bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Distributional dynamics following a technological revolution
Authors: Andolfatto David , Smith Eric
Published: March 2003

In this paper we explore the link between technological change and the dynamics of employment, production, and the distribution of earnings. Technological change not only advances society's collective capability but also changes the relative productivities of its members. The latter effect establishes the likely winners and losers from advances in productive capabilities, provides a mechanism that can generate cyclical fluctuations in output as well as employment, and determines the evolution of the earnings distribution.

Dynamique de la répartition à la suite d'une révolution technologique. Ce mémoire examine le lien entre le changement technologique et la dynamique de l'emploi, de la production et de la répartition des revenus. Le changement technologique n'augmente pas seulement la capacité collective d'une société mais modifie aussi les productivités relatives de ses membres. Ce dernier effet crée des gagnants et des perdants, déclenche un mécanisme qui peut générer des fluctuations cycliques tant dans le niveau de production que dans celui de l'emploi, et détermine l'évolution de la répartition des revenus.
Product differentiation, competition, and international trade
Authors: Bernhofen Daniel M.
Published: March 2003

In this paper the two workhorse theories of international trade under imperfect competition – Krugman’s taste for variety model and Brander’s strategic intra‐industry trade model – are integrated into a single analytical framework. A quadratic utility function allows for a nesting of these two theories by postulating a consumer taste for variety over differentiated products, where the extent of product differentiation is linked to the intensity of strategic interaction among firms. The model yields intuitive predictions on the effects of the degree of product differentiation on the volume of trade and on the composition of the gains from trade under imperfect competition. JEL classification: F12

Différenciation de produits, concurrence et commerce international. Ce mémoire intègre deux théories connues du commerce international en régime de concurrence imparfaite – le modèle du goût pour la variété de Krugman et celui du commerce intra‐industrie de Brander – en un seul cadre analytique. Une fonction d’utilité quadratique permet d’encadrer ces deux théories en postulant que le consommateur a un goût pour la variété dans une gamme de produits différenciés où le degré de différenciation est reliéà l’intensité de l’interaction stratégique entre les entreprises. Le modèle engendre des prévisions quant aux effets du degré de différenciation des produits sur le volume de commerce international et la composition des gains résultant de ce commerce en régime de concurrence imparfaite.
Transport Costs, the New Economic Geography, and Rural Development
Authors: Kilkenny Maureen
Published: March 2003

This paper explores land use conflicts between non‐farm neighbors and farmers to illustrate the usefulness of the concepts of interdependence, rules, and property rights when doing rural development. Recognizing interdependence and its implications helps economic analysis focus on and understand the types of rules and institutions having the most influence on economic behavior, and thus identify policy alternatives. The resolution of land uses conflicts, for example, unavoidably changes the bundle of rights associated with land, and influences who can impose costs of whom; it makes a difference if a large farm has the right to produce odors, flies, or noise that reduces their neighbors' abilities to enjoy the neighbors' own land, or if instead, neighbors have the right to use their property without experiencing farm‐produced odors, flies or noise the farm may be unable to use its own land for agriculture without being inconvenienced.
Spatial Industrial Dynamics in Sweden: Urban Growth Industries
Authors: Karlsson Charlie
Published: March 2003

In this paper two basic theories within spatial industrial dynamics—the filtering‐down theory and the spatial product cycle theory—are used to explain processes of spatial decentralization and centralization of economic activities. In particular, a case is made for the idea that employment decentralization should be expected not only for growing and maturing manufacturing industries but also for growing and maturing service industries. Based upon this theoretical framework the empirical part of the paper analysis the spatial behavior during the period 1980 to 1993 of the employment in a group of 19 industries in Sweden—the so‐called urban growth industries—with an expected high potential for employment decentralization. Most of the industries exhibited the expected pattern of employment decentralization with the larger medium‐sized regions as the main winners. A shift‐share analysis shows that the overall magnitudes of the competitive shift components are rather small and that, hence, Sweden during the period 1980–1993 did not experience a drastic change in the spatial distribution of its urban growth industries.
Estimating Amenity Benefits of Coastal Farmland
Authors: Johnston Robert J. , Opaluch James J. , Grigalunas Thomas A. , Mazzotta Marisa J.
Published: March 2003

This paper investigates differences in non‐market farmland amenity values estimated using distinct methodologies, with a focus on the potential causes and policy implications. The paper compares farmland amenity values generated by a hedonic property value model and a contingent choice model, both estimated from data collected in the Peconic Estuary System of Suffolk County, NY. The analysis demonstrates that a combination of non‐market valuation methodologies can provide policy insights not otherwise available to those relying on any single approach, and illustrates types of information that may be obscured by methodologies used in isolation.
Do Policymakers Locate Prisons for Economic Development?
Authors: Cherry Todd , Kunce Mitch
Published: March 2003

