bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Early Writings
Authors: McCulloch Margery Palmer
Published: April 2023

1926–1927. This chapter reviews and discusses the couples’ literary output to date, as they settle in a cottage in Dormandsland in Surrey, closer to literary life in London. Willa wrote lively essays about their time in Prague, but these have never been published. Edwin produced First Poems (1925) and Chorus of the Newly Dead (1926), which show the influence of his interest in German poetry and writers such as Hölderlin and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. His first novel The Marionette was published in 1927. His essays have appeared in We Moderns (1918), Latitudes (1924), Transition (1926). He is now a respected reviewer, published by the Hogarth Press, and friendly with influential figures such as Leonard and Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, and the novelist and translator Sydney Schiff (‘Stephen Hudson’).
Willa and Womanhood 1927–1929
Authors: McCulloch Margery Palmer
Published: April 2023

1927–1929. This chapter describes the production of Willa’s proto-feminist study Women: An Inquiry (1925). A discussion of the book’s strengths and weaknesses is set against contemporary opinions about childbirth and infancy, most notably the teachings of Truby King. The Muir’s son Gavin is born on 29 October 1927. It is a very difficult birth, and Willa will suffer recurring gynaecological problems for years to come. She keeps a diary of Gavin’s early years (unpublished) called ‘Marmaduke’s Journal’. Gavin will prove to be a worry for his parents, who cannot always give him the attention he will need.
Crowborough and Literary Life 1929–1931
Authors: McCulloch Margery Palmer
Published: April 2023

1929–1931. The Muirs move to a cottage in Crowborough. Edwin works on another novel, The Three Brothers (1931), while Willa returns to her plans for a novel of her own. With Edwin’s support, she continues with the German translations that are now a regular source of their income. Writing as ‘Agnes Neill Scott’, she translates Hans Carossa’s A Roumanian Diary on her own. Edwin discovers an author of a book who is new to them both. The Muir’s translation of Kafka’s The Castle, published in 1930, is a significant event for the English-speaking world. Further novels of his are to follow, as well as a contract to translate Hermann Broch’s great trilogy Die Schlafwandler, The Sleepwalkers. The pressures of work affect them both, especially Willa, so they place young Gavin in a Montessori nursery school and take a month’s break in Menton. In Paris on the way south they meet with John Holms, now Peggy Guggenheim’s lover. Willa finishes her novel, published in 1931 as Imagined Corners, and the themes of the novel and its critical reception are discussed in detail. The pressures of literary work, childcare, and family demands take their toll. Willa has to go to hospital to repair the damage, never properly dealt with, endured during Gavin’s birth. More serious than expected, the operation keeps her in hospital for three weeks, with a further two weeks bed-rest at home.
Changing Worlds and a Hampstead Idyll 1930–1933
Authors: McCulloch Margery Palmer
Published: April 2023

1930–1933. The chapter begins with a discussion of the literary renaissance in Scotland, Edwin’s engagement with it, and his friendship with Hugh MacDiarmid and James Whyte, the editor of The Modern Scot. Edwin and Willa are sent to Budapest in May 1932 as representatives of Scottish P.E.N. They are glad to be back in Europe, but it is not a happy occasion, tainted by a harsh Hungarian regime and shadows of fascism. On their return the Muirs decide to move to London, using an inheritance from Willa’s mother to rent a house in Hampstead. Here they will spend five happy years, in close contact with publishers and writers, including expatriate Scots such as Catherine Carswell, George Malcolm Thomson, and younger poets including Stephen Spender, Dylan Thomas, and George Barker. Edwin’s last novel Poor Tom (1932) is his best piece of fiction, but lukewarm reviews convince him that his métier is poetry. Willa’s second novel, Mrs Ritchie, appears in 1933 as a scathing vision of a puritanical narrowness in Scottish society. More overtly polemical, it is less successful than Imagined Corners. In May 1933, Edwin attends another P.E.N. conference, this time in Dubrovnik, sadly marked by anti-Semitism and the presence of Nazi sympathizers. Back in London, Gavin is injured by a lorry while fleeing from the servant girl whose hell-fire religious fanaticism had frightened him, an already nervous child.
Scotland and Europe 1935–1939
Authors: McCulloch Margery Palmer
Published: April 2023

