Fish as the “bank in the water” – Evidence from chronic-poor communities in Congo

Small-scale fisheries in developing countries are often perceived as being a low-productivity and backward informal sector. As a result they are rarely considered in poverty reduction programmes and rural development planning. In this paper, we investigate the dual role of fish as a food and cash crop through data collected in river fisheries in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Fishing in this very remote rural region of DRC is operated both by men and women, as part of a household multiple activity livelihood strategy. The data shows that poor households rely heavily on fishing for their supply of protein-rich food, in particular through women’s subsistence catches. Fishing also appears to be the main source of cash-income for the majority of households, including local farmers. Based on these findings and a review of the literature, the paper argues that small-scale fisheries can play a fundamental role in local economies, especially in remote rural areas where they strengthen significantly the livelihoods of people through their role in both food security and cash-income generation.     

Billboard and cinema advertising: Missed opportunity or spoiled arms?

Advertising remains one of the most popular marketing instruments, and many studies have studied its sales effectiveness. However, prior research has either looked at the total spending of a brand/firm, or has focused on the most popular media, especially TV advertising. Even though huge amounts are also spent on “smaller” media such as billboards and cinema, little is known on their effectiveness.     

Accounting records of large rural estates and the dynamics of agriculture in Catalonia (Spain), 1850-1950

In this article the agrarian accounts generated by the large rural estates of Catalonia (Spain) during the period between 1850 and 1950 are studied with a twofold objective. First of all, their formal characteristics and content are described and it is argued that the traits and variations observed are a consequence and reflection of the social conditions under which they were generated. Second, we evaluate the use which Catalan rural historiography has made recently of these documents in order to reconstruct the functioning and evolution of contemporary agriculture.     

Optimal control of linear econometric models with intermittent controls

Dynamic Programming is used to derive the optimal feedback solution to the minimization of a quadratic welfare loss-functional subject to a linear econometric model, when the value of some instrument variables can not be optimized in every model period, but only in single ones. In this way, the relative inertia of fiscal policy-making, as compared to monetary policy-making, can e.g. be taken into account. Analytical expressions are derived for the optimal feedback rules and for the minimum expected losses, and iterative schemes are proposed for their numerical computation. It is suggested that a numerical analysis of the economic gain to be realized by making more frequent adjustment of fiscal policy variables than is actually undertaken could yield valuable information for policy-makers.     

Leslie Berlin. The Man behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. xi + 402 pp. ISBN 0-19-516343-5, $30.00.

The last few years have seen a number of books on the rise ofSilicon Valley. Martin Kenney’s Understanding SiliconValley (2000), Ross Bassett’s To the Digital Age (2002),Frederick Terman at Stanford by C. Stewart Gillmor (2004), andmy own book on Making Silicon Valley (2006) are notable examples.Another addition to this literature is The Man behind the Microchip:Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley by