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This paper argues that dual economy models deserve a central place in the analysis of growth in developing countries. The paper shows how these models can be used to analyse the output losses associated with factor misallocation, aggregate growth in the presence of factor market distortions, international differences in sectoral productivity and the potential role of increasing returns to scale. Above all, small-scale general equilibrium models can be used to investigate the interactions between growth and labour markets, to shed new light on the origins of pro-poor and labour-intensive growth, and to explore the role of the informal sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers contained in this Policy Arena are revised versions of papers originally presented at the University of Innsbruck in Austria on 10th October 1997 at the conference that was convened to celebrate the award to Professor Sir Hans Singer of an honorary doctoral degree of the University in recognition of his outstanding contributions to economic science in general and to the study of economic development in particular. As editors we are indebted to the conference participants (including Sir Hans) for their many helpful comments and suggestions. Particular thanks are due to Dr Richard Hule and Dr Herbert Stocker of the University of Innsbruck and Professor Kunibert Raffer of the University of Vienna for their detailed incisive written comments on the papers as presented at the conference. Although space constraints prevent us from including these documents in this collection, copies are available from the editors upon request. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economics of happiness, or subjective well being, is an expanding field, with a growing number of applied papers reporting empirical associations between happiness and other variables. This paper takes a broad view of the topic, aiming to provide an outline of the literature in relation to happiness economics' origins, definitions, theory, methods, applications, critiques, relations with other areas of economic research, political and policy connections, and promising directions for future inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the convergence between the economists living in the Midwest and those living in the East and West Coasts of the U.S. who have separate approaches in macroeconomics in view of the paper of economist Bennett McCallum focusing on the new classical macroeconomics as of June 1989. Approach of the Midwest economists on the role of imperfect competition in price setting; Views of the East and West Coasts economists on economic growth; Impact of the convergence on several issues about macroeconomics.

Both policymakers and economists have tried to find criteria to assess whether economic growth is pro‐poor. In this paper we reconsider the inequality‐oriented approach originally proposed by Jenkins and Van Kerm. They look at the changes in the whole income distribution, and decompose the change in income inequality, measured by the Gini coefficient, into a progressivity and a reranking component. They define a pro‐poor (or progressive) change as one where the changes in income are more to the benefit of those who are initially poor than to the benefit of those who are initially rich. We challenge this assumption, and maintain that also the point of view of the finally poor and the finally rich should be taken into account when evaluating whether growth is pro‐poor. We suggest a new decomposition method, based on an inequality index of the generalized entropy family, which allows the change in income inequality to be decomposed exactly into a forward‐looking and a backward‐looking progressivity component. Our empirical illustration, using data from household surveys in Vietnam, shows that economic growth in Vietnam has been pro‐poor from a forward‐looking perspective, but not from a backward‐looking perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article profiles macroeconomist and social scientist Edmund Phelps who introduce various concepts of modern growth theory. It states that Phelps have changed the way people think about macroeconomic theory and policy because of his imperfect information and communication about macroeconomic theory. It likewise claims that he treated the theory as social science whose subject matter stresses about how people interact in groups. Moreover, it stresses the contributions of Phelps which give further understanding of the nature and significance of imperfect information to human's life.

