The Millennium Development Goals, How Realistic Are They?

Summary In its Millennium Declaration of September 2000, the United Nations adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), to be reached in 2015 through concerted efforts worldwide. According to UN-calculations, the estimated costs in terms of additional development aid of meeting the MDGs in all countries vary from 121 billion US dollars in 2006 to 189 billion US dollars in 2015. The present communication reviews the figures reported. It appears that while Asia is well on track to achieve the goals, essentially through efforts of its own, Africa is lagging behind, albeit that according to detailed survey data on weight-for-length among adults collected in Africa for the US aid agency, rates of undernutrition are about 58 percent of the levels used as a reference by the UN, which are based on assessment of food production. Yet, child undernutrition comes out higher in these surveys. Besides mentioning reservations about the adequacy of these MDG-yardsticks, we consider the cost estimates for Africa as presented in the UN-reports and subsequently assessed in the literature. It appears that these estimates are too low, even if all MDG-funds were concentrated on this continent, essentially because they are set up as shopping lists that are necessarily incomplete and, among others, disregard many of the indirect cost of delivering the goods to the target beneficiaries, including the cost of providing adequate security and avoiding corruption. Nonetheless, recalling how hopeless the situation looked some 30 years ago for China, India, and Bangladesh, where unprecedented numbers have now escaped extreme poverty during the past decade and a half, we submit that over a time horizon of about twice the 15 years of the MDG’s and with adequate international support, realization of the MDG-targets should be possible for Africa too. An erratum to this article can be found at     

The influence of need for closure and perceived time pressure on search effort for price and promotional information in a grocery shopping context

Need for closure (NFC) is introduced as a variable of individual difference that shows promise to help the understanding of a consumers' effort to search for price and promotional information in the context of retail grocery shopping. Results showed that NFC and perceived time pressure (PTP) are important determinants of search effort for price and promotional information (e.g., searching for coupons, looking for in‐store promotions, switching stores to find lowest prices, and comparing unit prices). Moreover, an interaction effect was found between NFC and PTP. Future research and theoretical and practical implications are discussed. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Randomized Response, Statistical Disclosure Control and Misclassificatio: a Review

This paper discusses analysis of categorical data which have been misclassified and where misclassification probabilities are known. Fields where this kind of misclassification occurs are randomized response, statistical disclosure control, and classification with known sensitivity and specificity. Estimates of true frequencies are given, and adjustments to the odds ratio are discussed. Moment estimates and maximum Likelihood estimates are compared and it is proved that they are the same in the interior of the parameter space. Since moment estimators are regularly outside the parameter space, special attention is paid to the possibility of boundary solutions. An example is given.     

Not so constant! The constant-market-shares analysis and the exchange rate

Summary We show that the results of the Constant-Market-Shares analysis are influenced by the — arbitrary — choice of the currency in which the data have been expressed. The so-called static competition effect is not influenced by the exchange rate. The Dutch export performance in 1989–1991 disaggregated by 17 OECD countries and five product groups serves as an empirical illustration of our findings.Harry Oldersma is at the Directorate-General for Foreign Economic Relations, Department for International Economic Analysis and General Affairs, and Peter van Bergeijk is at the Economic Policy Directorate. This article should not be attributed to the government of The Netherlands.A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the ECOZOEK workshop on international economics, Rotterdam, June 3, 1992. Comments by Steven Brakman, Catrinus Jepma, Charles van Marrewijk, Ed Westerhout and the referees of this journal were very useful.     

Ethical Corporate Consultancy

As ethical consultancy to business develops what are its principles, its methods and its possible pitfalls? The author is Professor of Business Ethics at the Netherlands School of Business, Nijenrode, and Chairman of the European Business Ethics Network.     

A dynamic specification of an AIDS import allocation model

In this paper we use the first-order autoregressive scheme in order to introduce dynamics into the AIDS model. We also consider the theoretical restrictions of additivity, homogeneity and symmetry, and use two different specifications of the covariance matrix. We estimate the models using import allocation data for the UK 1952–1979 of five EEC countries and test different specifications against each other.     

Book Review: Bridging the Gap Between Values and Reality

John Donaldson, Business Ethics. A European Casebook , Academic Press, 1992, pp. xxvi + 293, pb, £14.94, ISBN: 0 12 220543X.     

An institutional analysis of the US foreign sales corporation

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how institutional analysis can be applied to the study of an evolving institution—the Foreign Sales Corporation (FSC). The FSC was created by the US government to provide a tax incentive to domestic exporters. It has a checkered history because the European Union views it as an export subsidy. After establishing that the FSC is definitely an institution, Scott’s institutional synthesis is utilized as a conceptual prism to demonstrate how his framework can be utilized to examine complex phenomena. The study also tests a crucial proposition for institutional theory and explores a research question critical to the continuing development of the theory. That question deals with the persistence of the FSC as an institution.