NSSM 200 and the world population explosion

This paper was published in the wake of Pope John Paul II's encyclical 'Evangelicum Vitae', which condemns abortion and contraception. The author describes how, in the mid-1970's, the Vatican blocked the implementation of President Nixon's 'National Security Study Memorandum 200', which was intended to combat global overpopulation. The author explains that excessive population growth is considered threatening to U.S. security interests, and concludes that "papal security-survival along with the influence of fundamentalist Protestant opposition to birth control is now pitted against the U.S. and world security-survival."     

The market for surrogate motherhood contracts

Surrogate motherhood is a controversial subject, and has not previously been formally modelled by economists. In this paper, a neoclassical model of the market for surrogate motherhood contracts is developed, based on the utility maximizing decisions of potential surrogate mothers and commissioning parties. The presence of both altruistic and self-interested behaviour generates unusual market outcomes.     

Determinants of internal and external R&D: Some Dutch evidence

Summary Innovating firms can choose to engage in either internal or external R&D, or in both. In the current study, we shall examine internal and external R&D separately to determine empirically the market structure characteristics explaining the external R&D share and the differences in market structure determinants between internal and external R&D. Our results indicate that a government policy that aims at stimulating technological progress by offering external research facilities is particularly interesting for smaller, capital-intensive firms operating in less concentrated markets.We would like to thank Alfred Kleinknecht for providing the R&D data and Kees Bakker and Yvonne Prince for providing the market structure data. We thank Alfred Kleinknecht, Bart Nooteboom and an anonymous referee for their comments and suggestions We acknowledge a research grant from the Stichting KMO Fonds.     

A preliminary evaluation of the new RIDP and its impact on regional development in South Africa

The debate on regional political autonomy makes regional economic development a subject of central importance. Current policy is embodied in the Regional Industrial Development Programme (RIDP), as revised in May 1991. Regional industrial policy in South Africa originated in 1956 with the Border Industry Programme, whose objective was to create economically independent sovereign states, Subsequent shifts of emphasis from socio‐political objectives towards a predominantly economic orientation in the 1991 RIDP were expected to concentrate the allocation of resources to industry at locations with greater natural potential for industrial development.

An evaluation of the preliminary results of the 1991 RIDP confirms these expectations in that, as far as capital investment is concerned, a certain degree of concentration is already discernible especially in metropolitan areas and secondary cities. However, it seems there are a number of factors present in the market‐place that are still inhibiting the full realisation of the objective of concentrated industrial development at locations with a natural potential for industrial development. The existing institutional development framework, the availability of relatively cheap excess infrastructure in certain locations and the spatial application of the new RIDP are some of the factors that could possibly have influenced locational decision making during the last 20 months.

Therefore, although the new RIDP is more market orientated than its predecessor and certainly much more economically sustainable, a number of issues still need attention, and further adjustments to the programme should be made if the various regions are to be developed optimally and scarce economic resources utilised effectively.