1935–1939. The Muirs move to St Andrews and contribute to a series on Scottish identity. Edwin’s Scott and Scotland and Willa’s Mrs Grundy in Scotland are published by Routledge in 1936. Willa’s book, produced under the pressures of her translation work, is a rather heavy-handed attack on narrow-minded Protestantism. Edwin’s study is a more considered critique, but his reservations about the Scottish literary renaissance prove to be highly controversial. He regards the use of literary Scots to be a dead end; Scottish writers should look to English. MacDiarmid takes this as a personal betrayal, and the debate raged for years to come. Life in St Andrews is not as Willa remembered. Edwin and Willa are happiest with Europeans and more free-thinking people in the city. Edwin starts to revisit his childhood with plans for an autobiography. Willa begins a novel based on their happier Hampstead years. Called ‘Mrs Muttoe and the Top Story’, it will never be published. Darker times, with the Spanish Civil War and the rise of fascism, give a new relevance to the couple’s translations of Kafka, with The Trial (1937) and America (1938). They arrange for Hermann Broch to flee Austria and come to Britain. He stays with them in St Andrews before leaving for the United States. Willa’s old troubles recur, her heart has been weakened, and she needs rest in the Cottage Hospital before another internal operation. Hitler’s invasion of Poland signals the start of world war.
The Second World War in St Andrews 1939–1942
Authors: McCulloch Margery Palmer
Published: April 2023

1939–1942. The Muirs face worries about their health, the war, and the collapse in demand for German literature in translation. Edwin completes his autobiography, to be published as The Story and the Fable in 1940. They worry about Gavin, who has musical talent, but is prone to acute anxieties. As socialists in conservative St Andrews, the Muirs are regarded with a degree of suspicion in these difficult times, and some of their left-wing friends, and prominent Scottish nationalists, are visited by MI5 looking for fifth columnists. Willa works as an underpaid school teacher at Gavin’s school. Edwin is disregarded by the university because he has no degree, so he signs up with the Home Guard and works as a clerk at the Food Office in Dundee. His health fails, however, and he has to rest at home for several weeks. Under the stress of these days, Willa’s troubles recur. Suffering from bowel ulcers, she struggles on until, seriously ill, she has a major operation in January 1942. Things improve for Edwin when Harvey Wood invites him to come to Edinburgh to lecture Polish troops at the Polish House, catering for European combatants displaced from their home countries. (Free French and Czech houses were to follow.) Edwin’s talks are a success, and when the British Council seek to formalize the arrangement, he gets the job. When Willa is feeling better, the family leave St Andrews and move to Edinburgh.
The Cold War and Prague 1945–1948
Authors: McCulloch Margery Palmer
Published: April 2023

1945–1948. Edwin and two British Council colleagues set out for Czechoslovakia by car. The ruins of post-war Europe are a shock to them, and people in Prague, so recently under Soviet occupation, seem nervous and subdued. Willa flies out to join Edwin and they find a place to stay and a decent venue to establish the British Institute. Edwin is made visiting professor at Charles University. His informal lecturing style is popular with Czech students, arousing professional jealousies. Nevertheless, he is awarded an honorary doctorate in May 1947. Edwin’s duties keep him busy, with P.E.N. meetings and lectures in Zurich, Vienna, and elsewhere. Willa, rather on her own, promotes a social life at the institute for staff and local people alike, and starts personal journals to record her experience of Prague. The traumas of Nazi occupation have left a legacy of tension and hatred in the city. She is working on translating Kafka again, with The Penal Settlement, Tales and Short Pieces published in 1948. Political tensions increase with the rise to power of the Communist Party. Non-communists are removed from posts throughout the city. Jan Masaryk, former foreign minister and son of the founder of the First Republic in 1918, dies in suspicious circumstances. Edwin is followed by the secret police, his lectures are observed, and student numbers dwindle. Lumir Soukup leaves the country and the Muirs follow suit. Edwin’s next collection, The Labyrinth (1949) is much influenced by these experiences, and contains some of his best poems.
American Adventure 1955–1956
Authors: McCulloch Margery Palmer
Published: April 2023

1955–1956. The Muirs are charmed by the material and social differences of North America, though they will rarely stray from Harvard and the North East. The hospitality and the social freedom of American academics is a new experience for them, and they make friends with Archibald MacLeish, Robert Frost, Harry Levin, Edmund Wilson, and visiting Scot, Karl Miller. Edwin’s lectures are well received, later published as The Estate of Poetry (1962). The couple visit Washington and Edwin does poetry readings for the radio, also at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the University of Chicago. Back in Cambridge, they attend a performance of Djuna Barnes’ play The Antiphon. When the time comes to return to Britain, they reflect that they had to come to America to find out how ‘European’ they are.
Swaffham Prior 1956–1959
Authors: McCulloch Margery Palmer
Published: April 2023

1956–1959. Seeking an affordable place to stay, within reach of literary London, the Muirs take Priory Cottage in the village of Swaffham Prior outside Cambridge. Gavin is finding it difficult to settle to a career. Edwin and Willa like to take holidays in Orkney, but settle in England, close to friends like Katherine Raine, who is a Fellow at Girton and John Holloway at Queen’s College. They are well received. Edwin is made a member of Queen’s and can use the library. They meet with David Daiches who is at Jesus. One Foot in Eden (1956) is well reviewed and its poems and its uses of mythology are discussed. Edwin gains a Bollingen Foundation grant for a book on the Scots ballads. He hopes to visit Norman MacCaig in Edinburgh to research it, and plans a new collection of poetry to be called ‘Last Poems’. Steps are taken to grant him a civil list pension, and he is awarded an Honorary D.Litt. by Cambridge in June 1958. Edwin’s health is not strong, however, and suffering breathlessness, with fluid in the lungs, he is confined to the garden of their cottage. In December he is rushed to Addenbrookes Hospital and dies of congestive heart failure on 3 January 1959.
Willa Alone 1959–1963
Authors: McCulloch Margery Palmer
Published: April 2023

