In this book, Andrew Harvey sets out to provide a unified and comprehensive theory of structural time series models. Unlike the traditional ARIMA models, structural time series models consist explicitly of unobserved components, such as trends and seasonals, which have a direct interpretation. As a result the model selection methodology associated with structural models is much closer to econometric methodology. The link with econometrics is made even closer by the natural way in which the models can be extended to include explanatory variables and to cope with multivariate time series. From the technical point of view, state space models and the Kalman filter play a key role in the statistical treatment of structural time series models. The book includes a detailed treatment of the Kalman filter. This technique was originally developed in control engineering, but is becoming increasingly important in fields such as economics and operations research. This book is concerned primarily with modelling economic and social time series, and with addressing the special problems which the treatment of such series poses. The properties of the models and the methodological techniques used to select them are illustrated with various applications. These range from the modellling of trends and cycles in US macroeconomic time series to to an evaluation of the effects of seat belt legislation in the UK.

Forecasting, Structural Time Series Models and the Kalman Filter

TH1OSE WHO WOULD CODIFY THE MEANINGS OF WORDS fight a losing battle, for words, like the ideas and things they are mneant to signify, have a history. Neither Oxford dons nor the Academie FranUaise have been entirely able to stem the tide, to capture and fix mneanings free of the play of huinan invention and imagination. Mary Wortley Montagu added bite to her witty denunciation "of the fair sex" ("my only consolation for being of that gender has been the assurance of never being mnarried to any one among them") by deliberately misusing the grammatical reference. ' Through the ages, people have made figurative allusions by employing gramnmnatical termns to evoke traits of character or sexuality. For example, the usage offered by the Dictionnaire de la langue francaise in 1876 was, "On ne sait de quel genre il est, s'il est mile ou femelle, se dit d'un homnme tres-cache, dont on ne connait pas les sentiments."2 And Gladstone made this distinction in 1878: "Athene has nothing of sex except the gender, nothing of the woman except the form."3 Most recently-too recently to find its way into dictionaries or the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences-feminists have in a imore literal and serious vein begun to use "gender" as a way of referring to the social organization of the relationship between the sexes. The connection to grammar is both explicit and full of unexamined possibilities. Explicit because the grammatical usage involves formal

/pdf/gender-a-useful-category-of-historical-analysis-4rba11dyjw.pdf

Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis

On exports and economic growth

The twentieth century gave rise to profound changes in traditional sex roles. However, the force of this 'rising tide' has varied among rich and poor societies around the globe, as well as among younger and older generations. Rising Tide sets out to understand how modernization has changed cultural attitudes towards gender equality and to analyze the political consequences of this process. The core argument suggests that women and men's lives have been altered in a two-stage modernization process consisting of (i) the shift from agrarian to industrialized societies and (ii) the move from industrial towards post industrial societies. This book is the first to systematically compare attitudes towards gender equality worldwide, comparing almost 70 nations that run the gamut from rich to poor, agrarian to postindustrial. Rising Tide is essential reading for those interested in understanding issues of comparative politics, public opinion, political behavior, political development, and political sociology.

/pdf/rising-tide-gender-equality-and-cultural-change-around-the-4nv4loqf2b.pdf

Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World

Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature brings to light the deep sense of crisis within the profession of academic philosophy which is similar to the paralyzing pluralism in contemporary theology and the inveterate indeterminacy of literary criticism. Richard Rorty's provocative and profound meditations impel philosophers to examine the problematic status of their discipline— only to discover that modern European philosophy has come to an end. Rorty strikes a deathblow to modern European philosophy by telling a story about the emergence, development and decline of its primary props: the correspondence theory of truth, the notion of privileged representations and the idea of a self-reflective transcendental subject. Rorty's fascinating tale—his-story —is regulated by three fundamental shifts which he delineates in detail and promotes in principle: the move toward anti-realism or conventionalism in ontology, the move toward the demythologizing of the Myth of the Given or anti-foundationalism in epistemology, and the move toward detranscendentalizing the subject or dismissing the mind as a sphere of inquiry. The chief importance of Rorty's book is that it brings together in an original and intelligible narrative the major insights of the patriarchs of postmodern American philosophy—W. V. Quine, Wilfred Sellars, and Nelson Goodman— and persuasively presents the radical consequences of their views for contemporary philosophy. Rorty credits Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Dewey for having "brought us into a period of 'revolutionary' philosophy" by undermining the prevailing Cartesian and Kantian paradigms and advancing new conceptions of philosophy. And these monumental figures surely inspire Rorty. Yet, Rorty's philosophical debts—the actual sources of his particular anti-Cartesian and antiKantian arguments—are Quine's holism, Sellars' anti-foundationalism, and Goodman's pluralism. In short, despite his adamant attack on analytical philosophy—the last stage of modern European philosophy—Rorty feels most comfortable with the analytical form of philosophical argumentation (shunned by Wittgenstein and Heidegger). From the disparate figures of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey, Rorty gets a historicist directive: to eschew the quest for certainty and the search for foundations.

