bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
State Intervention
Authors: Zamagni Vera
Published: October 2023

Whoever cnt1c1zes the Italian State’s intervention in economic affairs, as Gerschenkron does,at the same time implicitly acknowledges that the Italian State is an interventionist State, and is not at all ‘lethargic’, as Jones chooses to call those States that do not actively strive to improve their citizens’ lives.2 This was true of the Italian State as far back as the times of the Historical Right.
The Meaning and Measurement of Poverty
Authors: Nolan Brian , Whelan Christopher T
Published: October 2023

This chapter outlines the ways in which poverty has generally been concep tualized and measured in relatively rich countries, in order to identify the key problems that subsequent chapters seek to address. It begins with a discussion of how poverty has been defined or viewed in such societies, and an overview of the ways in which it has been measured. The different approaches to deriving and applying a poverty standard are then examined in more detail. This is followed by a description of current official practice in the UK, the USA, and the European Union, to provide concrete illus trations of the way conventional approaches are applied. Given this point of departure, the route to be taken by the current study is then outlined.
Income Poverty
Authors: Nolan Brian , Whelan Christopher T
Published: October 2023

In this chapter we briefly describe the survey on which our empirical analy sis is based, and apply relative income poverty lines to the sample to show the extent and composition of poverty as it would be measured by this widely used approach. We have seen in Chapter 2 that poverty in the rich countries is most often measured using income poverty lines, and that deriving these lines in a purely relative way, for example as proportions of average income, has a number of advantages. Spelling out how many and which households would be identified as poor using this method thus pro vides the background for the development in subsequent chapters of an alternative approach, which employs both income and indicators of depri vation. What will be most interesting, from the point of view of understand ing poverty and framing policy responses, is whether the types of household seen to be below relative income lines are also those identified as poor by the alternative approach.
Measuring Deprivation
Authors: Nolan Brian , Whelan Christopher T
Published: October 2023

As we have seen, poverty in industrialized countries is most commonly measured using income poverty lines. Such lines may be derived in a variety of different ways, as outlined in Chapter 2. It is not our aim here to adjudicate between these approaches, though purely relative income lines of the type applied in Chapter 3 have a number of advantages. Rather, our concern is with the use of income itself as the ‘marker’ which allows poor and non-poor households to be distinguished. Chapter 3 has explored a number of the well-known difficulties with the use of income, including the time period over which income is measured and the inherent difficulties in measuring income accurately by means of survey techniques. However, the fundamental issue about reliance on income is not simply one of measure ment: it is whether income, properly measured, in fact tells us what we want to know when we set out to measure poverty.
The New Popuiation Question
Authors: Gauthier Anne Hèléne
Published: October 2023

In contrast to the mid-1960s, when the onset of fertility decline had raised alarm in only a few countries, the subsequent reaching of below-replacement fertility levels resulted in widespread concerns. The new questions of population ageing and population decline paralleled to a certain extent those raised in the 1930s, when fears of depopulation were heard. But while in the 1930s, the situation of below-replacement fertility persisted for only a few years, during the 1970s and 1980s there was little sign of fertility reversals. Below-replacement fertility was seemingly here to stay, thus giving rise to some anxieties concerning the economic and social consequences of such a situation. In contrast to the early 1960s when record high levels of fertility were observed, well above replacement, fertility subsequently declined rapidly in several countries to levels as low as 1.3-1.4 children per woman. From a cross-national average (based on 22 countries) of 2.0 in 1975, fertility declined to 1.7 in 1990. While in 1970 levels above replacement were observed in 17 of the countries, it was the case in only 3 of them by 1990 Oreland, New Zealand, Sweden). These trends for selected countries are presented in Table 8.1 and Figure 8.1.
The Finances of the Government
Authors: Heymann Daniel , Leijonhufvud Axel
Published: October 2023

If high inflations are virulent processes, with large social and economic costs, the obvious question is why any sane government would allow the malady to fester. Outright policy mistakes do occur but surely cannot provide a complete explanation. Similarly, erratic inflation makes it difficult to conduct policy in a coherent manner. But governments do not end up with high inflations merely because they adapt to an unstable environment. In a manner of speaking, they ‘choose’ the policies that result in high inflation, albeit a choice made under political duress and in difficult circumstances.
Living with High Inflation
Authors: Heymann Daniel , Leijonhufvud Axel
Published: October 2023

Living with high inflation forces people to adapt every aspect of their economic activities to this peculiarly unstable and unpredictable environment. Even the most routine day-to-day transactions have to be organized differently. In some respects, the survival of relatively normal forms of economic behaviour is striking. The economy does not collapse—at least, not short of actual hyperinflation. But the capacity of individuals and of the economic system as a whole to cope with high inflation should not be exaggerated. Price instability greatly complicates the planning and co-ordination of economic activities. It wastes resources. In the extreme, it wastes them on a grand scale.
The Mansholt Plan and Its Legacy
Authors: Fennell Rosemary
Published: October 2023