1959–1963. The chapter reviews the critical assessments and obituaries that follow Edwin’s death, north and south of the border. Willa’s friends rally round, and her correspondence with Violet Schiff, Kathleen Raine, and the Marwicks in Orkney will be a great comfort to her in years to come. Crippled with arthritis and easily tired, Willa is determined to cope on her own. Honouring Edwin’s Bollingen grant, she commits to writing the ballad book herself. She is awarded a prize of 3000 marks from the German Academy of Language and Literature in recognition of her translation work, and receives the Guinness Poetry Award on Edwin’s behalf in London. Edwin’s Collected Poems is published in 1960, and Willa helps with the addendum of ‘Poems not Previously Collected’. She meets Peter Butter, who is writing a book about Edwin. She writes an essay on old age from a woman’s perspective, but ‘This Lopsided World’ is never published. She does, however, contract to translate Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s play, Der Schwierige—The Difficult Man. Gavin is finally to be married. He will wed Dorothy Hargreaves at Swaffham Prior so that his mother can attend. Willa is delighted, but there will be growing tensions between her and Dorothy when the couple decide to come to live with her in December 1961. Within two years Willa has decided to leave Swaffham Prior to stay with Kathleen Raine, in a basement flat in Chelsea.
Basis of Inter-industry Trade
Authors: Acharyya Rajat
Published: April 2023

This chapter introduces the basis of inter-industry trade and exchange of goods between nations: Why or when two nations trade with each other and what governs the pattern or direction of trade between them? Arbitrage is shown to be the basic force behind inter-industry trade, the scope of which arises from price differences across nations due to difference in any of the three fundamentals—technology, abundance or scarcity of factors of production, and tastes. Relative price differences that essentially reflect comparative advantage can also arise due to public policies. Development of hard infrastructure like paved roads and improved sea-ports generates positive externalities by lowering the cost of transporting and shipping of goods and thus establishes comparative advantage in goods. Similarly, development of infrastructure for ICT may promote virtual trade in services. In contrast, lax implementation of environmental standards in a country may establish a perverse comparative advantage for it in dirty goods—goods that pollute the environment—and lead to ecological dumping and unfair trade. This chapter also introduces to the students trade in intermediate goods, which now dominates the world trade, arising from fragmentation of vertical stages of production with different countries producing and specializing in different stages of production, known as global value chains. Fundamental determinants of such vertical specialization are again technology and/or abundance of factors intensively used in the stage of production in which the country specializes. Finally, this chapter discusses Balassa’s concept of RCA as an empirical measure of comparative advantage.
Gains from Trade
Authors: Acharyya Rajat
Published: April 2023

This chapter discusses the normative aspect of international trade and exchange, viz., the Gains from Trade Theorem which is the essence of Ricardo’s doctrine of comparative cost advantage. It demonstrates that if each country exports the good in which it has a comparative (cost) advantage then trade is a positive-sum game. That is, free trade is beneficial for all the trading partners. Gain from trade is not a Pareto statement though, since trade creates both winners and losers. It only ensures that if a compensation principle is applied whereby gains are forced to compensate losers for their losses, then free trade is Pareto superior to autarchy or no trade. Sources of such gains from trade are discussed and illustrated by decomposing the overall gain into consumption (or exchange) gain and production (or specialization) gain. But, gains from trade may not always be realized and this chapter provides the sufficient conditions for gains from trade in terms of tangency and convexity conditions, and highlights the role of technology (or returns to scale) in this context.
International Equilibrium and the Terms of Trade
Authors: Acharyya Rajat
Published: April 2023

With opening up of trade, arbitrage and free movements of goods across nations would lead to convergence of autarchic prices in the two countries. At which level does the post-trade prices converge, or the terms of trade (ToT) settle? This chapter looks into this dimension and provides an answer to this question by characterizing international equilibrium. The offer curve technique is used for determining the ToT at the international equilibrium. Existence, uniqueness, and (Walrasian) stability of international equilibrium are studied graphically in terms of properties of the offer curves as well as algebraically in terms of the properties of excess demand functions for the goods traded. Finally, welfare properties of the international equilibrium are discussed and gains from trade theorem are revisited by introducing the concept and properties of trade indifference curves.
Factor Endowment and Trade
Authors: Acharyya Rajat
Published: April 2023