While public goods can provide an overall increase in welfare, ‘inferior’ public facilities produce externalities specifically impacting host locations. Heterogeneous jurisdictional attributes, however, can cause net social benefits to vary across potential host communities. Using data from a unique public works project, this paper empirically investigates whether policymakers consider heterogeneous conditions when locating prison facilities. Results indicate that policymakers follow a process that maximizes net social benefits by systematically delegating such facilities to lagging communities; thereby potentially using the public facilities for economic development. Additionally, results suggest that policymakers properly consider existing infrastructure and agglomeration economies in the siting mechanism.
Interpreting Presuppositions Using Active Logic: From Contexts to Utterances
Authors: Gurney John , Perlis Don , Purang Khemdut
Published: March 2003

Presuppositionis a pervasive feature of human language. It involves many interesting interactions between the utterances of a discourse and the contextof the discourse. In this paper we focus on issues of logical form connected with the interaction of presupposition and discourse context, and illustrate our theory with some implementational work using the active logicframework. After reviewing some of the major issues in presupposition theory we turn to a largely successful unified approach of Heim. We show how the main principles of this theory can be implemented in active logic. But we also find two serious difficulties. These consist in (a) a straightforward counterexample and (b) a type of discourse that we call a garden‐path discourse. We maintain that both the counterexample and the garden‐path type of discourse can be handled by our active‐logic version of Heim's theory. This requires us to reformulate and extend Heim's theorey. Although this work is largely theoretical, both Heim's theory and ours have important things to say about the incremental processing of the utterances that make up discourse. And we present our theory as a specification of a processing device that takes logical form of a sentence along with current discourse context as input and delivers an updated discourse context as output. As an experiment, we have implemented portions of this device.
Simulated Annealing and the Generation of the Objective Function: A Model of Learning During Problem Solving
Authors: Cagan Jonathan , Kotovsky Kenneth
Published: March 2003

A computational model of problem solving based on significant aspects of human problem solving is introduced. It is observed that during problem solving humans often start searching more or less randomly, becoming more deterministic over time as they learn more about the problem. This two‐phase aspect of problem‐solving behavior and its relation to learning is one of the important features this model accounts for. The model uses an accelerated simulated annealing technique as a search mechanism within a real‐time dynamic programming‐like framework upon a connected graph of neighboring problem states. The objective value of each node is adjusted as the model moves between nodes, learning more accurate values for the nodes and also compensating for misleading heuristic information as it does so. In this manner the model is shown to learn to more effectively solve isomorphs of the Balls and Boxes and Tower of Hanoi problems. The major issues investigated with the model are (a) whether such a simulated annealing‐based model exhibits the kind of random‐to‐directed transition in behavior exhibited by people, and (b) whether the progressive discovery of the objective function, even when given very little or poor initial information, is a plausible method for representing the learning that occurs during problem solving and the knowledge that results from that learning.
Knowledge Retrieval, Use and Storage for Efficiency
Authors: Fall Andrew , Mineau Guy
Published: March 2003

The Knowledge Retrieval, Use and Storage for Efficiency (KRUSE) symposiums aim at providing a forum for research related to efficient processing and management of complex information and knowledge. This special issue presents selected articles from the KURSE'97 symposium held in Vancouver, Canada. In this introductory article we describe the goals of KRUSE and present some background topics that are fundamental to the articles herein. In particular, we provide an overview of partial order theory, formal concept analysis and taxonomic encoding. We also outline the articles that follow.
Resolving Ambiguous Segmentation of Korean Compound Nouns Using Statistics and Rules
Authors: Yun Bo‐Hyun , Kwak Yong‐Jae , Rim Hae‐Chang
Published: March 2003

Korean compound nouns may be written as a sequence of characters without blanks between unit nouns. For Korean processing systems, Korean compound nouns have to be first segmented into a sequence of unit nouns. However, the segmentation task is difficult because a sequence of characters may be ambiguously segmented to several sequences of appropriate unit nouns. Moreover, this task is not trivial because Korean compound nouns may include many unknown unit nouns.

This paper proposes a new method for KCNS (Korean Compound Noun Segmentation) and reports on the appliccation of such a segmentationtechnique to enhance the performance of an information retrieval system. According to our method, compound nouns are first segmented by using a dictionary and structure patterns. If they are ambiguously segmented, we resolve the ambiguities by using statistical information and a preference rule. Moreover, we employ three kinds of heuristics in order to segment compound nouns with unknown unit nouns.

To evaluate KCNS, we use three kinds of data from various domains. Experimental results show that the precision of KCNS's output is approximately 96% on average, regardless of domains. The effectiveness of using the segmented unit nouns provided by KCNS for indexing is proved by improving retrieval performance of our information retrieval system.
Integrated Temporal Reasoning with Periodic Events
Authors: Terenziani Paolo
Published: March 2003

In many areas of Computer Science, including planning, workflows, guidelines, and protocol management, one has to deal with abstract plans, procedures, or schedules involving temporal constraints between classes of actions that have to be repeated at periodic times and may be instantiated in different ways for different executions of the plans (procedures, schedules). In this paper we propose an integrated framework to deal with both qualitative temporal constraints on classes of actions and temporal constraints between instances of actions, in which temporal reasoning is used to amalgamate both types of constraints and to check their consistency. In particular, we consider an expressive formalism to deal with temporal constraints between classes of actions (with special attention to periodic actions) which takes into account different components such as frame times, numeric quantification, periods, and qualitative relations. We define the notions of (contextual) concretization of qualitative temporal constraints between classes and use this notion to formally define the consistency of a knowledge base of temporal constraints between classes and a set of temporal constraints on instances, and to define the algorithm for checking such a consistency. An application for scheduling lessons in a school is shown in an example.
Using Images As a Foundation for Natural Language Processing
Authors: Kohanim Michel , Johnson Julia
Published: March 2003

A new framework for knowledge representation is proposed, based on modality‐dependent (sight, sound, touch) images, within which agents will be better able to communicate using natural languages. The premise is that natural language processing depends not only on the grammatical rules but also on entities (whatever the agents are communicating about), their attributes, and supported events (in a time/space continuum). We call the collection of an entity's associated attributes a state. The description of a concept is refined when new information about the concept is encountered through discovery of consistency between the attributes belonging to different image instances.
Transferring Case Knowledge To Adaptation Knowledge: An Approach for Case‐Base Maintenance
Authors: Shiu Simon C. K. , Yeung Daniel S. , Sun Cai H. , Wang Xi Z.
Published: March 2003

In this article we propose a case‐base maintenance methodology based on the idea of transferring knowledge between knowledge containers in a case‐based reasoning (CBR) system. A machine‐learning technique, fuzzy decision‐tree induction, is used to transform the case knowledge to adaptation knowledge. By learning the more sophisticated fuzzy adaptation knowledge, many of the redundant cases can be removed. This approach is particularly useful when the case base consists of a large number of redundant cases and the retrieval efficiency becomes a real concern of the user. The method of maintaining a case base from scratch, as proposed in this article, consists of four steps. First, an approach to learning feature weights automatically is used to evaluate the importance of different features in a given case base. Second, clustering of cases is carried out to identify different concepts in the case base using the acquired feature‐weights knowledge. Third, adaptation rules are mined for each concept using fuzzy decision trees. Fourth, a selection strategy based on the concepts of case coverage and reachability is used to select representative cases. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach as well as to examine the relationship between compactness and performance of a CBR system, experimental testing is carried out using the Traveling and the Rice Taste data sets. The results show that the testing case bases can be reduced by 36 and 39 percent, respectively, if we complement the remaining cases by the adaptation rules discovered using our approach. The overall accuracies of the two smaller case bases are 94 and 90 percent, respectively, of the originals.
A Complexity‐Level Analysis of the Sensor Planning Task for Object Search
Authors: Ye Yiming , Tsotsos John K.
Published: March 2003

Object search is the task of searching for a given 3D object in a given 3D environment by a controllable camera. Sensor planning for object search refers to the task of how to select the sensing parameters of the camera so as to bring the target into the field of view of the camera and to make the image of the target to be easily recognized by the available recognition algorithms. In this paper, we study the task of sensor planning for object search from the theoretical point of view. We formulate the task and point out many of its important properties. We then analyze this task from the complexity level and prove that this task is NP‐Complete.
Clinton, Europe and Economic Diplomacy: What Makes the EU Different?
Authors: Peterson John , Green Cowles Maria
Published: March 2003

The Clinton administration's economic diplomacy has been more aggressive, politicized and controversial than that of any recent US administration. We examine its application to the European Union (EU) and seek to answer the question: what makes Europe different? Put another way, why has the US pursued cooperation on “behind‐the‐border” issues such as competition policy, standards and investment rules, and eschewed export promotion?

