Some aspects of technology choice in the iron foundry industry

This article examines technological choice for developing countries in the iron founding industry. Three key sub-processes are investigated and the effect of wage rates, discount rates, scale and quality standards are examined. In general, low wage rates, low scale and high discount rates favour the selection of techniques that are high or intermediate in their labour-intensity. The effect of increasing quality standards is to favour the more capital-intensive (and less labour-intensive) techniques.     

Some arguments for (moderately) capital-intensive development,even in labour-abundant nations

This essay suggests that there may be good reasons why some labour-abundant developing nations prefer capital-intensive economic activities. In developing nations where large amounts of time and investment would be required to achieve full employment of their labour, policy-makers may do better to seek a capital-intensive development programme that increases labour productivity, inspires technological change, and, through rapidly increasing national income, increases the demand for labour in the long run by more than a labour-intensive approach would. A diagrammatic representation is presented. The suggestion is offered that a ‘moderate’ capital-intensive strategy, in which factor prices are maintained ‘just’ — rather than ‘much’ — different from their scarcity values, should encourage labour-augmenting technological change.     

The effect of settler farming on indigenous agriculture: Evidence from Italian Libya

What effect did the settlement of European farmers have on the indigenous agricultural sector during the colonial period? On the one hand, European immigrants imported skills and capital but, on the other, they took control of local resources. By looking at the short-term effect of Italian farming in colonial Libya, I shed new light on this question. Through regression analysis on a novel village dataset covering the entire country, I show that, in 1939, proximity to Italian farms was associated with significantly lower land productivity relative to distant locations. Lower yields can be explained by the adoption of land-extensive cultivation techniques, implemented by indigenous farmers to counteract a labour drain operated by Italian farms through factor markets. The combined mitigating effect of monetary wages and land-extensive farming only partially compensated for the fall in income linked to reduced land productivity.     

Portuguese living standards, 1720–1980, in European comparison: heights,income, and human capital1

When and why did the Portuguese become the shortest Europeans? In order to find the answer to this question, we trace the trend in Portuguese living standards from the 1720s until recent times. We find that during the early nineteenth century average height in Portugal did not differ significantly from average height in most other European countries, but that when, around 1850, European anthropometric values began to climb sharply, Portugal's did not. In a panel analysis of 12 countries, we find that delay in human‐capital formation was the chief factor hindering any improvement in the biological standard of living in Portugal.     

ANTHROPOMETRIC TRENDS IN SOUTHERN CHINA, 1830–1864

Anthropometric indicators can shed light on the ‘Great Divergence’ debate on the timing of the welfare development in China and Europe. We mobilise two new datasets of some 13,000 Southern Chinese contract migrants who were sent to Suriname and Indonesia, and thus supplement the limited existing evidence on early to mid‐nineteenth century China. The Southern Chinese were about as tall as Southern Europeans during the early and mid‐nineteenth century, but notably shorter than Northwestern Europeans. Height development was stagnant or slightly downward over the period studied, which fits into the pattern of real wage developments at that time.     

The settlers’ fortunes: Comparing tax censuses in the Cape Colony and early American republic

Europeans at the end of the eighteenth century had settled across the globe, from North and South America to Australia to the southern tip of Africa. While theories of institutional persistence explain the ‘reversal of fortunes’ between settled and unsettled regions, few studies consider the large differences in early living standards between settler societies. This paper uses newly transcribed household-level tax censuses from the Dutch and British Cape Colony and the United States shortly after independence to show comparative levels of income and wealth over four decades both between the two regions and within them. Cape farmers were, on average, more affluent than their American counterparts. While crop output and livestock were more unequally distributed at the Cape, ownership of enslaved people in America was more unequal. There was little indication of an imminent reversal of fortunes.     

浅析刘呐鸥都市小说的特点

刘呐鸥——这位中国新感觉派的始祖，以超越时代的敏锐眼光，借鉴日欧等先锋派作家的手法，捕捉到上海国际大都市迷幻的时尚风情与都市小人物的时尚生活。他在小说中进行大胆而新颖尝试，广泛采用现代主义手法，注重个体经验的表达，以一个都市作家的身份，写出了都市的真谛和内涵。     

The age of mass migration in Latin America

The experiences of Latin American countries are not fully incorporated into current debates concerning the age of mass migration, even though 13 million Europeans migrated to the region between 1870 and 1930. This survey draws together different aspects of the Latin America immigration experience. Its main objective is to rethink the role of European migration to the region, addressing several major questions in the economics of migration: whether immigrants were positively selected from their sending countries, how immigrants assimilated into the host economies, the role of immigration policies, and the long‐run effects of immigration. Immigrants came from the economically backward areas of southern and eastern Europe, yet their adjustment to the host labour markets in Latin America seems to have been successful. The possibility of rapid social upgrading made Latin America attractive for European immigrants. Migrants were positively selected from origin according to literacy. The most revealing aspect of new research is showing the positive long‐run effects that European immigrants had in Latin American countries. The political economy of immigration policies deserves new research, particularly for Brazil and Cuba. The case of Argentina shows a more complex scenario than the classic representation of landowners constantly supporting an open‐door policy.     