This paper explores a number of key issues in Development Economics which should be central concerns of contemporary development debates but which rarely attract the attention they deserve. It argues that there were fundamental insights in much of the early theoretical work of the ‘first generation’ of development economists, including the Latin American structuralists, that remain important. It then discusses the view that much of this earlier work is in danger of being ignored, forgotten or for various ideological reasons, airbrushed out of history. Recent examples include the omission of Latin American structuralism from recent editions of otherwise highly regarded texts, the omission of any reference to Harrod or to Domar in another recently published book which purports to discuss the evolution of growth theory, and a third book focussing on Economic Growth which excludes both Harrod and Domar and gives Arthur Lewis only one mention. The main conclusion is that Development Economics has moved too far away from its core competencies, and that a move ‘back to basics’ is long overdue. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does development economics address the issue of gains and losses from the displacement that inevitably accompanies many development processes? This paper argues that economists have struggled mightily between the core criterion of a "Pareto improvement", which vests individuals with infinite rights in their current standard of living, and its deeply conservative implications--both that it would prevent redistribution away from the rich, and that it would stop most projects from ever taking place. Where they have got to conceptually is a compromise, through using distributionally sensitive weights to evaluate the gains and losses of a project. In practice, however, systematic use of such weights in project appraisal or cost--benefit analysis is rare. Apart from advocating such use, which is true to the spirit of the conceptual position reached in economics, the paper argues that specific compensation mechanisms and generalised safety nets will reduce tensions between protecting the vulnerable and supporting projects that produce aggregate net benefits--including benefits for the vulnerable themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT. It is widely recognized that the analysis of economic growth in Henry George's Progress and Poverty was considerably influenced by the British classical tradition, especially the writings of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill. What has been less clearly perceived is that George made significant extensions to the classical theory. This paper's aim is to provide an interpretation, and to some extent a "rational reconstruction," of George's positive analysis, largely leaving aside the striking normative lessons he drew from it. George's unsatisfactory treatment of capital is disposed of in Section I, while Section II--the core of the paper--follows George's lead in aggregating capital and labor into a single productive factor which is employed in a given natural environment. Section III adds the complication of improvement in the arts of production, and Section IV deals briefly with George's views on land speculation. Section V assesses, comparing George with his contemporary Alfred Marshall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY In recent years there has been a great development of interest in the principles and the problems of rational decision-making and rational action. Economists, mathematicians, statisticians, logicians, engineers, and philosophers have all addressed their efforts to various phases of the general problem of rationality. This paper attempts a provisional synthesis of their basic results so far, in the form of a suggested preliminary definition of rationality that is sufficiently general to be applicable in all circumstances. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Beitrag zu einer allgemeinen Definition des rationalen Handelns In den letzten Jahren ist ein zunehmendes Interesse an den Grundlagen und den Problemen der rationalen Entschlussfassung und rationalen Handelns festzustellen. Ökonomen, Mathematiker, Statistiker, Logiker, Ingenieure und Philosophen haben ihre Anstrengungen auf verschiedene Phasen des allgemeinen Problems des Rationalen gerichtet. Die vorliegende Studie macht den Versuch einer vorläufigen Synthese der bisherigen grundlegenden Ergebnisse in Form einer vorläufigen Definition des Rationalen, die genügend allgemein ist, um unter jeglichen Bedingungen anwendbar zu sein. RÉSUMÉ Recherche ď une définition générate de ľ ction rationnelle. Durant ces dernières années, ľ intéret s'est fortement accru pour les principes et les problèmes relatifs à la décision rationnelle et àľ action rationnelle. Des économistes, des mathématiciens, des statisticiens, des logiciens, des ingénieurs et des philosophes ont concentrés leurs efforts sur les différentes phases du probléme général de la rationalité. La présente étude constitue un essai de synthèse provisoire des résultats fondamentaux obtenus jusqu'ici, sous la forme ď une définition préliminaire de la rationalité, par ailleurs suffisamment générale pour etre applicable dans toutes les circonstances. The general definition of rationality, to be usable for 'practical' decisionmaking, must take full cognizance of each of the following characteristics of the 'real' world, at least: the time-dimension of action and of the consequences of the action; the multitudinous side-effects of an action; the inevitable uncertainty