Report of the royal commission on population ‐ A comment

The purpose of this paper is to present estimates of expenditure elasticities and household‐size elasticities derived from nationwide budget‐survey data of both urban and rural households conducted by the National Statistical Office of Malawi. All too often demand projections are based on demand elasticities derived from small samples in the capital city which can give a highly misleading picture of how demand may be expected to grow. Urban/rural differences in elasticities and possibly differences between different urban areas contribute to these inaccuracies. These possibilities are examined in sections 5 and 6 which present and discuss the results and make some tentative demand projections. The sample functional form utilized, and the estimation technique are discussed in sections 2, 3 and 4 respectively. In section 7 results of several different elasticities studies conducted in Eastern Africa are presented and compared.     

Transnational Strategic Networks and Policymaking in Chile: CORFO's High Technology Investment Promotion Program

Once prey to government patrimonial practices, the Corporación de Fomento de la Producción (CORFO), Chile's economic development agency, overcame this problem in the early 1990s. In 2000 CORFO established a High Technology Investment Promotion Program to promote foreign direct investment in high technology and other nontraditional sectors. This article applies concepts of political survival and cooperation to explain how CORFO moved from patrimonialism to technocratic independence. Then it demonstrates that governments possessing technocratic independence but lacking other characteristics typically associated with successful investment promotion efforts can develop transnational strategic networks of individuals, business associations, and universities to facilitate their learning process in order to devise more effective strategies to promote nontraditional FDI.     

Optimal Growth with Public Capital and Public Services

We characterize optimal economic growth in an endogenous growth model in which production requires public capital (a stock) and public services (a flow) in addition to private capital and labor. We analyze the comparative static effects of changes in the fundamental technological and preference parameters of the model on the optimal values of several variables, such as the optimal rate of growth and the optimal allocation of resources among consumption, the provision of public services, and investment in public and private capital. We show that the general optimal path converges in finite time to the balanced growth optimal path. We relate our paper to important contributions to the existing literature by obtaining them as special cases of our model.     

Having your Dutch foundation managed

Together with the 2005 and 2006 contributions, the present contributionforms the third part of a ‘Dutch foundations manual’. The article sets out how to select an appropriate Dutch FiduciaryServices Office (‘FSO’), elaborates on the criteriato be applied to this selection and provides recommendationswith a view to the negotiating and contracting with the FSO.Furthermore, the article also discusses the availability oflegal actions which are at the ultimate beneficiary's disposalif the FSO or a manager defaults or commits tort.     

Corporate wealth or public health? WTO/TRIPS flexibilities and access to HIV/AIDS antiretroviral drugs by developing countries

Between 1994 and 2003, the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement of the WTO was refined to allow for flexibilities in the use of compulsory licences to import and export ‘generic’ varieties of pharmaceutical products, including ARV drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. After summarising this process, and assessing its implications in practice for developing countries, this article briefly places the current regime in a longer-term context of the institutional protection of patents in Britain and Europe dating from the nineteenth century. It traces how that pattern, which benefits major patent holders, continues to be present in TRIPS. The article goes on to demonstrate the continuity of corporate influence over the state, as expressed in the ‘TRIPS-plus’ conditions, which are appearing in bilateral free-trade agreements between the USA and either individual developing countries or regional groupings. This array of what amount to institutional obstacles to the sustained availability of cheap drugs presents serious problems for future operations of the supply chain for many imported medicines and, in the case of HIV/AIDS, has negative implications for the long-term clinical effectiveness of the most widely used drugs.     

Evaluation of Direct PCR Amplification Using Various Swabs and Washing Reagents

DNA profiles were generated via direct amplification from blood and saliva samples deposited on various types of swab substrates. Each of the six non-FTA substrates used in this research was punched with a Harris 1.2 mm puncher. After 0.1 μL of blood or 0.5 μL saliva, samples were deposited on each of these punches, samples were pretreated with one of four buffers and washing reagents. Amplification was performed using direct and nondirect autosomal and Y-STR kits. Autosomal and Y-STR profiles were successfully generated from most of these substrates when pretreated with buffer or washing reagents. Concordant profiles were obtained within and between the six substrates, the six amplification kits, and all four reagents. The direct amplification of substrates which do not contain lysing agent would be beneficial to the forensic community as the procedure can be used on evidence samples commonly found at crime scenes.