Measuring poverty and income distribution in Southeast Asia

The paper surveys the extensive research on the measurement of poverty and inequality in Southeast Asia over the last five decades. It examines the work carried out by both independent scholars and international agencies including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. The paper argues that the household surveys carried out by national statistical agencies across the region, and used by most researchers, are often flawed. These flaws have led to rather misleading results both for individual countries and for cross‐country comparisons. Further problems have been found in the data on purchasing power parities (PPP) which have been used by the World Bank to estimate poverty both in Southeast Asia and in other developing countries. The paper also points out that estimates of poverty and inequality are often politically sensitive, and argues that a more accurate understanding of the estimation problems will only emerge if governments support rather than suppress open debate over measurement problems.     

The Role of a Toolkit in Mobilising Women in Local and Regional Development

This paper introduces UK readers to the EuroFEM Toolkit which has been developed with European Union (EU) funding. The Toolkit is a collection of methods and stories taken from women's projects in European member states and is aimed at supporting, encouraging and facilitating women's involvement in every sector of local and regional development. The context for the development of the Toolkit is set within the debate about gender mainstreaming and what this means for local and regional development.     

Virtue: The Missing Ethics Element in Emotional Intelligence

Journal of Business Ethics - The Emotional Competency Inventory (ECI) framework of Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis has gained significant impact in business leadership and management...     

Accommodating a growing population in Javanese agriculture

An examination of how the island of Java, Indonesia, has accommodated population growth over the past 150 years by a process of agricultural development is presented. A brief review of the literature on the relationship between agricultural development and population growth is first provided. Next, the available data on land area, cultivated area, agricultural production, and employment in Java over the past century are reviewed. The relationship between agricultural development and population growth in Java is then analyzed in terms of the concepts and processes discussed in the theoretical literature.     

Book Reviews

Mohamed Ariff and Hal Hill, Export-Oriented Industrialisation: The ASEAN Experience, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1985, pp. 270. Aus$ 19.95

David Lim (ea.), ASEAN-Australian Trade in Manufactures, Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1985, pp. xii + 263

Kathryn May Robinson, Stepchildren of Progress: The Political Economy of Development in an Indonesian Mining Town, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986, pp. xvi + 315.

Gillian Hart, Power, Labor and Livelihood: Processes of Change in Rural Java, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986, pp. xvi + 228. US$ 30.00

Walter P. Falcon, William O. Jones, Scott R. Pearson and others, The Cassava Economy of Java, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984, pp.xvii + 212. $US 38.50.

Randolph Barker, Robert W. Herdt with Beth Rose, TheRice Economy of Asia, Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, 1985, pp. xx + 324 $US 30 (hardcover), $US 12 (paper).

C.W. Watson, Kerinci: Two Historical Studies, Canterbury: University of Kent, Centre of South-cast Asian Studies Occasional Paper No.3, 1984, pp.63.

Asia Pacific Report: Trends, Issues, Challenges, Honolulu: East-West Center, University of Hawaii, 1986, pp. x + 104.

B.L. Greenshields and M.A. Bellamy (eds), Rural Development, Growth and Inequity, International Association of Agricultural Economists Occasional Paper No. 3, Aldershot: Gower, 1983, pp.viii + 312.

Masami Mizuno, Population Pressure and Peasant Occupations in Rural Central Java, Canterbury: University of Kent, Centre of South-east Asian Studies Occasional Paper No. 4, 1985, pp.71.     

Unions and Efficient Training

The paper examines the optimal level of training investment when trained workers are mobile, wage contracts are time-consistent, and training comprises both specific and general skills. The firm has ex post monopsonistic power that drives trained workers' wages below the social optimum. The emergence of a trade union bargaining at the firm-level can increase social welfare, by counterbalancing the firm's ex post monopsonistic power in wage determination. Local union-firm wage bargaining ensures that the post-training wage is set sufficiently high to deter at least some quits, so that the number of workers the firm trains is nearer the social optimum