This paper develops a model to analyze economic performance under different political regimes. An “oligarchic” society, where political power is in the hands of major producers, protects their property rights but also tends to erect significant entry barriers against new entrepreneurs. Democracy, where political power is more widely diffused, imposes redistributive taxes on producers, but tends to avoid entry barriers. When taxes in democracy are high and the distortions caused by entry barriers are low, an oligarchic society achieves greater efficiency. Because comparative advantage in entrepreneurship shifts away from the incumbents, the inefficiency created by entry barriers in oligarchy deteriorates over time. The typical pattern is one of rise and decline of oligarchic societies: An oligarchic society may first become richer, but later fall behind a similar democratic society. I also discuss how democracies may be better able to take advantage of new technologies, how within-elite conflict in oligarchies might cause a transition to democracy, and how the unequal distribution of income may keep inefficient oligarchic institutions in place. (JEL: P16, O10)

Oligarchic versus democratic societies

Since its introduction in the first Human Development Report in 1990, the Human Development Index (HDI) has attracted great interest in policy and academic circles, as well as in the media and national audiences around the world. Its popularity can be attributed to the simplicity of its characterization of development - an average of achievements in health, education and income – and to its underlying message that development is much more than economic growth. The index was originally conceived by the late Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq, in collaboration with Amartya Sen and other scholars, as a response to their dissatisfaction with GDP as the standard measure of development. As Haq noted, “Any measure that values a gun several hundred times more than a bottle of milk is bound to raise serious questions about its relevance for human progress.” Yet the HDI’s very simplicity prompted critiques from the start, with some contending that it was too simplistic, while others who accepted its self-imposed limitations still questioned its choice of indicators and its computational methodology. This article discusses the concept and key insights learnt from the HDI, provides a detailed review of key critiques of the HDI, today and in the past, and explains the recent changes introduced to the HDI formula and indicators. Recent controversies are highlighted and placed in the context of longer running debates. The innovations to broaden the measurement of deprivations and disparities in human development are introduced, with some key global and regional insights.

http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdrp_2011_01.pdf

The HDI 2010: new controversies, old critiques

The recent overthrow of the Shah of Iran, the launching of the Iranian Revolution between 1977 and 1979, came as a sudden surprise to outside observers from the American friends of the Shah, to journalists and political pundits, and to social scientists including those, like me, who are supposed to be "experts" on revolutions. All of us have watched the unfolding of current events with fascination and, perhaps, consternation. A few of us have also been inspired to probe the Iranian sociopolitical realities behind those events. For me, such probing was irresistible - above all because the Iranian Revolution struck me in some ways as quite anomalous. This revolution surely qualifies as a sort of "social revolution". Yet its unfolding - especially in the events leading to the Shah's overthrow - challenged expectations about revolutionary causation that I developed through comparative-historical research on the French, Russian, and Chinese Revolutions.' "Social revolutions" as I define them are rapid, basic transformations of a country's state and class structures, and of its dominant ideology. Moreover, social revolutions are carried through, in part, by class-based upheavals from below. The Iranian Revolution seems to fit this conception. Under the old regime, the Shah ruled through an absolutist-monarchical military dictatorship, styling himself a cosmopolitan Persian King in the 2,500-year-old image of Cyrus the Great. Iran's dominant class, ostentatiously pro-Western in its cultural style, consisted of state bureaucrats, foreign capitalist investors, and domestic capitalists closely tied by patronage and regulation to the state machine. The Revolution itself involved revolts against this dominant class by urban workers, unemployed people, and old and new middle classes. Finally, the removal of the Shah was accompanied by the dispossession of many (especially politically privileged) capitalists, by the removal of all top officials

Rentier state and shi'a islam in the iranian revolution

In this article we provide a summary of empirical results obtained in several economics and operations research papers that attempt to explain, predict, or suggest remedies for financial crises or banking defaults; we also outline the methodologies used in them. We analyze financial and economic circumstances associated with the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis and the global financial turmoil that has led to severe crises in many countries. The intent of this article is to promote future empirical research for preventing bank failures and financial crises.

/pdf/financial-crises-and-bank-failures-a-review-of-prediction-3j1qb6qqwc.pdf

Financial Crises and Bank Failures: A Review of Prediction Methods

Counseling for work and relationship is a social constructionist perspective, informed by feminist and social justice values, and responsive to radical changes in contemporary lives, that fosters a shift in vocational psychology from helping people develop careers to helping people construct lives through work and relationship. The first and major proposition of this perspective is a new discourse for describing the construction of lives that specifies four major social contexts through which people construct lives. These social contexts are market work, personal care work, personal relationships, and market work relationships. Additional propositions of the counseling for work and relationship perspective are the centrality of narrative theory for understanding how lives are constructed and agentic action as a critical process in constructing lives. Implications for research, intervention, and training are considered.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0011000011406452

Fereydoun Hoveyda

Papers

The Rise and Fall of the Shah