The origins of structural policy and the basic legislation relating to it were out lined in Chapter 2. The present chapter, and Chapters 9 and 10 examine aspects of the policy as it developed. The Mansholt Plan has already been referred to in Chapter 4, in the context of changes to the price and market policy, and the attempt to introduce the objective method in price-fixing. The document which became known as the Mansholt Plan was the work of a small group of officials who held a series of private meetings in the Luxembourg village of Gaichel, from which they became known as the ‘Gaichel group’ (Ries 1978). Their work expanded into a massive exercise within the Commission and, in December 1968, the Commission presented the outcome to the Council. It took the form of a series of documents under the collective call number COM(68) 1000 (Commission 1968(a j).
Comment
Authors: Quah Danny
Published: October 2023

In the minds of many economic theorists and many traditional econometricians, vector autoregression (VAR) analysis is one of the worst things that could have happened to the scientific research programme that is business-cycle study. Users of VARs commit every crime imaginable: they estimate reduced forms—and hardly ever calculate formal specification tests—instead, preferring to work with a fiction known as a just-identified model. These practitioners refer to things as structural that no econometrician—working in either standard simultaneous equations, standard time series, or standard rational expectations paradigms—would recognize to be structural. (Within those three groups, of course, none acknowledges any of the others as structural either.) No undergraduate econometrics course teaches the tokens of VAR research dialogue: impulse response functions and forecast error variance decompositions.
A Historical Perspective on Population and Resources
Authors: Wrigley E A
Published: October 2023

In all living species the size that a population can attain is conditioned by the scale of the food and other resources necessary to sustain life that are available to the population. In all species other than man the scale of such resources may be regarded as given in the sense that the population must adjust to current opportunities and limitations. These may fluctuate widely in the short term, but in the longer term they change very little except on a geological time scale. The antelope has no means of making the grass grow faster or more abundantly, nor the buzzard of influencing the size of the stock of rabbits, or the speed of their reaction to danger.
Introduction
Authors: Blanc-Lapierre Andre
Published: October 2023

Concern with how human populations use and abuse physical resources was eloquently expressed by Pope John Paul II in his message commemorating the Day for World Peace (1 January 1990): Today there is a more acute awareness of the threats to world peace, not only because of the weapons race or of the regional conflicts, or of the many forms of injustice that still exist among peoples and nations, but also because of the many infringements upon the laws of Nature and the denial of the respect due to it, of the indiscriminate exploitation of its resources, and of the gradual deterioration in the quality of life. . . . Facing a general deprivation of its environment, mankind has now become more aware of the fact that the world’s wealth cannot continue to be used as it has been in the past.
Energy Resources and Population
Authors: Colombo Umberto
Published: October 2023

Since the discovery of fire, energy has been a major factor in development. Each of the great transformations of civilization has been accompanied by new ways to pro duce and utilize energy. Conversely, each new source of energy has made possible, or has necessitated, transformations in social organization. Fire, by permitting the conservation of food and protection from cold, brought about a more stable and complex prehistoric society; draught animal energy was a majqr component in the advent of agriculture; the use of the wind in sea transport and for mills had a profound influence on the Renaissance and contributed to the expansion of cultural and commercial horizons. Coal was at the base of the industrial revolution, which developed in countries having large reserves of this fuel (such as Great Britain and Germany). Electricity stimulated new forms of industry and changed the urban environment, while oil has fueled the great transformation of industrial society, especially after World War II.
Introduction
Authors: Fowden Leslie
Published: October 2023

There is agreement that, given the finite nature of many resources, agricultural production and derived food supplies must ultimately regulate the world population. There is less agreement concerning the population that global agriculture could support. Reasonable confidence exists that the 9-10 billion individuals projected to be alive in 2030 could be fed: it is less easy to foresee how agriculture could provide in sufficient amount the food, fiber, and fuelwood needed by some 15 billion people forecast by demographers as the possible plateau of world population by the year 2100.
Growth and Productive Structure: A Medium-Term Perspective
Authors: Curzio Alberto Quadrio , Fortis Marco
Published: October 2023

One of the fundamental aims of economic systems and of the science of economics is to use resources and factors so as to increase them over time to meet human needs. This is one of the meanings of the statement that “economics is at the service of humankind.” At least five major groups of resources have shaped the processes of economic growth: human; natural and environmental; technical and productive; fi nancial; and social-legal-institutional. Each of these broad groups can be subdivided both from a logical and from a historical point of view. These resources have always been complementary and partially substitutable in the processes of growth and development; it is impossible to deal with any one of them in isolation.
Malnutrition and Human Development
Authors: Grantham-Mcgregor S
Published: October 2023

