Child Growth in the Time of Drought

This paper examines the impact of rainfall shocks on a measure of child health, growth in height, drawing on a unique household panel data set from rural Zimbabwe. We find that children aged 12 to 24 months lose 1.5-2 cm of growth in the aftermath of a drought. Catch-up growth in these children is limited so that this growth faltering has a permanent effect. By contrast, there is no evidence that older children experience a slowdown in growth. There is some evidence that the loss in growth is unequally distributed with children residing in poorer households and offspring of women who are daughters of the household head appearing to be especially vulnerable.     

The Significance of the Monetary Context of Economic Behavior

The dominant paradigm in economics views economic behavior as allocative activity in a neutral, C-M-C' economy. As a consequence, money is treated as a veil that is inessential to the real functioning of the economic system. This paper argues that one of Keynes's fundamental insights is the significance of the monetary context of economic behavior. This insight has been developed by the post-Keynesian theory of money as a "time-machine vehicle" that provides the causal link between uncertainty and unemployment. The Circuitist theory of money as the means of final payment provides a complementary radical perspective on the significance of the monetary context. This paper investigates the methodological and theoretical implications of these radical monetary theories and assesses their contribution towards the development of a general theory of a monetary production, M-C-M' economy.     

Work, organisation and Enterprise Resource Planning systems: an alternative research agenda

This paper reviews literature that examines the design, implementation and use of Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs). It finds that most of this literature is managerialist in orientation, and concerned with the impact of ERPs in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and business performance. The paper seeks to provide an alternative research agenda, one that emphasises work- and organisation-based approaches to the study of the implementation and use of ERPs.     

Public expenditure planning in Papua New Guinea: an evaluation of innovation

This paper discusses the problems faced by non-socialist developing countries in evolving successful systems of comprehensive public expenditure planning and makes a series of proposals designed to avoid some of these problems, e.g. by outlining precise processes, mechanisms and institutions which might generate and maintain political and bureaucratic support and correspond to a more realistic view of politics, as well as developing a framework within which public expenditure proposals can be consistently compared. The paper refers throughout to the experience of Papua New Guinea.The evaluation of the approach and processes of public expenditure planning in Papua New Guinea is divided into two parts. The first part assesses the system's achievements, costs and weaknesses and then considers the impact which the system itself has had on framing and developing new policy. In the second part, the general lessons which may be learned from Papua New Guinea's experience are discussed.     

THE REGULATION EFFECT OF CREDIT RATINGS ON BOND INTEREST YIELD: THE CASE OF JUNK BONDS

This paper examines the 'regulation effect' of bond ratings of yield. It is shown that the high yield premia on 'speculative bonds' not only reflect the high probability of default, but also contain an effect of regulation. A multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) technique is used to separate the default component of yield premium from the regulation effect. The results in the study suggest that non-regulated investors, by taking advantage of the regulation effect, may earn an extra premium on a diversified portfolio of 'speculative bonds', at least for the period under this study (from January 1982-June 1987).     

NONSTATIONARITY OF BETA AND TESTS OF MARKET EFFICIENCY

Conclusions from event type studies are usually supported by data generated from some form of the market model. This study examines the robustness of these conclusions to different static and dynamic estimates of beta when the event under investigation occurs during a period of changing systematic risk. The results indicate that when beta is nonstationary, the findings of market inefficiency (or efficiency) in previous studies may be an artifact of the static beta estimation method.