bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Effects of Political and Economic Transition on International Migration in Central and Eastern Europe
Authors: OkÓlski Marek
Published: August 2004

Until the late 1980s, Central and Eastern Europe was a region relatively isolated from the other parts of the world, and foreign travel was administratively restricted. The freedom of movement reinstated in the region around 1990 led to massive migration. However, instead of acceleration of the highly selective outflow of ethnic minorities, political opponents and elites, which predominated past movements or westbound exodus feared at the time the transition to democracy began, quite new and partly unexpected phenomena occurred. Those phenomena included: an unprecedented intensification of international flows within Central and Eastern Europe, an influx of people from outside the region, and illegal transit migration. In the 1990s, migration in the region reflected, and will continue to do so, the interplay of three different kinds of imbalances: demographic, economic, and political whose clear outcome is the persistence of a latent potential for emigration.
Immigration and the Labor Market in Metropolitan Buenos Aires
Authors: Maguid Alicia
Published: August 2004

Until 1991, Argentina experienced rising immigration from border countries to fulfill a segmented demand for labour within specific sectors; but structural economic change had negative consequences for employment, as the number of jobs in construction, industry, and services contracted. Given the narrowing of employment options and the shrinking of Argentine employment, it is not clear what will happen to immigration from border countries, but the data presented here suggest that the concentration of border workers will increase in construction and services and that within these sectors they will be employed on increasingly unfavourable terms.
Remittances, Savings, and Development in Migrant-Sending Areas
Authors: Taylor J. Edward
Published: August 2004

Explores three sets of potential impacts of international migrant remittances and savings on the economies of migrant‐sending areas. It then presents a case study that illustrates the diverse impacts of remittances and savings at a major international migration staging ground in Mexico. Remittances contribute to income both directly and indirectly. Economic linkages transmit remittance impacts to other households, including ones that may not send migrants abroad. These direct and indirect income effects of remittances have profound influences on production, incomes, inequality, and poverty.
The Role of Recruiters in Labor Migration
Authors: Abella Manolo I.
Published: August 2004

Job brokering for profit has become an important institution in the market for foreign labour, especially where social networks are not yet established to facilitate migration or where states of employment and origin have not agreed on exclusive systems for recruiting labour. Job brokers or recruiters have successfully organized labour migration between many states, especially where few or no political or economic linkages have existed before. However, recruiting activities have been frequently characterized by fraudulent practices. Little evidence indicates that public authorities’ efforts to protect workers against such practices have been effective.
Return Migration in the Philippines: Issues and Policies
Authors: Battistella Graziano
Published: August 2004

Return migration is a fixed component of temporary labour migration currently organized in Asia. However, as the experience of the Philippines indicates, policies for the reintegration of returning migrants are often difficult to implement and yield poor results. Return should be part of the planning before departure, and policies should focus on providing information, facilitating access to credit, maximizing the use of remittances, favouring local initiatives, and fostering cooperative enterprises. As for other aspects, policies for returning migrants should be part of a cooperative approach to migration between countries of origin and of destination.
Have the Occupational Skills of New Immigrants to the United States Declined Over Time? Evidence from the Immigrant Cohorts of 1977, 1982, and 1994
Authors: Jasso Guillermina
Published: August 2004

Examines whether immigrant occupational skills have declined over time using data collected by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service on cohorts of new immigrants admitted in fiscal years 1977, 1982, and 1994. Results indicate that average cohort quality declined slightly among men, but only trivially among women. Cohort changes differ by gender, visa class, and origin country, producing a mix of increases and decreases. On average there is evidence of cohort declines both within countries and within visa classes. The pattern of results suggests that a portion of the decline is due to changes in US immigration law and policies other than family reunification.
Admissions Policies in Europe
Authors: de Wenden Catherine Withol
Published: August 2004

Despite the persistence of idiosyncratic characteristics, the trend in Europe's immigration policies is one of convergence in two basic areas: border control and residence rights. Everywhere border control is a priority, and the principle of closure to foreign workers is maintained. Nonetheless, discrepancies remain in the rights each country grants to foreigners, including right to remain, residence status, social rights, and access to work and to citizenship. The Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 raised new issues about the decline of nation‐state sovereignty with the transition from the “third pillar” (intergovernmental decision‐making processes for immigration and asylum) to a “first pillar” (a communalization of decisions). This treaty may lead to the end of European national immigration policies and an end to citizen control over such decisions.
A New Paradigm for the European Asylum Regime
Authors: Joly DaniÈle , Suhrke Astri
Published: August 2004

