Tariff protection and workforce gender: Evidence from U.S. manufacturing industries

A data set of 266 four-digit SIC U.S. manufacturing industries is used to examine the relationship between tariff protection and workforce gender. The paper shows that industries with a relatively large proportion of women are more likely to be protected by U.S. tariff policy, even when factors such as wages and human capital are controlled. Furthermore, this result is robust in that it is not driven by any particular industry or industries.     

The Triple C approach to local industrial policy

In both developed and developing countries there is mounting evidence that clustering and networking help small- and medium-sized manufacturers to raise their competitiveness. The role of public policy in this process is less clear. The European experience suggests that local and regional government can play an important role. Equally, if not more, interesting experiences can be found in developing countries. Their analysis constitutes the core of this paper. The lessons can be summarized as the “Triple C” which stands for customer-oriented, collective and cumulative.     

Some poor and invisible women: Farm labourers in South Africa

This article presents the results of a prevalence survey carried out in 1994 to assess the socio‐economic significance of waged farmwork in parts of the Eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga). The survey was designed to shed light on the question of how many rural households depend for their survival on the availability of wage employment opportunities for women on farms. The results support the view that economists and statisticians in South Africa have paid insufficient attention to the importance of unrecorded, or statistically ‘invisible’ agricultural wage employment to the rural population. In particular, the importance of women's work as waged farm labourers has not received the attention it deserves for policy purposes. Women's wages and working conditions on all types of farms are probably the critical determinants of the standard of living of many tens of thowsands of households in Mhala and Mapulaneng, and of many millions of the poorest households in South Africa as a whole.     

Fertility and child mortality in Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana.

This article summarizes a 1994 World Bank working paper on methodological issues and a study of the determinants of child mortality and fertility in Ghana and the Cote d'Ivoire. Data were obtained from the 1985, 1986, and 1987 Cote d'Ivoire Living Standards Survey and the 1987-88 and 1988-89 Ghana Living Standards Survey. Both surveys entailed two-stage, self-weighted stratified samples. The study sample included women who had at least one birth 5 or more years before the survey. The conceptual framework distinguishes between endogenous and exogenous variables affecting fertility. The statistical approach relies on parallel reduced-form techniques. Model I assumes that all explanatory variables are exogenous. Model II excludes husbands' characteristics and household composition. Model III assumes that excluded model II factors are exogenous and likely to affect child mortality and fertility. Findings indicate that economic resources of households, maternal education, access to markets, and food prices were associated with child mortality in Ghana. Sanitation in both countries affected child survival only for less educated mothers. Urban residence in Ghana particularly benefitted uneducated mothers. In Cote d'Ivoire, household assets were not a significant predictor of child mortality. When child mortality is treated as exogenous in fertility model I, only 4-15 fewer child deaths were associated with a reduction of only one birth. Local health programs and environment explained little of the variation in child mortality in both countries. Women's education was strongly related to fertility declines in both countries. Assets and maternal health were positively related to fertility in Cote d'Ivoire and negatively related in Ghana. Findings suggest that the negative effects of household assets on fertility apply in urban subsamples among older women in each country. The authors conclude that economic growth must occur simultaneously with increased levels of female education and urbanization.     

Tourism and the Australian economy

Consideration of the economic significance of tourism requires synthesis of a discrete tourism ‘industry’ from selected sectors of the economy and identification of its component activities which may then be used to relate expenditure by tourists, sectorally and spatially, to other elements in the economy. This approach is applied to create a profile of the Australian tourism industry at a national level and shows that tourism contributes a significant proportion to GDP and employs at least 3% of the labour force. This is comparable with the UK and other developed countries.