A Political Economy Forecast for the 2005 British General Election

Recently, we proposed an original statistical model for forecasting general elections in the United Kingdom, based on the observation of a few key indicators of the political and economic system. That vote function model was tested against the results of the 2001 general election. Here we evaluate the results of that test, and offer an appropriately revised model for the forecasting of the upcoming 2005 general election. According to our forecast, a Labour victory appears the most likely outcome.     

“Complete Labelling” and Domestic Prosecutions for Crimes Against Humanity

Criminal Law Forum - Fair labelling is an established principle of criminal justice that scrutinises the way that States use language in labelling criminal defendants and their conduct. I argue...     

Credit Constraints and Distress Sales in Rural India: Evidence from Kalahandi District,Orissa

The literature on the rural credit market in India (and elsewhere) has generally assumed that peasant farm households are rationed in their access to subsidized formal credit. Because of a lack of infrastructure and poor access to institutional credit, such farmers are exploited by means of an interlocked market connecting informal credit to the sale of paddy. The resulting gap, between the sale by a borrower of paddy at a predetermined low price, and the price of this commodity on the open market, constitutes the amount of what is termed a distress sale. The latter is itself influenced by the bargaining capacity (or lack thereof) of the peasant farmer who borrows on the informal market. Also of importance in determining whether or not a cultivator is compelled to resort to the informal credit market – and thus into an interlocked arrangement – is the need for additional liquidity to meet production costs and/or household consumption, as well as the monopsony nature of the paddy market. Data from Kalahandi district in Orissa suggest that access to formal credit is limited in rural areas although there exists a high demand for it, that a high degree of credit rationing by the formal lender occurs, and that poor implementation by the state of minimum support price policy all contribute to the need for informal loans and its attendant interlinkage.     

Agrarian structure,foreign investment in land,and land prices in Brazil

The recent global rush for farmland in Latin America has produced a dramatic increase in the level of foreign investment in land in Brazil. The current trend accentuates the ongoing process of foreignization of agriculture associated with the production of grains, sugar, ethanol and other commodities, increasing land prices. In response, the Brazilian government reestablished a legal mechanism for ‘controlling’ land-based foreign investment which has proven neither efficient nor effective in solving land concentration. This paper examines this issue by analyzing the causes of the increase in investment as well as the consequences of this process with respect to land prices, critically situating land-based investments and the government's policy response in a broader discussion of the demands of agrarian social movements.