The most important nutritional deficiencies that are known to affect child development are protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) and iron and iodine deficiency. PEM will be the main focus of this chapter; however, the importance of iron and iodine deficiency is increasingly being recognized and will be briefly discussed. Vitamin A deficiency will not be addressed, other than to point out that an estimated 500,000 new cases of eye lesions attributed to vitamin A deficiency occur annually (FAOIWHO Expert Consultation, 1988). The resulting reduced vision or blindness is likely to detrimentally affect the children’s development and severely limit their educational opportunities.
Local Governments and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
Authors: Kitayama Toshiya
Published: October 2023

It has been decades since the ‘miracle’ of Japanese economic growth caught the attention of political scientists and economists. Many have focused on the role of the national bureaucracy, particularly of the Minis¬ try of International Trade and Industry (MITI), and the role played by large companies, such as Toyota, Matsushita, and Sony. Some, most notably Chalmers Johnson, argue that MITI is the key player, indeed the economic general staff, in Japan’s ‘developmental state’ where its industrial policy has been instrumental for Japan’s rapid industrialization. Others argue that the ‘three sacred treasures’ —the lifetime employment system, the seniority wage system, and enterprise unionism, which are found almost exclusively in large enterprises—explain the competitiveness of Japanese companies.
The Environmental Resource Base and Human Welfare
Authors: Dasgupta Partha , Folket, Carl , Maler Karl-Goran
Published: October 2023

The ecological services we rely upon are produced by ecological systems (or ecosystems for short). These services are generated by interactions among organisms, populations of organisms, communities of populations, and the physical and chemical environment in which they reside. Ecosystems are involved in a number of functions. They also offer a wide range of services. Many are indispensable, as they provide the underpinning for all human activities. So they are of fundamental value. Among other things, ecosystems are the sources of water, of animal and plant food, and of other renewable resources. They also maintain a genetic library, sustain the processes that preserve and regenerate soil, recycle nutrients, control floods, filter pollutants, assimilate waste, pollinate crops, operate the hydrological cycle, and maintain the gaseous composition of the atmosphere (see e.g. Odum 1975; Folke 1991; de Groot 1992; Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1992; and Section 2 below). The totality of all the ecosystems of the world represents a large part of what we may call our natural capital base.1 For vividness, we will often refer to it in what follows as the environmental resource base.Since the services this base provides for us are essential for our survival, it would clearly be prudent to monitor it in much the same way that we routinely monitor our manufactured capital stocks, such as roads, buildings, and machinery. Unhappily, this has not been standard practice.
Introduction
Authors: Mason Karen Oppenheim , Jensen An-Magritt
Published: October 2023

This volume considers the question of how changes since World War II in the family and in the roles of women and men have been causally interconnected. Many observers speculate that major changes in women’s roles and attitudes, such as their increased labour force participation and the rise of a new feminist movement, have contributed to the ‘decay’ of the Western family. Others have suggested that women’s new roles and outlooks are a response to the increasing insecurity of marriage in an age of divorce. The contributions to this volume deal with such questions as: has the economic ‘liberation’ of women as represented by their improved educational and employment opportunities—or their ideological liberation promoted by the ‘second-wave’ women’s movements arising during the 1960s-1980s—contributed to such changes in the family as the postponement of marriage, increases in premarital cohabitation, rising divorce rates, or increased levels of non-marital childbearing? And have changes in the family, especially the destabilization of the conjugal unit as a lifelong arrangement, motivated women and men to alter their roles and status?
Women’s Condition, Low Fertility, and Emerging Union Patterns in Europe
Authors: Pinnelli Antonella
Published: October 2023

This chapter is concerned with the apparent divergence between fertility trends and trends in union formation and dissolution in Western Europe—-in particular, whether conditions for women can explain these trends and the divergence between them. After the boom of marriages and births in the first half of the 1960s, most Western European countries experienced a sharp and continuous fall in fertility during the second half of the decade and throughout the 1970s—with an impressive convergence among them to figures below the replacement level. Towards the end of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, however, the decline in fertility slowed down, coming to a halt or even reversing in some cases. In some countries the total fertility rate (TFR) is now very low at about 1.5 children per woman (Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland), but in others it is closer to the replacement level (France, the UK, Scandinavia) or even higher (in Sweden the TFR was 2.14 in 1990).1 In general, however, differences in fertility among the Western European countries are now small: less than one child per woman.
Urbanization of the Third World Giants
Authors: Jones Gavin W , Visaria Pravin
Published: October 2023

