MEASURING THE PERFORMANCE OF A COMMUNIST COMMAND ECONOMY: AN ASSESSMENT OF THE CIA ESTIMATES FOR THE U.S.S.R.

There are major methodological and practical problems in comparing the performance of capitalist and communist economies. They have been most carefully analysed for the former Soviet Union, for which there was a huge research input, mainly by the CIA. The CIA effort had considerable merit, particularly in assessing Soviet rates of growth. Unfortunately, it was terminated in 1991, partly because it suffered from unduly harsh criticism, partly because its political relevance waned. However, the CIA archives remain an important source for the study of comparative economic growth. It would be extremely useful if they were opened to scholars, a serious loss if they were destroyed.     

Uncertainty,Learning and International Environmental Policy Coordination

In this paper we construct a simple model of global warming which captures a number of key features of the global warming problem: (i) environmental damages are related to the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; (ii) the global commons nature of the problem means that these are strategic interactions between the emissions policies of the governments of individual nation states; (iii) there is uncertainty about the extent of the future damages that will be incurred by each country from any given level of concentration of greenhouse gases but there is the possibility that at a future date better information about the true extent of environmental damages may become available; an important aspect of the problem is the extent to which damages in different countries may be correlated. In the first part of the paper we consider a simple model with two symmetric countries and show that the value of perfect information is an increasing function of the correlation between damages in the two countries in both the cooperative and non-cooperative equilibria. However, while the value of perfect information is always non-negative in the cooperative equilibrium, in the non-cooperative equilibrium there is a critical value of the correlation coefficient below which the value of perfect information will be negative. In the second part of the paper we construct an empirical model of global warming distinguishing between OECD and non-OECD countries and show that in the non-cooperative equilibrium the value of perfect information for OECD countries is negative when the correlation coefficient between environmental damages for OECD and non-OECD countries is negative. The implications of these results for international agreements are discussed.     

Quantifying and interpreting world development: macromeasurement before and after Colin Clark

This article is an appraisal of the contributions of Colin Clark to the art of macroeconomic measurement. It traces his place in the historical tradition in this field, provides biographical background and analyses his contributions to national income measurement, international comparisons, agricultural development and the impact of population growth.     

Local environmental quality and life-satisfaction in Germany

Hitherto the task of valuing differences in environmental quality arising from air pollution and noise nuisance has been carried out mainly by using the hedonic price technique. This paper proposes a different approach to derive information on individual preferences for local environmental quality. It analyses data drawn from the German socio-economic panel in an attempt to explain differences in self-reported levels of well-being in terms of environmental quality. Mindful of existing research a large number of other explanatory variables are included to control for socio-demographic differences, economic circumstances as well as neighbourhood characteristics. Differences in local air quality and noise levels are measured by how much an individual feels affected by air pollution or noise exposure in their residential area. The evidence suggests that even when controlling for a range of other factors higher local air pollution and noise levels significantly diminish subjective well-being. But interestingly differences in perceived air and noise pollution are not capitalised into differences in house prices.     

Will African Agriculture Survive Climate Change?

Measurement of the likely magnitude of the economic impact ofclimate change on African agriculture has been a challenge.Using data from a survey of more than 9,000 farmers across 11African countries, a cross-sectional approach estimates howfarm net revenues are affected by climate change compared withcurrent mean temperature. Revenues fall with warming for drylandcrops (temperature elasticity of –1.9) and livestock (–5.4),whereas revenues rise for irrigated crops (elasticity of 0.5),which are located in relatively cool parts of Africa and arebuffered by irrigation from the effects of warming. At first,warming has little net aggregate effect as the gains for irrigatedcrops offset the losses for dryland crops and livestock. Warming,however, will likely reduce dryland farm income immedia-tely.The final effects will also depend on changes in precipitation,because revenues from all farm types increase with precipitation.Because irrigated farms are less sensitive to climate, wherewater is available, irrigation is a practical adaptation toclimate change in Africa.     

Dose response functions and the harvesting effect

Much of the existing literature on air pollution and mortality deals only with the short-term effects of air pollution. Policy on the other hand needs to know when, whether and to what extent pollution-induced increases in mortality counts are reversed. This involves modelling the entire infinite distributed-lag effect of air pollution on mortality counts.Using an ARMAX modelling strategy this paper illustrates how distributed lag effects can be parsimoniously but plausibly estimated in the context of a time-series study into the relationship between ambient levels of air pollution and daily mortality counts for Manchester. The analysis reveals that maximum 1-h ozone levels are strongly associated with daily mortality counts and that a significant harvesting effect is present. The mortality cost of peak 1-h ozone concentrations for Greater Manchester with a population of 2.6 million is estimated to be £572 million annually. This accounts for the fact that some of the deaths associated with maximum 1-h O₃ concentrations have been advanced only by a short period of time.     

Fluctuations in the momentum of growth within the capitalist epoch

This paper reviews the history of cyclical and long wave analysis and examines the evidence on changes in the momentum of economic growth in 16 advanced capitalist countries from 1820 to 2001. It assesses the work of the main Business Cycle Research Institutes in Western Europe the USA and Russia, as well as that of Kondratieff, Kuznets, Schumpeter, Abramovitz and the long-wave revivalists-Rostow, Mandel and Mensch. It concludes that the existence of regular long-term rhythms in capitalist development is not proven, but distinguishes major changes in the momentum of growth due to disturbances of an ad hoc character. The role of system shocks and historical accidents is important but the role of policy error and success is also emphasised. It identifies five major phases of capitalist development since 1820.