Risk Aversion, Wealth and International Capital Flows

This paper models capital flows in a rich–poor, two-country, two-asset, dual-risk economy with decreasing absolute risk aversion. The first risk is asset-specific. The second is political and dependent; i.e., related to particular asset outcomes. In this framework, the role of wealth in determining asset preferences is demonstrated, and the conditions for diversification are derived. The wealth effect and diversification conditions are applied to explain ongoing two-way capital flows in general as well as the apparent paradox of domestic capital flight with simultaneous inflows of foreign capital.     

Strategies to increase agricultural productivity and reduce land degradation: evidence from Uganda

This paper estimates a structural econometric model of household decisions regarding income strategies, participation in programs and organisations, crop choices, land management, and labour use, and their implications for agricultural production and soil erosion; based upon a survey of over 450 households and their farm plots in Uganda. Many factors have context-specific impacts and involve trade-offs between increasing production and reducing land degradation. Government agricultural extension and training programs contribute to higher value of crop production in the lowlands, but to soil erosion in the highlands. By contrast, non-governmental organization (NGO) programs focusing on agriculture and environment help to reduce erosion, but have less favourable impacts on production in the lowlands. Education increases household incomes, but also reduces crop production in the lowlands. Poverty has mixed impacts on agricultural production, depending on the nature of poverty: smaller farms obtain higher crop production per hectare, while households with fewer livestock have lower crop production. Population pressure contributes to agricultural intensification, but also to erosion in the densely populated highlands. Several household income strategies contribute to increased value of crop production, without significant impacts on soil erosion. We find little evidence of impact of access to markets, roads and credit, land tenure or title on agricultural intensification and crop production and land degradation. In general, the results imply that the strategies to increase agricultural production and reduce land degradation must be location-specific, and that there are few 'win-win' opportunities to simultaneously increase production and reduce land degradation.     

Privatization and Technical Efficiency: Evidence from the Manufacturing Sector in Malawi

This study evaluates the impact of privatization on the technical efficiency of six privatized enterprises, three state‐owned enterprises and six private enterprises competing in three oligopolistic manufacturing industries in which privatization took place between 1984 and 1991 using panel data between 1970 and 1997. Technical efficiency scores are computed using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) based on the ‘intertemporal frontier’ approach for panel data. The results show that privatization in Malawi is associated with high mean technical efficiency in privatized enterprises and competing state‐owned enterprises and private enterprises. If we account for other sources of technical efficiency, in the full sample we find evidence that the competitive process is more important than privatization in increasing the technical efficiency of all enterprises competing in the same industries. However, the results of the subsample of privatized enterprises show that privatization significantly increases the technical efficiency of privatized enterprises, although we cannot ignore the role of domestic competition, capital intensity, multinationality and structural adjustment programmes as sources of technical efficiency.     

Investors’ preference towards risk: evidence from the Taiwan stock and stock index futures markets

We apply the stochastic dominance (SD) tests proposed by Linton et al. (2005) and Davidson and Duclos (2000) for risk averters and risk seekers to examine investors’ preferences with respect to the Taiwan stock index and its corresponding index futures. We find that there is no first‐order SD relationship between Taiwan spot and futures. However, for second‐ and third‐order SD, we find that spot dominates futures for risk averters whereas futures dominates spot for risk seekers. The implication is that to maximize their expected utilities, risk averters prefer to buy stocks, whereas risk seekers prefer long index futures.     

From Bastiat's circumference to Knight's wheel: a newly discovered letter of Mr Sherlock Holmes to Dr Watson *

This paper continues the investigation of the antecedents of the Wheel of Wealth, initiated by Don Patinkin as a by-product of his 1973 memoir of Frank Knight. A series of partly chance leads pointed to Bastiat as the earliest author to have employed circle or wheel diagram in an associated context, and one with whose writings most later users of it were acquainted. Although Patinkin mistakenly concluded that late-nineteenth century Contitental European literature completely eschewed diagrams, he was right in hypothesizing the wheel diagram to have originated outside the main stream of economic thought.     

The meaning of industrial prestige

In light of the growing interest in industries as distinct units in the structure of stratification, this research explores the dimensions underlying the social evaluation of industries, with an emphasis on the meaning of industrial prestige. The data collected for this purpose consist of multiple ratings of the banking and insurance industries by a national sample of Israelis. The empirical findings indicate, first, that there exists virtual concensus about all the ratings across various demographic and socioeconomic categories and, second, that industrial prestige is related to instrumental rather than normative considerations of industrial behavior. These results are discussed in terms of the specific characteristics of banking and insurance as well as in terms of the general debate over the meaning of prestige scales of occupations.     

Trends and patterns of the international tropical hardwood trade

In spite of the rapid expansion of tropical hardwood exports since 1960, there was no change in the structure of the trade. For a more equitable distribution of gains from the trade, tropical developing countries need to move away from log exports into domestic processing of wood. The main obstacles to future expansion of tropical hardwood exports are a lack of necessary complementary inputs in the producing countries and the restrictions to market access in the major importing countries. Rationalization of the production and trade of tropical hardwoods could contribute significantly to world welfare.     

Heirs to colonial trade

Decolonization lowered the share of trade ex-colonies conducted with the former metropolitan power. It is sometimes claimed, however, that this development reflected only a change in the identity of the exploiting country. This paper examines the changes which occurred between 1960–1962 and 1968–1970 in the shares of three groups of potential neocolonialists in the trade of 44 former U.K. and French dependencies. It is shown that the gains made by these three groups do not provide evidence of their taking over the trade monopoly formerly enjoyed in effect by the old colonial powers. Most of these gains can be explained by trade diversification, the only notable exception being the gains made by the traditional colonial ‘have-nots’.