On the use and misuse of profit functions for measuring the price responsiveness of peasant farmers: A comment

The standard profit function approach has been applied successfully in a number of LDCs to measure the price responsiveness of peasant farmers. Yet, various problems afflict this approach including, but not restricted to, the existence of non‐competitive market structures, zero‐valued observations, exclusion of relevant variables, lack of participation in output and/or input markets, and endogeneity of input and/or output prices. The impact of these problems on estimation results, however, can be minimised through modifications and adaptations of the standard approach, better specification of the underlying technology, and the use of selected functional forms.     

Performance Measures,Ranking and Parental Choice: An Analysis of the English School League Tables

ABSTRACT

Parental choice among schools in England is informed by annually published school performance (league) tables. The 2006 league tables included a measure of contextual value added (CVA) for the first time. By explicitly accounting for the characteristics of a school's intake, the aim is that CVA should isolate the impact a school has on its pupils' progress and so provide a measure of school effectiveness. In this paper we use UK government administrative data to replicate CVA and other key performance measures in order to investigate the extent to which the current league tables provide the information necessary to support parental choice on the basis of school effectiveness. We find that school rankings based on CVA are largely uninformative for parents: almost half of English secondary schools are indistinguishable from the national average level of CVA.     

The Death of the Author through False Translation in Mario Bellatin's Orientalised Japan

This article argues that Mario Bellatin's exploration of the potential relationship between writing, translation and physical deformity leads, perhaps unconsciously, to the continuation of exoticising stereotypes about ‘Oriental’ cultures. In El jardín de la señora Murakami, Shiki Nagaoka: una nariz de ficción, and Biografía ilustrada de Mishima, Bellatin resorts to Japanese characters to distance himself from his own writings, as if it were the culture that is the most alien to his own. His lucubrations about reading and writing are sometimes accompanied of exocitising and orientalist overtones, which he mocks at times.     

Rental vacancy rates: A policy primer

Abstract

This article examines how policy makers use rental vacancy rates as indicators of housing market condition. The common practice of assuming that any rental market is in equilibrium when its rental vacancy rate is approximately 5 percent is criticized. Based on theoretical and empirical literature, the case is made that the rental vacancy rate that prevails when the supply and demand for rental units are in balance varies among areas and types of units and is not always 5 percent. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is faulted for not recognizing these variations and, therefore, misusing rental vacancy rates in its formula allocations for the Section 8 and HOME programs.

Observed vacancy rates offer meaningful insight into rental market conditions only when they are compared with empirically derived estimates of equilibrium vacancy rates. The methods for estimating these rates, however, are still being refined, and the data needed to derive such estimates are available only for a limited set of metropolitan areas. Other measures are available that policy makers could use to judge the adequacy of low‐income housing supply in local markets, but they are also somewhat problematic.