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Tony Weis. The Global Food Economy: The Battle for the Future of Farming. London and New York: Zed Books/Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishers, 2007. 217 pages. Paperback. Price not given.
Get PDFTony Weis’s book provides a systematic analysis of the
dynamics, problems, and inequities of the global food economy. Starting
with the current situation regarding hunger and poverty, the author
states that despite the fact that food production is more than needed to
provide every person on earth with a nutrition diet, hunger still
persists. The percentage of world population with food shortages has
declined but absolute numbers have grown. Similar is the case with
poverty. According to the World Bank estimates, 2.8 billion people are
living on less than US1). And a special feature of the hunger and
poverty is that these problems are acute in developing countries,
especially South Asian and sub- Saharan African countries
Sustainable Income, Employment, and Income Distribution in Indonesia
Get PDFProduction and consumption activities in any economy have a
direct impact on the environment. Although increased economic activity
and population growth in developing countries continue to exert enormous
pressure on their natural environments, the role of the environment is
neglected in the estimation of national income. Such neglect at the
macroeconomic level is at least in part, an important cause of
environmental degradation in developing countries. Since the United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 at Rio and
even as early as middle of the 1980s, a substantial literature had
developed on methods to integrate the environment into the economic
development process. The main assertion in this literature is that
natural resources represent a form of capital that is analogous to the
stock of manufactured capital. Sustainable income can be determined by
allocating a portion of income to allow for the deprecation of natural
capital [Ahmed, El Serafy, and Lutz (1989) and Solow (1992)]. Indonesia
had average real GDP growth rates of more than five percent per year up
to the early 1990s [World Bank (1994)]. But income inequality (measured
by the Gini coefficient) has been high. Although inequality continues to
be quite high, especially between rural and urban populations, Indonesia
has been successful in poverty alleviation up to mid 1990s. In 1976
almost 40 percent of its population was below the poverty line, which in
1993 decreased to less than 14 percent [Todaro (1994)]. Income
distributional consequences of economic growth would continue to be one
of the main policy issues in Indonesia. This is due to its large
population size, presence of different ethnic and religious groups,
large diversity between rural and urban groups, variety of natural
resources scattered over the country, huge distances and the effects of
a far-flung archipelago [Akita, Lukman, and Yamada (1999)]
Self-reported Symptoms of Reproductive Tract Infections: The Question of Accuracy and Meaning
Get PDFVerbal surveys are the most common way of gauging any
population’s health status, but questions remain regarding the accuracy
of the responses they elicit. The present paper compares women’s
self-reports regarding their experiences with reproductive tract
infections (RTIs) and the medical diagnosis that they went through to
ascertain the presence or otherwise of the infections. Weak concordance
was found between women’s self-reports and the medical diagnosis, with
the former over-representing the presence of infections. Some of the
selfreported symptoms were pathogenic in nature, as represented by the
true positive reports, but the majority of the self-reports were false
positives when compared to medical diagnosis. The conventional health
surveys, relying solely on verbal responses, thus, do not essentially
represent the actual health situation of a population studied, and any
policy intervention formulated exclusively on this information would be
flawed. There is a need to understand the non-medical context of
illnesses to understand the disease fully
Ayesha Siddiqa. Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2007. 292 pages. Paperback. Rs 450.00
Get PDFThe book is about business interests of the military in
Pakistan. It looks at the political economy of military’s business
activities and the personal economic stakes of military personnel as the
driver of political ambitions of the armed forces. The author has coined
the term ‘Milbus’ for military’s business activities. She defines
‘Milbus’ as ‘military capital used for the personal benefit of military
fraternity’. Apart from the Introduction, the book has ten chapters.
Chapter 1, ‘Milbus: A Theoretical Concept’, argues that Milbus prevails
in most militaries around the world. The extent to which Milbus prevails
in a military depends upon the civil-military relations and the strength
of political institutions in the country. The chapter outlines six
distinct categories of civil-military relations along a continuum of the
strength of civil institutions. Polity’s that boast of strong civil
institutions, see political forces rule over the country with military
playing a subservient role. As the strength of civil institutions
declines, militaries penetrate, with the role military becoming complete
when the state fails. This is the state where warlords rule. Chapter 2,
‘The Pakistan Military: The Development of Praetorianism’, argues that
certain structural lacunae in Pakistan’s political system, dating back
to 1947, brought the military to fore. Governments of the day, having
failed to promote socioeconomic development, promoted the national
security paradigm, to retain their political legitimacy. This brought
the military to the forefront. The ascent of military is owed on the one
hand to the weak political leadership, that gave the military an
opportunity to assert itself, and on the other hand to the authoritarian
inclination of civil governments, that compelled these governments to
partner with the military. Thus the seed of praetorianism were sown from
the very beginning
Malcolm Gladwell. The Tipping Point. London: Brettenham House. 2007. 279 pages. Paperback. £ 6.99
Get PDFThe Tipping Point is a book about change. What brings on
change and why so often it happens so quickly? The book is an
intellectual journey taking the reader through the changes in the world
of business, education, fashion, and media. It draws heavily from
psychology, sociology, history, and epidemiology to explain these
changes. The idea of “Tipping Point” is derived from epidemiology. It is
the moment in any epidemic when the disease reaches its critical
mass—the moment on the graph when the line shoots vertically upwards.