Discusses trends in the concept and practice of asylum over the last two decades of the twentieth century. Most of these changes took place in the industrialized world, particularly in Europe. The most striking development has been a series of attempts to restrict the rights to asylum under the 1951 Geneva Convention. These attempts took many forms: restricting rights to file applications, stricter interpretation of the Convention's articles, the development of non‐Convention forms of temporary protection, and new measures for reception in regions of origin. As the path toward asylum has narrowed, policies to deal with the refugee problem as a whole have widened. This tendency is expressed in what has come to be called “a comprehensive refugee policy,” which basically consists of interventionist policies that provide protection and humanitarian assistance within countries of origin so as to preempt mass outflows.
The Legacy of Welfare Reform for U.S. Immigrants
Authors: Fix Michael , Zimmermann Wendy
Published: August 2004

The 1996 welfare reform law marked a sharp exclusionary turn in US immigrant policy by imposing new and unprecedented bans on the receipt of public benefits by legal immigrants. Although in the years following the law's passage, benefit eligibility was restored to certain classes of immigrants, the law nonetheless represents a watershed in US immigration history. Welfare reform also ushered in a number of normative and institutional changes that, when taken together, had profound “chilling effects” on immigrants’ use of public benefits, even among those who remained eligible. Welfare reform has transformed the governance of immigrant policy by devolving authority over eligibility and responsibility for benefit costs to states.
Controlling International Migration through Enforcement: The Case of the United States
Authors: Bean Frank D. , Spener David A.
Published: August 2004

Seeks to ascertain the degree to which recent employer sanctions and border interdiction policies in the US have been effective in curtailing international migration in general and Mexican migration, in particular, to the country. Examples are respectively the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) and Operations Hold‐the‐Line and Gatekeeper that involved the saturation of stretches of the border with Border Patrol officers. Evidence about effectiveness is mixed. Migration has continued despite sanctions, but the will and the resources required to enforce such provisions have largely been lacking, thus rendering ambiguous whether it is the ineffectiveness of sanctions per se or their lack of enforcement that fails to deter migration. Border interdiction efforts during the 1990s appear to have been partially successful in that crossings from Mexico have become more difficult and expensive. However, enforcement efforts will have to attain a degree of scale and comprehensiveness not heretofore attempted if they are to have any chance of working. And even then, as long as other channels of interchange between countries (commerce, tourism, etc.) remain open, alternative routes of entry are likely to provide substitute ways for unauthorized migrants to continue to come.
Network Data Collection and its Relevance for the Analysis of STDs: The NHSLS and CHSLS
Authors: Morris Martina
Published: August 2004

This chapter describes two related local network studies of HIV-related behavior in the United States conducted in the early and late 1990s: the pioneering nationally representative survey of about 3,500 18–59 year olds, and the subsequent representative survey of about 2,000 respondents from four neighborhoods in Chicago. Both collected information on the attributes of the respondents and their sexual partners; the NHSLS obtained a full partnership history while the CHSLS collected information only on the last two partners. In addition, CHSLS collected geographic network information. The chapter reviews the study design, fieldwork experience and measurement of network characteristics, and concludes by presenting a sampling of findings from studies using the network data.
Network Dynamism: History and Lessons of the Colorado Springs Study
Authors: Morris Martina
Published: August 2004

This chapter describes the pioneering longitudinal partial network data collected by the Colorado Springs research team in 1990-95 to assess HIV and STD transmission potential in the region. The design was based on an intensive sampling of high-risk places, and included an adaptive sampling component. The survey collected information on the attributes of the respondents and their sexual, injection and close social partners, attributes of the partnerships, geographic network information, behaviors within the partnership, and alter adjacency. Data were collected from about 600 respondents, who in turn nominated over 35,000 partners. The chapter reviews the study design, fieldwork experience and measurement of network characteristics, and concludes by presenting a sampling of findings from studies using the network data.
The Collection and Analysis of Social Network Data in Nang Rong, Thailand
Authors: Morris Martina
Published: August 2004

This chapter describes the network data collected by the CEP-CPC Study of Social Change in Nang Rong, Thailand in 1994-95. The purpose of the study was to monitor and understand the sweeping demographic and social changes occurring in this province. The data collection included a community profile, household survey, and migrant follow-up in 51 villages with over 7,300 households and 42,000 persons. The household survey collected kin and agricultural support network data within and between villages, with household geographic coordinates; all households within a village were surveyed, so the within-village networks are complete. The chapter reviews the study design, fieldwork experience and measurement of network characteristics, and concludes by presenting a sampling of findings from studies using the network data.
God and Explanation
Authors: Rundle Bede
Published: August 2004