An alternative source of comparative advantage of nations and explanation of the basis of trade was offered by Eli Heckscher (1949) and Bertil Ohlin (1933). Their analyses that related pattern of trade of a country with its relative factor endowment abundance later came to be known as the Heckscher-Ohlin (HO) theory. Factor abundance of a country, that determines its pattern of trade, is defined in terms of factor proportions and hence this theory or explanation of pattern of trade is also known as the Factor Proportions Theory. This chapter discusses this explanation of the pattern of trade in terms of what is known as the Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson (HOS) model. Along with the basic properties of the HOS model and the HO theorem, three other important theorems—Stolper-Samuleson theorem, Rybczynski theorem, and Factor Price Equalization theorem—constituting the core results in the HOS model are also discussed.
Quantitative Restrictions, Non-tariff Barriers, and Equivalence
Authors: Acharyya Rajat
Published: April 2023

Quantitative restrictions (QRs) on trade and non-tariff barriers (NTBs) are prevalent in many countries. These QRs and NTBs take many forms like import quota, export quota or voluntary export restraint (VER), content protection scheme and product standards. This chapter discusses costs and benefits of trade restrictions through import quota and voluntary export restraint (VER). It also provides a comparison between equal-import quota and tariff, a topic of discussion that has attracted a lot of interest among economists since Jagdish Bhagwati’s price-equivalence result in 1965. Similar to this, equivalence between quota imposed by a country on its imports and a VER negotiated with its trading partner that yields equal-import is also discussed.
Political Economy of Trade Policy
Authors: Acharyya Rajat
Published: April 2023

In a democratic political regime and governance, trade policies are often determined by political economy considerations. These include loss of political support and the consequent political risk of being overthrown from power if a trade policy creates more losers than winners and lobbying by competing interest groups and potential beneficiaries of a trade policy. Politically optimum trade policies thus are actually quite different from the economically optimum policies. At the same time, restrictive trade policies that generate rents for some domestic economic agents—such as an import quota generating scarcity rent for the import license holders—may trigger rent-seeking lobbying that use up scarce real resources that could have been otherwise used in productive purposes. The economy thus produces less and thereby experiences a welfare loss due to such directly unproductive profit-seeking (or DUP) lobbying activities over and above the usual loss from trade protection. This chapter discusses these aspects of political economy of trade policy choice and rent-seeking lobbying activities that it may lead to.
Multilateralism and Regionalism
Authors: Acharyya Rajat
Published: April 2023

Since the 1990s, there has been a spectacular upsurge in the number of regional trade agreements (RTAs) amongst a group of nations in a particular region, usually the neighbours, for freer trade and unified trade policies within that region. Building upon reciprocated and coordinated trade policy liberalization, member countries engage in deeper and broader levels of economic cooperation through such RTAs including fiscal and monetary policy coordination. BENELUX and subsequently the EU are the two glaring examples in this regard. The RTAs that have emerged across the globe after 1990s, however, differ from those after the WW II in motivation as well as in character. Strategic reasons, coordinating on product standards and environmental protection, and the like now govern these RTAs more than the motive of realizing welfare gains through trade creation and trade diversion a la Jacob Viner. But, this regional approach has slowed down the momentum in the multilateral approach to free trade negotiations, and in many cases has undermined it. Moreover, regional agreements have often overlapped leading to what Jagdish Bhagwati calls spaghetti bowl effect, which is certainly not the best way of organizing world trade. This has raised serious concern over the direction of the world trading system in future. Why bilateral or regional trading arrangements have been the dominant approach to free trade in history as well as in contemporary times? Is regionalism a stumbling block or a stepping stone to global free trade? This chapter addresses these issues.
Foreign Capital Inflow, Multinationals, and Migration
Authors: Acharyya Rajat
Published: April 2023

Inter-country immobility of capital and labour assumed in the neoclassical trade models is not what we actually see around us. Rather large capital flows and labour migration can be observed along with commodity movements much before the present waves of globalization. This chapter discusses the causes and consequences of such factor flows on welfare and employment of the host country separated from as well as in conjunction with commodity trade. An important dimension of capital inflows is the foreign direct investment (FDI) by the multinational corporations through setting up of subsidiaries in host countries or through joint ventures, takeovers, acquisitions and mergers. A lot of FDI is also taking place over the last two decades in particular through fragmentation and outsourcing of production processes that has been made possible by the advent of information and communication technology. Feasibility of fragmentation of vertical chain of production processes has also led to a production process known as global value chain (GVC) whereby a single finished product results from manufacturing and assembly in multiple countries, with each stage generating and adding value to the end product. GVCs provide opportunities for the developing countries to increase their participation in global trade and, most importantly, to diversify their exports by specializing only in fragments of vertical stages of production according to their relative strengths and comparative advantages. FDI, fragmentations, and different aspects of GVC such as its measurement and potential gains for the developing countries are elaborately discussed in this chapter.
Balance of Payments and National Income Accounting
Authors: Acharyya Rajat
Published: April 2023