We offer three explanations. First, the EU's market is unique: it is a mature, but lucrative one for large US‐owned firms concerned more with behind‐the‐border issues than with market access issues. Second, American companies who have invested heavily in Europe have developed their own political links to the EU, particularly through the EU Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce. Third, these same companies have a powerful influence over US policy towards Europe as well as EU policymaking. Our analysis develops these three hypotheses, and also offers an assessment of the progress and meaning of the Transatlantic Business Dialogue.
In a State?
Authors: Wilson Graham
Published: March 2003

There has been considerable discussion of the decline of the nation‐state. It is important, however, to set claims that the nation‐state is in decline in historical context and to distinguish processes of state adaptation to crises from changes in the power of the state. The popularity of anti‐state rhetoric in the 1980s and 1990s led many to confuse changes in the modes of state activity, of which there is much evidence, with a decline in the significance of the state, for which there is much less evidence.
Defensive versus Offensive Approaches to Administrative Reform in France (1988–1997): The Leadership Dilemmas of French Prime Ministers
Authors: Bezes Philippe
Published: March 2003

From 1988 to 1997, all French prime ministers launched administrative reform programs with numerous concerns for increasing efficiency, strengthening responsiveness, or redesigning political and administrative roles within the state. However, these initiatives have never led to radical and disruptive changes. The institutional legacy seems to have strongly constrained the politics of administration. What, then, is the meaning of launching administrative reforms within the French political power configuration, and how does it “fit” with the way leaders try to establish their political authority? This article provides two empirical studies of different prime ministers (Michel Rocard under the Mitterrand presidency and Alain Jupp under the Chirac presidency) that can explain the nature of the French governments' commitments to these issues. It argues that understanding administrative reforms requires a mixture of institutional and actor‐centered explanations, because these policies are really leadership challenges to the preexisting institutional order. As such, they are reflexively shaped or constrained by what they try to control and define. This paper shows that for a French prime minister to define the administration as a problem while building his own leadership can jeopardize the resources he will get from that same bureaucratic administrative system. This “power‐reform dilemma” may explain why administrative reforms have proven more politically effective as an instrument of order‐affirming impulses rather than as a disruptive strategy.
Autonomous Policy Leadership: Steering a Policy Process in the Direction of a Policy Quest
Authors: Wallis Joe , Dollery Brian
Published: March 2003

This article attempts to make a contribution to the literature which reflects a growing interest in the conditions underlying radical policy reform. It advances a concept of autonomous policy leaders who can be distinguished from vote‐buying politicians by their passionate commitment to "make a difference" by advancing a particular policy quest, with particular reference being made to the way such leadership was exercised by Roger Douglas, New Zealand Minister of Finance from 1984 to 1989. Although such leaders resemble the "policy entrepreneurs" described in "garbage can" models, their goals are more ambitious and the window of opportunity they are waiting for (with its characteristic mix of crisis, mandate, honeymoon and weakened opposition) much greater. They are also dependent on, and emerge from with, an advocacy coalition network which provides them with the backing and resources to redirect public policy. This redirection may produce a backlash from groups concerned that these policy elites may steer the policy process too far in a particular direction.
Central Audit Institutions and Performance Auditing: A Comparative Analysis of Organizational Strategies in the OECD
Authors: Barzelay Michael
Published: March 2003

The New Public Management supplies a rationale for broadening the mandate of external audit institutions to encompass performance auditing. This article examines conceptual, empirical, and managerial issues raised by external performance auditing. Conceptually, performance auditing is a misnomer for a class of mainly evaluative review activities. Empirically, OECD countries vary in terms of the specific types of performance audits conducted by their principal external audit bodies. Explaining such variation offers some insight into the contemporary politics of public management policy. Managerially, audit bodies whose mandate includes performance auditing confront two major strategic issues: whether to conduct such evaluative reviews in an auditing style and whether to gear their work to achieving performance improvement in auditee organizations.
How American Core Values Influence Public Policy: Lessons From Federal Aid to Small Business, 1953–1993
Authors: Anglund Sandra M.
Published: March 2003

Why does the federal government provide aid for small business? This article contends that American core values are one of the sources of small business aid. Rather than taking the values/policy congruence approach of the national values school, it demonstrates a mechanism through which core values have influenced small business aid and through which core values likely influence other policies. The focus is on the processes of policy problem definition. While a role for core values in problem definition processes has been noted previously, core values have neither been a center of attention, nor have the various paths of values influence been linked. Analysis of the problems defined in the legislative histories of 39 systemically selected small business aid enactments, 1953–1993, shows avenues of values influence that have been under‐appreciated or not appreciated at all.
A Structural Approach to External and Internal Person‐Team Fit
Authors: Hollenbeck John
Published: March 2003

