Behavioral Pragmatism: President Obama’s Approach to Unemployment

However wide the ideological distance between positive and negative prognosticators of employment growth, the pragmatic center is where the White House preferences are likely to fall. Obama??s pragmatic center may be far from the ideological center between public-private program alternatives. Instead, it is closer to the pressure center of partisan and interest-group forces that normally participate in fiscal policy-making. As a behavioral pragmatist the moderate position for Obama is found at the center of ideologically separated political competitors whatever the content of their beliefs, since content is relatively uncritical in this perspective. Pressure groups?? numbers and organizational strength define the value of their diversity more than the substance of their beliefs. For the strong believers on both political left and right the outcomes will rarely look pragmatic because they will rarely fit the traditional standards for moderation     

A comparison of citizen and “expert” preferences using an attribute-based approach to choice

This paper explores whether expert judgements can be taken as a proxy for citizen preferences for determining investment strategies for public goods. As an illustration, we focus on the provision of Public Rights Of Way (PROW) by Local Government Authorities in England. These provide rights of passage over property to those other than the owners, and little information is available on the welfare effects of changes in the provision and use of PROW. Given limited funds, reliance on expert judgement could be a cost effective alternative for decision-making compared with stated preference surveys of citizens. Two methods are compared. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to elicit expert judgement to proxy citizen preferences for different attributes of PROW. The Choice Experiment (CE) technique is then used to derive preferences directly through personal interviews with citizens. Overall it was found that judicious use of AHP by experts can, in this instance, be used to represent citizen views. However, this result may not be easily generalisable to other settings.     

From Dependency to Defiance? Work‐Unit Relationships in China’s State Enterprise Reforms

This paper outlines the economic reform process being undertaken in China and the subsequent partial closure and radical down-sizing of the state-owned enterprise sector. Redundancies arising out the restructuring process have eroded the state-worker contract of the iron rice-bowl. This has resulted in growing and sometimes violent labour unrest. The planned workforce projections until the end of the year 2000 suggest that the numbers of redundancies has increased, adding to China's 'surplus labour' problem. A critical issue is thus whether the Chinese government, together with state-enterprise management, can contain potential future labour and civil unrest using its present methods.     

新兴经济体银行危机的根源和早期预警指标

一、银行危机可能造成的影响 首先值得我们关注的一个问题是:在全面演变成银行危机之前,我们为何对找出银行部门存在的问题如此感兴趣? 1.一旦真正发生银行危机,将给有关国家带来重大损失.自70年代末以来,已经有93个国家发生超过112次的系统性银行危机(Caprio和Honohan,2000).在发展中国家发生的超过15次的银行危机中,公共部门为化解危机所投入的成本达到或超过有关国家GDP的10%.有人推算发展中国家自1980年以来为化解银行危机所投入的救援总成本已经达到2500亿美元,而且这还是在亚洲危机爆发以前.[1]对于亚洲危机国家来说,我们认为其用于补充银行资本金的成本占到GDP的10%～60%.[2]     

Factors explaining the diffusion of hybrid maize in Latin America and the Caribbean region

If future demand for maize in Latin America and the Caribbean region (LAC) is to be met from local sources, domestic production must continue to increase. Because further expansion in the area planted to maize is precluded by the limited availability of arable land, future increases in production will have to rely heavily on the spread of productivity‐enhancing hybrid technology. Until now, the diffusion of hybrid maize in LAC has been quite variable. Using data from 18 countries, we investigate factors affecting the hybrid maize diffusion rate. Our findings validate conventional profitability‐based explanations of producer adoption behavior, but they also confirm the importance of supply‐side factors, thereby providing empirical support for the life cycle theory of seed industry development. We conclude that if policy makers in LAC are to accelerate the diffusion of hybrid maize, they will have to ensure an environment in which it is not only profitable for producers to adopt improved germplasm, but also profitable for the seed industry to produce and sell high‐quality seed.     

KwaZulu‐Natal's rural institutional environment: Its impact on local service delivery

This article examines the rural institutional framework in KwaZulu‐Natal as it pertains to local service delivery, and claims that the key component of development is getting the institutional environments right. The article assesses relevant literature and introduces a dual framework linking institutionalist and organisational perspectives. The institutional framework of KwaZulu‐Natal is discussed in terms of its historical development, and a critical analysis of its present configuration is carried out. The article highlights the mismatch between rural development needs and the institutional framework of the province and generates a number of policy proposals in an attempt to correct this problem.     

Trade union mergers and competition in British banking

This article examines union merger discussions in the clearing banks in relation to the model developed by Undy et al. ‘Emphasising the importance of ideological differences and the proposed distribution of power in the negotiations, it argues more stress be placed on internal political factors in explaining merger patterns.     

The Question of Value in Social Marketing

A bstract . Economic theory fails to recognize value in social marketing, it is argued, because these beliefs are widely held: (1) social marketers do not consider consumer needs , (2) they are motivated by social welfare , (3) the price mechanism does not fully operate in the social sphere, (4) there is usually insufficient competition , and (5) social marketing is less effective in market control. Based on quality-of-life (QOL) theory , several normative principles are derived to guide the efforts of social marketers. One, QOL-means have to be determined by relating them to QOL-ends (long term satisfaction). Two, discrepancies between QOI, means potentialities and actualities have to be minimized. And third, social marketing programs designed to minimize those discrepancies have to be developed in such a way as to reduce negative environmental impacts.     

The Investment in Housing As a Forward Market Transaction: Implications for Tenure Choice and Portfolio Selection

A model of tenure choice is presented which treats the benefits and costs of homeownership from a theory of finance perspective. The incremental benefits from homeownership over renting housing services are from two sources: protection against rental price risk (a forward transaction in the housing market) and from a possible capital gain from the eventual sale of a house (substitutes for portfolio investment). The cost of these benefits is higher initial outlay on housing, which reduces the funds available for portfolio investments. The comparative statics of this model is presented. It is shown that rental risk and portfolio risk add to the value of homeownership. Since homeownership is a partial substitute for portfolio investment, it is shown that the lower the covariance between portfolio returns and future home prices the more valuable is homeownership. In the presence of differential borrowing opportunities it is shown that the leverage available to housing significantly increases the value of homeownership.     

REVISED REAL CANADIAN GNP ESTIMATES AND CANADIAN ECONOMIC GROWTH, 1870–1926

Revised Canadian real GNP estimates for the 1870–1926 period, based on the nominal GNP estimates constructed by M. C. Urquhart and on a variety of sector-specific price indexes, are presented below. The construction of this revised real GNP series allows for the creation of real output estimates for the major sectors of the Canadian economy as well as for a new implicit price index series. These revised estimates cast new light on our present understanding of Canadian economic growth and reinforce the view that the Canadian wheat boom probably played an important and positive role in the process of Canadian economic development.