Anybody familiar with the development literature will know that the world is rapidly urbanizing, and that by the year 2005 (less than a decade away) more than half the world’s population will live in urban areas (United Nations 1994). This figure, however, hides enormous inter-country variation.
The Effects of National Urban Strategy and Regional Development Policy on Patterns of Urban Growth in China
Authors: Laquian Aprodicio A
Published: October 2023

As a centrally planned economy, the People’s Republic of China has an explicit national urban strategy which seeks ‘to strictly limit the size of big cities, ration ally develop medium-sized cities and encourage the development of small cities and towns’ (Li Ximing 1982). This strategy is a key feature of the country’s new economic reforms, pursued since 1979. To achieve strategic goals, authority and power have been decentralized to local units, capital and infrastructure investments have been reallocated, pricing policies for goods and services have been altered, and policies on internal migration have been revised.
Migration and Urbanization in China
Authors: Su Lin You
Published: October 2023

Migration is one of the most important areas of contemporary research on development issues in developing countries. The process of migration is closely related to the structural transformation of a country from an agrarian society to an industrial society. Recent studies show that in many developing countries city ward migration is a significant factor contributing to the growth of the urban population (Yap 1975: 6-10; Fuller 1981: 55-66; Goldstein and Goldstein 1985: 3-21), and China is no exception. However, because of the paucity of material on migration in China, very little is known about this. This chapter will begin to fill the gap by focusing on migration to urban China. It is mainly based on two sets of data: Registration data and Migration Survey data from 1986.
Industrial Location Policies and Their Implications for India
Authors: Mohan Rakesh
Published: October 2023

Since independence India has followed a path of rapid industrialization in a very conscious, planned manner. At the time of independence, industrial production in the organized sector of the economy was very concentrated in a few industries and in just a few regions, and was mostly centred around large cities. At the same time, there was a relatively even spread of household industry across the country. The main centres of industrial production were Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Ahmedabad, and Kanpur, with some concentration of the steel- and coal-related industries in eastern Bihar and West Bengal. Most of the industries located in and around the port cities were export-related processing of basic items such as tea and jute. Given this background of the industrialization pattern in the country there has been a long-standing concern with the location of industry in India. It is probable that this concern is more serious than in many other countries since the pre-independence concentrations of industry were also linked with colonial domination and exploitation. Before independence it is difficult to find any indication of any location policy being followed by British India. As time has progressed the government has adopted an increasingly interventionist stance in the location of industries.
Transition Banking
Authors: Anderson Ronald W , Kegels Chantal
Published: October 2023

Transition Banking assesses the efforts since 1989 to develop financial sectors in the economies of Central and Eastern Europe. In finance above all, the principles of central planning were radically opposed to those of capitalism, and moving from one system to the other has required entirely new institutions and skills. This financial development is crucial to growth and to full partnership with the West. The approach taken here is comprehensive, empirical, and comparative. Anderson and Kegels seek to answer a series of key questions: * Has the State retreated from controlling the allocation of savings? * Is the banking sector competitive? * Do investors direct the use of capital? * Are securities markets developing? * Is outside finance supporting economic growth? * Is the financial system stable? In explaining the logic of finance in a transition setting, Transition Banking both documents the important progress made in institution-building to date and pinpoints the areas where the region remains vulnerable.
Comment
Authors: Persson Torsten
Published: October 2023

It is a great pleasure to read and comment on this paper. What it does is to survey recent theoretical and empirical research on political factors in the growth process. The authors are indeed two of the main contributors to this emerging field, which runs across the conventional boundaries between macroeconomics, development economics and political science. In addition, the paper sheds some new light on two specific hypotheses regarding an empirical relation that has been emphasized in recent research: countries with a more unequal distribution of income turn out to have lower growth rates.
The Simple Catching-up Effect: Some Empirical Tests
Authors: Bergström Villy
Published: October 2023

Strong empirical support for the catching-up hypothesis was provided, for example, by Baumol (1986) and Abramovitz (1986) when they tested it on sixteen developed countries for which Maddison (1982) had compiled productivity data dating back to 1870. Productivity is defined as GDP per hour worked. In Table 12.1, the trends of GDP per hour worked are compared in Maddison’s sixteen countries during the period 1870-1970. The countries are ranked according to the rate of increase in productivity. As we see, there is a very strong negative correlation between a country’s productivity level in 1870 and the rate of growth during the next 100-year period.
Modelling the Effect of Social Capability
Authors: Bergström Villy
Published: October 2023

