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We examine the causal relationship between electricity consumption and sectoral output growth in Uganda. First, we use vector error correction techniques to estimate the long-run relationship between electricity consumption and GDP growth. Second, we apply Granger causality tests to determine the direction of this relationship. Third, we disaggregate GDP into its major sectors of agriculture, industry and services and test for Granger causality between sectoral output growth and electricity consumption. At the macro-level, results suggest long-run unidirectional causality running from electricity consumption to GDP. At the sectoral level, results indicate long-run causality running from electricity consumption to industry; a unidirectional short-run causality running from services sector to electricity consumption; and neutrality in the agricultural sector. These results have important implications for policy. In particular, policies that improve electricity generation and consumption will accelerate growth in Uganda by facilitating industrial sector growth. Moreover, electricity conservation policies can be applied in the services sector without hurting growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the recent archaeological evidence for industrial housing in Manchester, United Kingdom. The paper argues that a fragmented land-holding pattern developed in a number of city-centre areas during the second half of the eighteenth century. This land-holding pattern gave rise to overcrowding as a result of the domestic redevelopment of back yard plots and the conversion of older housing to tenements. This redevelopment was at its most acute during the peak decades of population growth in the city, 1800-40, and this led to the conditions of poverty, disease, and overcrowding recorded in contemporary accounts from the mid-nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I develop a proposal for the theoretical vantage point of the sociology of markets, focusing on the problem of the social order of markets. The initial premise is that markets are highly demanding arenas of social interaction, which can only operate if three inevitable coordination problems are resolved. I define these coordination problems as the value problem, the problem of competition and the cooperation problem. I argue that these problems can only be resolved based on stable reciprocal expectations on the part of market actors, which have their basis in the socio-structural, institutional and cultural embedding of markets. The sociology of markets aims to investigate how market action is structured by these macrostructures and to examine their dynamic processes of change. While the focus of economic sociology has been primarily on the stability of markets and the reproduction of firms, the conceptualization developed here brings change and profit motives more forcefully into the analysis. It also differs from the focus of the new economic sociology on the supply side of markets, by emphasizing the role of demand for the order of markets, especially in the discussion of the problems of valuation and cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To borrow a phrase once used about business cycles, it can be said that “the study of super cycles necessarily begins with the measurement of super cycles” (adapted from Baxter and King, 1999). Are metal prices currently in the early phase of such a “super cycle”? Many market observers believe the answer is yes. Academics, on the other hand, are generally skeptical about the presence of long cycles. This paper searches for evidence of super cycles in metal prices by using band-pass filters to extract particular cyclical components from time series data. The evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that there have been three super cycles in the past 150 years or so, and that we are currently in the early phase of a fourth super cycle. Most analysts attribute the latter primarily to Chinese urbanization and industrialization.IMF Staff Papers (2008) 55, 541–565. doi:10.1057/imfsp.2008.19; published online 19 August 2008 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent endogenous growth literature has focused on the transition from a Malthusian world where real wages were linked to factor endowments, to one where modern growth has broken that link. In this paper we present evidence on another, related phenomenon: the dramatic reversal in distributional trends-from a steep secular fall to a steep secular rise in wage-land rent ratios-which occurred some time early in the 19th century. What explains this reversal? While it may seem logical to locate the causes in the Industrial Revolutionary forces emphasized by endogenous growth theorists, we provide evidence that something else mattered just as much: the opening up of the European economy to international trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the initial phase of transformation to a market economy many of the Eastern European and Baltic countries experienced an initial decline of out-put. This paper explains, both theoretically anti empirically, why they experienced negative growth initially, and how some of them started to get over and recorded positive growth recently. As a vehicle to transfer technology and managerial skills to the transition economies, as well as to increase capital work, foreign direct investment (FDI) is regarded important. Production function with a low elasticity a! substitution between two inputs is employed to capture the dynamic short-run movement of these economies. Cross-sectional and panel data are utilized to analyze the short-run dynamic movement of equilibrium paths of transformation to a market economy. The findings confirm that total factor productivity and GDP in the region grew together with the inflow of FDI, and the marginal contribution of FDI to growth is greater than that of domestic investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The twentieth century has marked transitions in the developed world from an agricultural to an industrial to an information-based society. As the primary work force has evolved from farmers to laborers to knowledge workers, the bases of wealth, power and social interaction have moved from land to mass production to e-commerce. Critical writings from Drucker's The Age of Social Transformation to Fukuyama's The Great Disruption, have discussed these transitions and their impact on values. This paper places the issue of downsizing in the context of those discussions, exploring the ethical impact and role in those transitions of the author's Four Horsemen of Downsizing: Suspicion, Acquisition, Budget-cuts, and Termination. Finally, it discusses Western society's predilection to use language to construct an epistemological Tower of Babel and the impact that may have on Fukuyama's conclusion that a Great Reconstruction based on Western values will replace the Great Disruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the emergence of a new comparative political economy. The political turmoil of the sixties was a world-wide phenomenon and the international character of the impact of the decade on intellectual life is perhaps clearer in the case of development theory. Intellectual currents originating in the third world challenged accepted approaches to development issues. These new streams of thought found a receptive audience in the developed world among younger scholars and students radicalized by the events of the sixties. The new comparative political economy has not aimed at charting progress along a presumed unilinear path of societal development but rather at uncovering, interpreting, and explaining distinctive patterns of development. Different countries exhibit different patterns of distribution and accumulation over the course of their development. Industrialization associated with strikingly disparate political regimes in different periods and regions. One of the hallmarks of the new comparative political economy is its focus on the way processes of historical change are shaped by the patterns of conflict and alliance among classes or fractions of classes.

