The shadow economy and sustainable development: The role of financial development

This paper provides fresh evidence concerning the threshold relationship between the shadow economy and financial development. Shadow economy is quoted as an obstacle to sustainable development and therefore the role of financial development is examined in this paper to tackle the issue of shadow economy. It is based on panel data of 29 developed and developing countries over the period of 1975–2015 and use of panel threshold model. Three proxies for financial development—liquid liabilities, private credit to deposit money banks, and stock market capitalisation—were utilised to obtain the threshold value of US$33,600 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. This threshold helps to determine the impact of financial development on the size of the shadow economy. Empirical results suggest that above this threshold, financial development significantly contributes to the reduction in size of the shadow economy while it has no impact for countries that have per capita income below this threshold. This implies that, countries with lower per capita income (below $33,600) should implement policies to improve accessibility to finance and credit market which leads to a sufficiently higher per capita income that in turn allows for a reduction in the size of the shadow economy.     

Women and wars: Some trajectories towards a feminist peace

This paper seeks to explode a number of myths about women's absence from wars and conflict; it considers some problems about their vulnerabilities in these circumstances; and offers some feminist perspectives for addressing these problems. The paper considers the conflicting demands made on women in periods of war and revolution, and argues that differing historical processes result in different post-conflict policies towards women. There is, however, a commonality of experiences that universally marginalise women in the post-conflict and reconstruction phases. Even when women have participated actively in wars and revolutions, they are heavily pressured to go back to the home and reconstruct the private domain to assert the return of peace and 'normality'. This paper contends that the insistence on locating women within the domestic sphere in the post-war era may be counter-productive and located in the historical construction of nationhood and nationalism as masculine in terms of its character and demands. With the dawn of the twenty-first century and the long history of women's participation in wars, revolutions, and policy making, it may now be possible to use the symbolic importance given to them in times of conflict to articulate a different perception of nationhood and belonging, and to create a more cooperative and less competitive and hierarchical approach to politics and the reconstruction of nations and their sense of belonging.     

Book reviews

Bryan S. Turner, Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalising (Routledge, London 1994). 208pp. ISBN 0–415–10861–6, 0–415–10862–4 (pb).

Mir Zohair Husain, Global Islamic Politics, (Harper Collins, London 1995). 282pp. ISBN 0–06501484–7 (pb).

Sondra Farganis, Situating Feminism: From Thought to Action, (Sage, London 1994). 195pp. ISBN 0–8039–4650–3

Tom Mayer, Analytical Marxism, (Sage, California 1994). 371pp. ISBN 0–8039–4681–3 (pb).

Ian Adams, Political Ideology Today, (Manchester University Press, Manchester 1995). 369pp. ISBN 0–7190–3347–0.

Geoffrey Pridham and Tatu Vanhanen, Democratization in Eastern Europe: Domestic and international perspectives, (Routledge, London 1994). 274pp. ISBN 0–415–11063–7(hb), 0–415–11064–5(pb).

Ash Amin (ed), Post‐Fordism: A Reader, (Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1994). 435pp. ISBN 0–631–18857–6 (pb).