IMPACTS OF THE FARM FINANCIAL CRISIS OF THE 1980s ON RESOURCES AND POVERTY IN AGRICULTURALLY DEPENDENT COUNTIES IN THE UNITED STATES

The farm financial crisis of the 1980s has had a major effect on agriculturally dependent areas in the United States. The crisis has resulted in a large proportion of producers leaving agriculture, in a substantial decline in the number of rural businesses, and in the support for rural service bases. Although extensively analyzed, the crisis' impacts on resources and poverty have not been adequately evaluated.
This paper examines such impacts using parameters derived from USDA data and from extensive surveys of producers, business operators, and employees in rural communities. The results show effects on populations, services, and income that could lead to a substantial increase in the rates of poverty in these counties.
The paper concludes that the crisis, if left unaddressed, may result in a long-term loss of economic opportunities, accentuated rates of poverty, and reduced potential for economic development in agriculturally dependent areas in the United States.     

Implementing 'Best Value': Local Public Services in Transition

This paper examines the impacts of the 'Best Value' regime on the management of local public services in the UK. It argues that the regime marks an important shift in the framework of national regulation of local authorities and the services they provide but that the initiatives developed by the councils which have been piloting the new framework reflect a variety of approaches to local implementation. This suggests not the arrival of a new, hegemonic 'outcomes-focused paradigm' but a more gradual transition characterized by the co-existence and interaction of hierarchical, market based and collaborative frameworks for co-ordinating service delivery. The search for 'citizen-centred' services is likely to lead to a shift in the 'mix of governing structures' with an increasing number of services structured around 'cross-cutting issues', specific client groups or local communities. However, these more integrated approaches to local service delivery frequently require internal re-structuring as well as more effective collabor-ation with other local service providers and with local people. They may not therefore lead to immediate improvements in public services and will require local and central government to embrace new approaches to learning.     

WTO and China's Financial Services Sector

Financial services, particularly securities markets, insurance and commercial banking, have played a crucial role in China's post-1978 economic reforms. China has so far established a market structure and a legal framework, and has a growing understanding of how financial services operate in the modern world economy. We will review China's progress in financial services reforms over the last 22 years, describe the commitments China has made to gain WTO entrance, and then evaluate the potential benefits and costs to China's financial sector of WTO accession. We conclude that even with the substantial challenges presented by greatly increased post-WTO foreign competition, China will benefit from the WTO because of a number of factors including a growing pool of well-trained personnel, lessons learned from domestic and foreign development experiences, increasing Chinese economic strength, and continual advancement of China's financial infrastructure.     

Attentiveness to television news and opinion change in the fall 1992 presidential campaign

This paper examines the extent to which attention to television news impacted affective evaluations of presidential candidates during the last two months of the 1992 campaign. Our analyses show that attentiveness to campaign news significantly influenced evaluations in a manner consistent with the tone of news coverage for each candidate. We disaggregate the data by party and ideology, however, and discover this effect to be conditional, depending critically on the character and intensity of political predispositions. Throughout the paper we emphasize the interplay between political predispositions and the valence of network coverage, underscoring the contingent effect of media messages. We conclude with a brief discussion of our results and stress the importance of partisan reinforcement, which we found was a major consequence of news media reception during the fall 1992 campaign.     

The Gnomes of Washington: Four Myths of the 1976 IMF Crisis

The IMF settlement of December 1976 looms large in popular and partisan views of the politics of the 1970s. It is argued here that conventional academic wisdom has come to embody several misleading myths about its impact on economic policy. Evidence is presented to challenge four such myths which suggest that the IMF forced the Labour government to launch an attack on public spending, introduce cash limits to control public spending, introduce monetary targets and abandon the pursuit of full employment through demand management.
Although the language of the [IMF] negotiations reflected the arcane terms of international finance… the decisions required of the British Government were profoundly political… behind the technical financial decisions lay fundamental differences over the appropriate balance between the private and public sectors, the priority between capital accumulation and social welfare, the relative weight to be given to incentives and equality… What was at issue was the future shape of the political economy of Great Britain.¹     

Introduction: The changing life space of early adolescence

The socialization of children and adolescents is shaped by how they spend their time. This special issue maps the daily experience of white American 5th–9th graders, describing both the quantities of time they spend in different contexts and the affective states associated with these contexts. Each paper examines a separate segment of daily activity (e.g., schoolwork, talking, sports), employing data from a common study in which 401 participants provided experience sampling reports at random times during their daily lives when cued by a pager. The findings show substantial age and sex differences, indicating significant changes in the daily life space of girls and boys between preadolescence and early adolescence. Implication for socialization to healthy adult adjustment in love, work, and play are discussed in each paper.Received Ph.D. from Committee on Human Development, University of Chicago, Research focuses on daily experience associated with health and psychopathology in adolescence and across the life span.Received Ph.D. from Committee on Human Development, University of Chicago. Current research interests: pubertal development, precursors of eating disorders, and the effects of maternal employment on young adolescents.     

Are US Crime Rates Really Unit Root Processes?

Existing research has uncovered little evidence against the hypothesis of US crime rates being unit root processes, despite the uncomfortable implications of this assumption. In light of this, the present paper draws upon noted changes in the temporal patterns of US crime rates since 1960 to undertake an informed approach to testing of the unit root hypothesis which incorporates two potential points of structural change. The results obtained show the unit root hypothesis to be rejected for all classifications of criminal activity examined over the period 1960 to 2007. In addition, the dates of the detected breakpoints are supported by a variety of arguments available in the existing criminology literature concerning alternative determinants of crime and their movements. Interestingly, a difference is observed in the nature of the breaks detected for violent and property crimes. However, potential explanations for this are again found in theoretical arguments available in the criminology literature. Finally, the implications of the current findings for the properties of crime, its subsequent statistical analysis and past and future research are discussed.