Showing papers in "The Economic Journal in 1979"

Poverty in the United Kingdom : a survey of household resources and standards of living

Abstract: Breadline Britain-Stewart Lansley 2015-02-19 Poverty in Britain is at post-war highs and even with economic growth -is set to increase yet further. Food bank queues are growing, levels of severe deprivation have been rising, and increasing numbers of children are left with their most basic needs unmet. Based on exclusive access to the largest ever survey of poverty in the UK, and its predecessor surveys in the 1980s and 1990s, Stewart Lansley and Joanna Mack track changes in deprivation and paint a devastating picture of the reality of poverty today and its causes. Shattering the myth that poverty is the fault of the poor and a generous benefit system, they show that the blame lies with the massive social and economic upheaval that has shifted power from the workforce to corporations and swelled the ranks of the working poor, a group increasingly at the mercy of low-pay, zero-hour contracts and downward social mobility. The high levels of poverty in the UK are not ordained but can be traced directly to the political choices taken by successive governments. Lansley and Mack outline an alternative economic and social strategy that is both perfectly feasible and urgently necessary if we are to reverse the course of the last three decades.

Accounting and fixed price multipliers in a social accounting matrix framework

Abstract: The relationship between output, factor demands, and income and the decomposition of these relationships into separate effects as suggested by the structure of a social accounting matrix are examined. The best analytical approach for examining these relationships uses a model that starts with a social accounting matrix, and hence, with a structure of an economy at some base date. The methodology contains accounting multipliers that give insight into the anatomy of the social accounting matrix. In addition, the multipliers examine transfer effects and the full circular and cross effects between different parts of the economy. The model shows how the structure of production and income distribution are interrelated and how they derive from the structure of exogenous demand and the distribution of assets. Analysis of the social accounting matrix and the accounting multipliers shows the extent to which initial structure is important in determining the impact of changes in demand. The fixed price multiplier approach could be extended to embrace the interaction of price changes and shifts in exogenuous demand. Equations and matrix values are provided. 17 references.

Economics, Environmental Policy, and the Quality of Life.

Abstract: In this detailed study, the authors present, in a non-technical way, the basic economic principles of environmental policy. They develop the implications of these principles for the design and implementation of environmental regulation and describe experience with existing policy.

Generalised Farrell Measures of Efficiency: An Application to Milk Processing in Swedish Dairy Plants

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the measurement of productive efficiency. Farrell's measures of efficiency are generalized to nonhomogeneous production functions. Several new measures of efficiency have been introduced and applied to the Swedish milk processing industry. The empirical analysis is based on a complete set of cross section- time series data for a period of la years of 28 individual plants producing a homogeneous product, pasteurized milk. Industrial structure and structural change are examined by both studying the shape of the efficiency distributions for the individual units and their changes through time. The aggregate performance of the sector is studied by the development of the different measures of structural efficiency. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

The Philosophy of Money

Abstract: Acknowledgements Foreword to The Routledge Classics Edition Preface to the Third Edition Introduction to the Translation Analytical Part 1. Value and Money 2. The Value of Money as Substance 3. Money in the Sequence of Purposes Synthetic Part 4. Individual Freedom 5. The Money Equivalent of Personal Values 6. the Style of Life Appendix: The Constitution of the Text

Economic Growth and Distribution in China.

Abstract: This study maintains that China's system of economic planning tends to mitigate the trade-off between economic growth and equity that has been found to prevail in the early stages of development in most less developed countries. The analysis focuses on the Chinese leadership's attempt to improve economic efficiency by decentralizing economic management without encouraging, as a consequence, increased economic inequality among different regions. By examining the budgetary and planning process, focusing in particular on the fiscal relations between the centre and the far-reaching degree of resource redistribution undertaken by the central government through its control of interprovincial and intersectoral resource transfers. Professor Lardy's analysis highlights the essential features of Chinese economic growth and relates these to the experience of both developing and Soviet-type economies.

The Theory of Commodity Price Stabilisation Rules: Welfare Impacts and Supply Responses

Abstract: Commodity price stabilisation schemes are again topical, this time as a result of pressure from UNCTAD for an integrated programme on commodities as part of the 'New International Order'. Despite the long history of interest in the subject and its evident importance for developing countries the conventional analysis of the impact of price stabilisation is remarkably simplistic.^ The theory was developed by Waugh (1944), Oi (1961), and Massell (1969) and provides the basis for most subsequent theoretical investigations (of which some are presented in the references and surveyed in Turnovsky, 1978^) and empirical estimates (e.g. MacAvoy and McNicol, 1976; World Bank, 1977). The WaughOi-Massell approach assumes 'linear demand and supply schedules, instantaneous reaction of supply and demand to changes in market prices, additive stochastic disturbances and price stabilisation at the mean of the prices which would have prevailed in an unstabilised market' (World Bank, 1977), as shown in Fig. I.