As already noted in Chapter 10, social capability is a necessary condition for a country to be able to benefit from catching up. The model we use to examine the effect of social capability on the catching-up process starts out from the model already presented in section 12.1.
Introduction
Authors: Bergström Villy
Published: October 2023

There is currently an explosion of interest in the role of institutional factors in secular economic growth. Standard neoclassical economic growth theory is devoid of institutions and predicts that, in long-run equilibrium, growth rates will be equal across countries, or at most will vary with differences in labour force participation. Recently though, Romer (1986) and Lucas (1987) have developed growth models that contain some form of increasing social returns. These endogenous growth models imply that institutional factors and government policies can systematically affect economic growth, and there is now a large empirical literature examining these phenomena.
Problems and Pitfalls
Authors: Bergström Villy
Published: October 2023

In this chapter, I address three specific problems or shortcomings in the existing empirical work. My goal is not to belittle previous work, but to show what direction future work might consider and to motivate the empirical approach I use in the rest of this paper. Indeed, Cameron and Calmfors and Driffill have done a tremendous amount to advance the study of the relation between governance and economic growth.
Environinental Policy and International Capital Moveinents
Authors: Rauscher Michael
Published: October 2023

Before we turn to issues of foreign trade, the problem of international factor mobility will be addressed. One reason for dealing with this issue first is the simpler model framework. International factor mobility can be dealt with in a one-good model whereas the consideration of international trade in final goods requires at least two commodities. Thus, it is easier to derive results and to develop an intuition of what happens in models involving environmental resources and international economic relationships. It with be seen in the following chapters that similar results are obtained in models with international trade in final goods but these results will in many cases be not as unambiguous as those derived in the factor-mobility model. The other-more important-reason to consider international factor movements here is their relevance. In the standard model framework which perfect competition and absence of scale economies, international trade and factor movements are substitutes. Trade in final goods occurs when factors of production are internationally immobile. The specialization effects that are induced by foreign trade in final goods require the intersect oral relocation of the factors of production. Thus, there has to be some mobility of factors of production.
International Trade in Final Goods: The Case of Perfect Cornpetition
Authors: Rauscher Michael
Published: October 2023

As has been shown in the previous section, trade in toxic waste can be dealt with in a one-sector model. The consideration of trade in final consumable commodities requires a more general framework involving at least two goods. The present chapter uses such a model. International trade is explained by differences in the environmental resource endowments of different countries. In a first step, one may ask what determines the endowment of a country with environmental resources. This issue has already been addressed in Chapter 2, but it will be reconsidered here using a more formalized approach. Moreover, one can look at the gains from trade: in which circumstances is it possible that increased environmental disruption offsets the traditional gains from trade? Finally, the question may be addressed whether it makes sense to use environ mental policy to achieve trade-related economic policy objectives and whether this will result in a race to the bottom in the field of environmental regulation. Is ecological dumping compatible with optimizing behavior.
How should the public debt be managed?
Authors: Missale Alessandro
Published: October 2023

How should the public debt be managed? This question has received different answers depending on the specific reasons considered as to why debt management matters. Each of these reasons suggests a policy objective: (i) distorting taxes--the design of public debt should support optimal taxation, also ensuring its time consistency; (ii) incomplete markets—debt management should improve risk sharing; (iii) imperfect markets—market efficiency should be enhanced; (iv) tax myopia and finite planning horizons-debt instruments should support stabilization policy.
Debt composition and debt maturity: the evidence
Authors: Missale Alessandro
Published: October 2023

In the absence of informational asymmetries, expectations failures and market imperfections, the ideal debt instrument would be negatively indexed to public spending and positively indexed to productivity or output. Shiller (1993, ch. 4) suggests issuing debt positively indexed to output as the socially optimal solution. This debt design would minimize tax distortions by limiting variations in labor tax rates, which would otherwise be needed to meet changes in financing needs. It would also help to relax borrowing constraints, by allowing for lower labor tax rates than would otherwise be possible in states where output is low and constraints are binding.
Introduction
Authors: Soeya Yoshihide
Published: October 2023

This study traces the evolution of the structure and process of Japan’s trade relations with China in the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s. It illuminates the pluralistic structure of postwar Japan-China trade which survived the three politically turbulent decades after the end of World War II, and thus highlights continuity in the bilateral trade relationship amid political discontinuity. The conventional wisdom on postwar Japan-China relations stresses the predominance of strategic concerns and fluctuations in the overall bilateral relationship. Despite significant political fluctuations, however, the records of Japan-China trade were impressive when viewed in relative terms. A few statistics demonstrate the point. As a share of Japan’s total trade with North East Asian countries (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, North Korea, and the Soviet Union), Japan-China trade occupied as much as 29.8 per cent in 1956, which made China the leading trade partner of Japan in the region (Table 2.3 on page 43). From 1964 to 1967, Japan’s trade with China was larger than that with Taiwan and South Korea, and not until 1980 did it ‘recover’ to the level of the 26 per cent share recorded in 1966.
Japan-China Trade in the l950s
Authors: Soeya Yoshihide
Published: October 2023