This chapter discusses two sets of issues. First set concerns the different components of the Balance of Payments (BOP) accounts, and the concepts of balance and equilibrium in the external payments of a country. BOP is a record of values of all economic transactions of a country with the rest of the world in a particular year. It also defines different sub-accounts and balances thereof, such as the trade account, the current account, and the capital account. The second set of issues concerns how the basic national income identities can be extended to include external trade and transfers of a country. An important distinction that is made in this context is between the Gross National Product (GNP) and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which differ from each other in presence of factor incomes from abroad and payments made to foreign nationals for their services.
National Income and Current Account Balance: The Income Approach
Authors: Acharyya Rajat
Published: April 2023

The accounting identities in a Balance of Payments Accounts of a country based on ex post or realized values cannot be used as cause-and-effect relations. Study of cause-and-effect relations and determinations of national income in an open economy requires actual or ex post values being replaced by plans of relevant economic agents. This chapter deals with this aspect by specifying relationship between the national income and the trade or the current account balances in terms of plans or behavioural functions. Three main issues are discussed. First, how an equilibrium in an open economy evolves where plans of all economic agents are simultaneously realized. The level of national income and trade (or current) account position of a country at equilibrium are the two elements that are of particular interest in this context. Second is how the equilibrium national income and trade balance change when the spending pattern of private economic agents as well as the government changes. These effects are discussed in both absence and presence of international transmission mechanisms by which a change in the national income of a country affects the national incomes of its trading partners and vice versa. Third, the chapter discusses an interesting debate over plausible effects of a unilateral transfer of income from one country to the other. The context of this debate is the contrasting opinion of John Maynard Keynes and Bertil Ohlin in 1929 on effects of war reparations or compensations paid by Germany to the Allied countries in the Europe.
BOP Adjustment Policies in a Pegged Exchange Rate Regime
Authors: Acharyya Rajat
Published: April 2023

The underlying assumptions of the income approach discussed in an earlier Chapter 21 were constant commodity prices and a fixed exchange rate, both of which prohibit automatic adjustments towards a Balance of Payments (BOP) equilibrium. For example, when the exchange rate is pegged with an overvaluation of the domestic currency vis-à-vis the foreign currency, the country’s BOP is in deficit. Under such circumstances, the national governments or the monetary authorities may undertake policies that aim at lowering the BOP deficit. This chapter discusses such policies that aim at correcting the BOP imbalances under a pegged exchange rate regime. These policies can be categorized broadly into expenditure reducing and expenditure switching policies. Of course, these policies are only temporary in nature and can hardly be a solution to the BOP crisis in the long run. The expenditure reducing and switching policies are associated respectively with the income (or absorption) approach and the elasticity approach which are, however, restrictive and incomplete. Whereas the income or absorption approach assumes constant prices, the elasticity approach assumes constant national incomes and makes a partial equilibrium analysis. A complete and more comprehensive approach is the synthesis of the two allowing for both prices and incomes to adjust. This chapter also discusses this synthesis approach.
Money, Price, and Exchange Rate
Authors: Acharyya Rajat
Published: April 2023

This chapter discusses three important elements of the analyses of BOP adjustment and exchange rate determination that were set aside in the earlier chapters: flexible commodity prices, monetary policy of a country’s central bank, and capital account transactions such as capital mobility or asset trading. Without these elements being explicitly taken into account, analysis of BOP adjustment and a theory of exchange rate determination would remain incomplete. Two variants of these relationships are considered. First is the monetarist approach to BOP that, in contrast to the elasticity and the absorption approaches, postulates that a BOP imbalance is essentially a monetary phenomenon and is transient in nature. Second is the Mundell-Flemming tradition of monetary approach under the Keynesian assumption of sticky wages and prices with capital mobility. Income change is the key element in the monetary adjustments in this approach. This approach is essentially the open economy extension of the Keynesian IS-LM framework, known as the Mundell-Flemming model. The main point of discussion here is the relative efficacy of fiscal and monetary policies in changing the output levels, with the BOP adjusting under a fixed exchange rate through endogenous capital mobility. Another dimension of discussions in this chapter is the monetarist approach to the exchange rate determination.
Introduction
Authors: Driemel Imke
Published: April 2023

This chapter introduces the phenomenon of pseudo-noun incorporation, the way it has been diagnosed in the past, and why there is a need for a theory that unifies all properties emerging from the cross-linguistic picture. Established accounts based on the size or the position of the pseudo-incorporated noun are not sufficient to capture the case, scope, binding, control, and movement properties with one account. The account of this book pursues the idea that the effects of pseudo-noun incorporation are not related to size or position, but to category. Through the investigation of eleven different noun types across five different languages, we can identify the core diagnostics of pseudo-noun incorporation and compare them to a very related phenomenon, which is often discussed as differential object marking. This serves as the motivation in this chapter to conduct a detailed cross-linguistics study.
Differential object marking
Authors: Driemel Imke
Published: April 2023

