Implications of the lome convention for African trade and development

Conclusion The analysis presented here does not support the contention that the Lomé Convention is a turning point in the history of relations between rich and poor nations, and the herald of a new economic order, more just and equitable. While Lomé does not represent radical departures from the present system, it reflects the realization by the vulnerable, resource-poor EEC that some concessions had to be made in the fields of trade and aid. The reforms include: greater trade preferences; STABEX; some participation in the decision-making process of the EDF; financing of economic integration among the ACPs. These modifications, however, do not repudiate the present system, but rather make it more viable. The power of the multinationals is in no way affected, and the pattern of unequal development is left intact. Lomé-type relationships between the poor and rich countries will at best provide the elites with increased resources which might lead to national capitalist development, strengthening of the elites’ material base, and reproduction of the structure of dependence and inequality.     

Dortmunder Institut für Zeitungsforschung wird 80 Jahre alt / Gabriele Toepser-Ziegert leitet das Haus in die Zukunft

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Road accessibility and cohesion in lagging regions: Empirical evidence from Portugal based on spatial econometric models

A number of transportation infrastructure projects were conducted in Europe during the 1990s with the explicit objective of promoting regional cohesion goals through the improvement of the accessibility of peripheral regions. Given its peripheral situation in the Union, Portugal was a key target for some of these projects. A decade later, it is pertinent to ask whether the new infrastructure achieved its objective of promoting lagging regions. The objective of this paper is to analyze one of the lagging regions in Portugal, to try to establish the link between changes in accessibility levels brought by improvements in the transportation network, and two indicators commonly used in accessibility research (population and purchasing power), while controlling other variables of possible relevance, such as the levels of educational achievement of the population in the region. The analysis is based on the use of spatially autoregressive models which allow the representation of accessibility as spatially lagged variables of first and second order. The results place the contribution of accessibility changes in context, and point at the relevance of education as an alternative policy.     

Managing uncertainty in on-demand air travel

Fractional management companies (FMCs) that provide on-demand air travel services experience frequent changes in aircraft availability and flight requests. We propose scheduling heuristics which are both cost-effective and persistent (i.e., close to the original schedule) to address the uncertainty. The heuristics include pro-actively enforcing idleness of aircraft in creating the original schedule, strategically repositioning aircraft to serve yet-unknown demand and dense scheduling. Computational experiments are conducted in a simulator that mimics FMCs’ daily operations. Simulation results quantify the value of each heuristic, which can be easily incorporated into existing computational methods used in FMCs for static scheduling problems.     

Context sensitive multimodal road planning: a case study in Cape Town, South Africa

Road planning practice relies almost exclusively on parameters related to traffic factors, such as private vehicle speeds and volumes. In many developing countries the requirements for public transport and non-motorised transport are not explicitly integrated into the planning process, despite the fact that these form the primary mode of transport for the majority of the population. This affects the mobility opportunities for these sectors of the population and contributes to poor road safety, especially with regards to pedestrians. The research outlined in the paper posits that, in order to assess the usage and needs of the road holistically, other factors related to the adjacent land uses, socio-economic characteristics of the population the road serves, and the environmental context within which the road is located, factors heavily in how the road is used and should, therefore, be considered within the planning process. The paper describes a methodology to include these factors in the planning of roads. The method attempts to prioritise amongst the five primary road based modes (public transport, car, freight, walking and cycling) based upon a combination of traffic and non-traffic factors. The method employed uses a geographic information system (GIS) based spatial multiple criteria evaluation (SMCE) model with inputs from widely available data sources such as census, household travel surveys, land use and environmental data to arrive at solutions for modal priorities. A case study is conducted along an arterial route in Cape Town, South Africa, providing infrastructure planning recommendations and audit possibilities for the future. Since weighting is an important driver in the SMCE process, a sensitivity analysis is conducted to investigate the effect of alternative weighting schemes on the outputs from the method.     

Enkele Aspecten van de West-Europese Integratie

Rede uitgesproken bij de aanvaarding van het ambt van gewoon hoogleraar in de Westerse Economie aan de Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden op Vrijdag 21 juni 1957.     

Trade reorientation and recovery in transition economies

How do we define transition and when can we say that transitionto a market economy is complete? Here we suggest that one wayof addressing this issue is to analyse current economic dataand ask whether, in ignorance of the past, we can identify countriesin central and eastern Europe as being somehow different fromcomparable western market economies. In this paper we focuson international trade and argue that several indicators, suchas the geographical structure of trade and the undervaluationof the exchange rate, cannot distinguish the more advanced countriesin central and eastern Europe. We also seek to explain how thereorientation of trade towards the West has been achieved and,in particular, assess whether improvements on design and qualityare a prerequisite for export expansion.