Performance criteria and multilateral aid allocation

This study raises questions about past models for aid allocation, in particular the ‘two-gap’ model. It proposes an alternative method for allocating aid among developing countries, on the basis of need (as represented by per capita income) and country performance (measured by variables for relative effort in savings, exports, control of inflation, tax policy, and efficiency of resource use). Statistical tests are applied to actual lending patterns of the World Bank to determine the extent to which in practice the Bank relates lending to these proposed measures of need and performance.     

Federally subsidized occupational training and the employment and earnings of male trainees

The impact of MDTA training on the earnings and employment probabilities of male trainees are studied on the basis of a longitudinal data set on trainees and non-trainees. Econometric techniques which eliminate many of the ambiguities in interpreting previous estimates are used. It is found that the program had little or no effect on employment or earnings of trainees in the late sixties (relative to continued normal employment). It is suggested that the program be interpreted as a pure income-maintenance program rather than a subsidized skill-acquisition program.     

Reinterpreting the convict labour market

The convicts transported to NSW between 1817 and 1840 were young, fit, highly literate and brought occupational skills which were broadly representative of the British and Irish working classes. In the colonial labour market where convicts were coerced, more labour was forthcoming and at a lower wage than in a free labour market. The assignment of convict labour in the colony was efficient; skilled urban and construction tradesmen were employed in the same jobs in NSW as they had held in Britain. Domestic servants and unskilled urban workers whose skills were not suited to the needs of the colony experienced job restructuring. The organization of convict workers into teams and gangs in Australia was similar to the way work was organized in free labour Britain, and a mbc of incentives and rewards characterized the extraction of work from convicts. The human capital of the transportees and the labour system within which they worked help to explain the rapid growth of the colonial economy before 1840.     

Identifying restrictions in limited information analysis of the schooling coefficient in a wage equation

Identifying restrictions underlying limited information estimates of the coefficients of a wage equation are considered from a Bayesian point of view. Within this framework ‘exclusion’ restrictions need not be imposed exactly, and it becomes possible to consider the marginal densities of interesting coefficients as functions of the tightness of these restrictions. In the application considered here the posterior mean for the schooling and test-score coefficients in a wage equation are examined as identifying restrictions are relaxed. The paper also serves as an example of the feasibility of Bayesian limited information analysis of a current economic issue.     

The Influence of Spiritual Traditions on the Interplay of Subjective and Normative Interpretations of Meaningful Work

Journal of Business Ethics - This paper argues that the principles of spiritual traditions provide normative ‘standards of goodness’ within which practitioners evaluate meaningful work....     

Public Policy for Growth and Poverty Reduction

In this paper, I would like to outline an approach to publicpolicy that focused on fighting poverty and is based on an understandingof growth and development. Such a public policy requires answeringtwo key questions. First, what are key determinants of a developmentthat benefits poor people – or what has been labelled"pro-poor growth"? And second, we need to answer the policyquestion: how can public action influence the key determinantswe identify? In putting the questions this way, we are settingourselves the task of building a dynamic public economics –a public economics of development. Given that development isthe objective, this task will require a better understandingof how to measure it. And we must also achieve a better graspof changes of behaviour in the process of development, sincechanging perspectives and behaviour are usually an integralpart of the development story. In laying our task of advancinga dynamic public economics, however, let me emphasise that shouldbe building – on – not overturning – pasttheory. In much of the work I will describe, the empirics seemto be ahead of theory. Thus one of my purposes is to highlightsome elements of an agenda for theoretical research. (JEL E6)     

Sizing up information and communication technologies as agents of political development in sub-Saharan Africa

It is widely speculated that the emergence of modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) will boost political development in the developing world. This expectation anchors on solid foundation since, presumably, the ICT revolution would radically alter access to information, dislodge entrenched social cleavages, and unleash new patterns of citizen consciousness and civic engagement by hitherto marginalized mass publics, and orchestrate new and decisive political equilibriums. This research provides an empirical assessment of the impact of ICTs on political development in sub-Saharan Africa. The analysis suggests that speculation about the potential for ICTS to enhance political development in the sub-Sahara is not unrealistic. The levels of phone, computer, and Internet diffusion are associated with political development, although only the effect of the phone remains once other variables are specified. The phone is the most robust of all individual factors explaining variations in political development. However, the effect of ICTs on political development can neither be certified as revolutionary, nor can they be codified as panacea.     

Privatization and telephone numbers

This report is the Rapporteur's personal impression of the presentations given at the World Privatization of Telecommunications Conference in Amsterdam, 23–24 June 1992. It includes some commentary of his own.