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Summary: This paper estimates the impact of nutrition and health problems on test scores of grade four students in Sri Lanka using a rich dataset on child height, weight, hearing and vision problems, helminthes infections, malaria, and micronutrient deficiencies. The results show that stunting and hearing problems in children have direct impact on tests scores and an indirect effect as parents may adjust to small changes in nutrition and health by changing the education inputs provided to their child. Further, omitting health problems from estimation generally causes an upward bias in estimates of stunting, a common measure of overall child health. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: The larger part of the economy in most developing countries is outside the regulative control of the state. When defined in this way, it has two types of expression: first, self-employment (with some wage-work) in unregistered or unincorporated small enterprises; second, unregistered and unregulated activity and workers inside and around large registered organizations such as firms, public sector enterprises, and the state itself. This paper reviews the literature, mainly but not exclusively from India, with three objectives. First, it questions what brings order to such economic activity and how economic and social insecurity is instituted. Second, it examines the counter intuitive proposition that social security rights are de facto, if not de jure, dependent upon work rights. Third, it explores the dynamics of, and responses to, informalization. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper studies the driving forces behind the considerable expansion of the underground economy during the late 1990s. I propose a novel explanation for this phenomenon: the sharp increase in market competition worldwide, which reduces prices and profits and drives firms into the shadow economy. Empirical evidence from a panel covering 45 countries from 1995 to 2000 shows that increased competition is indeed correlated with an expansion of the underground economy. The effect is strongest in low-tax, high-corruption countries that do not provide the public services which make it worthwhile for firms to remain official despite growing competitive pressure. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper examines public–private partnerships (PPPs) for development through the example of telecenters in two Indian states. How might a developmental state position itself with respect to civil society under a PPP model of service delivery? We find that each state’s political economy is reflected in its PPP strategy, but that in both states the emerging middle classes rather than the poor benefit most from ongoing telecenter projects. Outsourcing development services to private entities need not “privatize” the state but does alter the way in which citizens “see” the state. Service delivery through telecenters becomes a symbol of government efficiency and responsiveness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper studies the product cycle and neo-technology theories of trade in the context of generic pharmaceuticals. It analyzes the export performance of 131 Indian pharmaceutical firms for the period 1989–2004. The results indicate that technology proxied by foreign patent rights has a positive impact on exports. This suggests that developing countries with innovation skills for process innovations are capable of penetrating international markets in the later stages of the product cycle by using patents, which were the barriers to trade in the early stages of the product cycle. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper explores the linkages among the different stock markets in the Greater China region (China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan). The empirical findings show no indications of long-run relationships among the markets. There are, however, short-run spillover effects in both returns and volatility in the region. Both China and Hong Kong are affected by mean spillover effects from Taiwan. Volatility in the Hong Kong market spills over into Taiwan, which in turn affects the volatility in the Mainland China market. This means that the Mainland China market is related to other markets, even though the possibilities for outside investments have been limited until recently. Overall, the study shows significant interdependencies among the three markets, a result that has important implications for both policymakers and investors in the region. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Plagued by a notoriously weak legal system, China has developed an alternative governance system based on de facto regulatory decentralization in its financial market development, in which regional governments are responsible for selecting state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to go public. The effect of this regulatory system has been highly controversial but evidence is very scant in the literature. This paper shows that regional governments tended to choose better-performing SOEs in the pre-listing stage to go public, and thus substantial stock market investment funds were channeled into potentially productive companies. China’s experience demonstrates that administrative governance of capital markets may have been instrumental in jump starting capital markets in the absence of adequate market-supporting legal institutions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: In Reform Era China, bank financing plays a significant role in entrepreneurial development, despite a severe information asymmetry problem and a discriminatory legal/regulatory environment. This paper offers a political explanation for how Chinese entrepreneurs obtain bank loans by arguing that entrepreneurs actively invest in political capital to overcome bank financing obstacles. Pursuing membership in the legislative or semi-legislative organs of the Chinese government is an effective strategy for private entrepreneurs to obtain political capital. Empirical analysis suggests that a legislative membership helps entrepreneurs get access to bank loans; and it may be more useful for small and medium enterprises. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Recent studies of large-scale “headline” conflicts have excluded consideration of local conflict, in large part due to the absence of representative data at low levels of geographic specification. This paper is a first attempt to correct for that by assessing the incidence, impacts, and patterns of local conflict in Indonesia. We employ a combination of qualitative fieldwork with an exploratory statistical analysis of the 2003 Village Potential Statistics collected by the Bureau of Statistics (Potensi Desa-PODES), which maps conflict across all of Indonesia’s villages/neighborhoods. Violent conflict can be observed throughout the archipelago. The qualitative analysis shows that local conflicts vary in form and impacts across districts, and that local factors are key. The quantitative analysis, which excludes high conflict areas of Indonesia, confirms the importance of economic factors, with positive correlations between violent conflict and poverty, inequality, and variables measuring economic development. Clustering of ethnic groups and ill-defined property rights were also positively associated with violence. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: In this paper we study the importance of the non-farm household enterprise (NFHE) sector in Vietnam. We do find that NFHEs increase income and reduce between-household inequality. However, the role of the NFHE sector has been diminishing, especially in urban areas, and the NFHEs have been affected by trade liberalization in the period 1993–2002. In terms of policy, this suggests that there is increasing scope for targeting NFHE sector policies at those NFHEs that are in the best position to benefit from the new opportunities in the liberalizing environment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper applies a CGE model to analyze the effects of better addressing worker’s rights in Bangladesh’s textile and apparel industries. Results show that an increased minimum wage for unskilled, low-, and medium-skilled workers has negative impacts for these workers in aggregate and also for the economy in terms of export, GDP, and welfare. This comes from the decrease in employment. However, labor productivity-increasing improvements in factory conditions and services to workers not only increase incomes of workers, but also welfare. Entrepreneurs also enjoy higher incomes, enabling them to pay for improving the work environment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: In countries emerging from ethnic and civil conflict, standard approaches to measuring trends in well-being do not account for the empowerment of the population due to the political liberalization, which is critical for the successful implementation of zero-generation reforms. They also fail to do justice to the often massive population displacement unleashed by the violence which makes a comparison of living standards from before to after the conflict problematic. Using the example of Timor-Leste, this paper demonstrates how subjective, objective, and recall information collected through a cross-sectional household survey can be combined to provide a rich profile of trends in well-being from the pre- to post-conflict stage. By differencing across pre- and post-conflict periods, the regression estimates are robust with regard to psychological attributes or other time-invariant personal traits. The analysis shows that the changes in self-rated welfare and power in Timor-Leste broadly corresponded to changes recorded by objective indicators of economic resources, economic shocks, and ethno-linguistic status. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Economic crises in developing countries differ in their causes, severity and recovery trajectories. The literature on the causes and immediate management of these crises is well developed. However, it is more difficult to develop an a priori framework which facilitates an analytical interpretation of how crises affect economic policy and hence recovery. This is especially so in the commonly occurring “twin crises,” in which an economic crisis interacts with regime collapse. Country studies are needed to contribute to the development of such a framework. This paper addresses these issues with reference to Indonesia’s deep economic and political crisis of 1997–98. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper provides an ethnographic look at economic change in rural areas of remote regions of Russia and China. While the structural conditions of agriculture at the outset of reform partially explain the dramatically different trajectories of reform seen in my study sites, the current state of economic stagnation or economic development in these areas should not primarily be seen as a legacy of pre-reform conditions. It is largely the economic policies pursued by the Russian and Chinese governments that have created or failed to create the conditions that enable post-socialist farmers to take advantage of market opportunities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper undertakes a comprehensive assessment of the long-run sustainability of one of the world’s largest sustainable development programs, the Slopping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) in China under different plausible post-SLCP scenarios. The analysis is based on farmer contingent behavior post-program land and labor decisions as well as choice experiment data. Our econometric results highlight the main obstacles to the program’s sustainability, which include specific shortfalls in program implementation and certain institutional constraints, namely tenure insecurity and poor land renting rights. The use of a choice experiment also reveals unique evidence on rural households’ preferences over tenure reform in China. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper studies ethnic disparity in employment in the state sector in China. It compares Han Chinese with Hui Muslims. Data are from a 2001 survey conducted in Lanzhou. Data analysis shows that during market reforms, the CCP has not been able to protect workers of minority status as promised by its equal opportunity policy. Workers of minority status have faced a similar barrier in finding a job in both state firms and redistributive agencies. Minority ethnicity is the main determinant of labor market discrimination, controlling for educational attainment and other key characteristics. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: The aim of this paper is to highlight a potentially very fruitful link between micro-entrepreneurs and international capital markets. It discusses the role structured finance and credit derivatives could play in extending finance to micro-entrepreneurs on a much larger scale than today’s mainly non-commercial microfinance industry. The mechanisms of so-called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) are described and extended to the microfinance world. Finally, a hypothetical, but realistic, example of such a microfinance CDO (MiCDO) is used to discuss the implications of securitization and tranching of microcredits. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Renewed interest in law and development in the 1990s focused new attention on the role of justice sector institutions in social change. If robust institutions and settled rule of law are important, they are also elusive, hence the need for reform. Yet law reform suffers from a “knowledge deficit” about its nature and consequences, and its target settings. Questions remain about the meaning and purpose of law reform especially in stratified societies. This paper looks to the Philippine countryside to explore these issues, and asks to what extent existing reforms address the justice needs of the rural poor. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper studies the correlates of firm total factor productivity (TFP) in Bangladesh using data from a recent survey of large manufacturing firms. TFP measures are obtained following [Ackerberg, D., Caves, K., & Frazer, G. (2007). Structural identification of production functions. UCLA mimeo] and using firm-specific deflators for output and inputs. Controlling for industry, location, and year fixed effects, we find that firm size and TFP are negatively correlated while firm age and TFP exhibit an inverse U-shaped relationship. We also find that managerial quality and global integration are positively associated with firm TFP. Finally, we find that power supply problems, heavy bureaucracy, and the presence of crime dampen firm TFP. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Consumer concerns over the environmental and social conditions of coffee production have led to the proliferation of sustainability codes, certification schemes, and labeling claims in the sector. This paper addresses how the global private regulation of ethical and environmental standards is having several implications for value chain structures and institutions in the smallholder coffee systems of Indonesia. Global private regulation is driving structural changes in modes of farmer organization, trader–farmer relationships, and is resulting in the increased upstream penetration of multinational trading companies into coffee-producing areas across Indonesia. An unintended consequence of these changes in the future may be to increase transaction costs along the value chain and to exert an overall downward pressure on farm-gate prices. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: The state of Andhra Pradesh, India, provides a case study of a liberalization program with an emphasis on women’s empowerment. Based on the state budget data and fieldwork data from two villages, this paper investigates the content of this policy regime to argue that women’s empowerment policies were ultimately constrained by the policy context of liberalization. The state lowered shares of expenditure upon social reproduction and the substantive content of women’s empowerment policy was reduced to a thrift and micro-credit program. Fieldwork data indicate, the latter lacks administrative support and relies upon the expenditure of time and resources by participants themselves, re-emphasizing class and caste inequalities among women and undermining the broader project of empowerment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper documents the diverging patterns of capital accumulation, profit rates, investment rates, capital productivity, and technological progress of China and India between 1980 and 2003. The two Asian economies have followed very different growth patterns and, today, they face different challenges. India’s is how to accelerate growth, while China’s policy makers debate between the need to maintain a high growth rate to generate employment and the imperative to reduce it to cool the economy. India must address impediments to investment. China must deal with the question of whether investment can continue being the main source of growth. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Via computable general equilibrium modeling we find that as a result of economic growth, Yuan appreciation, and logging restrictions in China, China’s imports and exports of forest products would dramatically increase, and China’s imports would have displacement effects as timber-exporting countries would increase their exports to China while reducing their shipments to other countries. Such displacement effects would make pressure on forests in supplying countries less than they otherwise might be. Global economic growth is a dominant driving force for China’s imports. Russia, Southeast Asia, and Africa would remain major foreign suppliers of logs to China, while supply sources for Chinese imported lumber and paper products would be relatively diverse. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Environmental social movements in developing countries are often portrayed as democratizing but may contain important social divisions. This paper presents a new methodology to analyze the social composition and underlying political messages of movements. Nearly 5000 newspaper reports during 1968–2000 in Thailand are analyzed to indicate the participation of middle and lower classes, and their association with “green” (conservationist) and “red-green” (livelihoods-oriented) environmental values. Results show middle-class “green” activism has dominated forests activism, but lower-class “red-green” activism has grown for forests and pollution. Newspapers, however, portray all environmentalism as “democratization,” suggesting that the possible exclusiveness of some environmental norms is unacknowledged. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper quantifies the local impacts of mechanized logging on forest-dependent communities in Indonesia, before and after decentralization. A conceptual framework incorporates financial, social, enforcement, rent-seeking, and environmental impacts. Using data from 60 communities in East Kalimantan, the empirical results suggest that significantly more households received financial and in-kind benefits after decentralization compared to before. Many communities engaged in self-enforcement activities against firms both before and after decentralization. Post-decentralization, a significantly higher proportion of households perceived community forest ownership. There were few significant differences in perceived environmental impacts. Little evidence exists of a post-decentralization trade-off between environmental and financial contractual provisions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper analyzes the effects of riverine floods on agricultural wages in Bangladesh. Drawing upon the district-wise monthly data over 1979–2000, we model wages as a dynamic process. We find that floods have positive implications for wages in the long run. In flood months, however, agricultural wages decline in the inundated districts. We obtain difference-in-difference estimates to show that the magnitude of impact of flood depends on the relative flood proneness of a district and the relative severity of flood conditions. Our results indicate that favorable demand and supply conditions in the agricultural labor market can mitigate the impact of disasters on wages in Bangladesh. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Women’s land rights are increasingly put forth as a means to promote development by empowering women, increasing productivity, and improving welfare. However, little empirical research has evaluated these claims. This paper uses the 2001 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey to explore whether women’s land rights empower women and benefit young children’s health in Nepal. The results provide support for both of these hypotheses. Women who own land are significantly more likely to have the final say in household decisions, a measure of empowerment. Similarly, children of mothers who own land are significantly less likely to be severely underweight. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Using case studies from six Asian countries, this paper assesses the relevance of underlying rationales for public intervention in food grain markets, documents the existing policies and regulatory supports to grain marketing parastatals, examines benefits and costs of parastatals, and summarizes lessons from reforms and reduced interventions. The results suggest that commonly cited rationales for food market intervention are no longer convincing, the costs of parastatals-led price stabilization are staggering, and the price policies are being dictated by special interests. The evidences from the early reformers indicate that reduced intervention can promote competition, reduce subsidies, and release funds for development and anti-poverty programs—all without jeopardizing price stability. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Using time series data for Taiwan during 1964–2003, this paper examines how economic growth, openness, and the role of government contribute to poverty alleviation. Sustained economic growth is found to be the major driving force for poverty reduction in Taiwan, and openness to foreign trade helps the poor through a direct distribution effect as well as indirect growth effect, in both the long term and short term. While inward FDI has no significant impact on the mean income of the poor, outward FDI from Taiwan in the past two decades seems to have had an adverse effect on the poorest 20% of the population. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper studies the impacts of village elections on the accountability of the village committee, local fiscal sharing, and state taxation in rural China using data of 48 villages for the period of 1986–2002. Elections are found to substantially increase the share of public expenditures in the village budget, but reduce the shares of administrative costs and income handed to the township government. These findings suggest that elections have enhanced the accountability of the village committee, but weakened local fiscal sharing and the state’s grip. No strong evidence is found that state taxation is affected by elections, nor is it found that the role of a more competitive election is different from that of a closed election. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: In the light of ongoing debates about the suitability of proprietary seed technologies for smallholder farmers, this paper analyzes the adoption and impact of hybrid wheat in India. Based on survey data, we show that farmers can benefit significantly from the proprietary technology. Neither farm size nor the subsistence level influences the adoption decision, but access to information and credit does. Moreover, willingness-to-pay analysis reveals that adoption levels would be higher if seed prices were reduced. Given decreasing public support to agricultural research, policies should be targeted at reducing institutional constraints, to ensure that resource-poor farmers are not bypassed by private sector innovations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper examines attempts by community-based conservation (CBC) to integrate conservation and development. It investigates the dynamic interrelation between internal and external institutions; and between conservation and development of indigenous CBC initiatives in Taiwan, drawing the following major conclusion. The development-through-conservation approach, having conservation as a priority, generally leads to better integration, since this approach contributes to building social capital, fostering collective action and strengthening the institutional capacity needed for sustainable development. By contrast, owing to elite capture and interest heterogeneity, the conservation-through-development approach that emphasizes development first tends to undermine collective action, and hence jeopardizes internal institution building and resultant outcomes. This study suggests that priority should be given to conservation rather than development efforts, especially when internal institutions are still weak. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper examines the reasons for Korea’s lower investment levels after the crisis of 1997–98 through estimation of an error correction model of real investment. The econometric results suggest that the fall in investment rates resulted from a decline in the long-run equilibrium value of investment rates due to a deterioration in terms of trade. They also show that recent investment levels are neither too high nor too low relative to the long-run equilibrium value. The variation in terms of trade seems to have pronounced effects on investment through its effect on corporate profits and cash flows in Korea. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Evidence in industrialized countries shows that universities can supply the crucial underpinnings of dynamic industrial clusters within metropolitan regions. A key component of China’s recent reforms in the national innovation system is the promotion of university-based research and technology transfer. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the interactions between two elite universities in Shanghai (Fudan University and Shanghai Jiaotong University) and the metropolitan economy. In particular, it analyzes major institutional changes within the universities and policy changes at local and national levels that have allowed more business engagement. As the universities gain greater autonomy, they are adopting distinctive approaches to commercializing academic research and managing industrial linkages. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: In the late 1990s and early 2000s, select cities in Pacific Asia formed or significantly deepened formal institutional linkages with a variety of foreign (mainly Western) universities. The objective of this paper is to examine: the policy objectives of Singapore, a Pacific Asian city-state, in opening up its territory to new forms of foreign educational knowledge, institutional structures, practices, and technologies; the specific programs and practices that have enabled the Singaporean state to implement these policy objectives; and the preliminary implications of various “modes of entry” that the foreign universities have adopted for the formation of university–industry linkages in Singapore. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: In a globalizing environment in which the competitiveness of firms and the economic prosperity of major urban centers hinges on technological dynamism and the capacity to nurture innovation, universities have an increasingly vital role. Beyond the traditional role of teaching, leading universities in middle and lower-middle income countries are finding that the need to enlarge or build research capabilities in basic research and also in technology development is being urged upon them by governments and by firms. This collection of papers charts progress to date indicates where it might be heading and assesses the pace and direction of change. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: In recent years the practice of dowry has witnessed sharp changes in south India. Dowry has become an all caste/class phenomenon and average dowry payments have risen. These changes have been associated with several negative consequences for women, including their survival. Despite these consequences the practice of dowry continues unabated. Based on data from a south Indian village, this paper examines the link between dowry and domestic violence. We argue that larger dowries reduce marital violence by increasing the economic resources of the marital household, enhancing the social status of the groom and his family, and serving as an asset over which the woman enjoys relatively more control. While women with generous dowries may benefit, a continued upward spiral in dowry expectations will exacerbate daughter aversion and may fuel sex selective abortion and female infanticide. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: In this paper, I illustrate the effects of different types of social ties on the welfare of Indonesian households and draw out implications for debates around state and community development efforts, empirical analysis, and project design. Guided by social capital theory, the analysis indicates that certain social ties can be a means of improving welfare for poor families. The distribution of different ties varies with socio-economic class, however, and each type is linked to distinct resources. The distribution of ties may be shifting in Indonesia, with greater access for poor households to state-sponsored ties and accompanying resources. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: A paradoxical phenomenon in China’s transitional economy is that markets developed under predominant public ownership, which nevertheless has declined with the development of markets. Previous studies reveal that initial political and economic conditions of reform and fiscal decentralization gave rise to local public enterprises’ leading role in early marketization. This paper explains the subsequent fall of such a role. Building and expanding on recent studies of privatization, we argue that market development and competition have constrained the abilities of local public enterprises to address revenue and employment imperatives, whereas local governments’ sales-oriented growth strategies have exacerbated governance problems. Panel data are analyzed to provide provisional test of pertinent hypotheses. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper presents estimates of the value of statistical life (VSL) in rural Thailand using the contingent-valuation (CV) method. These estimates are applied to an economic analysis of landmine clearance. The estimated VSL of US$250000 suggests that the value of lives saved from landmine clearance is at least an order of magnitude greater than the values used in existing studies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper evaluates the role of self-employment in China’s rural economy, while paying attention to whether the rise of self-employment promotes entrepreneurship and is a sign of development, or whether it is a stopover for disadvantaged workers and a sign of distress. Using data on 20-year labor market histories of a nationally representative sample of individuals, we provide descriptive evidence that self-employment in rural China, unlike in some other places, is a sign of development. Econometric evidence from a random-effects probit model and a continuous-time Markov model shows also that self-employment in rural China shares many features of a productive small-business sector. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper evaluates the outreach and impact of two microfinance programs in Thailand, controlling for endogenous self-selection and program placement. Results indicate that the wealthier villagers are significantly more likely to participate than the poor. Moreover, the wealthiest often become program committee members and borrow substantially more than rank-and-file members. However, local information on creditworthiness is also used to select members. The programs positively affect household welfare for committee members, but impact is insignificant for rank-and-file members. Policy recommendations include vigilance in targeting the poor, publicly disseminating the program rules and purpose, and introducing and enforcing eligibility criteria. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: In this paper, we test whether economic growth decreases child labor by bringing together data from the National Sample Survey of India and state-level macrodata to estimate a bivariate probit model of schooling and labor. Our results lead us to conclude that contrary to popular wisdom, growth actually increases rather than decreases child labor because it increases the demand for child workers. The level of state NDP, village wages, and household incomes are seen as the conduits through which growth influences the supply side of the child labor market. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper examines the conflict that may exist between conservation and food security. In China, policymakers and scholars are debating whether or not conservation set-aside programs threaten food security. To address the debate, we describe China’s conservation set-aside program known as Grain for Green and compare it with similar programs outside of China. We then use data that we collected to measure the production and price impacts of the program on China’s grain economy since 1999. Our simulations find that Grain for Green has only a small effect on China’s grain production and almost no effect on prices or food imports. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This examination of Indonesia argues the Asian crisis marked a shift in the dominant discourse and practices of development from authoritarian state developmentalism to neoliberal globalism, exacerbating the environmental destructiveness of development. The analysis considers the ecological contradictions, first, of the “miracle” in Indonesia and, second, of the IMF-led structural adjustment in Indonesia. This program included unusual forestry sector reform conditions favored by nongovernmental critics of Suharto. However, the paper concludes that structural adjustment is part of the broader ascent of global neoliberalism, a model that pays scant attention to the increasing social and environmental costs of reliance on resource-based export growth. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The paper applies Wagner's Law of increasing state activity to illustrate the changing function of the state in China as a consequence of economic liberalization. Wagner's Law describes the association between increasing national wealth in progressive states and the rise in state activity and expenditure. This indicates that the causes of bureaucratic expansion are to be sought, not just in terms of political pressures, but the interplay between political considerations and the economic necessities, resulting from the emergence of new property rights. A simple illustrative model is developed to measure the effects of increasing national wealth and the growth of the public sector. This suggests that the patterns of economic development observed by Wagner in 19th century Europe are not unlike those observed in China today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian State of Kerala presents a paradox of development, with its remarkable social achievements and relative industrial backwardness. This paper describes Kerala's industrial backwardness as due to a path-dependent process of industrialization. A policy decision in the 1930s-marked by a priority for investments in chemical-based industries and the identification of hydroelectricity as a potential basis for industrialization-continue to have implications for industrial growth in Kerala today. With the policy decision in the 1930s, industrial structure in Kerala came to be locked into a pattern that offered very little potential for interindustry interlinkages and industrial growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hypothesis that sustainable resource management and hiodiversity conservation can result in material benefits to participating communities has existed under different guises in the concepts of sustainable development, integrated conservation and development projects, sustainable use, and community-based resource management. What these approaches have in common is the belief that win-win situations between the environment and human development are possible under particular institutional arrangements. Disentangling the factors that contribute to effective conservation and improved human welfare is difficult, but necessary for understanding when these win win scenarios are like) to emerge. This paper analyzes data on 40 community-based marine protected areas in the Philippines. to determine the correlates of win-win versus lose-lose or trade-off outcomes, measured in terms of children's nutritional status and coral reef health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The relationship between energy and poverty is obvious and goes both ways. Recognizing this, this paper provides a short overview of different approaches to measuring energy poverty. It then presents a novel two-dimensional measure of energy poverty and energy distribution that combines the elements of access to different energy types and quantity of energy consumed. An assessment of the extent of energy poverty and changes in energy distribution pattern are analyzed by applying this measure to Indian household survey data for 1983–2000. The analysis shows a significant reduction in the level of energy poverty and a rapidly developing subcontinent. The new measure is a good complement to conventional monetary measures and is general enough to be applied to other developing countries. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The aim of this article is to produce a comprehensive analysis of the performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in terms of repayment. We focus the analysis on the impact of group lending, nonfinancial services and dynamic incentives on repayment performance. We test for endogeneity of loan size and use instrumental variables to correct for it. In the second section of the paper, we use a comparative analysis of the determinants of the repayment performance and of loan size in order to make policy recommendations on the allocation of loans by MFIs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]