Showing papers on "Economic sector published in 1983"

Workers' earnings and corporate economic structure

Abstract: Workers' Earnings and Corporate Economic Structure investigates the role of economic structure in determining employees' earnings and how workplace organization contributes to social inequality. The study focuses on the characteristics of the organization of capital rather than on different management styles or systems. Earnings as a key labor force outcome are examined at both the industry and company levels of economic organization. Comprised of nine chapters, this volume begins with an overview of economic explanations for the diversity of wage labor in advanced capitalist countries, and whether the labor market in the United States is structured by the organizational characteristics of capital. The discussion then turns to the dual economy model of industrial structure; an alternative resource approach to the study of organizational structure and labor segmentation; and enterprise- and industry-level sectoral models of economic structure. Subsequent chapters explore the relationship between the sectoral models and poverty, class position, and racial and gender groups; the ability of the sectoral models to explain workers' earnings and select continuous-variable models of the impact of economic structure on workers' earnings; earnings determination within economic sectors; and the impact of economic structure across class, occupational, and status groups. The final chapter offers concluding thoughts and reflections and integrates the insights derived from the study of industrial structure with themes from the broader field of social stratification. This book will be of interest to economists, sociologists, and workers and industry officials.

Calcutta s Informal Sector-Theory and Reality

Abstract: Calcutta's Informal Sector Theory and Reality Emmanuel Romatet Studies conducted in the early seventies by experts of the international Labour Office on the employment in metropolises of developing countries led to a new concept that has aroused a great deal of controversy since then : the concept of the informal sector, as opposed to the formal sector, these two sectors constituting the urban economy of third-world countries.

The Penny Capitalists: A Study of Nineteenth Century Working-Class Entrepreneurs

Abstract: The primary sector mining and fishing farming the secondary sector manufacturing building the tertiary sector transport entertainment personal services financial services retailing.

Testing theories of regime change: hegemonic decline or surplus capacity?

Abstract: Two theories explain changes in the international regimes for major economic sectors. A theory of hegemonic stability explains sectoral change as a consequence of ebbing hegemony; a theory of surplus capacity attributes regime shifts to a serious global problem with excess production capacity in the sector. The history of the world automobile industry shows that surplus capacity offers the better prediction and explanation for the timing of regime changes. However, a synthesis of the two theories is even more satisfactory. Hegemonic decline is a necessary but not sufficient condition for change. Surplus capacity, in the absence of a hegemon, creates the conditions necessary for change.

Public employee unions and the privatization of “public” services

Abstract: Public sector unions are strongly opposed to contracting with the private sector for the production of goods and services. Economic theory indicates that because of incentives the private sector should be much more efficient that the public sector — a proposition verified for numerous activities of state and local governments. This paper examines evidence at the federal level to show that substantial cost savings can be achieved by contracting out in that sector as well.

Economic policies and Philippine agriculture

Abstract: Evaluation of the impact of general policies, such as trade and foreign exchange, financial, fiscal and employment policies and specific measures relating to subsectors in agriculture, such as price policies, credit programs and efficiency, indicates that almost all agricultural activities investigated appear to enjoy a comparative advantage. Evidence suggests a strong economic potential in agriculture. While price interventions are unquestionably geared to promote various development goals, such policies have been adverse to agriculture sector. Several problems in the agriculture’s subsectors are also identified.

The socioeconomic significance of information technology to developing countries

Abstract: In the industrially advanced societies of the West, economic development has invariably been accompanied by a structural shift of labor from the primary and secondary production Sectors to the tertiary or service sector. A systematic analysis of the service sector would show that the “commodity” on which this sector acts is “information.” The increasing importance of “information” for control and management in an “advancing” society is the primary reason for the structural shift of labor to the service sector. In this paper the critical importance of the service sector to development is emphasized and it is argued that information technology that underpins activity in this sector is an appropriate technology for speeding‐up socioeconomic development in the third world countries.

China's Special Economic Zones: Experimental Units for Economic Reform

Abstract: THE People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), which emerged as a socialist State in 1949, brought forward the principle of what is called "self -reliance" due to the deterioration of relations with the Soviet Union in the 1950s. She kept it as her inviolate national policy for a quarter of a century. This "principle of selfreliance" meant to stand her on her feet without any support or loans from foreign countries and to exclude overseas investment, direct or indirect. In 1971, the P.R.C. was accepted as a member of the United Nations in place of Taiwan and came to have a political voice on the international plane. But it was not until 1978 when the Gang of Four was purged that the principle of selfreliance was revised in her external economic policy. Then the present leaders of the P.R.C. put up the new slogan of "four modernisations" which was designed to help China catch up with the most developed Western countries by the end of this century in four fields, namely agriculture, industry, science and technology and national defence. In pursuance of the four modernisations, the Central Government of the P.R.C. realised the vital necessity of attracting an enormous amount of foreign capital and advanced technology. Since then the P.R.C. has promoted increased economic co-operation with capitalist States and, starting with the processing of imported materials, she has become engaged in various patterns of foreign trade and has even gone as far as applying for governmental and non-governmental loans from abroad. Moreover, China's 1979 Joint Venture Law, which permitted overseas enterprises to undertake joint ventures with Chinese nationals, took the epoch-making step of allowing direct foreign investment.' On the other hand, the so-called "readjustment of the economy" has been under way in China since 1979 to accomplish the four modernisations. For example, one major economic policy of special interest to potential investors is