Chapter 8 is dedicated to the noun types that have been identified in the previous chapters as DOM-marked. This is the case for a class of nouns in Tamil and Korean. As expected, these noun types do not show any movement restrictions, akin to case-marked objects in the respective languages. Moreover, their binding, control, and scope properties are not affected by case loss. Thus, Tamil and Korean (possibly also Hindi) provide evidence for the view that pseudo-incorporation and differential object marking do not present two sides of the same coin. On the contrary, each grammatical process has to be accounted for independently, but ideally with the same theoretical account for optional case marking. Furthermore, two anomalies in the data set are discussed, with interesting consequences for control theory.
The job ladder
Authors: Fields Gary S. , Gindling T. H. , Sen Kunal , Danquah Michael , Schotte Simone
Published: April 2023

This chapter outlines the content and scope of the book. Further, it sets out the intended intellectual contribution of the book. Using a range of countries from the Global South, the book examines heterogeneity within informal work by applying a common conceptual framework and empirical methodology. The country studies use panel data to study the dynamics of worker transitions between formal and heterogeneous informal work. The range of country studies are drawn from Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. A key contribution of the book is that it offers a more nuanced view of informality that differentiates not only between formal and informal, self-employed, and wage-employment but also between upper-tier and lower-tier informality.
Transforming informal work and livelihoods in China
Authors: Lin Carl , Ye Linxiang , Zhang Wei
Published: April 2023

The informal sector has long been viewed as a locus of the disadvantaged, unskilled, and inexperienced workers in under-developed and developing economies. Workers in the informal sector, however, can learn skills and gain experience that could help them switch to better-paying jobs in the formal sector. But evidence of this is limited. China constitutes an important case study because it is the most populous country and has the largest labour force, consisting of over 290 million rural-to-urban migrants whose employment is mostly informal. Using three waves of nationally representative household surveys over 2014–2018, we study how the livelihoods of Chinese workers change when transitioning to different work status groups within or between formal and informal sectors. Our results show that transitioning jobs from the informal to the formal sector and from the self-employed to the wage-employed increases earnings, which improves the livelihoods of Chinese workers.
Moving up or down the job ladder in India
Authors: Natarajan Rajesh Raj , Schotte Simone , Sen Kunal
Published: April 2023

The Indian labour market is characterized by a high level of informality with large numbers of workers in poorly paid ‘lower-tier’ informal jobs and somewhat better paid ‘upper-tier’ informal jobs, which do not have the same benefits and security of tenure as formal jobs. We examine the likelihood of individuals moving up from informal jobs to formal jobs (and vice versa) and from lower-tier to upper-tier informal jobs using a longitudinal data set for India. We find that self-employed workers exhibit relatively more mobility than wage workers. Among wage workers, we find high persistence rates for formal wage-employed and lower-tier informal wage-employed. As expected, our results suggest substantial income gains for workers experiencing upward transition. Our results also suggest that lower-tier informal workers, whether in self-employment or wage-employment, have limited upward transition possibilities and are in a ‘dead-end’ work status.
Progress and stagnation in the livelihood of informal workers in an emerging economy
Authors: Rizky Mayang , Suryadarma Daniel , Suryahadi Asep
Published: April 2023

In this chapter, we use long-spanning individual longitudinal data to examine the long-term labour market outcomes of low-tier informal workers in Indonesia. We investigate their characteristics, calculate the extent of switching and identify the characteristics of those who have switched. Finally, we estimate the earnings premium of switching. We find that individuals are negatively selected into low-tier informal work. Almost half of individuals who started out as a low-tier informal workers remained as low-tier informal workers through the next 8–19 years. The other half switched, on average, three times. Most switches take place from low-tier informal to low-tier formal work. High-tier jobs are relatively closed off to those who started their career as low-tier informal workers. The earnings premium that low-tier informal workers could gain by switching is large and statistically significant. An effective policy, therefore, is to support low-tier informal workers to improve their livelihoods by becoming low-tier formal workers.
Transforming informal work and livelihoods in Costa Rica and Nicaragua
Authors: Alaniz Enrique , Gindling T. H. , Mata Catherine , Rojas Diego
Published: April 2023

The authors of this chapter divide workers into six work status groups: formal self-employed, upper-tier informal self-employed, lower-tier informal self-employed, formal wage-employed, upper-tier informal wage-employed, and lower-tier informal wage-employed. In both Costa Rica and Nicaragua earnings are highest for formal work, next for upper-tier informal, and last for lower-tier informal. Mobility out of lower-tier informal is higher than out of all other work status groups, and most transitions are into a higher-wage work status. This suggests that lower-tier informal work in Costa Rica and Nicaragua is not a ‘dead end’ and that there is scope to promote transitions to higher work status groups. Transitions from all types of informality into formality are more common in Costa Rica than in Nicaragua, partly due to the larger proportion of formal workers within Costa Rica. Regressions of transitions on worker characteristics suggest that policies of providing vocational training and formal education to informal workers can promote transitions into better-paying work status groups.
Informal work in urban Mexico
Authors: Duval-Hernández Robert
Published: April 2023

