Private sector shrinkage and the growth of industrialized economies: Reply

Further tests and thoughts on the OECD data lead me to conclude that, if anything, my 1986 paper underestimated the magnitude of the inverse relation between economic growth and government size. If one takes the nominal-based measure of government scale, as advised by Saunders, the significance levels, coefficient magnitudes and goodness of fits improve over what I found with my initial investigation. I would suggest that Saunders reconsider his reluctance to believe that the size of the public sector is unrelated to economic growth in OECD countries over this time period.One additional thought appears relevant to the current policy debate concerning budget deficits and economic performance within the major industrialized economies. The empirical work displayed here and in my 1986 paper suggests serious problems associated with the various proposals urging governments to raise taxes and/or ease fiscal policy. Elsewhere, I have suggested that available empirical evidence implies that plans to increase taxes as a way out of budget deficits are plans that carry the potential for raising government spending and possibly future deficits as well. Coupled with the evidence presented here, we should also recognize the potential of tax increases to raise the level of government participation in a country and, accordingly, exert inverse influences on its future economic performance as well. As suggested in my 1986 paper, the empirical evidence may suggest the following irony: While political participants may crave larger and larger non-market resource allocations, their future ability to satisfy that craving may very well be severely constrained by the satisfaction of that same appetite.     

Fiji: country profile

Fiji is a country consisting of 300 South Pacific islands, of which the largest is Vitu Levu, which includes the capital, Suva. The islands are home to 700,000 people, of whom 50% are Indian, 46% Melanesian, and the rest Chinese or European. The official language is English, and the major religions are Hinduism and Christianity. Literacy is 79% for men and 64% for women, whose status is generally low in this patriarchal society. Infant mortality is 27/1000 live births, but life expectancy is 70 years. The British began sending missionaries and manufactured goods in the early 1800s and annexed the islands in 1874 as a source of sugar, for which they expropriated the land and imported the Indians as agricultural workers. Sugar remains the largest export along with coconut oil, gold, and timber. Manufactured goods, food, fuel, and chemicals are imported, and the national debt is over $200 million. Foreign investment, mostly by Australia, is $13.2 million. Inflation is 20%; 200,000 people are unemployed, and poverty is general except for the urban elite. The Fijian dollar is worth US. 80. Independence, granted in 1970, replaced colonial control with military governments, currently that of Colonel Rambuka, who refused to allow a democratically elected government to take office. Faced with a declining economy and the political power of the fascist Taukei movement, the Indians, who had been the shopkeepers, craftsmen and bureaucrats during the later period of colonial rule, have been emigrating en masse.     

Swaziland: country profile

Although Swaziland had been independent from colonialism for 20 years, a powerful monarch, King Mswati II, continues to control the country's political, religious, and social system. Swaziland has a population of 676,000, half of whom are under 15 years of age. The infant mortality rate is 105/1000 live births and 25% of children die before they reach their 5th birthday. Life expectancy is 54 years. Tribal chiefs, representing the king, hold and distribute about half of the national land. Most of the fertile land remains in the hands of white settler farmers. The concentration of income in foreign companies and urban centers has exacerbated poverty in rural areas. Depreciation of rand-linked local currency has boosted export earnings, but it has also raised the price of food and medical imports. Swaziland's main exports are sugar, wood pulp, chemicals, and fruit, most of which go to the UK and South Africa. The major food crops are maize, beans, groundnuts, and sorghum. About half of the working population is engaged in small-scale subsistence farming, but food yields are declining. The major producers are foreign companies attracted by Swaziland's low taxes and cheap labor supply.     

Bicommunalism in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is a bicommunal society in which Protestantsare numerically dominant; Roman Catholics constitute virtuallyall of the remaining population. On the island as a whole, Protestantsare heavily outnumbered; the Republic of Ireland (the "South")has a population that is about 96 percent Catholic. Social segregationof the two northern communities is relatively distinct, andthere is little crosscutting between groups that might lessenbicommunal conflict. A reciprocal relationship exists betweenthe social system and political structures. Northern Irish politicalinstitutions followed the Westminster model, which facilitatedthe political exclusion of Catholics and impeded social as wellas political integration. The bicommunal social structure hasimpeded the development of more accommodating political structures.Geographic issues and external linkages compound the politicalproblem. Northern Irish politics can be viewed as a "dual dyad"in which the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland arecritical components. Psychological dimensions of Northern Irishbicommunalism further exacerbate the conflict.     

The transition of migratory patterns in medium-sized cities

"The authors attempt to present some empirical findings regarding a phenomenon which they chose to call the 'transition in migratory patterns'.... The general hypothesis states that: changes in migratory patterns are due to an interaction between those economic, political and social processes which affect the distribution of the population; and that this interaction is also highly influenced by macroeconomic politics--an arena where technology plays a dominant role." Data are for Guadalajara and the state of Jalisco in Mexico. (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

Situational variation in moral judgment: In a stage or on a stage?

Two issues were examined in this study—the consistency of moral judgment across different types of dilemma and different social contexts, and the relationship between the structure (stage) of moral judgment and the content of moral decisions. Forty subjects were given two hypothetical dilemmas about business decisions and two standard Kohlberg dilemmas. Half the subjects directed their responses to a business audience, half to a philosophical audience. Responses to the moral dilemmas were scored in accordance with the Colby and Kohlberg (1987) scoring manual. Stage of moral reasoning was found to be significantly higher on the Kohlberg dilemmas than on the business dilemmas. A significant interaction between type of dilemma and audience was attributed to the tendency of subjects directing their responses to a business audience to interpret one of the business dilemmas in terms of the moral order of business, but for subjects directing their responses to a philosophy audience to treat it as a philosophical dilemma. The other business dilemma evoked uniformly low-level moral judgments. The amount of selfishness intrinsic in subjects' moral choices on the business dilemmas was significantly negatively correlated with moral maturity on the business dilemmas, but not with their moral maturity on Kohlberg's test. These results are interpreted as more consistent with models of moral development such as those advanced by C. G. Levine ([1979] Stage Acquisition and Stage Use: An Appraisal of Stage Displacement Explanations of Variation in Moral Reasoning, Human Development, Vol. 22, pp. 145–164), J. Rest ([1983] Morality, in: P. H. Mussen [ed.], J. H. Flavell and E. Markman [Vol. eds.], Handbook of Child Psychology [Vol. 3, 4th ed.], John Wiley & Sons, New York), and R. Harré ([1984]) Personal Being: A Theory for Individual Psychology, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts), which posit a relatively wide range of within-person stage use and emphasize the determining power of social situations, than with the more constructivistic model of moral development of Colby and Kohlberg (1987).This research was supported by Grant No. 410-87-1115 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.Received B.A. and M.A from Simon Fraser University. Research interests include moral development, and the influence of social interaction and language on the development of reasoning.Received Ph.D. from Harvard University. Research interests include moral development, altruism, and self-deception.