Price adjustment and market structure

Abstract: The present thesis is concerned with the relationship between price adjustments in response to changes in economic conditions and industrial market structure. Its point of departure consists of abandoning the time-honoured assumption that firms in industrial markets act as if they were price takers. Instead, attention is focused on the determinants of price adjustment in a more realistic industrial setting. Following the introductory analysis, a synthesis is proposed between the long-standing "administered prices" hypothesis, and the recent theories associated with the "new view" of Keynes. It is suggested that both approaches have common theoretical underpinnings which are themselves closely related to this thesis. The main body of analysis consists of a theoretical and an empirical investigation. In the theoretical section, two distinct aspects of the price adjustment decision are examined. The first concerns the comparative statics of adjustment and involves an analysis of the factors which determine the magnitude of price adjustments following changes in cost and demand. Moreover, the influence of market structure on the adjustment process is examined through its impact on the costs of search which are associated with the pricing decision. The second, and no less important aspect of the theoretical investigation concerns the dynamics of price adjustment. The object of this analysis is to assess the impact of market structure on the rate of price adjustment over time. The two hypotheses developed in the theoretical section are put to extensive empirical testing. The quantitative analysis involves mainly time-series and cross-section regressions, but other statistical techniques such as rank correlation and covariance tests are also employed. The first of these hypotheses is that price adjustments in response to short-run changes in demand could be attenuated relative to those occasioned by changes in marginal costs. The rationale for this asymmetry is based on the unequal impact of search costs. The empirical findings, whilst by no means conclusive, do not contradict this view. The second hypothesis suggests that a high degree of industrial concentration will be associated with high rates of price adjustment. This is because concentration facilitates the process of dynamic co-ordination amongst firms by reducing the costs of search. The empirical results come out strongly in favour of this hypothesis. The consequential implications regarding "administered prices" and the management of inflation are explored in the concluding chapter of this thesis.

The impact of income maintenance payments on poverty in Britain, 1975

Abstract: Book description: This authoritative collection brings together 100 key articles on the subject of the welfare state selected by one of the world’s leading experts. The first volume discusses the economic theory and related matters which underpin analysis of the welfare state. Volume II is about income transfers, especially social security benefits and poverty relief. Volume III looks at benefits in kind, particularly health care and education. This important work provides an analytical background to the subject whilst illustrating the vast array of literature available. It will be invaluable to students and professionals alike.

The New International Economic Order: The North-South Debate.

Abstract: The \"north-south debate\" between and within the developed and developing countries on achieving international distributive economic justice has emerged as one of the focal issues of world security and peace. The world economic order is changing, like it or not. Most discussions on the subject are distressingly uninformative, either giving blanket superficial endorsements to the demands of less developed countries or, equally superficially, condemning them out of hand. By contrast, this collection of more than a dozen articles, growing out of a workshop held at MIT in May 1975, is a real attempt to come to grips with the issues. Taken as a whole, the volume provides detailed and systematic reviews of the past history of the issues, their current status, future prospects, and economic desirability. Specific proposals are analyzed in depth, and with rigor and imagination, but without falling back on jargon or complicated mathematics.Professor Bhagwati sets the stage with an overview of the underlying political and economic factors. In the rest of the book developmental problems are covered under four headings. Section one, on resource transfers, offers essays on economic aid, income distribution, debt relief, and taxing the \"brain drain.\" Richard Cooper discusses oceans as a source of revenue. Section two, on international trade, includes Professor Bhagwati's essay on market disruption, and C. Fred Bergsten's proposals on access to supply. Others treat trade policies and commodities. Section three, on world food problems, deals with the stability of grain in D. Gale Johnson's paper and food aid in Alexander H. Sarris's and Lance Taylor's article. Section four, on technology transfer, evaluates multinationals and direct foreign investment. The concluding essay is an extensive panel discussion on the new international economic order as a whole and numbers among the participants Harry G. Johnson, Charles Kindleberger, I. M. D. Little, and Ali Mazrui.Where there are six economists, a wag once remarked, there are apt to be seven opinions. The present book, part of the MIT Bicentennial Studies series, seeks to fashion out of typically divergent and contentious opinions viable alternatives for reforming the world economic order.

Decision Theory and Social Ethics Issues in Social Choice

Abstract: 1 / Philosophy and Ethical Principles.- Rule Utilitarianism and Decision Theory.- Marx and the Utility Approach to the Ethical Foundation of Microeconomics.- Endogenous Changes in Tastes: A Philosophical Discussion.- 2 / Social and Collective Choice Theory.- Nice Decision Schemes.- The Distribution of Rights in Society.- Acceptable Social Choice Lotteries.- Social Decision, Strategic Behavior, and Best Outcomes.- Cyclically Mixed Preferences-A Necessary and Sufficient Condition for Transitivity of the Social Preference Relation.- Comparative Distributive Ethics: An Extension of Sen's Examination of the Pure Distribution Problem.- Rawls's Theory of Justice: An Impossibility Result.- Arrow's Impossibility Theorem: Some New Aspects.- Two Proofs of the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem on the Possibility of a Strategy-Proof Social Choice Function.- 3 / Special Topics in Social Choice.- Ethics, Institutions and Optimality.- Complexity and Social Decision Rules.- Discrete Optimization and Social Decision Methods.- The Equity Principle in Economic Behavior.- The Distributive Justice of Income Inequality.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.