The structure of Japan-China relations in the 1950s become the prototype of the developments in the following decade in two respects. First, heightened tension between the United States and China in the early 1950s structured the overall political relationship between Japan and China. In order for Japan to construct a new trade relationship with mainland China in this tense political environment, it now had to find a way to promote China trade under the strategic constraints imposed by the highly political objectives of the United States. A conflict between American strategic concerns and the extensive Japanese desire for trade with China had given rise to a specific mechanism of Japan’s China trade, which proved resilient throughout the 1960s and, to a significant extent, in the post-normalization decade as well.
Japanese Diplomacy with China in the l 970s
Authors: Soeya Yoshihide
Published: October 2023

The normalization of governmental relations in 1972 ushered in a new era in postwar Japan-China relations. A long-standing political obstacle which had hindered Japan-China relations from developing into a full-scale relation¬ ship was removed. During the previous two decades, the scope of Japanese governmental involvement in the relationship had been severely limited by international strategic factors, and big business, curtailed by its close relationship with both the Japanese government and the Taiwan and US markets, was not much interested in China except as a potential future market. As a result, Japanese society had been deeply divided over the China issue, both politically and economically, between the pro-US camp and the pro-China group challenging the logic of the Cold War and Pax Americana. With Japan China diplomatic normalization, however, the ideological cleavage over the China issue was considerably ameliorated in Japan. Also from the Chinese point of view, its political demands claimed in the three political principles were now satisfied: the government of Japan abandoned its ‘anti-Chinese’ attitudes, it recognized only ‘one China’, and diplomatic relations were normalized.
Migration, Sexual Subcultures, and HIV/AIDS in Brazil
Authors: Parker Richard G
Published: October 2023

By late 1993, the Brazilian Ministry of Health had recorded nearly 45,000 cases of AIDS-the highest number of cases reported in Latin America, and among the highest number anywhere in the world. Since its emergence little more than a decade earlier, the AIDS epidemic had taken shape as among the most serious public health problems in the country, and official estimates that more than 750,000 Brazilians are already infected with HIV suggest that the impact of AIDS will continue to grow dramatically in the foreseeable future. Throughout this period, the epidemic has been characterized by its apparently rampant spread over time, across space, and beyond the boundaries that would seem to divide otherwise disparate social groups.
A New Approach to Monetary Policy (1971–8)
Authors: Hagen Jürgen von
Published: October 2023

In the 1970s a new monetary policy era began in Germany. After a quarter century during which the D-mark had been tied to the US dollar and the Bundesbank had virtually lost control of the money supply, in March 1973 the Bundesbank was relieved of its obligation to intervene on the foreign exchange markets with respect to the dollar. While this did not mean complete freedom from exchange-rate constraints, the strongest and most immediate external pressure had been removed. New paths opened up for monetary policy.
Monetary Policy under Conditions of Increasing Integration (1979–96)
Authors: Baltensperger Ernst
Published: October 2023

During the period 1979–96 the Bundesbank had to meet a series of difficult challenges. It repeatedly faced sharp criticism both at home and abroad, and its policy was the subject of intense debate. Yet overall—in terms of its degree of goal attainment and the international reputation earned by the Bundesbank—this policy can undoubtedly be seen as an unequivocal success, at least compared to that pursued by the overwhelming majority of other central banks during the same period. This is manifested not least in the fact that under the terms of the Maastricht Treaty the Bundesbank served as a model for the establishment of a European central bank. It is therefore an interesting task to present and evaluate this policy, which, following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of Fixed exchange rates, first had to be defined in the early 1970s and then had to be gradually tested and developed.
Orderly Theories, Disorderly Women
Authors: Watkins Susan Cotts , Rutenberg, Naomi , Wilkinson David
Published: October 2023

One of the themes of feminist studies in a variety of fields is the issue of male control over females, particularly over their productive and reproductive labour. Two widespread social changes—the spread of money and the spread of new ideas about fertility regulation and modern contraceptive techniques—are, we suggest, subversive of this control, and have the potential to destabilize the gender balance of power.
The Rise of Dowry in Bangladesh
Authors: Amin Sajeda , Cain Mead
Published: October 2023