This article develops a structurally based, integrated theory of person‐organisation fit. This approach to fit recognises the need for achieving both a good external fit between the organisation’s structure and its environment, as well as a good internal fit between the organisation’s structure and its own members. The three most critical aspects of organisational structure within this theory are departmentation, centralisation, and adaptability as these are manifested at the team level. Structural contingency theory is used to derive predictions regarding how these types of structural characteristics interact with the nature of the environment (in terms of predictability and stability) to determine external fit (because of their influence on efficiency, flexibility, and responsiveness). The five factor model of personality is used to derive predictions regarding how these same types of structures interact with individual differences to determine internal fit (because of their influence on role requirements such as scope, interdependence, and innovation). Both types of fit are critical to organisational performance, because in many instances, the presence of a poor fit on one dimension may neutralise the otherwise positive effects of a good fit on the other dimension.
Effects of a Psychologically Based Management System on Work Motivation and Productivity
Authors: Kleinbeck Uwe , Fuhrmann Hartwig
Published: March 2003

Introducing group work as a principle of work organisation to increase productivity in organisations operating in a globalising economy requires new methods of measuring performance in groups. This study describes the introduction of a measurement instrument as part of a participative productivity management (PPM) system in a medium sized factory producing rubber compounds. Using a simple quasi‐experimental design, the PPM intervention was found to produce an increase in productivity and was also related to goal clarity, but not to higher group cohesion. It is concluded that PPM helps to increase productivity mainly by increasing task and goal clarity, and that increases in productivity can only be reached reliably when no competing system of performance appraisal exists besides PPM.
Successful International Cooperation: The Influence of Cultural Similarity, Strategic Differences, and International Experience
Authors: Van Oudenhoven Jan Pieter , Van Der Zee Karen I.
Published: March 2003

La coopération entre les entreprises dépasse de plus en plus les frontières nationales. Dans la présente recherche, 78 cas de coopération internationale sont examinés. Les résultats démontrent que la similitude entre la culture corporative et nationale est associée à une coopération réussie. Cependant, en lien avec le concept de stratégie corporative, la non similitude stratégique semble plus critique à une coopération réussie que la similitude stratégique. Également, la similitude culturelle apparaît comme relativement peu importante à une coopération réussie entre des entreprises ayant eu des expériences passées dans le même pays. Cet effet modérateur de l’expérience passée est aussi trouvé, mais à plus faible intensité, pour la coopération dans des pays ayant une culture similaire au pays où a eu lieu la coopération précédente. Aucun effet modérateur n’est trouvé pour l’expérience à l’étranger en général. Les implications de cette recherche pour les compagnies se préparant àœuvrer à l’étranger sont discutées.

Cooperation between companies increasingly exceeds national borders. In the present study 78 international cooperation cases were examined. It was shown that similarity in national and corporate culture is associated with successful cooperation. On the other hand, with respect to corporate strategy, strategic dissimilarity rather than similarity is critical to success of cooperation. Cultural similarity appears to be relatively unimportant to the success of cooperation among companies that had previous experience in the same country. This moderating influence of earlier experience was also found, although less consistently, for cooperation in countries that had a culture related to the culture of the country of the previous experience. No moderating influence was found of experience abroad in general. Implications of the present study for companies starting abroad are discussed.
The Influence of the Accountant on British Business Performance From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present Day
Authors: Matthew Derek
Published: March 2003

Britain has more professionally qualified accountants per capita than any of her leading economic rivals and they play a major role as advisers to British companies and take a disproportionate share of the jobs in top management. Unfortunately for the accountants, business historians, other academics, commentators and even contemporary politicians have almost universally noted this to be a bad thing. This article discusses whether this reputation is justified by assessing the past performance of professional accountants as business advisers and managers. Stereotypical criticisms of accountants in terms of excessive caution, their support for the holding company form, or seeing problems in narrow financial terms are found to be unjustified. The promotion of accountants to the top jobs can be seen as rational profit‐maximizing behaviour by British companies and a recent survey has demonstrated the performance of accountants in top management in recent years to be superior to other professions such as engineers.
Domesticating Diamonds and Dollars: Identity, Expenditure and Sharing in Southwestern Zaire (1984–1997)
Authors: De Boeck Filip
Published: March 2003