Difficulties in invoking God in any explanatory role are pursued in connection with the possibility of miracles and the argument from design. The anthropic principle and the significance of ‘fine tuning’ are discussed, along with confusions concerning the laws of Nature. Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion is touched upon briefly.
Causation and Necessity
Authors: Rundle Bede
Published: August 2004

The concept of causation has a key role in both theological and cosmological speculations. An analysis of the concept which runs counter to the Humean tradition is developed, an analysis which aims to assign necessity, regularity, and connection their appropriate roles in accounts of causation, induction, and laws of Nature. Backwards causation is also discussed.
Creation and Conservation
Authors: Rundle Bede
Published: August 2004

The preceding account of causation reveals it as bound to the physical every bit as much as are length, breadth, and depth. This makes any conception of divine agency difficult to defend, and a further problem is to be found in the consideration that a divine act, as of creation, would have to be temporally extended. God's relation to time is discussed, and it is argued that there is no call for an appeal to a creative act to explain the continuing existence of the universe.
Essence and Existence
Authors: Rundle Bede
Published: August 2004

It is difficult to see how purely philosophical considerations might lead to an understanding of why there should be anything at all. After looking at the cosmological and ontological arguments for the existence of God, and considering issues associated with the notions of essence and existence, a negative answer is returned to the question whether it makes sense to suppose that there might have been nothing. No particular being had to be, but there had to be something. This leads on to a discussion of the question whether it can be said that the universe began to exist, as Big Bang cosmologies would appear to imply.
Matter and Abstractions
Authors: Rundle Bede
Published: August 2004

Granted that there has to be something, the question arises why reality has taken the form it has. The possibilities divide into the physical, the supernatural, the mental, and the abstract (the principal category of interest within the latter being that of number). The supernatural has already been ruled out, and it is argued that, while neither the mental nor the abstract is in any way fundamental, if anything at all exists, there must be a physical reality. Some light is thrown on the contentious topic of necessary existence by a consideration of mathematical necessity.
Mind and Agency
Authors: Rundle Bede
Published: August 2004

The claim of mind to be more basic than matter is considered, as also its relation to agency. Spirits, forces, and energy are then discussed, and our conclusion is reinforced that, while it is nonsensical to hold that everything is material, we can maintain that, if anything exists, matter does, on the grounds that it is only in matter that the necessary independent existence is to be found.
Objectifying Demographic Identities
Authors: Kreager Philip
Published: August 2004

Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, demographic models, measures, and categories have played an influential role in identifying the groups of which modern societies are composed. By constituting the characteristics and problems of groups as objects of scientific inquiry and public intervention, demographic methods work to enfranchise (or disenfranchise) them for various purposes. As part of Europe's relations with colonial and post‐colonial states, demographic methods have helped shape a wide range of popular identities, as well as ordinary people's experience of basic vital processes. Understanding the impacts of demographic practice requires us to depart from the conventional view that population data and analysis merely represent social and biological phenomena. The impacts arise not only from eugenic and other biases that may shape demographic categories, but are integral to the actuarial matrix of what are usually considered purely formal modelling and quantitative methods. ‘Demographic nominalism’, i.e. the historical consequences of fixing the flow of vital and social events into discrete classificatory schemes and formal models, is examined in terms of three available historical approaches, and illustrated by instances drawn from the demography of Indian castes.
Malthus' Anti-Rhetorical Rhetoric, or, on the Magical Conversion of the Imaginary into the Real
Authors: Briggs Charles L.
Published: August 2004

Beyond the theory of population growth for which it is famous, Thomas Malthus's Essay on Population, published in 1798, urged systematic empirical investigation of the ‘manners and customs’ of ‘the lower classes’. Argues that Malthus's logic rests on particular constructions of mind, language, and inequality and a rhetorical posture that purports to reject rhetoric. These notions enabled Malthus to privilege seemingly abstract, decontextualized, ahistorical, universal knowledge about population and to transform issues of poverty and social inequality, raised at the time in philosophic debates and street battles waged by an impoverished proletariat, into phenomena that could be measured in purportedly objective, quantitative, and politically neutral terms —and so become objects of state regulation. Since constructions of language and rhetoric continue to inform ways of constructing and legitimating social inequalities-such as those associated with new global economic and military regimes —critically assessing how they are embedded in science, public policy, and popular culture is an important desideratum.
Racial/Colour Categorization in US and Brazilian Censuses
Authors: Nobles Melissa
Published: August 2004

