Japan and China as seen from Moscow today

His most recent study wasRusso-Japanese Relations and the Future of the U.S.-Japanese Alliance (Santa Monica: RAND, MR-168-AF, 1993).     

THE WELFARE COSTS OF SUPPLY RESTRICTIONS IN THE GENERAL PRACTICE LABOUR MARKET

Abstract: This paper examines policy arguments for further restricting supply to the Australian General Practice profession by immigration and medical school policies. It uses economic analysis to assess the costs and benefits of supply restrictions. The effects of Medicare and GP income-targeting on policy design are analysed. Restrictions are shown to impose net costs on the community as a whole and on government. Even with Medicare subsidies, the inefficiency costs of the current health system are minimised with liberal policies for accepting foreign- trained GPs.     

Structuring the Debate on Consolidation: A Response to Leland and Thurmaier

In their essay "When Efficiency Is Unbelievable: Normative Lessons from 30 Years of City–County Consolidations," published in the July/August 2005 issue of PAR , Leland and Thurmaier make an important contribution to understanding how city–county consolidation occurs. They revise the widely accepted Rosenbaum and Kammerer model of consolidation and posit that "strong arguments" based on economic development, especially in the absence of organized opposition, led to victory for consolidation advocates. In this response, we argue that efforts to identify a set of arguments or charter provisions that will lead to successful consolidation are misguided. The real story in consolidation campaigns is how participants use heresthetical arguments in an effort to turn their opponents into political losers. What makes arguments strong or weak is not their substantive policy focus, but how they are structured.     

The Cost of Discrimination in Latin America

Indigenous and linguistic minorities are in an inferior economic and social position. The ethnic concentration of inequality is increasingly being recognized in the literature. In this review, studies from six Latin American countries that estimate the costs to an individual of being an economic minority are reviewed. The studies decompose the overall earnings gap into two components. One is the portion attributable to differences in the endowments of income-generating characteristics (“explained” differences) and the other is attributable to differences in the returns that majority and minority workers receive for the same endowment of income-generating characteristics (“unexplained”). This latter component is often taken as reflecting the “upper bound” of wage discrimination. In two studies for Bolivia, one using a 1966 survey and the other a 1989 survey, decomposition of the differential between indigenous and nonindigenous earnings leads to the conclusion that most of the overall differential is due to productivity. In Guatemala, Mexico and Peru, only one-half of the earnings differential can be attributed to differences in productivity-enhancing characteristics. In Paraguay, decomposition of the overall earnings differential between monolingual Spanish speakers and Guaraní speakers shows that most of the differential is explained by human capital differences. In Brazil, however, there is a significant cost to “being non-white.” Harry Anthony Patrinos is a Senior Education Economist at the World Bank. He leads the Economics of Education Thematic Group and manages EdInvest (www.worldbank.org/edinvest), the Education Investment Information Facility. He is co-author ofDecentralization of Education: Demand-Side Financing (1997). His latest co-edited book isPolicy Analysis of Child Labor: A Comparative Study (St. Martin's Press, 1999).Indigenous People and Poverty in Latin America: An Empirical Analysis (edited with George Psacharopoulos), was one of the first studies of the socioeconomic situation of indigenous peoples in Latin America.