SOCIAL CHANGE AND ECONOMIC LIFE IN BRITAIN IN THE 1980s

Books reviewed in this article:
Duncan Gallie, Catherine Marsh, and Carolyn Vogler (eds.) (1994) Social Change and the Experience of Unemployment.
Jill Rubery and Frank Wilkinson (eds.) (1994) Employer Strategy and the Labour Market.
Alison McEwan Scott (ed.) (1994) Gender Segregation and Social Change: Men and Women in Changing Labour Markets.
Roger Penn, Michael Rose, and Jill Rubery (eds.) (1994) Skill and Occupational Change.
Michael Anderson, Frank Bechhofer, and Jonathan Gershuny (eds.) (1994) The Social and Political Economy of the Household.
Duncan Gallie, Roger Penn, and Michael Rose (eds.) (1996) Trade Unionism in Recession.     

The Poverty of Politics: How Income Redistribution Hurts the Poor

In spite of the significant research literature identifying a tradeoff between income redistribution and economic growth, massive public programs have been implemented to help the poor by transferring income to them. Since Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty began in 1964, over 3.5 trillion dollars have been transferred. However, the possibility that everyone, including the poor, may in fact be made worse off by the transfer has largely been ignored. With a simple algebraic model, the authors demonstrate that, over time, both high and low-income groups are harmed by redistribution. In addition, social mobility, as well as political concerns with relative poverty and international income redistribution increases the damage to all income groups produced by redistribution.     

Expectations, the business cycle and the Mexican peso crisis

The 1994–95 ‘peso’ crisis did not displaycharacteristics which allow it to be easily captured by traditionalcrisis models. Models based on Minsky's financial fragilityhypothesis offer more persuasive accounts but have been supportedby relatively little direct empirical evidence. This paper providessuch evidence, with particular attention being paid to the roleof domestic financial liberalisation in the process. Minsky'shypotheses about the evolution of expectations over the businesscycle are tracked using business survey data. In addition, crisisindicators are constructed, reflecting the changing vulnerabilityof the economy to shocks. The findings support a Minskyian interpretationof the crisis.     

Interpersonal influence and consumer innovativeness

Innovators represent a small and somewhat elusive group of consumers who are often the earliest adopters of new products. As such, marketing researchers and practitioners alike are interested in determining the personality characteristics that influence innovators to purchase a new product early in the product life cycle. This correlational study examined the relationships of three of these characteristics (susceptibility to interpersonal influence, attention to social comparison information, and role‐relaxed consumption) to individual innate innovativeness. Data were collected using self‐report surveys administered to 326 students at a large public university in the south‐east United States. The results supported hypothesized negative relationships between consumer innovativeness and both susceptibility to interpersonal influence and attention to social comparison information, as well as a positive relationship between consumer innovativeness and role‐relaxed consumption.     

Rent seeking and the value of time

This paper focuses on the question of how rivals’ rent-seeking expenditures and investment expenditures are affected by the temporal dimension of those cash flows as well as the timing of the cash flow of monopoly rents. The paper applies methods from statistical reliability theory to derive five propositions establishing the conditions that must be satisfied if the rivals apportion their rent seeking and investment expenditures to maximize their certainty equivalents of the monopoly rent. The propositions explicate the responses of the rivals to changes in economic parameters characterizing the rent-seeking contest such as a change in the duration of the monopoly rent cash flow or a change in the number of rivals.     

Foreign investment in Russia and China: A long way to go,but reason for optimism

D. LeBaron, with D. Carpenter. 2002. Mao, Marx, and the Market: Capitalist Adventures in Russia and China. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 303 pages; ISBN: 0‐471‐15315‐X. B. Granville & P. Oppenheimer (Eds.). 2001. Russia's Post‐Communist Economy. Oxford, England: University Press. 538 pages; ISBN 0‐19‐829525‐1. H. Fung & K.H. Zhang (Eds.). 2002. Financial Markets and Foreign Direct Investment in Greater China. New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 302 pages; ISBN: 0‐7656‐0804‐9.     

Are regulations the answer for emerging stock markets? Evidence from the Czech Republic and Poland

Does the emergence of a stock market require a well-developed legal and/or regulatory system? Although historical work by Neal and Davis [Neal, L., & Davis, L. (2005). The evolution of the rules and regulations of the first emerging markets: The London, New York, and Paris stock exchanges, 1792–1914. Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 45, 296–311] and Stringham [Stringham, E. (2003). The extralegal development of securities trading in seventeenth century Amsterdam. Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 43, 321–344] suggests that securities markets have successfully developed with little government oversight, numerous authors [including Black, B. (2001). The legal and institutional preconditions for strong securities markets. University of California Law Angeles Law Review, 48, 781–855; Coffee, J. (1999). Privatization and corporate governance: The lessons from securities market failure. Journal of Corporation Law, 25, 1–39; Frye, T. (2000). Brokers and bureaucrats: Building market institutions in Russia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Glaeser, E., Johnson, S., & Shleifer, A. (2001). Coase versus the Coasians. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116, 853–899; Mlčoch, L. (2000). Restructuring of property rights: An institutional view. In L. Mlčoch et al. (Eds.), Economic and Social Changes in Czech Society After 1989. Prague: The Karolinum Press; Pistor, K. (2001). Law as a determinant for equity market development – the experience of transition economies. In Peter Murrell (Ed.), The Value of Law in Transition Economies (pp. 249–287). Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press; Stiglitz, J. (1999). Whither reform. Ten years of the transition. Keynote Address, Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics, Washington, DC, April 28–30, 1999; Zhang, X. (2006). Financial market governance in developing countries: Getting the political underpinnings right. Journal of Developing Societies, 2, 169–196] argue that the Czech Republic and other Eastern European governments need more regulation for their newly created stock markets. They maintain that the Warsaw Stock Exchange, which is seen as more regulated, has outperformed the Prague Stock Exchange which is seen as largely unregulated. Thus increased regulations are a key to increased performance. This article, however, maintains that the evidence from the Czech experience has been misinterpreted. This article provides an in depth case study of the Czech stock market and finds that (a) Czech capital markets have been hindered by government intervention from their beginning, (b) that the evidence on Poland's superior performance is not as strong as suggested, and (c) that Czech regulators seem to be unqualified, lack the proper incentives, and are unlikely to benefit the market. Under these circumstances it appears that Neal and Davis (2005:311) are correct that increased government involvement is unlikely to improve the situation.     

Information services in rural areas — access and delivery

In the UK, considerable interest has been expressed in the extent to which telecommunications could help to improve the accessibility and provision of information services in rural areas. Information services are typically provided by local and central government departments, voluntary advice agencies, and by a wide range of professional, financial, public utility and transport undertakings. It has never been particularly easy to visit service outlets in market towns, but recent changes in the organization and location of information services, together with the withdrawal of many public transport services, have caused a significant deterioration in physical accessibility. The authors summarize their research project on ‘Telecommunications and information services in rural areas’, the final report of which was submitted to the UK Department of the Environment in October 1978.     

Planning for recreational planning

This paper takes a look at recreational planning from the point of view of a formal planning system. In particular, the development of a decision support system for recreational planning is discussed. One of the outputs of this system is the familiar recreation plan and its associated processes. In addition, such a system allows the recreation plan to deal with some important issues on a timely basis as well as establishing a strong working relationship with local agencies.