Provides an abbreviated history of racial categorization in American and Brazilian censuses from each country's first census in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries up through the 2000 census. It argues against the view that census bureaux are disconnected from larger political developments or that racial data are innocuous demographic data. For most of their countries’ histories, state officials, (social) scientists, and politicians tightly controlled American and Brazilian census‐taking and the social categories deployed. Over the past thirty years in the US and the past twenty years in Brazil, groups within civil society have organized and lobbied to have methods of categorization altered. Categorization is now a ‘bottom up’ process and not only a ‘top down’ process.
Internal Diaspora and State Imagination: Colombia's Failure to Envision a Nation
Authors: Villaveces-Izquierdo Santiago
Published: August 2004

The increasing intensification of Colombia's internal wars since 1990 has exacted a heavy toll in uprooting large segments of the country's rural population. As of 2002, it was estimated that 2.9 million Colombians (of a total of 42 million) had become internally displaced. The lack of census variables that capture the dynamics and impact of such dramatic demographic flux has produced a statistical conundrum that hides the crisis from policy‐making spheres as well as from political debates, creating an ‘official invisibility’. Explores the way in which an official ‘narrative’ can obliterate the political standing of the forms of ‘otherness’ that it creates through such state classificatory devices as the census, vital statistics, laws, and maps.
Users, Non-users, Clients, and Help-seekers: The Use of Categories in Research on Health Behaviour
Authors: Obermeyer Carla Makhlouf
Published: August 2004

Using two examples of research on health behaviour that combined quantitative and qualitative methods, this analysis shows that information that captures the perspectives of users can be at odds with the categories that predominate in demographic and public health analyses. The first case, from Egypt, illustrates the contradictory nature of the categories in which individuals are implicitly classified as consumer‐clients, citizens, or simply as individuals trying to find their way through a complicated system. It shows how these contradictory categorizations reflect the political context of health care. The second case, from Morocco, demonstrates how ethnographic research can question the relevance of survey categories such as users and non‐users of maternal health services. The research project found that the dichotomy between users and non‐users, which was crucial for statistical analyses, was challenged by evidence that detailed the more complex behaviour and attitudes of the majority of women regarding health care. Both cases show that integrating ethnography and statistical analyses can help reformulate research questions and lead to very different policy recommendations.
Etic and Emic Categories in Male Sexual Health: A Case Study from Orissa
Authors: Collumbien Martine , Bohidar Nabesh , Das Ram , Das Braj , Pelto Pertti
Published: August 2004

Presents a case study from intervention research on male sexual health in eastern India. Focused ethnographic research shows that men's concerns about sexual health comprise a complex array of symptoms. Many of these are not directly related to sexual transmission but reflect psycho‐sexual concerns about semen loss. The understanding of this local perspective, with its emic categories, challenges the public health paradigms currently adopted in HIV interventions, based on the biomedical model of sexual health and associated etic categories. To be effective, sexual health services need to go beyond the biomedical diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections.
Re-contextualizing the Female-headed Household: Culture and Agency in Uganda
Authors: Davis Paula Jean
Published: August 2004

The household is a standard social category used in demographic census and survey work around the world where it is taken to represent both the family and the basic economic unit of society. From an anthropological perspective, however, there can be a great difference between ‘the household’ as defined by demographers and the concrete networks of kinship relations that extend beyond the household and connect certain households to one another. It is shown that the women in urban Kampala, who would be demographically enumerated as residing in female‐headed households, in fact typically form, as ‘Senga aunts’, an integral part of a dual family household paired with a rurally located brother's household. Application of the conventional demographic category of household can only result in a complete misreading of family structure and economic relationships in this part of Africa. Routine demographic practices such as household surveys are of questionable value without more careful attention to the local contexts in which active agents create their culturally diverse household forms.
Spillovers, Subdivisions, and Flows: Questioning the Usefulness of ‘Bounded Container’ as the Dominant Spatial Metaphor in Demography
Authors: Adams John W. , Kasakoff Alice B.
Published: August 2004

Foundational ‘bounded container’ models of demography do not allow for spillovers or subdivisions, and hence yield misleading statistical means. Four other spatial models are presented; a space of ‘flows’ is preferred because it accounts well for mid‐nineteenth‐century migration in the American North. Men born in different regions within New England, and into rich and poor social classes, entered different migration streams.
Introduction
Authors: Peacocke Christopher
Published: August 2004

The introduction introduces the subject matter and the main argument of The Realm of Reason and situates the work in relation to a number of the author's previous works.
Entitlement, Truth, and Content
Authors: Peacocke Christopher
Published: August 2004

