Determinants of use of special drawing rights by developing nations

The paper examines the determinants of use of Special Drawing Rights by developing countries. Simple behavioural models are presented and estimated to explain the use of SDRs and the role of SDRs in the reserve portfolios of less developed countries. While the results are far from conclusive, they provide some understanding of the role of the newest international reserve asset in the international financial decisions of less developed countries.     

Incidence of agricultural export taxation in Papua New Guinea

The present fixed‐rate levy on major rural exports exerts a highly regressive and burdensome impact on marginal estates and smallholders at low external prices. In an export boom, however, it fails significantly to compress substantial plantation windfall profits and abnormally high village incomes. Thus the duty tends to destabilise producers' earnings over the export cycle. These undesirable effects can be considerably reduced under the proposed export tax schedules, with a cut‐off point to eliminate fiscal absorption at lower prices. However, the built‐in graduated rate structures will enable the government to mobilise greater excess agricultural resources during a price upswing. This serves not only to compensate for the tax losses through Marketing Boards' accumulations, but also to provide government revenue for rural improvement and development purposes.     

Has Television Personalized Voting Behavior?

Scholars and political observers have suggested that television has “personalized” voting behavior in American presidential elections by encouraging citizens to cast ballots on the basis of candidate image and personality. Though an oft-heard assertion, little solid evidence exists that this is true, and the reinvigoration of partisanship and the persistence of ideological conflict suggest personalization may be less pervasive than supposed. In this paper, I use National Election Studies data to examine whether voters are more concerned with candidates’ personal characteristics now than they were at the outset of the television era. I find, however, that voters are no more likely today to mention candidate personality as a reason for their vote choice than they were in the 1950s and 1960s. Moreover, while personality affects voting behavior, its influence on candidate choice is not significantly larger than it was a half-century ago. The results are not contingent on exposure to television or political awareness and are insensitive to different measures of perceptions of candidate image. The findings are consistent with the resurgence of partisan voting in American elections and suggest that some concerns about TV’s effects on political judgment are exaggerated.

Hongkong Chinese emigration and investment patterns in response to the 1997 problem

The transfer of Hongkong from British to PRC sovereignty has resulted in an apparently large outflow of Hongkong Chinese emigrants and investments abroad. The outflow is motivated by a variety of causes: Political fear, uncertainty, and economic considerations. These motivations in turn are mediated by the socio-economic position of potential migrants, their preference for developed. Western, liberal, English-speaking countries and the interplay of these factors with the international institutional system of legal migration. Because of these factors, the possibility of Communist rule after 1997 has in fact generated not a single response from Hongkong Chinese, but a variety of different responses. They range from economically eligible migrants choosing to stay and invest in Hongkong to outright emigration and divestment.