This paper explores the origins and timing of the reported emergence of dowry payment and the extent of its practice in rural Bangladesh. The increasing incidence of dowry, and a shift from a norm of brideprice to dowry over a time span of less than one generation, represents a dramatic change which invites interpretation.
Methodological Advances in Studying the Social Context of AIDS in West Africa
Authors: Caldwell John C , Orubuloye, I O , Caldwell Pat
Published: October 2023

The African AIDS epidemic has given rise to a need for both anthropological and survey methods of research and for modifications to existing methods because of the great sensitivity of the subject. Only very limited research on sexuality and sexual relations has ever been undertaken in sub-Saharan Africa even by anthropologists. This can hardly be explained by the fact that anthropologists looked upon it as a matter of trivial social importance or as having no significant bearing on other social relationships and behaviour. There are two possible explanations. The first is that they regarded the topic as so sensitive, and perhaps so central, that they believed its investigation would distort their relations with their respondents and hence would be damaging to their other inquiries. The second is that, arising from the nature of their own societies, they had difficulty in coming to terms with research on sexual relations as a serious, and even respectable, study.
Anthropological Insights into the Links between Women’s Status and Demographic Behaviour, Illustrated with the Notions of Hypergamy and Territorial Exogamy
Authors: Basu Alaka M
Published: October 2023

While the field methods of anthropological demography are increasingly accepted as an important way to increase our understanding of the impact on demographic behaviour of a variable—the status of women—which is today often considered an important key to sustained demographic change, the discipline of anthropology as a whole has much to offer in this understanding. In particular, its value lies in its ability to probe, define, and explain issues involving women’s status, even those with no obvious demographic implications. These issues are captured extremely inadequately by conventional demographic techniques; the excessive quantitative concentration by demographers on the two variables of female education and employment is not at all surprising, given that so much of what constitutes female status (and gender issues in general) is non-quantifiable and often even intangible.
Political Economy and Cultural Processes in the Fertility Decline of Sicilian Artisans
Authors: Schneider Jane , Schneider Peter
Published: October 2023

This paper analyses the transition from high to low fertility of the artisan class in a rural town of the Sicilian interior. The transition occurred between the First and Second World Wars, a time of severe dislocation and economic downturn. We argue that the resulting hardships motivated artisans to want smaller families; yet we do not treat their impressive new commitment to family limitation as a mere economizing gesture, but regard it as reflecting, as well, pan-European cultural processes that contributed to the diffusion of a particular technique of family limitation: coitus interruptus. We ask specifically how the inter-war crisis affected local artisans. In addition, we examine their life ways in relation to both the gender dynamics of this technique and the communications networks carrying news of its contraceptive efficacy. Overall, we hope to present a culturally sensitive, political economy approach to population change.
Social Norms, Natural Fertility, and the Resumption of Postpartum ‘Contact’ in The Gambia
Authors: Bledsoe Caroline , Hill Allan G
Published: October 2023

Social scientists have long treated normative prescriptions for behaviour as keys to maintaining social order, and departure from these norms as the root of social pathology. Even the father of demography himself, T. R. Malthus, began, after his initial prophesy of population catastrophe (1798), to place more cheerful confidence in the potentials of norms to check population increase—specifically, conjugal norms that supported premarital sexual restraint and discouraged marriage by individuals who could not yet support a family. Malthus, of course, was a minister of the Church as well as an economist and mathematician, so it is perhaps not surprising that he would find hope in normative solutions, especially those with religious backing. Since his time, demography has been adopted more by sociology than by any other field, and normative approaches familiar to sociology and anthropology have dominated many of its explanatory frameworks. Thus, fertility patterns in developing countries are commonly attributed to the influence of traditions or values that entail certain behaviour patterns, while changes in fertility are commonly attributed to the influence of new norms, often those iraparted by Western education, which supplant local norms with modern cosmopolitan ones.
Industrial Reform and Macroeconomic Instability in China
Authors: Kueh Y Y , Chai Joseph C H , Fan Gang
Published: October 2023

Is the battle against inflation in China now over? Can Zhu Rongji, the economic guru turned Chinese premier who has successfully reduced the skyrocketing inflation of the mid-1990s to a near zero level, while yet maintaining high economic growth through the new millennium, relax? These are the key questions raised by China's current economic transition towards a market-based system, and they both revolve around the institutional economics that is the focus of this volume. Dealing specifically with the giant state-owned enterprises (SOEs), Industrial Reform and Macroeconomic Instability in China unravels the intriguing dynamics between industrial deregulation and inflation, in the context of China's continuous search for sustained, stable economic growth without runaway inflation. This book is unique among western studies: it addresses the very core, but to date least reformed sector of the Chinese economy. SOEs have monopolized key industrial supplies, commanded the bulk of national investment, disctated much of the nation's credit and finance, and have been the single most important source of state budget revenue. Continually faced with enormous internal wage pressures, all attempts at marketization and price liberalization are inherently inflationary. Based upon an independently, specifically designed set of questionnaires administered to 300 large and medium-scale state industrial enterprises in six major industrial cities, this book provides an in-depth analysis of the first decade of the reforms of the 1980s. The findings are formulated as pointers for understanding the macroeconomic vicissitudes that occurred after the launching of the campaign to create a 'socialist market economy' in the early 1990s. This book will be of use to China analysts, students, and businessmen who are interested in learning about the progress made, the remaining obstacles that the state-owned enterprises face, and their inevitable impact on China's economic growth and stability.
Risk and Migration
Authors: Daveri Francesco , Faini Riccardo
Published: October 2023

