A mid-level methodology for evaluating economic development projects

This article describes the key elements of a computerized spreadsheet model that can be used by public officials and agency staff to assess in advance the likely economic and fiscal effects of economic development projects. While the model in its current state is based on Chicago, local data can be used to adapt it to other places. The project is innovative in its use of current economic theory, data, and tools to create a model useable on a routine basis by non-specialist public agency staff. The aim is to narrow the gap between academic economic analysis and public sector practice. A key element of the model is that it was developed in close cooperation with staff of the Chicago Department of Planning and Development and combines rigorous economic analysis with the political priorities and choices of public agency staff. Also, the model includes key data about the local economy and standard industry data, but can be overridden by an

analyst if project-specific information is available.     

State economic development strategy: Designing a tool for evaluating policy

In 1987, the new governor of Pennsylvania introduced a plan designed to protect “old” jobs while encouraging public and private investment in targeted “growth” industries. Recognizing that “targeting growth opportunities” was, at best, an uncertain enterprise, the Department of Labor and Industry suggested a program be implemented that would monitor these “key” sectors. To be cost-effective, this evaluation effort would need to be sufficiently timely and sensitive to allow for mid-course corrections. In this paper, we describe an effort to design and implement such a program.     

Reinventing urban government in the Netherlands: an American perspective

National agricultural policies intended to stabilize farm price and income may have different impacts on different agricultural sector of a state or a region. A policy which influences a region's agriculture also may affect the general economy of that region, depending on the degree to which agriculture is linked to the general economy. This study evaluates the economywide impact of the Flexible Planting Program (FPP) -- a recent policy designed to encourage farmers to respond more to market than to the government incentives. The study employs an integrated modeling framework which links the national and state farm sectors to the region's non-farm sectors. Because of reductions in real U.S. market prices and, in turn, Tennessee market prices of some farm commodities under FPP, production of most agricultural outputs are expected to decline in Tennessee by 1995. Study results indicate that as a result of price reductions, the agricultural sector will lose about 15 percent of output, income, and employment. These losses cause significant negative impacts on the business-related service sector. The service sector suffers a loss of 31 million dollars in total output and 523 jobs. The total income lost by the service sector (18 million dollars) will be much higher than agriculture sector (11.99 million dollars). Thus, though the FPP may deliver its intended good at the national level, the policy has the potential to cause undesirable impacts on certain regions.     

Administrative development issues in china's economic reform: an introduction

This introduction article provides the background information about the present symposium and the summary of the articles addressed in the symposium. On the background information, the article reviewed the process of economic reform and key measures of administrative reforms. On the symposium summary, the article explained issues and conclusions of the following articles: administrative decentralization and state-society relations, the role of government in economic development, ethical codes in China's civil service, transportation infrastructure and regional economic development, characteristics of recent financial reforms, and privatization of urban housing provision.     

Angola: The politics of unsustainable development

Armed conflict facilitates corruption and Angola presents a dramatic case study of this process. This article explores why the political context represents the key impediment to sustainable development. Solve the political problems and the gates are open for the Angolan people to reap the benefits of an abundant natural resource base with a low population density. The country has been trying to undergo three transitions simultaneously, that from war to peace, from single-party rule to multiparty democracy and from a commandbased to a free-market economy. The article explores these processes and their effects on changing patterns of corruption.     

Population and development: fact,fancy and politics

Massive population growth is an accepted fact in developing countries at a time when developed, Western countries, i.e., the U.S., have become increasingly disenchanted with foreign aid. The gap between the very rich and very poor becomes wider and sharper. Most people live either in countries where the per capita income is below $320 or above $1,280. Lowering fertility rates would be favorable to economic conditions in the long run but with little short-run effect, population control is not a high priority government activity. The theme of the 1974 Bucharest Conference was that if development were encouraged, fertility would take care of itself. Programs which directly influence fertility rates are needed to improve development. Family planning programs are low cost compared to other development policies, and they improve maternal and child health. Women cannot be educated or employed unless they have the freedom of choice not to have children or when to have children. Western enthusiasm for fertility control has been met with suspicion in many devleoping areas. Western attitudes should be balanced by restructuring world trade and constructing relationships which would hasten economic development.     

Dangerised youth: the politics of security and development in Timor-Leste

International organisations, the national government and civil society alike have identified youth as a potential threat to the stability of the young state of Timor-Leste over the last decade. In this article, I ask how these actors define the danger of youth and what reasons they identify for the potential threat of young citizens for the society and state. Guided by a theoretical framework of Critical Security and Development Studies, I argue that while political manipulation as reason for youth violence was a prominent part of the security discourse in the years after the crisis in 2006, the discourse on the danger of youth in very recent international and national documents has been depoliticised. Despite decreasing numbers of youth-related violence, the threat construction has not vanished; rather, the language on youth has been adapted to the existing international discourse on violent youth as a threat to successful development. In this way, international and national actors have sustained the image of a society in need of management.     

Tariffs and economic development: A comment

The optimality criteria of linear programming transportation and spatial equilibrium models never ‘explain ‘ real world flow patterns. This paper provides reasons for the difference between an optimal solution and real world patterns. Data for the linear programming exercises are derived from the four stages of a rice marketing system in Sri Lanka at a time when the state had monopoly control over distribution. The examination of factors more important than transport costs in explaining residual flows sheds some light on policy and institutional problems associated with monopoly procurement.

Substantively, a comparison of the optimal solution with reality shows a fairly high degree of transportation efficiency throughout the system, except at the last stage, where rice changes hands between two parastatal orginisations (the Paddy Marketing Board and the Food Commission) to be distributed to final destinations. Inefficient store locations rather than commodity allocations generate the greatest waste of transport. Reasons for the difference between programming solutions and reality include uncertainty, congestion, policies and institutional structure conducive to a deterioration in quality of the commodity handled, problematic regional preferences for rice type, inadequate communications, unpredictable timing of rice imports and corruption.     

欧洲绿党政治的新走向

2004年2月"欧洲绿党"(EGP)在"欧洲绿党联盟"(EFGP)的基础上成立了.欧洲绿党的成立改变了欧洲的政治版图,使原来分散的32个绿党能够以共同的宣言和行动表达他们共同的声音,进一步扩大绿党在欧洲的影响.绿党政治是20世纪60年代末70年代初最先在少数西方工业化国家产生并迅速扩展开来的社会政治现象,它之所以成为典型的20世纪西方"后30年现象",在于它与其他新社会运动相比,无论是运动规模、参与人数,还是社会政治影响,绿色运动都是首屈一指的.     

Mining and subaltern politics: political struggle against neoliberal development in Bangladesh

Drawing on social movement scholarship, this paper analyses subaltern struggles against a multinational mining company. The Phulbari coal mine is the centre of contention between the mining company and local/national activists. Local concerns about the dispossession of lands and livelihoods and environmental destruction have been merged with a Leftist political agenda on the growing vulnerability of the state and national sovereignty in the Global South. A close examination of the movement's discourses suggests that a broader political struggle against resource plunder and energy imperialism has been strengthened by local community resistance to an environmentally destructive coal mine. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews, I analyse how activists have created new meanings of the conflict to confront and delegitimize hegemonic discourses of capitalist development and modernity.