The price of everything and the value of nothing? Unravelling the workings of Russia's ‘virtual economy’

The unprecedented reliance on non-monetary exchange (NME) in transactions among industrial enterprises is one of the most remarkable features of Russia's post-Soviet economic transformation. This paper argues that firms engage in NME in order to discount nominal prices which remain well above market-clearing levels. The mechanisms which prevent a convergence between formal and actual transaction values include asset valuation rules, depreciation schedules, tax regulations and an inadequate bankruptcy mechanism. These distortions to the price-formation mechanism effectively operate to sustain a subsidy regime which has hitherto shielded much of Russian industry from the rigours of the market. The analysis concludes with an examination of the 1998 financial collapse, arguing that the crash was rooted in the breakdown of the subsidy system just described, a process which was strikingly similar to the breakdown of the Soviet economic system a decade earlier.     

Alienation and Belonging - Women's Citizenship and Emancipation: Visions for Sudan's Post-Islamist Future

This essay examines Sudanese Islamist debates about the position of women within an Islamic framework, oppositional groups' stances on the nature of a post-Islamist Sudan and women's role in the nation. The author critiques oppositional groups for a lack of vision for a post-Islamist gender egalitarian Sudan and feminism for its lack of clarity about the concept of women's emancipation. The author argues that all groups in Sudan have not extended a visionary approach to women, but have been limited to expressions about "women's rights." Using the concepts of "emancipation," "gender egalitarianism," "citizenship," "alienation," "belonging," and "subject," the author deconstructs segments of crucial political documents such as Islamic decrees, the new Sudanese Constitution (1998), the "Asmara Declaration" of the National Democratic Alliance, and various statements by political parties in exile. Using excerpts from women's narratives, the author attempts to illuminate Sudanese women's self-identification, belonging, and citizenship.     

C. Wright Mills,Power Structure Research,and the Failures of Mainstream Political Science

“Power Reconsidered” was the theme of the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in 2006. In a steady stream of analytically focused and empirically rich books and articles over the last 40 years, G. William Domhoff had made a unique and challenging contribution to the study of power and politics in the United States. In this commentary, based on a presentation at an APSA panel sponsored by the New Political Science section, Domhoff criticizes the narrow and misleading ways in which the concept of power has been used by pluralist, state autonomy, and historical institutionalism approaches in political science. Drawing on the path-breaking work of C. Wright Mills and Floyd Hunter in the 1950s, Domhoff restates and develops his class and organizational interpretation of the American power structure. As a progressive and scholarly journal, New Political Science encourages authors to submit research articles that engage with the theoretical questions raised by Domhoff.     

Interbranch Negotiations over Policies with Multiple Outcomes

Whereas presidents represent the entire nation, members of Congress serve districts and states. Consequently, presidents and members of Congress often disagree not only about the merits of different policies but also about the criteria used to assess them. To investigate the relevance of jurisdictional?and by extension criterial?differences for policymaking, we revisit classic models of bargaining under uncertainty. Rather than define uncertainty about the mapping of one policy into one outcome, as all previous scholars have done, we allow for every policy to generate two politically relevant outcomes, one local and another national. We then identify equilibria in which the president's utility is increasing in the value that a representative legislator assigns to national outcomes. As an application of this theory, we analyze budgetary politics in war and peace. We find that during periods of war, when members of Congress assign greater importance to the very same national outcomes that preoccupy presidents, congressional appropriations more closely reflect presidential proposals.     

Declining foreclosure neighborhood effects over time

According to previous studies, residential foreclosures reduce the value of neighboring residential units and the initial negative effects decay over time and space. This study attempts to investigate the temporal path of the initial effects by following cohorts of single-family housing distressed sales (foreclosures and real estate owned sales) over time. A hedonic model estimation of single-family housing sales in Saint Louis County, Missouri, produced larger marginal impacts for new distressed sales in the year 2000 compared with the marginal impact of new distressed sales in 2007, that is, the marginal impact of new distressed sales is declining in at least one housing market. This result holds true for the distressed sale neighborhood impact, the effect of distress on the same unit's future sales price, and the discount on a distressed unit's current “liquidation sale” price.     

Women employment in colonial Hong Kong

Women's participation in the labour market is on the rise, and employment opportunities available to working women have increased greatly. However, working women in Hong Kong are still disproportionately underrepresented in higher status occupations. Despite general improvement in their educational attainment, women are still unequally paid. Their role in the workplace is still very much constrained and impeded by their familial role. Hong Kong women's continuing subordination in the workplace lies in the domination of the Chinese patriarchal family in industrial Hong Kong. Women experience institutional discrimination insofar as other institutions and the public at large also subscribe to culturally entrenched prejudices and discriminatory practices against women. It appears that women's subordinate status will not change in the foreseeable future.     

Joint production and consumption in traditional households: Fuelwood and crop residues in two districts in Nepal

Forest conversion by agricultural households is the leading cause of deforestation. Yet we know little about agricultural household use of forest and tree products. This article measures household production of and demand for fuelwood and fuel substitutes in two districts in Nepal. Women play a larger role in collection in the district dependant on production from common forestlands. Men and agricultural capital are more important inputs in the district dependant on production from private lands. The article also measures demand elasticities for fuelwood, combustible agricultural residues, and improved stoves (a technological substitute), each by household income group. All price and income demand elasticities are less than one. The substitution elasticities between residues and fuelwood are less than one. Residues are more important substitutes for low income households and improved stoves are more important substitutes for high income households.     

An investigation of the export expansion hypothesis

The present study examines the appropriate development strategies for industrially advanced and developed nations utilising the earlier research of Alfred Maizels. As before, the basic model used is the ‘ex‐ante’ model developed by Hollis Chenery and Alan Strout. The results support the ‘Export Expansion’ hypothesis which emphasises the importance of exports as a source of savings and as a catalyst for economic development for both highly developed and less developed countries. Gross Domestic Product, Non‐export Gross Domestic Product, and exports are used to explain savings in 11 less developed countries and six developed countries.