The G-20 Moment

Thanks to the draining effects of the Iraq war and the financial meltdown emanating from Wall Street, a powershift away from American dominance is taking place. Caught between a rising China and an America in relative decline, the new leadership in Japan is recalibrating its post-World War II relationships. The G-20 has usurped the role once played by the G-8 as the governing committee of globalization. And the symbiotic coupling of "Chimerica", born out of the credit bubble built up over the past two decades, is being put to the test.
In this section, the new prime minister of Japan, the president of the European Union, the president of Brazil and a leading economic historian assess these shifts.     

Performance measurement and financial incentives for community behavioral health services provision

This article analyzes the uses of performance measures in contracting for behavioral health services. A flexible performance measurement methodology, called Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA),is used to measure cost efficiency and cost effectiveness. The use of measures in controlling costs, allocating program funds and administrating performance-based contracting is demonstated.     

MIXED COMPANIES AND LOCAL GOVERNANCE: NO MAN CAN SERVE TWO MASTERS

This article looks at the use of institutionalized public–private partnership (PPP) arrangements by local governments for the delivery of different types of infrastructure. It starts by analyzing the mixed company model from a theoretical point of view, in particular the potential for internal regulation and the achievement of a relational agreement. Then, after discussing the practicalities of crafting this type of governance structure, four Portuguese case studies are examined. The empirical evidence on mixed companies operating in the water, waste, transportation, and education sectors shows that the extreme complexity involved in the whole life‐cycle management of these companies usually leads to a poor protection of the public interest.     

The Poverty of Statistics and the Statistics of Poverty

This paper offers a critique of the picture of world growth and world inequality generally disseminated by international agencies. The positive view commonly presented depends on the widespread consensus that economic performance should be measured using ‘Purchasing Power Parity’ (PPP) statistics, instead of market exchange rates. Although originally conceived narrowly as a basis for comparing living standards, PPP indicators are now indiscriminately promoted as an unexceptionable standard for comparing and aggregating national income statistics. This article highlights the flaws in the PPP approach by accepting the claims made on their behalf at face value. It shows that, even on the basis of these claims, the wrong conclusions have been drawn. By comparing PPP and market exchange rate measures of inequality it shows that what really took place, at the end of the last century, was a systematic reduction in the prices of consumption goods in the Third World. PPP statistics have concealed this underlying and unsustainable trend, allowing it to be packaged as a stable reduction in poverty. Neither genuine growth, nor lasting poverty reduction was achieved over this period. The fall in the price of consumer goods masked a systematic failure to overcome the central problem of development—the high price of capital goods, which PPP statistics understate, and of intermediate goods, which they completely omit.     

The US presidential election of 1992 and its impact on Asia

Andrew Mack, (ed.), Asian Flashpoint: Security and the Korean Peninsula (Canberra and St. Leonards: ANU and Allen and Unwin, 1993), 175 pp.

Toh Mun Heng and Linda Low, (eds.), Regional Cooperation and Growth Triangles in ASEAN (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1993), 256 pp.

Kent E. Calder, Strategic Capitalism: Private Business and Public Purpose in Japanese Industrial Finance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 373 pp.

Garry Rodan, (ed.), Singapore Changes Guard: Social, Political and Economic Directions in the 1990s (Melbourne, Australia: Longman Cheshire Pty Limited and New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1993), xxii + 209 pp.

J. Mark Ramseyer and Frances McCall Rosenbluth, Japan's Political Marketplace, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993) 262 pp.

Roger Goodman and Kirsten Refsing, (ed.), Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan (Routledge: London, 1992) 243 pp.

John Bresnan, Managing Indonesia: The Modern Political Economy (New York, Columbia University Press, 1993), 375 pp.     

铅镉联合染毒对大鼠大脑皮质神经细胞的氧化损伤及NAC的保护效应

为研究铅、镉联合对新生大鼠大脑皮质神经细胞的脂质过氧化损伤及N-乙酰半胱氨酸(N-ace-tylcysteine,NAC)的保护效应,以体外培养的新生大鼠原代大脑皮质神经细胞为试验对象,分17个组进行了不同铅、镉浓度的染毒和保护试验,染毒时间为12 h.经超声波粉碎细胞后,测定神经细胞超氧化物歧化酶(SOD)、过氧化氢酶(CAT)、谷胱甘肽过氧化物酶(GSH-Px)、乙酰胆碱酯酶(TChE)活性和丙二醛(MDA)含量.结果表明,与对照组比较,铅、镉单独染毒组GSH-Px、SOD和TChE活性随染毒越量的增加呈逐渐下降趋势(P<0.05),而CAT活性及MDA含量则呈升高趋势(P<0.05),两者之间具有明显的剂量一效应关系;铅、镉联合染毒对神经细胞GSH-Px、SOD、TChE、CAT活性和MDA含量的改变均较相应的铅、镉单独染毒更为明显,部分组间有显著差异(P<0.05);NAC保护组的MDA含量显著低于相应的染毒组(P<0.05),SOD、GSH-Px、TChE和CAT活性不同程度地高于相应的染毒组,但部分组间差异不显著(P>0.05).铅、镉联合对新生大鼠大脑皮质神经细胞的氧化损伤表现协同毒性效应,NAC可以提高神经细胞的抗氧化能力,对铅、镉及其联合暴露所致的脂质过氧化损伤有一定的保护作用,但保护作用不明显.