of the 'actor' in connection with the alternatives of action open to him and the consequences of each of these; the costs of information-gathering; the costs of performing logical operations; the variety of the value-criteria of different actors; the changes in the value-criteria of any given actor over time; and the 'tastes' of the actor in relation to time-preference, risk-taking, logical processes, and the facing of uncertainty. The definition of rationality should specify the course of action which, in the light of all these factors, is the 'best' one. The present suggested definition outlines a 'rational' procedure for choosing one from among the set of all known possible actions, where the word 'action' refers to a particular time-sequence of (a) acting (in the usual sense), (b) information-gathering, and (c) logical analysis. The procedure consists, roughly, of these four steps: (1) the specification of the set of known possible actions; (2) the determination, for each of the actions, and using all available relevant information, of the set of all possible consequences of that action and their respective probabilities; (3) the evaluation, in the light of the relevant value-criteria, of each of the possible consequences of each of the possible actions; and (4) the derivation from (3) of the 'correct' action to be adopted. In carrying out these steps we employ a logical construction patterned after those of Carnap, Hempel and Oppenheim. For the sake of greater understandability, the definition is presented in two stages. The appendix to this paper contains a (grossly oversimplified) illustration of the application of the definition. Die allgemeine Definition des Rationalen - soil sie für praktische Entschlüsse verwendbar sein - muss zumindest folgende Charakteristika der 'realen' Welt voll berücksichtigen: die Zeitdimension einer Handlung und der Konsequenzen der Handlung; die zahlreichen Nebenwirkungen einer Handlung; die unvermeidliche Ungewissheit des Handelnden mit Bezug auf die ihm offenstehenden alternativen Handlungen und auf die Folgen jeder dieser Handlungen; die Kosten zusätzlicher Information; die Kosten des logischen Vorgehens; die Mannigfaltigkeit der Wertkriterien der verschiedenen Handelnden; die Rnderungen in den Wertkriterien eines Handelnden im Zeitverlauf; die Einstellung des Handelnden hinsichtlich Zeitpräferenz, Risikobereitschaft, logische Verfahren und Ungewissheit. Die Definition des Rationalen sollte jenen Ablauf des Handelns aufzeigen, der im Lichte aller dieser Faktoren der 'beste' ist. Die hier vorgeschlagene Definition skizziert ein 'rationales Verfahren für die Wahl einer Handlung unter all den bekannten möglichen Handlungen, wobei das Wort 'Handlung' sich auf eine besondere Zeitfolge von Handeln (im üblichen Sinn), Information und logischer Analyse bezieht. Das Verfahren besteht, grob gesprochen, in folgenden vier Schritten: I. Spezifikation der bekannten möglichen Handlungen; 2. Bestimmung aller möglichen Folgen und der Wahrscheinlichkeit dieser Folgen für jede der Handlungen, unter Verwendung aller verfügbaren relevanten Informationen; 3. Wertbestimmung jeder möglichen Folge von jeder der möglichen Handlungen auf Grund der relevanten Wertkriterien; und 4. Ableitung der 'richtigen' vorzunehmenden Handlung aus 3. Bei der Ausführung dieser Schritte wird eine logische Konstruktion verwendet nach dem Muster von Carnap, Hempel und Oppenheim. Im Interesse einer grössern Verständlichkeit wird die Definition in zwei Stufen entwickelt. Der Anhang enthält eine (stark vereinfachte) Illustration über die Anwendung der Definition. Une définition générale de la rationalité - pour qu'elle soit utilisable pour des decisions pratiques - doit pour le moins tenir pleinement compte de chacune des caractéristiques suivantes du monde 'réel': la durée de ľ action et des conséquences de ľ action; la multitude des effets connexes ď une action; ľ inévitable incertitude de celui qui agit en ce qui concerne les alternatives qui s'offrent à lui et les conséquences de chacune de ces actions; le coǔt des informations complémentaires; le coǔt de ľ exécution logique des opérations; la diversite des criteres-valeur, suivant l'opinion de ceux qui agissent; les modifications dans le temps des critères-valeur ď un exécutant donné; la préférence que marque celui qui agit quant au temps, au risque, à la procédure logique et àľ incertitude. La définition de la rationalité devrait spécifier le déroulement de ľ action, qui, à la lumière de tous ces facteurs, apparaǐt comme 'la meilleure'. La définition proposée ici esquisse une procédure rationnelle pour le choix ď une action parmi toutes les actions reconnues possibles; en ľ occurrence, le mot action se rapporte à une suite chronologique a) ď actions (au sens usuel), b) ď informations et c) ď analyses logiques. Grosso modo, le processus comprend les quatre étapes suivantes: I° la spécification des actions connues possibles; 2° la détermination pour chacune des actions, et en utilisant toutes les informations disponibles entrant en ligne de compte, de toutes les conséquences possibles et de leurs probabilityés respectives; 3oévaluation, à la lumière des critères-valeur entrant en ligne de compte, de chacune des conséquences possibles de chacune des actions possibles; et 4o la déduction de 3o de ľ action 'correcte'à exécuter. En exposant ces étapes, ľ auteur utilise une construction logique calquée sur celles de Carnap, Hempel et Oppenheim. Afin ď etre mieux compréhensible, la définition est présentée en deux paliers. Ľ annexe à cet article contient un exemple (considérablement simplifyé) de ľ application de la définition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many economists have long held that market failures create a gap between social and private returns to research and development (R&D), thereby limiting private incentives to invest in R&D. However, this common belief that firms significantly underinvest in R&D is increasingly being challenged, leading the rationale behind public support for private R&D to be questioned. In this paper, we attempt to clarify the perspectives of two sources: the theoretical literature on endogenous growth, and its recent developments in integrating a geographical dimension, and the empirical literature that measures the social returns to R&D in relation to the private returns. Ultimately, we are able to clearly distinguish among different types of market failures and compare their relative impact on the gap between the private and social returns to R&D. Two main conclusions are reached. First, systematic firm underinvestment in R&D is not demonstrated. Second, even though instances of underinvestment do occur, they are mainly explained by surplus appropriability problems rather than by knowledge externalities. This suggests the need for a new policy mix that employs more demand-oriented instruments and is more concentrated on identifying efficient allocations among activities rather than merely increasing global private R&D investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional disparities are an alarming issue in India, and it has been widening in spite of various policy initiatives by the government to develop backward areas. The fruit of high growth have not been distributed fairly across India's different regions and have given rise to the threat of regional inequality. Disparities in social and economic development, employment, and infrastructure amenities across the regions and within regions have been a major challenge to policy makers and economists. This paper is an attempt to understand the recent picture of regional imbalance in India across its states. The paper tries to analyze the existing regional disparity in India in terms of macroeconomic aggregates, social and economic infrastructure, and human development. The paper also examines the various policy initiatives taken by the government of India to achieve the regional balance in development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This address describes the history of the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) project and the development of the EFW index. This index is a measure of the extent to which the institutions and policies of various countries are coordinated by personal choice, voluntary exchange, open markets, and clearly defined and enforced property rights. The index contains 42 different components and is currently available for 141 countries. Data for approximately 100 countries are available back to 1980. The EFW index incorporates many of the elements that new institutional economists argue are important sources of growth. Thus, it facilitates empirical investigation of the institutional theory of growth and cross- country comparisons of economic performance. In this regard, the paper considers 10 propositions that have been addressed with the index, and what has been learned from this analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson have dramatically challenged the tendency of economists to confine their empirical search for the causes of economic growth to the recent past. They argue that the kind of institutions established by European colonialists, either protecting private property or extracting rents, resulted in the poorer parts of the pre-colonial world becoming some of the richest economies of today; while transforming some of the more prosperous parts of the non-European world of 1500 into the poorest economies today. This view has been further elaborated for Africa by Nunn, with reference to slave trading. Drawing on African and comparative economic historiography, the present paper endorses the importance of examining growth theories against long-term history: revealing relationships that recur because the situations are similar, as well as because of path dependence as such. But it also argues that the causal relationships involved are more differentiated than is recognised in AJR's formulations. By compressing different historical periods and paths, the ‘reversal’ thesis over-simplifies the causation. Relatively low labour productivity was a premise of the external slave trades; though the latter greatly reinforced the relative poverty of many Sub-Saharan economies. Again, it is important to distinguish settler and non-settler economies within colonial Africa itself. In the latter case it was in the interests of colonial regimes to support, rather than simply extract from, African economic enterprise. Finally, economic rent and economic growth have often been joint products, including in pre-colonial and colonial Africa; the kinds of institutions that favoured economic growth in certain historical contexts were not necessarily optimal for that purpose in others. AJR have done much to bring development economics and economic history together. The next step is a more flexible conceptual framework, and a more complex explanation. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are three positions concerning the economic effects of human rights discussed among economists. Some economists argue that only property rights matter for economic growth and basic human rights can even make the legal system less efficient. Others argue that negative rights are generally welfare increasing while positive rights tend to reduce income and growth over time. Yet a third group of economists argues that elements of all groups of human rights are a precondition for making productive use of one's resources and are thus efficiency-enhancing. Based on a cross-country analysis, the effects of different groups of human rights on economic growth are estimated in this paper. The transmission channels through which the different rights affect growth are identified by estimating their effects on investment and overall productivity. Basic human rights have indeed a positive effect on investment, but do not seem to contribute to productivity. Social rights, in turn, are not conducive to investment in physical capital but do contribute to productivity improvements. None of the four groups of rights covered in this analysis ever has a significant negative effect on any of the economic variables included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several disciplines have contributed to the understanding of the relationship between science, technology, and economic change. Weber's perspective on this relationship, however, has not been properly explored. In the first part of this paper, we give an account of Weber's perspective. In the second part, we critically assess Weber's ideas, indicating those that are useful and those that deserve to be abandoned. We also confront a revised Weberian perspective with those of the main contemporary competitors, the key ideas of economists and economic historians on one side and social constructivists on the other. We conclude that a Weberian comparative-historical approach compares favourably with these competitors, and suggest where his approach still requires further work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a restatement of the economists N.F.R. Crafts and C.K. Harley's views on the output growth and the British industrial revolution. Authors stress that the considerable volume of work since their original papers does not provide any serious quantitative challenge to their main findings nor does it go any distance towards reinstating economists P. Deane and W.A. Cole's view, which was the previous orthodoxy. The authors accept that measurement of growth yields only a range of best guess estimates. Nevertheless, it is important not to overstate the degree of uncertainty. The authors have made revisions to their earlier estimates in the course of the paper; these are generally fairly small and tend to reduce slightly the estimated growth rates. They demonstrate that total factor productivity estimation is much less problematic than the critics claim. They also accept that their approach to the industrial revolution has been shaped by the pursuit of particular questions and that other approaches are both valid and potentially important. Finally, they reaffirm the importance of the industrial revolution as an historical discontinuity.

In spite or a recent resurgence of interest in the economics of minority groups at least one burning question still awaits a definitive answer in American discussions of the subject. This is whether or not the Negro's economic position has improved pari passu with the development of the economy as a whole. So far attempted answers have differed greatly. Representative of the one group is an opinion subscribed to by economist Herman D. Bloch that the idea that the Negro has enjoyed an advance in economic status is a fallacy. In this paper it is attempted to scrutinize the validity of this statement. There seems to be an unnecessary undercurrent of despondency about the economic future of Negroes. This is perhaps a result of social scientists allowing themselves to be so moved by the worldwide abhorrence of discrimination that they tend to exaggerate the incidence and effects of such discrimination, almost as if all Negroes were poor and all whites rich. The fact is that the relative number of Negroes in higher income groups has been rising. Indeed, it is often overlooked that white poverty is actually a bigger problem than Negro poverty for instance, compared with 4 million Negro poor in rural areas, there are more than 12 million poor whites,15 and neither is white poverty limited to rural areas.

SUMMARY The paper starts from Schumpeter's interpretation of Adam Smith's concept of the contemporary embryonic industrialist whose main function was considered to be the accumulation of capital. The author traces the development of this concept in the nineteenth century and tries to explain its origin. He shows that medieval reality, i.e. the relationship between stans and transactor in the societas maris is at the root of Smith's concept. It remained justifiable as late as 1776 on the basis of the cooperation of capitalist and entrepreneur-manager in the early mechanized cotton industry, as it is presented in Robert Owen's autobiography. But just this self-testimony shows also the rapid change of this relationship after the appearance of the Wealth of Nations, which neither the classical economists nor Marx under-stood in their implications. From this came an unfortunate economic legacy, the misunderstanding of certain aspects of entrepreneurship, which only Schumpeter discarded on principle in his Theory of EconomicDevelopment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The World Bank has always sold ideas, not just loans. Starting in 1996, then president James Wolfensohn rebranded the Bank by articulating a