Discusses the economic development strategy for the peripheral socialist countries using Ethiopia as an example. Overview of the relationships among surplus appropriation, surplus utilization and industrialization in peripheral economies; Model of surplus mobilization; Political economy of Ethiopian socialism.

Deals with the characteristics of Soviet-type economies, particularly on the similarity of their intra-industry structures regardless of the varying sizes of these economies. Twofold underspecialization and its hypothesized effects; Assessment of the Soviet-type industrialization pattern.

The purpose of this paper is to bring attention to Sismondi's forgotten ethical critique of laissez-faire capitalism. It is a forgotten critique because Sismondi has to a large extent been neglected in the literature. He has been too quickly labelled an 'economic romanticist'. It is ethical because Sismondi questioned what he called chrematistics, which to him was becoming the chief end of economics. Chrematistics is the science of the increase of wealth conceived of abstractly and not in relation to man or society. This was opposed to the provisioning principle which Sismondi saw as the key principle of economics. To Sismondi the object of economics is man not wealth. His critique of laissez-faire capitalism was from this perspective. This led Sismondi to propose state containment of capitalism so that the well-being of the whole community was attained. This proposal is an alternative to Marx's complete liquidation of capitalism. Sismondi's ethical critique is important not only from the polar of view of the history of political economy but also for an insight into what values and principles should be given priority in our economic systems today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial economics is a rich source of 'puzzles' for economic theory. One of them - certainly the most discussed - regards the co-existence of firms (and plants) of different sizes, displaying rather invariant skewed distributions. Other 'puzzles', however, concern the sectoral specificities in industrial structures, the persistence of asymmetric corporate performances and the dynamics of entry and exit. The paper reports some preliminary results on evolutionary modeling of the links between the microeconomics of innovation, the patterns of industrial change and some observable invariances in industrial structures. First, the paper reviews a few of these empirical regularities in structures and in the patterns of change. Second, the paper discusses the achievements and limits of interpretations of the evidence based on equilibrium theories. Finally, it presents a model where these regularities are explained as emergent properties deriving from non equilibrium interactions among technologically heterogeneous firms. Moreover, simulation exercises show that also the intersectoral variety in the observed industrial structures and dynamics can be interpreted on the grounds of underlying specificities in the processes of technological learning - which is called 'technological regimes' - and of the processes of market interactions - i.e. 'market regimes'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes political strategies of national development in Brazil. History and political development of the country; Effects of internal and external forces on the semi-colonial structure of Brazil in the 1920s; Emergence of the industrialists and the proletariat following industrialization; Change in the economic structure of the country.

This paper introduces the special issue of papers selected from those presented at the International Conference on Business Ethics in Transitional Economies, held March 20-22, 2002 in Celakovice and Prague, Czech Republic. A brief background on the conference is given, and a summary of the papers offered in this special issue is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper forecasts major trends behind the conversion of arable land to nonagricultural uses by the year 2030, as well as food production capacities in China. It was found that agricultural structure adjustment, urbanization and industrialization will play an equally important role in reducing the gross quantity of arable land. In order to conserve high-quality farmland it is necessary to increase the intensity of nonagricultural land uses through both economic incentives andadministrative measures. The findings show that strengthening protection measures for arable land, including land reorganization, land reclamation, and land restoration, will significantly contribute to maintaining the acreage of arable land and enhancing food production capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]