gender are always kept central. Income, access to public goods, physical assets and human capital are the four determinants of the status of any individual visavis poverty. In terms of access to public goods the paper develops a new measure of poverty based on daily calorie supply, access to clean water and access to health care. It would seem that nearly 90% of the population in 25 SSA countries or as many as 350 million can be counted as poor. Poverty is influenced by population most significantly if the household cannot afford education and health for its children. Other effects of population on poverty are thought to be transient. Poverty affects population by the complex interaction of the desire for children as insurance but an inability to ensure their survival. Population problems are most acute in societies which are developing enough to cut death rates drastically but not yet adjusted to lower infant mortality to modify their child bearing behaviour. Policy issues are discussed in the last section which highlights once again the central importance of education, health and land reforms.     

Population and Poverty in Africa

This paper sets out the position in Sub-Saharan Africa [SSA] regarding poverty and population. Africa has as much danger of starvation and depopulation [due to Aids] as of over population. The paper sets out a model of poverty based on the twin concepts of capabilities and entitlements. This is micro level approach and points to the importance of health and education as well as physical assets in analysing poverty. Issues of gender are always kept central. Income, access to public goods, physical assets and human capital are the four determinants of the status of any individual visavis poverty. In terms of access to public goods the paper develops a new measure of poverty based on daily calorie supply, access to clean water and access to health care. It would seem that nearly 90% of the population in 25 SSA countries or as many as 350 million can be counted as poor. Poverty is influenced by population most significantly if the household cannot afford education and health for its children. Other effects of population on poverty are thought to be transient. Poverty affects population by the complex interaction of the desire for children as insurance but an inability to ensure their survival. Population problems are most acute in societies which are developing enough to cut death rates drastically but not yet adjusted to lower infant mortality to modify their child bearing behaviour. Policy issues are discussed in the last section which highlights once again the central importance of education, health and land reforms.     

2006年:中国经济及其对世界经济的影响

虽然1992年我在中国做财政问题研究,到现在中国已经发生了很大的变化.我非常高兴能够再来到中国,世界银行是一个多边发展机构,在中国的业务很多,现在我们更加关注中国对世界经济的影响,所以我非常荣幸能够受到邀请来讨论中国的经济以及中国对于世界经济的影响.     

当代中国经济与国际经济之比较

在1978年改革开放以后,中国经济进入了一个迅速腾飞的时代。随着中国市场经济体制的建立和全球化进程的逐步深入。中国经济已融入国际经济之中。两者既有共性,又有差异。研究这些共性和差异对中国更好地适应国际潮流具有积极意义。然而令人遗憾的是,目前我国对于这一方面的研究虽已十分深入,但每位学者通常只着眼于中国经济与国际经济的某一点差异。宏观与微观相结合的形式十分重要,因此本文希望以综述、宏观的角度,分析当代中国经济与国际经济的异同,进而得出一些有用的结论。     

Food and stabilization in developing Africa

This paper tests the hypothesis that inadequate food production, in developing Africa, is associated with inflation, balance-of-payments difficulties and stagnation. Econometric models are specified and derived to test the hypothesis. The empirical results are analyzed to clarify the impact of food imports on a number of issues relating to the general problem of economic growth.