The Growth and Restructuring of Metropolitan Economies The Context for Economic Development Policy

Abstract: The broad economic and spatial restructuring of metropolitan economies provide the context for formulating economic development policy in the United States. The diversity of experience among the one hundred metropolitan areas studied and the weak economic performance of many central cities reinforce the need to carefully target economic development strategies to reflect local comparative advantage. Combined with the relative vitality of lower density locations and the almost universal strength of service oriented industries, changing economic conditions also indicate a role for relocation and retraining programs to help displaced workers relocate to places with expanding job opportunities and to attain the skills required by growing economic sectors.

The Economic Integration of Women A Cross-National Investigation

Abstract: This research examines the relationship between economic development and the integration of women into economic activity in 162 countries. Polynomial regression using indices of femaleness for major industrial sectors and occupational categories assesses this relationship. The data suggest no clear-cut linear or curvilinear relationship. Economic development appears to be unrelated to the integration of women into important sectors of the national economy, namely the agricultural, mining and manufacturing sectors. The data suggest that economic development is also unrelated to the integration of women in production occupations and the important decision-making category of administration and management. Of the seventeen areas of economic activity examined in this article, economic development appears to be related to only two areas. Higher levels of economic development are associated with higher levels of integration of women in clerical occupations and in the transport, storage, and communication sector ...

Economic appraisal in the health sector

Abstract: This paper discusses the role of economic appraisal in the formulation of health sector policy in less developed countries (LDCs). Specifically, it focuses on the application of economic analysis to public investment decisions in the health sector, that is to the design, selection and financing of projects which constitute the health component of a development plan. The underlying theme is the desirability of integrating the health sector more closely with the overall framework of development planning through a systematic process of project appraisal based on clearly specified objectives and resource constraints.

Tax-Exempt Financing: Some Lessons from History

Abstract: TAX-EXEMPr FINANCING designed to influence capital flows to specific sectors of the economy is now a familiar feature of the capital markets. Municipal mortgage bonds and the new "all-saver's" certificates established by the Reagan administration are but two recent examples of such financing schemes. 1 In spite of this omnipresence, important questions regarding the efficacy and even the desirability of using the tax-exemption feature remain unanswered. Is tax-exempt financing the best method of assisting a particular sector? Can such financing be structured so that changes intended to help the targeted sector do not impose significant costs on other sectors of the economy? Does it make economic sense to manipulate the capital markets for a specific special interest? This paper provides a historical approach to answering these questions by examining the experiences of the first major tax-exempt financed program, the Federal Farm Land Bank (FFLB) system, from its inception in 1916 to its reorganization in

Changing Public-Private Sector Relations: A Look at the United States:

Abstract: One of the distinctive elements that accounts for the dynamism and innovative capacity of America's political institutions is the use of private organizations to accomplish public purposes. The nation has found it useful to contract out for services when bureaucratic obstacles thwart new policy objectives. Yet in recent years the country has seemed to lack exactly the qualities of dynamism, vitality, and innovative capacity in the public sector, in business, and in the voluntary sector that we have most cherished. The blame for this, in the view of some observers, rests with the blurring of the boundaries between public and private sectors that has characterized the postwar period. This article explores the paradoxical shift in attitudes on public-private sector relations against the background of contemporary ideological trends. The arguments for either a massive shifting of functions to private contractors or for the federal government to reabsorb major activities now carried out by contractors are equa...

Private Sector Initiatives and Public Sector Accountability: A Case Study of Contracting With City Venture Corporation

Abstract: City Venture Corporation is the largest private sector entity in the area of public/private partnerships in the country. Because it operates in many different cities and its projects include both successes and failures, it can serve as a case study for helping to define critical issues about this form of economic development. This study finds that the fundamental issue in such partnerships is the confusion of public, private, and community roles, with the key problem being the role of the government. Such confusion can lead to a lack of accountability. In addition, the study raises questions about the applicability of corporate management models to community economic planning and development.

Growth and Crisis in the Central American Economies, 1950—1980

Abstract: Prosperity and increasing inequality may well be the most suitable terms to describe at first glance the evolution of the Central American economies from the post-war period until the beginning of the eighties. Prosperity based on a very favourable external economic situation was characteristic of the fifties, with promotion of technological modernization and some diversification in the export sector. Sustained economic growth continued during the following decade, thanks to structural change brought about by industrialization and by the process of Central American integration. This upward trend began to break up in the seventies, and the whole region was plunged into crisis and instability. Although the gloomy side of the new international situation cannot be denied, twenty or thirty years of prosperity seem to have created internal conditions sufficient to nurture a social conflict of vast proportions, which embraces since at least 1978 not only the economic sector but all aspects of Central American life. Our objective here is to study economic growth in the Central American countries between I950 and 1980, examining the behaviour of some aggregate indices to try to establish the nature of the structural change brought about by industrialization and the integration process. Particular emphasis is given to the repercussions of growth on employment and the quality of life, taking careful account of regional nuances and differences. Finally, the nature and scope of the present crisis will be discussed.