formal vision of a ' Knowledge Bank'-a provider of state-of-the-art expertise on development. After a number of internal changes and assessments, the Bank is acknowledging that it needs to be more humble, pluralistic, and practical. Why do some regard the Bank as a legitimate knowledge actor, whereas others contest that authority? We offer an analytical framework that can explain stakeholders' uneven recognition of the Bank's knowledge role. When stakeholders define knowledge as products, the Bank generally obtains recognition for the quality and quantity of the information it generates. This is the output dimension of legitimacy. On the other hand, when knowledge only counts as such to users who have been part of the process of creating it, the Bank finds itself with limited recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT During the last decade, economists have shown that the inverse relationship between economic growth and unemployment rate varies over time. Rolling regression has been the main tool used to quantify such a relationship. This methodology suffers from several well-known problems which lead to spurious non-linear patterns in the Okun's coefficient behaviour over time. Here, we take a penalized regression spline approach to estimate the Okun's time-varying effects. As a result, spurious non-linearities are suppressed and hence important time-varying coefficient features revealed. Our empirical results show that the inverse relationship in some Euro area countries is spatially heterogeneous and time-varying. The findings are complemented by the calculation of the rate of output growth needed for a stable unemployment rate, as proposed by Knotek. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic development for remote Indigenous communities cannot be understood unless the relative importance of customary activity, potentially enhanced by native title legal rights in resources, is recognised. The present article uses a three-sector hybrid economy framework, rather than the usual two-sector private (or market) and public (or state) model to more accurately depict the Indigenous economy. Examples are provided of the actual and potential significance of the customary sector of the hybrid economy. Focusing on the concepts of property and institutions, it is demonstrated that significant local, regional, and national benefits are generated by the Indigenous hybrid economy. A role is foreshadowed for resource economists and the New Institutional Economics in quantifying these benefits, including positive externalities, so that they might be more actively supported by the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Kyklos is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A discussion of the differences between local understandings of property and Western influenced government land policies led to an exchange over cultural differences between the "East" and the "West." Some economists emphasized differences, contrasting Western notions of private property with Eastern concern for the uses of land and Western stress on individual rights with Eastern concern for social duty and obligation. Others are gued against simple East-West contrasts, suggesting that Westerners recognize both rights and obligations but invoke them in different contexts. Given the bleak picture of evicted farmers and devastated forests that emerged from the papers and discussions, economist Joel Handler asked if anyone knew of successful development projects. His question set off a lively discussion, reflected in the excerpts below. Economists asked, "development for whom?" which led into suggestions on how to spread the costs of development more evenly to avoid enriching the already rich and further impoverishing the already poor.

The effects of various tax policies on economic growth are reox amined on the basis of the recently developed endogenous growth theory. The assertion of Henry George that the structure of taxation is more important than the level of taxation in explaining economic growth is elaborated and verified. Annual data for Taiwan from 1954 to 1986 shows that the aggregate tax rate does not have significant effect on the long run growth rates of private output, consumption and production factor inputs. This result is due to the positive effect of consumption taxation offsetting the negative effect of factor taxation on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long relative decline of Great Britain's industrial economy has produced a voluminous literature, both polemical and academic, seeking to illuminate its causes. Recent contributions have stressed the deleterious effects of inappropriate and inconsistent government policies, in particular the deadweight of an inefficient public sector, and the contempt for industrial production on the part of a Treasury-dominated civil service elite obsessed with macroeconomic issues. They have also cited the anti-modernization ethos of the post-1945 political consensus. In a longer term perspective great stress has also been laid on the socio-cultural environment antipathetic to the industrial spirit, which, supposedly, had animated the business and investing classes in the pre-1850 phases of industrialization. The purpose of this paper is to examine the validity of the new institutional approach as an explanation of Great Britain's relative economic decline in the twentieth century. The discussion will focus on economists B. Elbaum and W. Lazonick thesis as a reference point for assessing alternative formulations of institutional rigidities.