This article explores the impact of the recent diamond traffic on both rural and urban life in southwestern Congo‐Zaire, in an attempt at a ‘multi‐sited’ ethnography of the circulation of cultural meanings, commodities, money and identities in an increasingly diffuse time‐space, in which the standard dichotomies between rural and urban worlds, lived world and system, traditional and modern, or precapitalist and capitalist realities have lost much of their explanatory strength. More specifically, the article deals with the widespread phenomenon of the bana Lunda, ‘the children of Lunda’, young Congolese urbanites who travel from all over southwestern Zaire to the Angolan province of Lunda Norte in order to dig or dive for diamonds in the UNITA‐controlled territories. It investigates the changes brought about by the diamond trade and by the influx of these urban youngsters into the rural border area, as well as the impact of the accompanying monetization, known as ‘dollarization’, on the daily life of villagers and urbanites in Southwestern Zaire.
Fertility Decline and Increasing Gender Imbalance in India, Including a Possible South Indian Turnaround
Authors: Basu Alaka Malwade
Published: March 2003

Birth rates in India have been in a definite decline since about 1985. However, contrary to our assumption that fertility declines in this region hinge on improvements in the status of women, declining fertility seems to be going hand in hand with worsening population sex ratios. This article examines the evidence for a causal connection between fertility decline and increasing gender imbalance by looking at differences in fertility and in gender inequalities between North and South India in the past, and their increasing convergence in gender inequalities in recent years. It pays special attention to the southern state of Tamil Nadu which has been in the forefront of the country's fertility decline but is nevertheless moving towards a North Indian pattern in many aspects of women's status. The Tamil Nadu example is a particularly striking way of studying the country‐wide trend because it represents a break from the past, in contrast to North India, where increasing gender differentials may be seen more as an accentuation of long‐existing trends. The main problem seems to be that pressures to lower fertility are occurring independently of a change in underlying son preferences and falls in fertility are being aided by technologies which allow one to manipulate not just the sex composition of living children, but also that of children as yet unborn. Some policy implications of this last situation are discussed.
Realizing the Right to Development
Authors: Sengupta Arjun
Published: March 2003

The Right to Development as established in the 1986 UN Declaration on the Right to Development has now been recognized, through an international consensus arrived at in Vienna in 1993, as a universal and inalienable right and an integral part of fundamental human rights. That has not, of course, settled all the controversy regarding the nature and the content of the Right to Development, but the inter‐governmental debate has shifted more to the methods of implementation of that Right. This article reviews the nature and contents of the Right to Development by virtue of which every individual is entitled to a process of economic, social, cultural and political development in which all human and fundamental freedoms can be realized. It spells out a programme for implementation of the Right, step by step, through national efforts supported by international co‐operation. While the states are primarily responsible for realizing this Right for their citizens, the international community has the obligation of enabling the states to do so. A mechanism is proposed through international compacts to design, promote and monitor the process of implementation.
Hill of Thorns: Custom, Knowledge and the Reclaiming of a Lost Land in the New South Africa
Authors: James Deborah
Published: March 2003

This article provides a detailed ethnographic exploration of a case of land restitution in South Africa. It shows how the development discourse invoked during the process of reclaiming land, rather than being imposed in an entirely top‐down manner, has been the result of negotiations between those claiming and those — in government and NGOs — who have helped them claim. The resulting knowledge about the ownership and appropriate governance of land reveals a complex and often contradictory understanding of concepts like ‘custom’, ‘community’ and ‘power’.
The Rise and Fall of ‘Internally Displaced People’ in the Central Peruvian Andes
Authors: Stepputat Finn , Nyberg Sørensen Ninna
Published: March 2003

This article analyses the possible effects of the introduction of the category of ‘internally displaced people’— IDP — in the context of violent conflict in central Peru. It gives an account of the ways in which the IDP category has been introduced and appropriated by local NGOs, people affected by violent conflict and displacement, and by the governmental organization, PAR, set up to facilitate return and repopulation after the declared end of the armed conflict. The category has facilitated and given leverage to a national organization of IDPs. However, the agencies and programmes that work in support of IDPs tend to regard existing mobile livelihood practices as an impediment for advocacy and longer‐term development strategies. This article suggests that, instead of considering displacement (and return) as an absolute break with the past, a focus on networks and mobile livelihoods may be a better way to help people affected by violent conflict to move beyond emergency relief.
Social Movements and Ecological Modernization: The Transformation of Pulp and Paper Manufacturing
Authors: Sonnenfeld David A.
Published: March 2003

Ecological modernization theory posits that social movements play a central role in the environmental transformation of contemporary society. How they do so has received limited scholarly attention. This article seeks to reduce this thesis to a number of propositions which are then examined in light of the experience of the pulp and paper industry in the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on field research and interviews in Southeast Asia, Australia and the United States, as well as available data, the study finds that social movements were instrumental in the environmental transformation of the pulp industry, with important differences between North and South. It concludes with a call for more nuanced studies of the influence of social movements on different sectors and countries, especially in newly industrializing countries where more tenuous and dependent forms of ecological modernization may be emerging.
Issues in Capital Account Convertibility in Developing Countries
Authors: Schneider Benu
Published: March 2003