Perceived levels of farming skills and problems of small‐scale commercial farmers in Ciskei

The aim of the study was to determine the potential for improved agricultural production among small‐scale commercial farmers at irrigation schemes in Ciskei, not by removing physical constraints but rather by enhancing human resource capabilities. A combination of individual and group interviews was used to examine perceptions of farmers about their farming skills and farming problems. It is apparent from this study that more emphasis needs to be placed on literacy training in the black farming community. Extension officers should also receive substantially more human relations training. There should also be more female extension workers to cater for the needs of female farmers.     

Energy availability from livestock and agricultural productivity in Europe, 1815–1913: a new comparison

This article explores the proposition that a reason for high agricultural productivity in the early nineteenth century was relatively high energy availability from draught animals. The article is based on the collection of extensive new data indicating different trends in draught power availability and the efficiency of its use in different countries of Europe. This article shows that the proposition does not hold, and demonstrates that, although towards the end of the nineteenth century England had relatively high numbers of draught animals per agricultural worker, it also had low number of workers and animals per hectare, indicating the high efficiency of muscle power, rather than an abundance of such power. The higher efficiency was related to a specialization on less labour-intensive farming and a preference for horses over oxen.     

“规范性力量欧洲”与欧盟对华外交

相对于民事力量欧洲和军事力量欧洲,欧洲人在21世纪初提出了规范性力量欧洲的概念,将它作为欧盟的身份及其在国际事务中角色的新定位。规范性力量欧洲是欧洲人对他们的先哲提出的政治价值观的继承以及他们在欧洲一体化实践中新观念的总结,同时也打上了欧洲历史和现实政治文化语境的烙印。通过分析欧盟对华人权外交及其成员国的价值观外交,作者认为,欧洲规范是有积极意义的,但欧盟以自己认定的方式将其向世界推广,将欧洲规范、欧洲价值观等同于所谓普世规范、普世价值而强加于人,这在理论上是不合逻辑的,在实践上是难以行得通的。     

A colonial legacy of African gender inequality? Evidence from Christian Kampala, 1895–2011

The colonial legacy of African underdevelopment is widely debated but hard to document. In this article, occupational statistics from Protestant marriage registers of historical Kampala are used to investigate the hypothesis that African gender inequality and female disempowerment are rooted in colonial times. We find that the arrival of Europeans in Uganda ignited a century‐long transformation of Kampala involving a gender Kuznets curve. Men rapidly acquired literacy and quickly found their way into white‐collar (high‐status) employment in the wage economy built by the Europeans. Women took somewhat longer to obtain literacy and considerably longer to enter into white‐collar and waged work. This led to increased gender inequality during the first half of the colonial period. However, gender inequality gradually declined during the latter half of the colonial era, and after Uganda's independence in 1962 its level was not significantly different from that of pre‐colonial times. The data presented here also support Boserup's view that gender inequality was rooted in indigenous social norms: daughters of African men who worked in the traditional, informal economy were less well‐educated, less frequently employed in formal work, and more often subjected to marital gender inequality than daughters of men employed in the modernized, formal economy created by the Europeans.     

Veld products and income generation in the southern Cape Strandveld

Only marginal farming activities take place in the Cape Strandveld area south of Alber‐tinia. While income from farming and wages are low, coloured families in the district are still making a living from traditional, informal occupations. Over a period of one year the activities of roughly fifty coloured families in the Albertinia Strandveld area were studied. These people being mostly illiterate, no formal questionnaire was used, but the author directly participated in their various activities and asked informal questions about their occupations. A questionnaire was sent out by Du Preez (1988) to about 150 white landowners in the area and we discussed these findings in relation to the informal sector study. Activities included thatch reed cutting, mole catching, honey collecting, aloe juice tapping, firewood cutting, hunting, fishing, breaking in horses, picking wild flowers and collecting sour figs. Higher incomes would be generated by improved techniques and expanded markets, but these activities should not be absorbed into the modern and formal economic system.     