This chapter presents a descriptive analysis of the labour market in urban Mexico, focusing on its heterogeneity across various employment status groups. It also studies the preferences of workers for formal wage-employment. About half of the employed population are formally employed, almost one-third are in lower-tier informal jobs, and the rest are in upper-tier informal jobs. Most formal workers are wage-employees. In contrast, one in three informal workers are self-employed. There is a clear job ladder and earnings fall as one moves down its rungs. Also, there is little employment mobility at the top (formal) and bottom (lower tier) of this ladder over the course of a year. Finally, almost 80 per cent of informal workers declare it preferable to be employed in a formal job. This suggests that many of the urban informal are in this type of employment because of a lack of better options.
Informal–formal workers’ transition in Nigeria
Authors: Folawewo Abiodun O. , Orija Olusegun A.
Published: April 2023

This study evaluates the effects of the informal sector on Nigerian workers’ livelihoods and analyses workers’ transitions within the informal sector and between informal and formal employment. A binary logit model is applied to General Household Survey panel data for the periods 2010–2011, 2012–2013, and 2015–2016. We find that informal employment has the greatest impact on workers’ livelihoods in terms of earnings. Results also indicate the existence of a high level of dynamic transition of workers within different types of informal employment. Our results further indicate that both self-employed and wage-employed informal workers are likely to transit to formal employment, the likelihood being higher for the upper-tier informal wage-employed. While informally employed workers have a very high chance of transiting to formal employment, formal workers have a much lower chance of transiting to informal employment. The policy implication of our results is the need to create better working conditions for informal workers.
The evolution of vulnerable employment in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia
Authors: AlAzzawi Shireen , Hlasny Vladimir
Published: April 2023

Youths in the Middle East and North Africa face the highest unemployment rates in the world. Those who are employed are pushed to accept informal-sector jobs that are insecure, unsafe, and lack non-wage benefits. Precarious employment is pervasive among lower socio-economic groups, leading to the perpetuation of misery across generations. Understanding employment outcomes therefore requires a broad focus encompassing the access to decent work, the evolution in this access over time, and the initial conditions. The authors analyse the static nature of vulnerable employment—especially youth unemployment and informality—and workers’ transitions to decent work using multinomial logistic regressions and recent labour market panel surveys for Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia. The authors find growing trends of vulnerable employment, particularly for youth cohorts. Especially in Egypt and Tunisia, children of poorer and less-educated parents start out in vulnerable jobs and are unlikely to ever attain formal employment. Wealth effects follow them throughout their careers.
How to transform informal work and livelihoods?
Authors: Fields Gary S. , Gindling T. H. , Sen Kunal , Danquah Michael , Schotte Simone
Published: April 2023

In this concluding chapter, the editors present the summary of lessons learnt from the 11 case studies in the book. In addition, a comparative perspective on the distribution of workers, as well as the job ladder between work status groups and transitions between work status groups, are discussed. The chapter offers some policy options suggested by the chapters. Some of the policy recommendations include raising the earnings of lower-tier self-employed workers, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa; creating more formal jobs for those down the job ladder to move into, especially in countries like China, Indonesia, and Mexico; providing those at the bottom of the job ladder with more human capital, particularly in the six Latin American countries; and formalizing the upper-tier informal group and increasing enforcement of labour protections, particularly in China and Latin American countries.
A defence of cellular agriculture
Authors: Milburn Josh
Published: April 2023

Cellular agriculture includes both growing meat from animal cells (cultivated meat) and genetically modifying non-animal cells to produce animal products (precision fermentation, including cultivated milk). It represents a major potential route to animal-rights-respecting animal products, and, thus, non-vegan food systems in the zoopolis. This chapter reviews and responds to challenges to cellular agriculture, noting that many of the challenges to plant-based meat canvassed in Chapter 3 also apply. First, it addresses challenges to cultivated meat: that it contains animal ingredients; that it rests upon historical injustice; and that it reifies a moral hierarchy through creating animal (but not human) meat. Second, it addresses challenges to precision fermentation, focusing on cultivated milk: that milk is not food; that precision fermentation involves genetic engineering, which we should reject; and that precision fermentation does not require animals, meaning the end of many human/animal interactions.
Eminence of Models
Authors: Zhu Mu
Published: April 2023