This article presents a discussion about the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) Special Study, "Report of the Special Study of the Securities Markets of the Securities and Exchange Commission," by Irwin Friend, in which he distinguishes between the public interest and the protection of investors aspects of the securities acts. The author here supports Friend's criticism of the report, which is that it does not contain generally acceptable means for judging the performance of the securities markets.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Development economists frequently emphasize the importance of good infrastructure for economic growth. Can governments attract private capital in infrastructural investments through policy reform? We address this question by showing that, in the case of electricity generation, a simple legislation enabling independent power production increases private investment in electricity generation by more than an order of magnitude. Contrary to the conventional wisdom on the importance of constraints on executive power for credible commitment, we find that such constraints neither draw private capital nor condition the effectiveness of policy reform. We also find that both domestic and foreign investment increase with IPP reform. Evidence for these claims comes from an instrumental variable analysis of power sector reforms and private electricity generation in all developing countries for the years 1982 to 2008. Simple and politically uncontroversial policies can generate positive results in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An intellectually vigorous modern economics profession has emerged in China over the past three decades of market-oriented reform and opening to the international economy. Understanding the Chinese economy is essential to understanding economics as China approaches being the world's largest economy. This review article discusses the modern economics profession in China and the contributions of Professor Justin Yifu Lin, a pioneer of modern economics in China and a major contributor from the beginning until now. It introduces and describes the distinctive ideas in his four recent books in English, which make his ideas and work accessible to economists outside China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The imposition of the world's first modern income tax in 1799 prompted a revival of interest in national accounting. This article examines the extent to which William Pitt the Younger, who proposed the new tax, modelled his estimates of national wealth on those produced a century earlier by the pioneers in this field, Sir William Petty, Charles Davenant, and Gregory King. In addition, the calculations of Benjamin Bell and Henry Beeke, two of Pitt's contemporaries, are analysed in detail to highlight the fragility of these contemporary estimates of national income. This analysis has important implications for economic historians who have used this material to try to establish the structure and growth of national output. National accountants during the long eighteenth century were not, for the most part, concerned with structural change. Rather, their descriptions of economic structure should be understood as reflecting a particular set of a priori claims about what they deemed to be the proper mode and distribution of taxation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We model a dynamic, competitive market, where in every period, risk-neutral traders trade a one-period bond against an infinitely lived asset, with limited short-selling of the long-term asset. Traders lack structural knowledge and use different "incomplete theories," all of which give statistically correct beliefs about next period's market price of the long-term asset. The more theories there are in the market, the higher is the equilibrium price of the long-term asset. Investors with more complete theories do not necessarily earn higher returns than those with less complete ones, who can earn above the risk-free rate. We provide two necessary conditions for a trader to earn above the risk-free rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article profiles the career and thought of Italian economist and anti-colonial scholar-activist Giovanni Arrighi. Focus is given to Arrighi's scholarly work on the racialized nature of proletarianization in colonial Africa and his involvement in the anti-colonial movements of Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe) and Tanzania. Also given consideration is his work on the inherent inequality of the world economic system, his critique of modernization theory and mainstream social science methodology in general based on his activism, and his thought on the difference between the East Asian and African labor forces.

The transition from plan to market was the largest natural experiment in economics ever. Now, 20 years from the start of transition, all former socialist countries are market economies at the middle stage of economic development, and convergence with neighbours, if not with the developed world, is largely achieved. With hindsight, it is clear that economists have spent too much time debating proper sequencing of reforms and the fine-tuning of reform packages. At the same time, the magnitude of the output and consumption fall in some countries was vastly underestimated, while the benefits of reforms have taken longer to materialize than expected. Successful practitioners of reform praise perseverance during and after the initial setbacks and willingness to make political compromises. At the conclusion of the natural experiment, transition economics has all but vanished as an academic discipline, although it played a crucial role in the formation of modern political economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the early years of the Rochester department of economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For years, policymakers, business leaders, human resources professionals, and economists have attempted to explain the existence of unemployment. Unemployment inhibits the economic growth of a nation and contributes to the problem of ongoing poverty, which cannot be lessened without that growth. Understanding the causes of unemployment and developing policies and programs to decrease it are vitally important for nations around the world, but one key variable in the study of unemployment has been overlooked. That variable is culture. This article will show that culture can significantly explain cross-national differences in unemployment rates and offers a link to understanding the global problem of poverty that plagues nations today. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most ecological economists believe that the transition to a steady-state economy is necessary to ensure ecological sustainability and to maximize a nation's economic welfare. While some observers agree with the necessity of the steady-state economy, they are nonetheless critical of the suggestion made by ecological economists-in particular, Herman Daly-that a steady-state economy is compatible with a capitalist system. First, they believe that steady-state capitalism is based on the untenable assumption that growth is an optional rather than in-built element of capitalism. Second, they argue that capitalist notions of efficient resource allocation are too restrictive to facilitate the transition to an 'ecological' or steady-state economy. I believe these observers are outright wrong with their first criticism and, because they misunderstand Daly's vision of a steady-state economy, are misplaced with their second criticism. The nature of a capitalist system depends upon the institutional framework that supports and shapes it. Hence, a capitalist system can exist in a wide variety of forms. Unfortunately, many observers fail to recognize that the current 'growth imperative' is the result of capitalist systems everywhere being institutionally designed to grow. They need not be designed this way to survive and thrive. Indeed, because continued growth is both existentially undesirable and ecologically unsustainable, redesigning capitalist systems through the introduction of Daly-like institutions would prove to be capitalism's savior. What's more, it would constitute humankind's best hope of achieving sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world's large and rapidly growing human population is exhausting Earth's natural capital at ever-faster rates, and yet appears mostly oblivious to the fact that these resources are limited. This is dangerous for our well-being and perhaps for our survival, as documented by numerous studies over many years. Why are we not moving instead toward sustainable levels of use? We argue here that this disconnection between our knowledge and our actions is largely caused by three “great divides”: an ideological divide between economists and ecologists; an economic development divide between the rich and the poor; and an information divide, which obstructs communications between scientists, public opinion, and policy makers. These divides prevent our economies from responding effectively to urgent signals of environmental and ecological stress. The restoration of natural capital (RNC) can be an important strategy in bridging all of these divides. RNC projects and programs make explicit the multiple and mutually reinforcing linkages between environmental and economic well-being, while opening up a promising policy road in the search for a sustainable and desirable future for global society. The bridge-building capacity of RNC derives from its double focus: on the ecological restoration of degraded, overexploited natural ecosystems, and on the full socio-economic and ecological interface between people and their environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professor Helen Hughes AO received the Economic Society's Distinguished Fellow Award at the 33rd Annual Conference of Economists in Sydney in September 2004. The citation focused on three areas where she has had major impacts: the economics of development, Australian economic policy, and institutions that further economic knowledge and debate. Helen Hughes was one of the first economists to recognise the importance of export-orientated growth to rapid and equitable development. Australia's third-largest services export industry, education, emerged from her advocacy in 1984 of a policy of selling education to overseas students. Her skill in teaching economics remains legendary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A biography is presented for Romanian economist, mathematician, and statistician Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. He was born in Constanta, Romania in February 1906. The article examines his comprehensive theory of economic development, institutional change, and biophysical constraints. The article also discusses Georgescu-Roegen's bioeconomics and their importance to the development of qualitative change.

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This article surveys research on Taiwan’s economic history for the past fifteen years, covering a period from approximately the eighteenth to early twentieth century. It discusses the works of economists as well as studies by researchers in history and other fields. The topics selected for the survey are: change of Taiwan’s per capita GDP in the long-term; trade and development; aborigine property rights; and institutional change in the early Japanese colonial period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schooled in the traditions of the Malthusian theory, economists, thinking in terms of static economics, have typically placed an optimistic interpretation upon the cessation of population growth. This indeed is also the interpretation suggested by the National Resources Committee which recently has issued an exhaustive statistical inquiry into current and prospective changes in population growth. In a fundamental sense this conclusion is thoroughly sound, for it can scarcely be questioned that a continued growth of population at the rate experienced in the nineteenth century would rapidly present insoluble problems. Economic analysis from the earliest development of science has been concerned with the role played by economic progress. Various writers have included under this caption different things, but here one may say that the constituent elements of economic progress are inventions, the discovery and development of new territory and new resources, and the growth of population. Each of these in turn, severally and in combination, has opened investment outlets and caused a rapid growth of capital formation.

ABSTRACT. IS the well-known finding of experimental economics that talk is correlated with co-operation in prisoner-dilemma contexts related to Adam Smith's claim that trade requires language? Using Smith's postulate of the existence of a desire for approbation and the supposition that language carries approbation, we demonstrate how the ability to exchange approbation enhances the rationality of co-operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questions of choice of techniques and technical change are often discussed as economic problems in the underdeveloped countries, but economists have not systematically taken account of systems of political economy to which their discussions refer. The main argument of this article is that this failure to be systematic about questions of political economy may lead to simplistic recommendations about technology policies, and possibly to some rather ill founded optimism about the efficacy of appropriate technologies as a cure for problems of unemployment and mal distribution of income. It is useful, for illustrative purposes, to start out with a brief discussion of some particular points about A.K. Sen's analysis of choice of techniques. Possibly, the least-noticed assumption is the assumption of a planned economy. All surpluses above the needs of current consumption are directly controlled by the state and are reinvested. Investible resources are scarce and the planners choose techniques of production which maximize their objectives function, subject to the constraints of this scarcity.