A note on modelling labour migration in LDCs

Taking the family as the rural‐to‐urban migration decision‐making unit, will the ‘expected‐income migration model’ accurately predict the level of migration? Consideration of two variables ‐ desire for leisure, and a version to risk ‐ serves to show that the expected‐income model yields a systematic downward bias in the predicted level of rural‐to‐urban migration. Likely policy implications emanating from the incorporation of these variables in the migration decision are indicated.     

Barriers to Efficiency and the Privatisation of Township-Village Enterprises

Qian (2000 Qian, Y. 2000. The process of China's market transition (1978–98): the evolutionary, historical, and comparative perspectives. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 156(1): 151–171. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and others suggest that post-1994 tax and banking reforms in China, combined with the development of markets for allocating resources, influenced the economic performance of township-village enterprises (TVEs) and private enterprises (PEs). This paper uses Chinese provincial level data to search for evidence of advantages and/or disadvantages offered to TVEs and PEs before and after the 1994 reforms. We define a sectoral net income-based measure of overall efficiency and decompose the measure into components that highlight the existence of credit constraints, output target constraints and labour hiring constraints. The results offer empirical support for Qian and others explanation of why private enterprises eventually emerged as the dominant institution for allocating resources in post-1994 rural China.     

Critical Pedagogy in the Neoliberal University: Reflections on the 2015 York University Strike through a Marcusean Lens

Abstract

In this article, we see the month-long graduate student and contract faculty strike at York University (Toronto, 2015) through a lens informed by Herbert Marcuse’s thought. In the context of widespread student protests across North America against neoliberal austerity, we draw on our picket line experiences to argue that Marcuse’s work provides insights into how students and faculty can engage in critical praxis within the neoliberal university. We argue that CUPE 3903, the union of TAs and contract faculty at York, is a kind of counter-institution that Marcuse argued was necessary for liberation. Marcuse strategically urged students to take advantage of gaps or cracks in a disintegrating system. Our analysis revolves around the complex experience of the graduate student picket lines – a “gap” – as a site of rupture for the liberation of aesthetic experience, “organized spontaneity,” open, democratic organization, as well as conflict.