From Form to Function to Sustainable Solutions? Reforming Public Sectors in Low Income Countries: New Approaches and Available Evidence of “What Works”

The article reviews the evidence about success of public sector reforms in low and middle income countries, external support for such reforms, and recent ideas of how such support could be better designed and implemented. Enthusiasm for supporting public sector reforms has decreased over the past decade, and available data suggest that there has been little overall improvement. However, it also indicates that a small number of countries have significantly strengthened their public sectors over the past 10 to 20 years. The article then reviews five new approaches that have been proposed for better supporting public sector reforms. It looks at how they diagnose what has not worked and the implications of what should be carried out differently. Furthermore, it explores to what extent the available evidence of overall stagnation as well as of success cases fits with these proposed alternatives, to gauge to what extent they are likely to make a difference. The final section sets out the implications. Development agencies should seek to deliberately test a combination of the proposed alternative approaches, particularly in more difficult contexts, taking political feasibility as a basis and adding other elements. The urgency to make progress remains high. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Putting the Supplier in Housing Supply: An Overview of the Growth and Concentration of Large Homebuilders in the United States (1990–2007)

As housing production was ramping up in the 1990s and 2000s, some of the industry’s largest firms experienced remarkable growth primarily through mergers and acquisitions and the issuance of debt; the market share of the 10 largest firms tripled between 1995 and 2005. This article describes the role of financial firms in encouraging that growth and some of its consequences. Drawing on financial filings, news reports, investor analyses, and other relevant data, this article offers an overview of the relationship between homebuilders and investment firms, as well as a new explanation of the oversupply of housing in the 2000s. In doing so, this article seeks to bring attention to homebuilders as a missing feature in analyses of housing supply and housing markets, and proposes directions for future research.     

Reforming and Performing the Informal Economy: Constitutive Effects of the World Bank's Anti-informality Practices in Kosovo

The World Bank has for over a decade tried to formalize the informal economy in Kosovo. However, local journalists and businessmen among others provide an alternative understanding of informality that problematizes the World Bank’s view and actions. Against this backdrop, the article analyses the constitution and the constitutive effects of the World Bank’s anti-informality operations in Kosovo between 1999 and 2014. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s power analytics, the article claims that the Bank’s agenda, and the economic ideas enacted through it, does structure and shape informal economic practices on the ground. Yet this structuring involves two forms of misrecognition. As a result, informality is paradoxically constituted (in novel ways) and reconstituted through the World Bank’s imposed anti-informality agenda. The article concludes with a discussion of how this underlines the need for policy solutions that depart from liberal peacebuilding’s subject–object distinction to form instead around an acknowledgement of informality as emergent and transforming throughout international interventions.     

基于循环型生态农业基础上的兰州现代农业模式构建

农业经济的落后已成为兰州市全面建设小康社会的主要制约因素。以发展循环型生态农业为切入点构筑现代农业新模式,实现农业内部各产业之间以及与之相关的其他产业间的互补与联功发展,是提升兰州农业发展水平,实现城乡统筹发展的必由之路。     

The Private Interests of Public Officials: Financial Regulation in the US Congress

Legislators' private financial holdings affect policy decisions. Due to financial self‐interest, we theorize that legislators whose personal investment portfolios include equities from firms affected by proposed policies vote for legislation that benefits those firms. We also theorize that legislators with greater personal exposure to equity investments support policies that benefit equities markets generally. We create a novel data set of legislators' personal stock investments and examine major congressional actions since the 1990s on financial deregulation and market intervention. US House members who own stocks in firms who benefit from financial deregulation vote for deregulation. House members with greater exposure to financial and automotive stocks support the financial and auto bailouts, respectively. General exposure to equities markets is also associated with support for key legislation boosting markets. The normative implications are significant, as legislators' private interests influence decisions in the public sphere.     

Brexit and Trade Ties between Europe and Commonwealth States in Sub-Saharan Africa: Opportunities for Pro-poor Growth or a Further Entrenchment of North–South Inequalities?

Abstract

Brexit will of course have major implications for trade between Commonwealth African nations and the European continent. In the short term, the European Commission’s Economic Partnership Agreements with regional groups such as the East African Community will be complicated by the UK’s decision to leave the European project. Moreover, there are longer-term consequences to be considered, not least the role which the UK—as an independent trade actor—will adopt in its trade relations with Commonwealth African countries. This article examines the impact of Brexit for Commonwealth African nations’ trade with Europe (including the UK). It particularly points to several potential pitfalls arising from the Brexit referendum vis-à-vis African development.     

The Jewish community in nineteenth century Palestine: evidence from the Montefiore censuses

Initial findings from five recently transcribed censuses of the Jewish community in nineteenth century Palestine, commissioned by Sir Moses Montefiore. This article discusses each census and presents uncorrected population figures. It describes how the Jewish community was rapidly changing: the population increased almost fourfold between 1839 and 1875, primarily due to immigration from Ashkenazi countries. The Jewish community was majority Ashkenazi by 1875. Analysis of the census data gives us detailed information about the community, such as the fact that Ashkenazim were significantly more likely than Sephardim to be engaged in full-time Torah study, whereas individuals who had immigrated to the land of Israel were slightly less likely. It also suggests that immigrations occurred at all ages, although the average age of an immigrant when they came to Palestine was 36.     

Willing Daughters: The Moral Rhetoric of Filial Sacrifice and Financial Autonomy in Tokyo's Sex Industry

Japan has one of the world's largest and most diverse legal sex industries. In a limited female labor market, sex industry work is a stigmatized yet lucrative form of women's short-term employment and advertisements for recruiting new employees are prominently displayed across urban spaces associated with feminized consumption. In this article, I examine the ideological impasses that adult Japanese women working in Tokyo's sex industry express when talking about their motives for pursuing this work. Female sex workers commonly justify their work as the necessary sacrifice of filial daughters. This rhetoric of reluctant acceptance for the sake of others, however, obscures the reality that many sex workers are middle-class and college-educated women who find the financial opportunity and flexibility of this industry appealing in contrast to more dominant forms of feminized labor. These women express the ambivalence of their desires for economic self-sufficiency through narrating the dependence of others on them. Examining these ambivalences, I argue that sex workers’ motivations can only be understood through considering the ethical and moral frameworks that define the gendered economies in which they labor.     

The political economy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership: a US perspective

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), signed in February 2016, is the most ambitious free trade deal of the postwar era. The 12 TPP countries account for nearly 40 percent of the world's economy. Coupled with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership—which is still being negotiated between the United States and the European Union—the TPP represents an attempt by the Obama Administration to lead in promoting regional trade and investment arrangements despite the failure of the Doha Round to reach a comprehensive global trade deal under the auspices of the World Trade Organization. Although the agreement among the 12 TPP countries has been reached, ratification by their legislatures is pending. Ratification by the US Congress remains uncertain due to complex economic and political factors in the United States, including the presidential election of 2016.     

陕西区域产业布局及重点产业协调发展研究

陕西地域禀赋差异明显,从产业分工优势出发,关中可依靠高新技术及其辐射作用率先发展,走产业结构优化升级发展模式;陕南立足绿色产业,走循环经济发展模式;陕北发挥能源优势,走节约能源、高效能源的可持续发展模式,实现三大区域错位与互补发展。