Minimum Living Level and Consumer Price Index: What's in a name?

The Minimum Living Level (MLL) denotes the minimum financial requirements of members of a household to maintain an acceptable living standard, which is above the Poverty Line. Sufficient quantities of relevant expenditure items based on minimum health standards are allowed for when calculating the MLL, but rational expenditure on them is assumed. The MLL is measured in monetary value. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measurement of changes in the prices over time of a basket of typical consumer goods and services and is measured by an index or percentage. The basket of expenditure items used in the CPI depends on household expenditure surveys. This article sets out to differentiate between the MLL, CPI and the Poverty Line, since the latter and the MLL are sometimes used in the same context in South Africa.     

Business Ethics in Belgium

Business Ethics has really taken off in Belgium. The author is Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, and an Associate Editor.     

Hard times in 19th-century Sweden: A comment

An alternative interpretation, the growth/workload hypothesis, is given to counter the recent argument by Sandberg and Steckel (1988, Explorations in Economic History 25, 1–19) on overpopulation and malnutrition in Sweden around the mid-19th century. This explains the joint behavior of agrarian growth and labor demand, poverty, side employment, and nutrition within a regional framework. The mid-19th century is seen as a transitional period which succeeded remarkably well in avoiding pauperization despite strong population growth.     

Total factor productivity in South African agriculture, 1947‐91

Indices of total factor productivity (TFP) measure aggregate output per unit of aggregate input, providing a guide to the efficiency of agricultural production. This article outlines the relationship between production functions and TFP indices. Then, an index is constructed for South African agriculture for the period 1947‐91. The index shows that TFP grew at an average rate of 1,3 per cent per annum. However, TFP growth has increased since the reforms of the early 1980s. Since capital has been more realistically priced relative to labour, greater productivity growth has gone together with increasing employment, which must have improved social welfare.     

Some notes on the stability of a simple Cournot economy with a leontief technology

The stability analysis of a simple linear Cournot model is extended by including two branches producing inputs to each other and for consumption. Equilibrium turns out as stable under continuous adjustment.