Predicting Household Poverty: A Methodological Note with a Kenyan Example

Household surveys provide data that is used for identifying and measuring the poverty status of households and individuals. However, carrying out such surveys is expensive, especially in poor developing countries. Thus it is important to make maximum use of the available survey data in developing countries, especially in sub‐Saharan Africa, where such data are expensive to collect and analyse. This paper develops a simple method for using poverty indices derived from survey data for a given year, to predict poverty rates for subsequent periods without having to conduct a new household survey. We illustrate the workings of the method with data from Kenyan household surveys for 1994 and 1997.     

An appropriate model for joint regional action in southern Africa after apartheid

Market‐based integration is not appropriate to the joint development of the southern African region; the region's political, technical and institutional immaturity requires instead loose, function‐based economic cooperation. This will also facilitate intraregional trade. Subregions in the meantime could progress to higher levels of integration: international experience has shown that successful integration is most likely when it takes place on the basis of ‘regions within regions’. Cooperative development of the subcontinent is likely to be best achieved through the ‘concentric circles’ approach to regional cooperation, in which a revised Southern African Customs Union‐Common Monetary Area forms the highly integrated core of a loose, function‐based cooperative arrangement covering the whole of southern Africa.     

Facilitating Global Organizational Learning in Product Development at Whirlpool Corporation

The challenges of leveraging learning about product development in a global company are complex. Whirlpool Corporation is addressing these challenges, using a multidimensional strategy that couples work in advanced products and product development with organization development and training. Deborah Durate and Nancy Snyder describe how Whirlpool has implemented training, best practices conferences, and programs focused on enhancing the performance of product development teams to facilitate learning after product development efforts and to leverage that learning on a global basis. Programs and processes are described, and lessons learned as well as guidelines for development are offered.     

Regulating Banks through Market Discipline: A Survey of the Issues

Abstract.  The interest in the application of market discipline to regulate the financial industry has boomed recently due to the proposed New Capital Accord. This paper reviews the potential role market discipline can play in financial regulation. We start with a discussion of the rationale for financial regulation and with a brief history of the current regulatory mechanisms. Next, a definition of market discipline as a regulatory mechanism is advanced. We evaluate the disciplining power various market participants have. Finally, we argue that more external risk management disclosure is a condition sine qua non in order to enable market discipline as a regulatory mechanism. In this respect, the Basle Committee has taken the right approach.     

HOUSEHOLD AND ENTERPRISE SAVING AND CAPITAL FORMATION IN THE UNITED STATES: A MARKET TRANSACTIONS VIEW

Contrary to conventional macro theory, it is not the consumption function in terms of either the permanent income or the life-cycle theory of saving that has furnished the saving for enterprise capital formation in the United States. Household sector accounts indicate that household gross saving, correctly measured, did not exceed household gross capital formation in the United States over the period since 1947. Furthermore, historical data on enterprise saving and capital formation in the United States, and cross-section tax return data of U.S. corporations indicate that the gross saving for many enterprise sectors has been equal to or greater than their gross capital formation. There are exceptions, however: these same sources indicate that public utilities have borrowed substantially to finance their capital formation. Finally, it is argued that employer pension and insurance reserves held by financial institutions for future benefit payments represent retained income of a nature similar to undistributed profits, and that these constitute a source of saving in the economy.     

Of hats and cattle: or the limits of macro-survey research in industrial relations

Attempts to use WIRS 3 data to assess the impact of HRM and specialist personnel management have produced implausible, inconclusive and contradictory results–demonstrating the severe limitations of the new macro-survey approach to industrial relations research. Yet macro-surveys threaten to become the dominant methodology. Imaginative insights, with practical implications, will not be achieved in this way. A major reorientation of research effort is needed before it is too late. Given its long tradition, of attempting to be both original and useful, British IR research deserves something better.     

Taking the “Q” Out of Research: Teaching Research Methodology Courses Without the Divide Between Quantitative and Qualitative Paradigms

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence that the debate between quantitative and qualitative is divisive and, hence, counterproductive for advancing the social and behavioral science field. We advocate that all graduate students learn to utilize and to appreciate both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. As such, students will develop into pragmatist researchers who are able to utilize both quantitative and qualitative techniques when conducting research. We contend that the best way to accomplish this is by eliminating quantitative research methodology and qualitative research methodology courses from curricula and replacing these with research methodology courses at different levels that simultaneously teach both quantitative and qualitative techniques within a mixed methodological framework.An earlier version of this article received the 2003 Southwest Educational Research Association (SERA) Outstanding Paper Award.     

Land use externalities, open space preservation, and urban sprawl

Parcel data on residential land conversion are used to investigate how land use externalities influence the rate of development and modify policies designed to manage urban growth and preserve open space. Several “smart growth” policies are found to significantly influence land conversion, including a development clustering policy that concentrates development and generates preserved open space. In addition to directly affecting a parcel's hazard rate of conversion, this policy is found to affect neighboring parcels' conversion by generating a positive open space externality that hastens their development. The implication that the clustering policy could generate a more sprawled pattern of development is explored using spatial simulation.