States and defends the first principle of rationalism, The Special Truth‐Conduciveness Thesis, which illustrates the connection between entitlement to form a given belief and the belief's truth. The principle holds that a fundamental and irreducible part of what makes a transition one to which a thinker is entitled is that the transition tends to lead to true judgements in a distinctive way characteristic of rational transitions. The author then defends this principle and its commitments against a variety of challenges, notably against two extreme views on the role the notion of evidence plays in the individuation of concepts and meanings. On one view evidence has no part at all to play in the individuation of concepts, and on the other, Quinean, view meanings are not merely partially, but exclusively a matter of certain evidential relations. The author challenges both views and suggests a middle way which his Generalised Rationalism is able to tread.
Explaining Perceptual Entitlement
Authors: Peacocke Christopher
Published: August 2004

Concerns itself with explaining the conclusion of the preceding chapter, namely that there is an entitlement to take experiences with instance‐individuated contents at face value. The author explains this by, first, formulating and defending a general principle about the explanation of complexity; second, establishing that this general principle applies to the explanation of the occurrence of experiences with instance‐individuated contents, and does so in such a way as to support the presumption that the contents of such experiences are correct; third, arguing that this application to perceptual states provides the philosophical explanation of why one is entitled to take experiences with instance‐individuated contents at face value.
A Priori Entitlement
Authors: Peacocke Christopher
Published: August 2004

States and defends the third principle of rationalism, The Generalised Rationalist Thesis, which holds that all instances of the entitlement relation, both absolute and relative, are fundamentally a priori. Even if a thinker's entitlement to a transition is provided by certain experiences of hers, her entitlement to make that transition from those experiences cannot itself be provided by certain experiences of hers. The author defends the third principle by appeal to two considerations: first, if the epistemological significance of experience was itself not knowable a priori, then making any particular transition on the basis of that experience could not be rational, and so a thinker could not be entitled to make that transition. Thus, if we are to be entitled to make any transition on the basis of experience, the principle that entitles us to make that transition must be knowable a priori, whether or not we happen to know it. The second consideration in defence of the third principle rests on a general conception of what it is for a proposition or transition to be a priori. According to this conception, a proposition or transition is a priori just in case its truth or truth‐conduciveness can be explained from the nature of its content, or of the states that it involves. According to this conception, the third principle is a corollary of the first two principles, and so our defence of those two principles should serve to defend the third principle as well.
Moral Rationalism, Realism, and the Emotions
Authors: Peacocke Christopher
Published: August 2004

The penultimate chapter of The Realm of Reason discusses the relation between the author's moral rationalism and a thorough moral realism and the question of whether a moral rationalist can hold that moral properties are sometimes involved in causal explanations. In reply, The author introduces what he calls the Eirenic Combination, which holds that (i) causal explanation of a priori moral beliefs by moral facts is excluded by the a priori status of those beliefs; but (ii) this is compatible with the moral properties mentioned in the a priori principles playing a significant part in empirical explanations, which they sometimes do. He then defends his moral rationalism against the charge that it is incompatible with the extensive role moral emotions play in our ordinary first‐level moral thought.
Conclusion
Authors: Peacocke Christopher
Published: August 2004

The conclusion to The Realm of Reason gives briefly examples of other areas a fully developed rationalism has to elucidate. These include, amongst others, explaining self‐ and other‐ascriptions of mental states and the possibility of conforming to the normative requirements of rationality, and further elucidating the notion of knowing what it is for a given content to be true.
The Nature of Political Theory
Authors: Vincent Andrew
Published: August 2004

This is a controversial book that challenges established views of contemporary political theory. It offers a synoptic, critical, and comparative analysis of the widely different accounts of how the discipline developed during the twentieth century. Its ‘nature’ is seen as intrinsically pluralistic and internally divided. The discussion utilizes the idea of foundationalism to bring coherence to the complex practices associated with theory during the twentieth century. Overall, the book aims to dispute current monistic trends in the way the discipline is understood. It will be an immensely useful resource for students of politics, as well as in providing critical perspectives on the future of the subject.
Bleached Foundations
Authors: Vincent Andrew
Published: August 2004

Focuses on the development of justice‐based theory, predominantly after the publication of John Rawls Theory of Justice in 1971. After an overview of the concept of justice, it provides a critical discussion of desert and non‐desert theories, mutual advantage, impartiality, utilitarian, rational choice, and feminist and pluralist accounts of justice
Shoring Up Foundations
Authors: Vincent Andrew
Published: August 2004

Examines the initial critique of justice‐based political theory. This critical movement was not so much a resistance to the idea of justice as to its Universalist pretensions. An attempt was thus made to root political theory in a form of conventionalism. This chapter examines the sophisticated origins of the conventionalist form of argument in the writings of Michael Oakeshott, the better‐known writings of communitarianism and the reaction of the later Rawls to communitarianism in terms of his ideas on political liberalism.
Segmented Foundations and Pluralism
Authors: Vincent Andrew
Published: August 2004