This article examines the pace, sequencing and preconditions of capital account liberalisation, drawing lessons from the experience of twelve countries, and focusing on the inter‐relationships between open capital and current accounts, the financial sector and the conduct of macro policies. It distinguishes between prudential limits and capital controls and discusses the effectiveness of direct and price controls. It makes a case for intermediate regimes with respect to exchange‐rate policy. It concludes that developing countries need to adopt a gradualist approach to the opening up of the capital account, outlining three strategies and highlighting that the capital account is only one aspect of a comprehensive reform package.
The Challenge of Ending Rural Poverty
Authors: Rahman Atiqur , Westley John
Published: March 2003

IFAD believes that the only way to reach the international poverty reduction target is to focus on rural development: in the early stages, with a strong focus on the production of food staples on small farms; in later stages, with more attention to commercial crops and the non‐farm sector (itself strongly linked to agriculture). The key interventions are: better access for the poor to assets, especially land, water and human capital; improved technology, both ‘old’ and ‘new’; better access to markets; and reform of institutions through decentralisation and devolution ‐ all designed to achieve rapid reduction of poverty, through employment intensity and the exploitation of local linkages with agriculture. IFAD’s approach and experience lay particular stress on supporting women and minorities.
Participation and Impact of Poverty‐oriented Public Works Projects in Rural Malawi
Authors: Chirwa Ephraim W. , Zgovu Evious K. , Mvula Peter M.
Published: March 2003

This article reports on factors influencing participation in the poverty‐oriented public works programme in rural Malawi and analyses the determinants of the revealed positive socio‐economic impact among the participants. The programme targets poor households through self‐selection by offering a wage below the official minimum for rural areas. The empirical results show that most participants are poor and with little education. Probability of particpation is higher for members of female‐headed households and households with longer periods of food insecurity, excess supply of labour, few assets and reservation wages below the wage offered in the programme. Taking account of selectivity bias, the impact of the programme increases with the gender (female) of participants and the numbers per household participating.
Policy Lessons for Prudential Regulation in Developing Countries
Authors: Brownbridge Martin
Published: March 2003

This article draws together the regulatory policy lessons arising from the Finance and Development Research Programme's project on prudential regulation and supervision of the financial sector in low‐income countries. The policy recommendations include: bringing regulations, such as loan provisioning rules, into line with international standards, where this has not already been done; tightening bank licensing procedures and raising minimum capital requirements; introducing ‘prompt corrective action rules’; providing the regulators with an unambiguous mandate to protect deposits and the stability of the financial system; enhancing the regulators' independence from political interference in operational issues but making them more accountable ex‐post; introducing risk‐based supervision; and limiting deposit insurance to small deposits only.
Safety Nets and Opportunity Ladders: Addressing Vulnerability and Enhancing Productivity in South Asia
Authors: Kabeer Naila
Published: March 2003

As patterns of poverty and vulnerability in South Asia change, households have to balance immediate needs and long–term goals. For the poor, these choices, and the costs of precautionary measures, are particularly acute and call for suitable government policies. While policy–makers face a number of trade–offs between promotion, prevention and protection goals, careful design can maximise the potential to reconcile these objectives. A review of experience suggests a number of lessons regarding the relative benefits of targeted and universal programmes; the need to differentiate microfinance products for different groups amongst the poor; ways of basing the self–targeting of public works on rights rather than stigma; and the influence of political processes (such as decentralisation) for the overall effectiveness of social protection.
Mali
Authors: Dante Idrissa , Gautier Jean–François , Marouani Mohamed Ali , Raffinot Marc
Published: March 2003

In Mali the process of preparing a PRSP was relatively long–drawn–out, partly because of the way it interacted with the timetable of political change in the country. This article explains how this had some benefits in terms of a maturing of government, NGO and donor attitudes in a nation that has been both highly aid–dependent and the focus of DAC–led efforts to improve aid co–ordination. It is argued, however, that significant constraints remain to transforming this good will into effective anti–poverty action, including weak policy–making capacities and incentives in government service, the slowness of public finance reform and the uneven progress in eliminating supply–driven aid and lending, and the use of parallel funding channels.
Semantic knowledge and the acquisition of proper names
Authors: Hall D. Geoffrey
Published: March 2003

This article explores the proposal that children learn proper names by exploiting implicit universal semantic knowledge. This knowledge directs children to interpret object‐directed words used under particular conditions as proper names referring to specific objects. Provided that caregivers use proper names as object‐directed labels under the same conditions, the knowledge can explain children's mastery of these expressions.
Why specific developmental disorders are not specific: On‐line and developmental effects in autism and dyslexia
Authors: Frith Uta , Happé Francesca
Published: March 2003

