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ABSTRACT

AN AFRICAN MIRACLE: STATE AND CLASS LEADERSHIP AND COLONIAL LEGACY IN BOTSWANA DEVELOPMENT. Abdi Ismail Samatar. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999, 240 pp., cloth $59.95, paper $24.95. ISBN 0-325-0068-9. For credit card orders in the USA, call 1-800-225-5800. Reviewed by Anne Stringfellow.     

Tourism development in Cambodia: An analysis of opportunities and barriers

Cambodia has been perceived as one of the major destinations for development in the southeast Asia region. Information regarding the country and its attractions have been difficult to obtain. This study investigated the opportunities and barriers the Cambodian tourism industry now faces.     

Domestic market context and international entrepreneurs’ relationship portfolios

The importance of relationships to international entrepreneurs’ internationalization is well recognized, but we still know little concerning how entrepreneurs find, develop and use different types of relationships for their internationalization. In a study based on international entrepreneurship and network theories, we examine how having or not having a domestic market affects the relationship portfolios developed by born global software entrepreneurs. We find it profoundly influences the personal relationship strength they seek in new international relationships, and their activeness towards developing new relationships that are embedded in foreign markets. Further, the analytical model we develop shows how and why the presence of a domestic market influences international entrepreneurs’ portfolios of relationships.     

Going green: the evolution of micro‐business environmental practices

This paper examines the process through which micro‐businesses ‘go green’. It builds upon previous studies that have identified the different drivers of this greening process. However, rather than a static focus on specific drivers, the study articulates the evolution of environmental practices over time. The paper uses comparative case studies of six micro‐businesses to build a composite sequence analysis that plots the greening process from its roots through to large‐scale and ambitious ecological projects. The study identifies three distinct stages that businesses pass through during this greening process. This has important implications for policy‐makers and advisors as it was found that the support needed by the businesses changed as they passed through these different stages. In particular, it was found that appropriate support is currently lacking at certain key points of the businesses' greening development. The paper therefore adds to current understanding of small business ecological responsibility by showing how activities and drivers change with the level of engagement. Pointers are provided as to how support can be improved.     

Exchange Rates, Nominal Inertia and Inflation

This paper examines the use of the nominal exchange rate in achieving disinflation under managed exchange rate regimes. Most previous empirical studies have not explicitly identified expectations in the wage and price setting behaviour of their econometric models, despite the importance of expectations both during a disinflation and in correcting misalignments. This has meant that costs due to nominal inertia and non-neutralities have not been addressed separately from questions of credibility. We present results for the UK economy using both a theoretical and empirical model in which firms and workers form rational expectations, but where there is also nominal inertia. We identify costs in using the exchange rate to change the inflation rate, and also the costs involved in correcting any disequilibria in the real exchange rate.     

Weak and strong sustainability in the SEEA: Concepts and measurement

In this paper, we explain how the latest international handbook on environmental accounting, the System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting or SEEA (United Nations, European Commission, International Monetary Fund, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and World Bank (2003). Handbook of National Accounting, Studies in Methods. New York, United Nations.), can be used to measure weak and strong sustainability. We emphasise the importance of understanding the conceptual differences between weak and strong sustainability. We then outline what we consider to be current best practice in measurement, all the time flagging the relationship between our discussion and that of the SEEA-2003. This is an important task in our view, because, despite covering a very wide range of relevant conceptual and empirical issues, the handbook is by design not meant to provide clear guidelines for the purpose of measuring sustainability in either its weak or strong version.     

What Place For The Region? Reflections on the Regional Question and the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

In our introduction to this Debates & Developments forum, ‘What place for the Region?’, we discuss why the founders of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR) regarded the regional question as having the same importance as the urban question, and how the region has remained a significant focus during the journal's subsequent development. We then explore some of the conceptual challenges in defining and investigating regions before considering some of the key developments in contemporary regional theory. Our introduction proceeds by highlighting the key insights of the contributions to the forum––essays by Edward Soja, Mariona Tomàs, Joe Beall, Susan Parnell and Chris Albertyn, and Jean‐Paul Addie and Roger Keil––before concluding with a reaffirmation of the importance of the region in IJURR's mission as a journal of critical urban and regional studies.