Private borrowing during the financial revolution: Hoare's Bank and its customers, 1702–241

The financial revolution improved the British government's ability to borrow, and thus its ability to wage war. North and Weingast argued that it also permitted private parties to borrow more cheaply and widely. We test these inferences with evidence from a London bank. We confirm that private bank credit was cheap in the early eighteenth century, but we argue that it was not available widely. Importantly, the government reduced the usury rate in 1714, sharply reducing the circle of private clients that could be served profitably.     

Trade and Biotechnology in Latin America: Democratization, Contestation and the Politics of Mobilization

This research explores the role of agrarian and environmental movements in contesting the development and promotion of agricultural biotechnology through trade liberalization in Latin America. Organized around themes of mobilization, participation and representation, it raises key questions about who mobilizes and how, and about the strategic dilemmas that arise when movements with different histories, membership bases and cultures of protest attempt to work together. Issues of accountability, representation and participation run through the analysis of strategies of organization and claim-making adopted by an eclectic range of groups seeking to contest the role of biotechnology in the structure of agricultural production, the institutions that manage that relationship and the discourses which sustain it. In particular, analysis centres on their responsiveness to the concerns and agendas of poorer groups in the front line of the 'gene revolution' as it plays out in the Latin American countryside, in particular in Argentina and Brazil, the key players in biotechnology in the region.     

Comparable Worth and Factor Point Pay Analysis in State Government

This study examines how factor point systems have treated state government jobs, which are held disproportionately by women, minorities, and union members. The findings indicate that female jobs may gain from comparable worth pay proposals, but the gains are dissipated in actual pay; unionized and minority workers tend to lose both proposed and actual pay; and the dispersion of points and pay is narrowed for jobs covered by collective bargaining agreements     

COMPETITIVE CONSIDERATIONS IN CABLE TELEVISION FRANCHISING

Franchising and renewing of franchises for cable television systems is an important urban policy issue. Of particular interest is whether franchise authorities ought to grant more than one franchise to provide cable service in a given area. This paper reports results of an empirical investigation into the cost structure of large, modern, urban cable systems. We find modest economies of scale in dimensions relevant to the feasibility of direct competition. The economies are not so large as to rule out the possibility that competition…whether direct or potential…can be an important disciplinary force in the marketplace.     

Access Pricing,Quality Degradation,and Foreclosure in the Internet

Access to both a local and a global network is needed in order to get complete connection to the Internet. The purpose of this article is to examine the interplay between those two networks and how it affects the domestic public policy towards a domestic provider of local access. We find that a cost-oriented regulation is detrimental to domestic welfare, because it shifts profit to the foreign provider of global access. The optimal policy is that the regulator commits itself to set an access price above costs, possibly the same price as in an unregulated market economy. A regulation of the global access price has a non-monotonic effect on domestic welfare, and there is a potential conflict between international and domestic regulation policy.     

Strategic Regulation Policy in the Internet

Some countries are importers while others are exporters of global backbone connectivity. At the same time, input components such as local access are non-traded. This paper analyzes a non-cooperative regulatory game between importing and exporting countries, assuming that the prices of both traded and non-traded inputs can be regulated. We show that exporting countries choose a more restrictive regulation of non-traded goods than importing countries do. We further show that a requirement of international non-discrimination may hurt importing countries, and give firms producing traded inputs incentives to invest in quality degradation.     

Gains from Trade versus Gains from Migration: What Makes Them So Different?

Would unrestricted “economic” migration enhance the potential gains from free trade? With free migration, consumers' feasible sets become non‐convex. Under standard assumptions, however, Walrasian equilibrium exists for a continuum of individuals with dispersed ability to afford each of a finite set of possible migration plans. Then familiar conditions ensuring potential Pareto gains from trade also ensure that free migration generates similar supplementary gains, relative to an arbitrary status quo. As with the gains from customs unions, however, wealth may have to be redistributed across international borders.