Examines the processes of internal fragmentation implicit within the logic of the conventionalist arguments, using the generic conceptual theme of ‘pluralism’ to analyse liberal pluralism, multicultural pluralism, and difference‐based pluralism. The basic argument made in this chapter is that conventionalism does not cease to work at the level of the nation or community. Every traditional community or nation is constituted by multiple sub‐communities and sub‐cultures.
Euroization, Dollarization, and the International Monetary System
Authors: Salvatore Dominick
Published: August 2004

A great debate has been taking place in many nations, especially small ones, in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe, in the Baltic States, and in the Americas on the need and benefits of abandoning the national currency in favor of the euro or the dollar. This chapter examines the benefits and costs of euroization or dollarization. It analyzes the ways in which the two processes are similar and different, and it examines their likely effect on the functioning of the present and future international monetary system.
The Effect of Common Currencies on International Trade: A Meta-Analysis
Authors: Rose Andrew K.
Published: August 2004

Nineteen recent studies have already investigated the effect of currency union on trade, resulting in 383 point estimates of the effect. In an attempt to summarize the current state of the debate, meta-analysis is used here to combine the disparate estimates. The chief findings are that (a) the hypothesis that there is no effect of currency union on trade can be rejected at standard significance levels, (b) the combined estimate implies that currency union approximately doubles trade, and (c) the estimates are heterogeneous and not consistently tied to features of the studies.
Living and Dying with Hard Pegs: The Rise and Fall of Argentina's Currency Board
Authors: de la Torre Augusto , Levy Yeyati Eduardo , Schmukler Sergio L.
Published: August 2004

The rise and fall of Argentina’s currency board illustrates the extent to which the advantages of hard pegs have been overstated. The currency board did not promote fiscal or monetary discipline, and fostered nominal stability and financial intermediation only at the cost of endogenous financial dollarization. Ultimately the failure adequately toaddress the currency-growth-debt trap, into which Argentina had fallen at the end of the 1990s, precipitated a run on the currency and on the banks, triggering a currency collapse and a sovereign debt default. The crisis, rooted in the underlying weaknesses of Argentina’s monetary regime, can best be interpreted as a bad outcome of a high-stakes strategy to overcome a weak-currency problem. To increase the credibility of the hard peg, the government raised its exit costs, which deepened the crisis once exit could no longer be avoided.
The Anatomy of a Multiple Crisis: Why was Argentina Special and What Can We Learn from It?
Authors: Perry Guillermo , Servén Luis
Published: August 2004

The Argentine crisis has been variously blamed on fiscal imbalances, real overvaluation, and self-fulfilling investor pessimism triggering a capital flow reversal. This chapter provides a full assessment of the role of these and other ingredients in the collapse. It shows that in the final years of its Convertibility program, Argentina was not hit harder than other emerging markets in Latin America by global terms-of-trade shocks and financial disturbances. Hence the crisis reflects primarily the high vulnerability to disturbances built into Argentina’s policy framework. These fragilities reinforced each other in such a way that taken jointly they led to a much larger vulnerability to adverse external shocks than in any other country in the region.
America's Interest in Dollarization
Authors: Cohen Benjamin J.
Published: August 2004

This chapter examines the US interest in dollarization. Formal adoption of the US dollar by other governments creates both opportunities and risks for the United States, political as well as economic. But few benefits and costs can be estimated in advance, leaving much room for disagreement over the likely balance of costs and benefits. The argument here is that, from the US point of view, no presumption either way can be established. Unless directly challenged by efforts elsewhere to establish formal currency blocs, the United States has no interest in promoting a wider role for the greenback.
Dollarization and Euroization in Transition Countries: Currency Substitution, Asset Substitution, Network Externalities, and Irreversibility
Authors: Feige Edgar L. , Dean James W.
Published: August 2004

The chapter examines the extent, causes and consequences of transition countries’ use of foreign currency as a co-circulating medium of exchange and store of value. Using new estimates of foreign cash in circulation, we obtain unique measures of currency substitution, asset substitution, and dollarization, and examine the consequences of network externalities for hysteresis and irreversibility. Finally, we examine factors that could lead some transition countries -- most of which are joining the European Union in 2004 -- to euroize officially, joining existing members of EMU, and others to euroize unilaterally, i.e., without joining EMU.
Allocating Lending of Last Resort and Supervision in the Euro Area
Authors: Kahn Charles M. , Santos João A. C.
Published: August 2004