The decision of where to seek work is a crucial determinant of the way labour markets function. If workers are attached to their initial location and reluctant to move to alternative locations, the smooth working of the labour market will be imperilled. Relative labour immobility will indeed result either in long unemployment spells if wages are rigid, or in persistent wage and productivity differentials across locations if wages happen to respond to unemployment. In both cases, however, the market outcome will be inefficient.
V-goods and the Role of the Urban Informal Sector in Development
Authors: Ranis Gustav , Stewart Frances
Published: October 2023

The informal sector typically accounts for a high proportion of the work force in developing countries. It is often described as a low-productivity backwater ‘sponge’ which absorbs those who can’t find productive employment in the rural areas or in formal urban activities. In contrast, others suggest that the sector can make an important and indeed increasing contribution to production and income generation. The purpose of this paper is to advance this debate by taking a closer look at the sector itself and analysing its relationships with the rest of the economy.
Promoting the Strong or Supporting the Weak? Technological Gaps and Segmented Labour Markets in Sub-Sahara African Industry
Authors: Navaretti Giorgio Barba
Published: October 2023

The fairly extensive literature on sub-Saharan African enterprises provides incontrovertible evidence of duality and a remarkably low rate of graduation from small-scale, low-productivity activities to those involving larger scale and modern technologies. Large numbers of firms with less than five employees survive, in the same industry, along with medium-large firms mostly under foreign or state ownership. While the number of indigenous enterprises has increased rapidly in the 1980s, especially in response to recession, the rate of graduation of firms into larger size has been very low in most African countries. The dynamism of African enterprises in other ways, such as the deepening of local linkages, productivity increase, product or technology diversification, and export performance, has also been low in relation to other industrializing areas. There are few signs that the duality in the industrial structure has been reduced by the modernization of the traditional sector or by diffusion of technology from large to small enterprises.
Labour Allocation under Baochan
Authors: Liu Minquan
Published: October 2023

In a recent contribution to the literature on collective farming, Liu (1994a) argues that, under the classical collective farm system of the Chinese commune type, collective members actively participated in collective production even more than a self-cultivating private farmer would spend time working, but while engaged in this collective work they shirked. In this paper I extend that analysis and show that a reformed collective farm system (RS) could overcome the shirking problem. Liu (1994a) also stresses that the Chinese commune system was able to mobilize vast amounts of additional labour from members for various kinds of agricultural infrastructural investment, and discusses the reasons.
Keynes’s Manuscript On ‘Population’
Authors: Toye John
Published: October 2023

Keynes’s manuscript on “Population’, the basis of a lecture he delivered on 2 May 1914, was not finally published in any form until 1993, and then only as one small part of the archive of Keynes’s papers that was made available by King’s College, Cambridge in a commercial microfilm version. The cost of this version places it beyond the reach of all except very wellendowed university libraries. Thus, despite the microfilm publication, “Population’ remains a relatively unknown piece of Keynes’s writing, even to the academic world. Now a hard copy edition of it is published for the first time in the Appendix to this chapter.
The Timing of Reforms
Authors: Boeri Tito
Published: October 2023

There are a few myths about the legacy of the Communist regime. Among these is the belief that the old system had developed a highly qualified labour force. Contrary to such belief, the Communists were everything except good ‘human capitalists’. They overinvested in narrowly based vocational training, forcing most of those entering secondary education to invest in skills that were not ‘fungible’, i.e. not transferable across different jobs. Thus, rather than having jobs attributed according to talent-as implied by the Marxist paradigm-there were a lot of bad matches around. Moreover, workers were stuck in these bad matches, not necessarily by coercive power-workers had much more freedom under Communism to change jobs than is usually thought-but because their skills were non-transferable across jobs. Under the radical transformations that occurred in the Eastern European nations at the beginning of the 1990s, it was very difficult for workers, especially those with long tenures in socialist enterprises, to adjust to new production methods and to shift across occupations or even whole industries.