Gladwell applies the same idea to “social epidemics”, and tries to
figure out “tipping points” in business, social policy, advertisement,
TV programming, and a number of other non-medical areas
Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, Muneer Mahmud, and Mustansar Billah (eds.). Pakistan and Changing Scenario: Regional and Global. Islamabad: Policy Research Institute, 2008. 166 pages. Price not given.
Get PDFThere are major developments taking place around the globe
affecting Pakistan and the region. Pakistan is dealing with various
social, cultural and security issues on its internal side. On the other
hand, the dynamics of globalisation are also having an impact offering
both challenges and opportunities. Taking into consideration the need
for an expert discussion on such issues facing Pakistan, the Islamabad
Policy Research Institute held a seminar on “Pakistan and Changing
Scenario: Regional and Global”. This book contains the research
presented in this seminar and is divided into six chapters
Management of Energy Recourses, Marginal Input- Output Coefficients, and Layers of Techniques: A Case Study of US Chemical Industry
Get PDFThe embodied technical change should reduce the cost of
production of the commodity. However, price structure, wages and
interest rates also will change over time. Thus if a commodity is
following a fixed price regime, the adjustment of a historical
input-output table to current price wage level will leaves less and less
profit per unit of output. The extent of this reduction will indicate
the extent of technological change. There are different approaches to
the prediction of changes in input-output coefficients. The first
approach, attributable to Leontief (1941) and Stone (1962), assumes that
input-output matrices change over time in a “biproportional” way. The
other approach is to estimate trends in individual coefficients using
statistical data. Former approach is used by a number of experts,
including Fontela, et al. (1970), Almon, et al. (1974) and Carter
(1970). Arrow and Hoffenberg (1959), Henry (1974), Savaldson (1970,
1976), Ozaki (1976), Aujac (1972) and Buzunov (1970). These are examples
of the application of the quantitative approach for forecasting
input-output coefficients. Still another approach which could not get
much attention for forecasting input-output coefficients, is
constructing the marginal input-output coefficients [Tilanus (1967);
Middelhoek (1970)]. Marginal coefficients for forecasting constructed by
Tilanus and Middelhoek are based on average input-output tables, which
shows that still new approach (marginal) is based on the old (average)
on
The Economic Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries and Transition Economies
Get PDFThe economic growth rates have dramatically increased in
developing economies, such as in Latin American, Asian, and Eastern
European countries, following the financial liberalisation attempt,
especially during the 1990s. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has become
an increasingly important element for economic development and
integration of developing countries and transition economies in this
period with the world economy. The main purpose of this study is to
develop an empirical framework to estimate the economic determinants of
FDI inflows by employing a panel data set of 17 developing countries and
transition economies for the period of 1989:01-2006:04. In our model
there are seven explanatory economic variables. They are, respectively,
the previous period FDI (the pull factor for new FDI), GDP growth
(measures market size), Wage (unit labour costs), Trade Rate (measures
the openness of countries), the real interest rates (measures
macroeconomic policy), inflation rate (as country risk and macroeconomic
policy), and domestic investment (Business Climate). Hence, throughout
the paper, only the economic determinants (being separated and apart
from the other studies in the literature) of FDI inflows to developing
countries and transition economies are studied. It is found out that the
previous period FDI which is directly related to the host countries’
economic resources is important as an economic determinant. Besides, it
is also understood that the main determinants of FDI inflows are the
inflation rate, the interest rate, the growth rate, and the trade
(openness) rate and FDI inflows give power to the economies of host
countries
Determinants of Interest Spread in Pakistan
Get PDFInterest spread of Pakistan’s banking industry has been on the
rise for the last two years. The increase in interest spread discourages
savings and investments, on the one hand, and raises concerns about the
effectiveness of the bank-lending channels of monetary policy, on the
other. This study examines the determinants of interest spread in
Pakistan using panel data of 29 banks. The results show that the share
of interest-insensitive deposits in total bank deposits is a key
determinant of interest spread, whereas industry concentration has no
significant impact on interest spread. Furthermore, the ongoing merger
wave in the banking industry will limit the options for the savers, with
adverse implications for the interest spread. We argue that to maintain
a reasonably competitive environment, merger proposals may be subjected
to review by an anti-trust authority
Demand Analysis of Recreation Visits to Chitral Valley: A Natural Resource Management Perspective
Get PDFRecreational visits are primarily about human activity which
involves travel from an originating area to a destination for cultural,
economic, and social exchange processes. People travel to exotic
locations for sight seeing, picnicking, bird watching, and for cultural
and religious settings. However, accessibility to such areas is often
free, which not only results in environmental hazards but also deprives
the cash destitute government from revenue that such these sites offer.
Valuing the recreational benefits associated with a destination based on
tourists’ preferences can help formulate an appropriate policy for
Natural Resource Management (NRM). Environmental and natural resource
management studies often try to measure the welfare change associated
with a policy change. Welfare is generally defined as area under the
demand curve; accordingly, by estimating the demand curve, consumer
surplus is obtained which shows the welfare changes associated with an
environmental policy change [Gunatilake (2003)]. The recreational values
thus obtained can be utilised for a cost benefit analysis of a policy
option, thereby, managing a park or a natural resource on a sustainable
basis