In this paper we will suggest that impairments in domain‐specific functions may have wide‐ranging developmental effects which mimic domain‐general impairments. This may explain why ‘pure’ cases of developmental disorders are rare. The understanding of autism and dyslexia has been advanced by theories postulating failure of a specific mechanism against a background of unimpaired general processing. Impairment in the mechanisms underlying ‘theory of mind’ in autism, and ‘phonology’ in dyslexia, predict and explain the pattern of poor and good performance on a range of experimental and real‐life tasks. However, existing accounts deal largely with the on‐line effects of modular deficits, and can be criticised as not truly developmental. Here we attempt to trace developmental or down‐stream effects of specific impairments in mentalising and phonological processing. We argue that these modules act as vital gatekeepers in development. Important in this process is the interaction of cognition with socio‐cultural environment, an effect well‐illustrated by cross‐language differences in dyslexia. We claim that consideration of these developmental effects makes clear why postulating specific impairments may be sufficient for explaining more general deficits.
Objective spatial coding by 6.5‐month‐old infants in a visual dishabituation task
Authors: Kaufman Jordy , Needham Amy
Published: March 2003

Forty 6.5‐month‐old infants were tested in a visual dishabituation variation of Bremner and Bryant’s reaching task used to evaluate the spatial representations of infants. In the visual dishabituation version of this task, infants were habituated to a display in which an object held a constant position at a corner of the table. Following habituation, the object was either moved to the opposite table‐corner or nothing on the table was changed. Also, the infant either remained in her starting position or she moved to the opposite side of the table. The results show that, following habituation to an object, infants dishabituated to a change in the actual location of an object and not to a change in the egocentric relationship between the infant and the object. We conclude that even in a landmark‐free environment (1)  6.5‐month‐old infants are capable of representing space allocentrically, and (2)  they have the ability to update their location during passive movement.
Promoting the Transition from Implicit to Explicit Understanding: A Training Study of False Belief
Authors: Clements Wendy A. , Rustin Charlotte L. , McCallum Sarah
Published: March 2003

Ninety‐one children aged between 2;10 and 5;0 participated in a training study of false belief. Children were assigned to either an explanation condition, a practice condition or a control condition where children heard two stories unrelated to false belief. Children’s eye movements in anticipation of the protagonist reappearing were monitored at pre‐test. Only the explanation condition led to improvements in judgement and justification of a protagonist’s future action based on false belief. Children who looked in anticipation to where the protagonist thought the object was at pre‐test were more likely to give a correct judgement at post‐test than those who did not. Those children in the explanation group who gave a correct judgement at pre‐test were more likely to give an appropriate justification at post‐test than those who did not. Three main conclusions are drawn: (1) providing explanation about the underlying principles of a task is more likely to lead to improvements in performance than merely informing children of whether their response is correct; (2) the nature of improvements in performance will depend on the level of knowledge of the child at pre‐test; (3) training will only be beneficial for those children who demonstrate evidence of implicit understanding.
Neural plasticity and human development: the role of early experience in sculpting memory systems
Authors: Nelson Charles A.
Published: March 2003

The concept of sensitive or critical periods in the context of memory development is examined in this paper. I begin by providing examples of the role of experience in influencing sensory, linguistic and emotional functioning. This is followed by a discussion of the role of experience in influencing cognitive functioning, particularly memory. Based on this discussion, speculation is offered that the infant’s proclivity for novelty, which makes its appearance shortly after birth, provides critical input into a nervous system that will eventually be set up to learn and remember for the entire lifespan. Because learning and memory are fundamental to the survival of our species, those aspects of the nervous system that permit the encoding and retention of new information are remarkably malleable from the outset, even in the face of some types of neural trauma. This flexibility is retained for many years so long as the learning and memory ‘system’ is challenged. The implications of this model are discussed in the context of those life events that might undermine the longevity of memory systems.
Preverbal children with autism understand the intentions of others
Authors: Aldridge Michelle A. , Stone Kari R. , Sweeney Melissa H. , Bower T.G.R.
Published: March 2003

There is a ‘theory of mind’ theory of autism. Meltzoff has recently developed a procedure that gives a nonverbal assessment of ‘theory of mind’. A group of children with autism and a matched control group of normally developing infants were given three of Meltzoff’s tasks and three conventional, gestural imitation tasks. The children with autism showed the expected deficits on gestural imitation, but were significantly better than the normally developing infants on the Meltzoff tasks. The implications of these results for a number of theoretical issues are discussed.