The direct impact of the relocation of farm labour on Chinese grain production

The shift from collective to household-based farming and the move towards a market economy have increased the opportunity cost of grain production and caused a withdrawal of labour from grain farming in China. Since Chinese grain production is important to both China and the world, there are concerns about whether such a farm labour relocation will have a destructive impact on China's grain production. The previous production function studies ignored the effects of changes in labour quantity and quality on grain production. Using recently available sample survey data on Chinese farm households, this paper incorporates production function analysis with human capital analysis to examine the direct impact of the relocation of farm labour on China's grain production. It has found that the relocation of farm labour has not harmed the Chinese grain production in general, but its impact varies across regions with different factor endowments that affect the choice of farming technology.     

Agricultural Exports: Important Issues for Sub‐Saharan Africa

Abstract: The central argument of this paper is that African countries stand to benefit more from the goodwill currently being shown by industrialized countries who have committed themselves to further opening up of their markets for commodities from the region. However, more needs to be done by African governments and the international community if these benefits are to trickle down to the African farmers and result in attaining the goal of poverty reduction. This paper identifies the issues that need to be addressed by all parties involved. At the macro level, our results find that the distortion in the macro environment is a major factor hindering African exports. At the micro level, our results show that for farmers to benefit from the opening up of the international market, they would need more access to market information, easier road access to the markets for both their output and inputs, improve their farming techniques by utilizing modern scientific farming methods and inputs, and to increase their productivity. At the international level, our study finds strong results indicating that foreign tariff rate, price support (PNAC) and standards act as a market barrier to African agricultural exports.     

Pricing to Market： Chinese Export Pricing to the USA after the Peg

In July 2005, the Chinese Government unpegged the RMB from the US dollar. As the RMB has followed a remarkably predictable appreciation over time, I examine the price of Chinese exports to the USA after unpegging the exchange rate. Results suggest that the Chinese industries with greater import market share were able to raise their prices after the removal of the pegged exchange rate regime; however, over time there is a significant deflationary trend. Chinese export prices tended to decrease under an unanticipated RMB appreciation; this effect was more pronounced for industries with more pricing flexibility. This suggests that Chinese exporters are consistently ＂pricing to market＂ and thus creating a significant foreign exchange policy implication. Specifically, a more flexible exchange rate regime will likely have little impact on the prices of Chinese exports to the USA but might increase the profit volatility of Chinese firms.     

Interlinkages Between Household and Corporate Debt in Advanced Economies

This article contributes to the debate on deleveraging in the non-financial private sector. It proposes a framework for assessing the interconnectedness of debt dynamics, in particular deleveraging in the household and in the non-financial corporate sectors, using instrumental techniques for a panel of 36 mostly OECD countries, from 1981 to 2015. Households’ debt developments are positively associated with non-financial corporations’ debt dynamics for the whole sample. Conversely, corporate debt has a positive influence on household debt and in particular during deleveraging episodes and in relatively labour-intensive countries. This is consistent with the functioning of the income channel, in which corporations squeeze their wage bill in order to restore profitability.     

Exports of manufactures by developing countries: emerging patterns of trade and location

Developing countries are rapidly increasing their shares ofmanufactured trade, not just in labour-intensive products, butalso in capital- and skill-intensive ones; their shares arerising particularly rapidly in the high-technology area. However,manufactured exports remain highly concentrated in the developingworld, with a few countries dominating all forms of export.Within the successful exporting countries, there are significantdifferences in the 'technology content' of exports. These trendsare difficult to explain with received trade theory, even takinghuman capital into account, or with reference to broad economicpolicies: it is useful to bring in 'learning', along with scaleeconomies, increasing returns, and agglomeration as determinantsof comparative advantage. These factors imply market failures,and so a role for policy in developing genuine comparative advantages.This article suggests that emerging trade and location patternsin the developing work are explained by market imperfectionsand government policies to overcome them.     

Brewing projects in developing countries: Technology, costs and employment

Recently established industries in developing countries are often criticized for high costs and low employment-generation, and a coincidence is sometimes supposed, given low wage rates, between minimization of costs and substantial direct employment creation. Analysis of alternative technologies reveals this supposition to be largely unfounded, as far as lager brewing is concerned, over a wide range of developing country circumstances; but a set of low-cost, labour-intensive techniques is suggested as approximately meeting requirements both for low costs and for equitable distribution of employment and income opportunities.     

巴比馒头:上海滩新传奇

经过层层评比,"巴比馒头"掌门人刘会平被评为"安徽省年度经济人物",因为"巴比馒头"实现了年产包子5个亿的行业传奇……在上海,"巴比馒头"的加盟店超过400家。虽然一个包子只赚一角钱,但所有的加盟店年利润都在10万以上。一个农村的打工汉,成为千万富