The Maastricht Treaty created the European System of Central Banks and the European Central Bank (ECB) to head the system. The treaty entrusts the ECB with the responsibility for monetary policy, but national authorities remain responsible for financial stability. In this chapter, we focus on the implications of national versus central assignment of lender-of-last-resort and supervisory functions for the degree of forbearance in closing distressed banks and for the level of diligence in bank supervision. One major conclusion is that, if only one of the two functions is centralized, then it will be more effective to centralize the supervisory function.
Landownership Inequality and the Income Distribution Consequences of Economic Growth
Authors: Carter Michael
Published: August 2004

Addresses the question of whether agrarian structure (land ownership inequality) can explain increasing income inequality. The second section begins the chapter with a conventional income inequality accounting or Gini decomposition framework, which, among other things, provides a convenient vehicle to review the economic theory of the inverted‐U, the assumptions under which it could be expected to hold, and, by implication, the likely reasons for its failure to hold in the contemporary world. This framework also makes it clear that the direct explanatory power of land ownership inequality on income inequality should diminish with the reduction in the share of national income generated in the agricultural sector, and should thus be diminishing rapidly over time in those countries of Asia and Latin America where the weight of the agricultural sector in the overall economy has fallen off dramatically. The third section develops an econometric approach for answering this empirical question, in which flexible estimation methods based on random coefficients or mixed effects models are employed to test for the effect of agrarian structure on income inequality. The last section summarizes the chapter by considering the implications for policy both inside and outside the agricultural sector.
External Liberalization, Economic Performance, and Distribution in Latin America and Elsewhere
Authors: Taylor Lance
Published: August 2004

Economic policy in developing and post‐socialist economies during the last 10–15 years of the 20th century had one dominating theme: packages aimed at liberalizing the balance of payments, on both current and capital accounts. Together with large but highly volatile foreign capital movements, this wave of external deregulation was the central feature of globalization for the nonindustrialized world. In two recent research projects, the implications of external liberalization have been investigated through the use of quantified narrative histories for a number of countries, based on a methodology developed by the author to decompose and analyse changes in effective demand, productivity growth, employment, and the sectoral/functional income distribution over time; one of these studies concentrates on countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, while the other includes Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, India, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, and Zimbabwe. After a summary of the results of the studies, with possible interpretations, the chapter develops a model of the likely effects of liberalization. The decomposition methodologies are then presented, and used to check the outcomes that the model generates; a substantial overlap is shown between observed phenomena and the model projections, and this discussion leads naturally to policy alternatives and suggestions about the future course of the liberalization process.
Increased Income Inequality in OECD Countries and the Redistributive Impact of the Government Budget
Authors: Atkinson Anthony B.
Published: August 2004

The recent rise in inequality in the distribution of disposable income in many, although not all, countries has led to a search for explanations, particularly since for much of the postwar period falling income inequality has been the norm. In the OECD countries, on which this chapter concentrates, the cause has been identified as rising wage dispersion, coupled with persistent unemployment in Europe. However, a number of factors need to be brought into any explanation of the extent and timing of changes in income distribution, including movements in factor shares, changes in real interest rates, and the impact of the government budget. This chapter focusses on the last of these. It has five sections: Introduction; Redistributive Impact of the Government Budget in selected OECD countries—a review of the statistical evidence from five OECD countries where a time series of studies covering the 1980s and the 1990s is available (UK, Canada, West Germany, Finland, Sweden; The Government Budget in Principle and Policy Reaction to Demographic Shifts—a simple framework within which the distributional implications of different government policy responses to changes in economic conditions and the different elements influencing the choice of response are explored; Policy Changes in Redistributive Taxes and Transfers: Case Studies of Unemployment Benefit and Personal Taxation—in the five European countries already studied, and in the US; and Summary of Conclusions.
Income Distribution and Tax and Government Social-Spending Policies in Developing Countries
Authors: Chu Ke-young , Davoodi Hamid , Gupta Sanjeev
Published: August 2004

Provides an overview of the changes in income distribution in developing and transition countries in recent decades, and assesses the incidence of taxes and government expenditure in these countries. For the overview of income distribution, the chapter relies largely on a set of newly available ‘high‐quality’ income‐distribution data. For the assessment of tax and government expenditure incidence, it relies on existing incidence studies on individual countries. The chapter has five sections: Introduction; The Role of Taxes and Social Spending; Selective Literature Survey—a survey of the studies on the incidence of taxes and expenditure, paying particular attention to the incidence of government spending on education and health, and reviewing the available evidence for a large number of developing countries; Role of Taxes and Government Social Spending Policy—this section offers an overview of the changes in income distribution in developing countries from the 1970s to the 1990s, with separate discussion of the nature of tax reforms and social expenditure policy and their distributional implications in selected countries (Hungary, Indonesia, and Thailand); and Summary and Conclusions.
The Impact of Adjustment-Related Social Funds on Income Distribution and Poverty
Authors: Cornia Giovanni Andrea , Reddy Sanjay G.
Published: August 2004

