Negotiating contested visions and place-specific expectations of the hydrogen economy

This paper explores the role of the 'hydrogen economy' as a guiding vision encompassing multiple contested technological futures, value judgements and problem framings. Hydrogen visions draw upon six overarching and competing narrative themes: power and independence; community empowerment and democratisation; ecotopia; hydrogen as technical fix; inevitability and technical progress; and 'staying in the race'. In other words the hydrogen economy possesses great interpretive flexibility. This, it is argued, is the key to hydrogen's rhetorical power, allowing it to become a space in which divergent interests and agendas are promoted. Turning to issues of scale and place, the case of London is used to document the dynamics of expectations: how the open flexible guiding vision of a hydrogen economy must inevitably be re-invented and grounded in local agendas and contexts if its promise is to become realised.     

Some theoretical and empirical issues relating to economic stabilization in developing countries

This paper surveys some issues relating to economic stabilization in developing countries. Section 2 examines the contributions of terms-of-trade deterioration and real exchange rate appreciation to payments imbalances in non-oil developing countries during the 1970s. Section 3 distinguishes between demand-side and supply-side policies, and discusses their respective roles in stabilization programmes. The effects of exchange-rate changes are considered within this framework. In Section 4, the effects of alternative stabilization policies on output, prices and the balance of payments are illustrated using simulations of a model that incorporates the major relationships relevant to a typical programme. Section 5 summarizes the conclusions.