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

English Apprenticeship: A Neglected Factor in the First Industrial Revolution

Female-headed households in early industrial Britain: the vanguard of the proletariat.

S tudies of industrialization inevitably involve some investigation of economic structure: structural changes comprise a defining characteristic of 'the industrial revolution' according to standard descriptions2 and the construction of output index numbers to ascertain growth rates requires knowledge of the distribution of value added.3 Surprisingly, these concerns have not spilled over into a direct interest in the interrelationships among industries during industrialization, studies of which would shed light on the mechanism of economic growth. Input-output analysis provides an obvious framework within which to investigate these interrelationships but the stumbling block is clearly the assembly of the necessary historical statistics. This article tries to overcome this obstacle and use input-output analysis to investigate the structure of an economy undergoing industrialization. Specifically we present an input-output table for the UK economy for i84I. So far as we know, this represents the first attempt to summarize the structure of the UK economy in this way for a date earlier than I907, for which year we have Thomas's study.4 We cannot expect the result to have the precision of Thomas's work, let alone that of the five-yearly inputoutput tables now published by the Central Statistical Office. But, compared with a retrospective look at a more recent year, our task is simplified by the rudimentary structure of the economy in i84I. The next section gives a brief description of our sources and the methods that we used to reconstruct the inter-industry transactions. The production analysis is then used to cast the table of input-output accounts. Capital and labour inputs by industry are also identified. We then use the table to identify the interdependence and linkages between industries and to assess the total productivity of each industry. I~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An input-output table for 1841

Child labor was more prevalent in 19th-century industrializers than it is in developing countries today. It was particularly extensive in the earliest industrializers. This pattern may be a source of optimism signaling the spread of technologies that have little use for child labor and of values that endorse the preservation and protection of childhood. Today and historically, orphaned and fatherless children and those in large families are most vulnerable. Efficient interventions to curb child labor involve fiscal transfers to these children and active policies toward street children. Changes in capitalist labor markets (including technology), family strategies, state policies, and cultural norms are examined to shed light on the causes, chronology, and consequences of child labor.

/pdf/child-labor-lessons-from-the-historical-experience-of-today-tdscbd6g7u.pdf

Child labor : lessons from the historical experience of today's industrial economies

Quantitative and qualitative analysis of a large number of autobiographies by working men who lived through the industrial revolution has demonstrated that there was an upsurge in child labour in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with children's work entrenched in traditional sectors as well as spreading in newly mechanized factories and workshops. I have interpreted this rise in terms of the appearance of a new equilibrium in the early industrial economy with more and younger children at work. The new equilibrium, in turn, was related to a number of co‐incidental developments including: an increase in the relative productivity of children as a result of mechanization, new divisions of labour, and changes in the organization of work; the dynamics of competitive dependence linking labour market and families; high dependency ratios within families; stumbling male wages and pockets of poverty; family instability; and breadwinner frailty. The establishment of these links forges a new synchronization between revised views of the industrial revolution and a revisionist history of child labour.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=2244043

Jane Humphries

Papers

English Apprenticeship: A Neglected Factor in the First Industrial Revolution

Female-headed households in early industrial Britain: the vanguard of the proletariat.

An input-output table for 1841

Child labor : lessons from the historical experience of today's industrial economies

Childhood and child labour in the British industrial revolution1: CHILDHOOD AND CHILD LABOUR