Most poverty and income inequality has deep‐rooted causes that can be removed only by structural (and often slow) interventions, although it is now increasingly evident that structural adjustment, premature financial liberalization, and uncontrolled globalization can exacerbate poverty by inducing protracted recessions and macroeconomic instability. One of the dominant responses to these policy‐induced problems has been the establishment of temporary social safety nets, of which the most popular type is known as ‘social funds’; these have become a prime policy choice for offsetting the social impact of policy reform. This chapter assesses the performance of social funds, arguing that have played a minor role in containing the social costs arising from liberalization policies and in reducing the number of unemployed, ‘adjustment poor’, and ‘chronic poor’. In addition, the emphasis placed on short‐term social funds may have diverted resources and the attention of policy‐makers from the extension and reform of standing social security arrangements that may more effectively address both chronic and adjustment‐induced poverty. The six sections of the chapter are: Introduction; The Historical Context Leading to the Mass Introduction of Social Funds; Adjustment‐Related Social Funds: Scale, Scope, and Structure; Effects on Incomes, Income Distribution, and Poverty: Macroperspective; Effects on Incomes, Income Distribution, and Poverty: Microperspectives; and Conclusions and Recommendations.
Factor Shares and Resource Booms: Accounting for the Evolution of Venezuelan Inequality
Authors: RodrÍguez Francisco
Published: August 2004

This is the second of five country case studies on income inequality, and shows that income inequality in Venezuela has significantly worsened during the past 27 years; in particular, the worsening has taken the form not of higher inequality among workers, but of higher inequality between those who own and those who do not own capital. Factor shares (shares of factors of production) have moved decisively against labour during the last three decades, resulting in a transfer of approximately 15% of GDP from labour to capital income: the data show an average worker in the late 1990s to be roughly half as well off in terms of income as an average worker in 1970. The chapter examines several possible explanations for the change in income inequality. It has six sections: Introduction; What the data say; Factor Shares, Factor Prices, and Oil Booms—an attempt to explain the evolution of factor shares on the basis of the evolution in human and physical capital accumulation; Other Influences on Income Distribution—an examination of alternative influences on factor shares; Labour's Loss of Power and the Political Economy of Inequality—an in‐depth discussion of the loss of political power by the Venezuelan labour movement and the relationship of this with the main hypothesis presented by the chapter; and Concluding Comments. The main thrust of the explanation offered is that the increase in Venezuela's income inequality can to a great extent be traced back to the decline in the country's physical capital stock and its rigid production processes, although policies such as trade liberalization, contractionary macropolicies, and capital account convertibility have made a far from negligible additional contribution.
Growth, Structural Change, and Inequality: The Experience of Thailand
Authors: Sarntisart Isra
Published: August 2004

This is the last of five country case studies on income inequality, and looks at the case of Thailand. Following on from a number of other studies, the study attempts to re‐examine the relationships between economic growth, structural change, and income inequality in Thailand. After an introduction, the second section, Economic Growth and Structural Change, provides a broad picture of the Thai economy, and the third, Trends in Income Inequality, reviews studies on the changes in income inequality from the 1960s through to the beginning of the 1990s. The fourth section, Factors Related to Income Distribution, examines industrialization planning, industrial protection policies, regional income disparities, and the minimum wage bill over the past four decades. The fifth section, Analysis of Income Inequality in 1988, 1992, and 1996, presents an analysis income inequality in those years according to the subgroups and source decompositions of income; the final section summarizes.
Corporate Law and Governance: Shareholder Derivative Suits
Authors: Milhaupt Curtis J. , West Mark D.
Published: August 2004

Presents a paradigmatic case of law's role in facilitating change in the Japanese economy: shareholder derivative suits. After discussing the structure of corporate governance in Japan, the authors show how a seemingly technical and innocuous legal change in 1993 led to large‐scale changes in the scope and mechanics of shareholder monitoring in that country.
Venture Capital
Authors: Milhaupt Curtis J. , West Mark D.
Published: August 2004

Chapters 3 and 4 examine the role of law and informal rules in the financial sector. Examines entrepreneurial finance in Japan, focusing on how the institutional environment associated with Japanese corporate governance in its post‐war heyday created problems for start‐up firms by handicapping the development of an active venture capital market. Bubbles notwithstanding, the maturation and dynamism of the venture capital market in the 1990s was one of the signal economic successes of the US in recent years. Not surprisingly, Japan has looked enviously at Silicon Valley. The search for an institutional structure supportive of entrepreneurial finance in Japan has motivated substantial corporate law reform over the past five years.