Determinants of agriculture's relative decline: Thailand

During economic development, agriculture declines as a proportion of aggregate national output. A number of theoretical explanations for this phenomenon have been advanced in the economic literature, but their relative historical significance has not been clear. This paper develops an econometric methodology to analyze this issue and applies it to time series data for Thailand. The study investigates the importance of relative commodity prices, factor endowments and technical progress as explanations for changing sectoral GDP shares of agriculture, manufacturing and services. It is concluded that the movement in Thailand's aggregate factor endowment relative to labor was the most important determinant of agriculture's relative decline.     

von Neumann/Morgenstrn Decision Making and Harsanyi's Theory of Justice: After Rawls and Nozick If It Risks Personal Freedom and Individual Liberty,Can It Be Really Just?

Abstract . John C. Harsanyi has developed a theory of justice based on the von Neumann-Morgenstern (vN-M) theory of decision making under uncertainty. Instead of applying the vN-M theory strictly, however, Harsanyi proposes to modify his approach so as to exclude decisions which seem to be the result of rashness, strong excitement and other circumstances which might hinder rational choice. The result is a theory of justice which is internally inconsistent and potentially hostile to liberty and individual freedom.     

Asset divestiture following horizontal acquisitions: a dynamic view

Business acquisition, resource redeployment, and asset divestiture are elements of a dynamic process in which firms change their businesses by recombining internal and external resources. Analyzing 253 horizontal acquisitions, we show that post‐acquisition resource redeployment leads to asset divestiture from the business that receives the redeployed resources, but not from the business that contributes the new resources. Consistent with scale economies rationales, we find that strategic similarity also leads to greater asset divestiture from the target firms. Many theoretical perspectives are skeptical about the positive rationale for acquisitions and many of these believe that asset divestiture is evidence of acquisition failure. Our arguments and analysis help refine the accepted wisdom. In particular, the pattern of resource redeployment and asset divestiture in our analysis suggests that acquisitions provide a means of reconfiguring the structure of resources within firms and that asset divestiture is a logical consequence of this reconfiguration process. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Centrelink Payments Data

At any point in time, Centrelink is administering the welfare payments of over 5 million Australians. A large amount of data is created in the process. Since early 2013, researchers have been able to request access. These longitudinal data, covering all income support payment recipients back to at least mid‐1998, are a rich resource for policy‐relevant research. This article overviews the data, noting some of their advantages and limitations. It also highlights ways in which the research potential of the data could be enhanced.     

The pathfinder process in Northern Ireland

Government has many customers — not just the individual citizen, but also corporate customers from the private sector. Getting close to those customers will require changes in the nature of public sector culture. Below are two examples — the first from Northern Ireland and the second from Whitehall — of government departments which have tried to change the way in which they do things.