This chapter uses examples from recent research to elucidate the statistical way of doing data science, and highlight the eminent role played by probability models. Students will see how probability models are used to describe the data generating process, and why a key question for statistics is about how to estimate various unobservable quantities in the model from the observable ones. The research being featured has to do with extending the basic stochastic block model for static friendship data in order to model dynamic communication data over time, and further adapting it to analyse basketball games, shedding light on what a unique player Lebron James is.
Building Vocabulary
Authors: Zhu Mu
Published: April 2023

This chapter builds the basic vocabulary for speaking the language of probability, from some fundamental laws to the notion of random variables and their distributions. Topics include: Venn diagrams, and de Morgan’s laws; conditional probability, and independence; the law of total probability, and Bayes law; discrete, and continuous random variables; expectation, variance, and Chebyshev’s inequality. To focus on main ideas, only three specific distributions are mentioned: binomial, uniform, and normal.
Tests of Significance
Authors: Zhu Mu
Published: April 2023

This chapter addresses another inferential task, known as the test of significance, which also requires explicit considerations of uncertainty. Key concepts, such as the significance level and the p-value, are introduced, but the main message is the close connection between significance testing and interval estimation. Some existing challenges are also discussed—e.g., multiple testing, and ways to lessen its negative effect, such as the Bonferroni correction and the Benjamini-Hockberg procedure.
Tandas and Cooperativas
Authors: Medina Patricia Campos , Nava Erika , Aramendi Sol
Published: April 2023

Using a multidisciplinary approach, this chapter examines how Tandas (ROSCA) and cooperativas (cooperatives) are part of a system of social purpose business arrangements of mutual aid and group economics that assist in the integration of precarious immigrants to the United States. Historical political dynamics have set legal restrictions limiting the legal migration of people from Latin America to the United States; hence, vulnerable working-class Latin American immigrants entering the United States to work arrive into racialized economic environments where they are forced to function as full participants in society via direct engagement in the informal and gig economy. This chapter examines two case studies of indigenous Latin American immigrants organizing their social capital to bring together economic resources, in the form of formal community worker-owned cooperativas or under informal financial arrangements called Tandas that help them survive and integrate into local communities. Cooperativas and Tandas support community-based entrepreneurship that aids undocumented immigrants in their economic survival and integration. Immigrants of indigenous backgrounds have a long history of pooling economic resources to finance their activities outside the formal economy. Theories of immigrant integration combined with an analysis of racial capitalist theory help explain how capitalism and racism intertwined create an environment of limited resources that truncate social and economic mobility for poor Black and brown immigrants entering local US urban communities. Faced with limited options for economic survival, these immigrants tap into their collectives and cultural support systems to survive and develop their livelihoods in American business and society.
Maroons, Rastas, and Ganja Cooperatives
Authors: Edmonds Kevin
Published: April 2023

While the majority of literature on cooperatives tends to focus on cases operating in legal settings, this chapter examines the history and contribution of illegal cannabis cooperatives in the Eastern Caribbean islands of St. Lucia and St. Vincent. This chapter argues that cooperatives were forged out of economic necessity, due to limited options for employment and income generation after trade liberalization devastated the Caribbean banana trade. Existing alongside more unequal structures of production rooted in a sharecropping model, the cannabis cooperatives provide an example of collective and community responses to economic hardship, rooted in longstanding traditions of resistance, from the Maroons to Rastafari. Unlike past illegal economic activities, the cannabis economy, in responding to widespread unemployment and catering to regional as well as local needs, represents a departure from the plantation model of the past.
Fighting to Preserve Black Life and Land Rights
Authors: Silva Silvane
Published: April 2023

This chapter shows that quilombos, which is a cooperative institution, have saved Afro Brazilians from business exclusion. To resist slavery, African-enslaved people escaped and to this day the quilombola system continues and is under attack by the state. The residents of nearly 5,000 Black rural Brazilian communities trace their lineage back to the historical quilombos. The Black social economy tied to the ideas of Buen Vivir are a way of ensuring that the self-organization of quilombola communities reveals a connection with other Black diaspora groups in the Americas. Last but not least is the crucial role of Black women in the organization and leardership of contemporary quilombos.
Introduction
Authors: Knight Amber , Miller Joshua
Published: April 2023

This chapter introduces readers to current medical and political developments in the realms of prenatal genetic testing and selective abortion to illustrate how these developments have influenced whether pregnant women will choose to undergo prenatal testing and what decision they will make based on the information they acquire from the results, especially in cases following a positive Down syndrome diagnosis. Moreover, we also enter into ongoing academic debates surrounding these issues in order to situate our analysis within the broader literatures in political thought, feminist theory, and critical disability studies. After expressing our joint allegiance to the movements for reproductive justice and disability rights, we delineate the core premise of the book: without structural changes to current ableist medical practices, neoliberal social welfare policies, and pernicious cultural norms, prenatal genetic testing technologies can too easily advance a liberal eugenic agenda at the expense of women’s reproductive autonomy and disability rights.