Purchasing power

About: Purchasing power is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2714 publications have been published within this topic receiving 36866 citations. The topic is also known as: adjusted for inflation.

Conspicuous Consumption: A Literature Review

Abstract: States that status and prestige considerations play a significant part in shopping preferences for products, which, although they appear to have a direct utility, serve only as a means of displaying wealth and purchasing power. Examines the literature on the subject, looking at the conspicuous customer, for whom the cost of a purchase is only of real significance and not the product. Suggests, from the literature, that consumer behaviour and demand for status goods and services needs further investigation.

The Economics of Life and Death

Abstract: National economic performance can reflect the health of the nation and the well-being of its citizens. National economics should encompass the economics and life and death. Mortality statistics or other health measures such as famines reduced life expectancies and higher female mortality can be used to gauge the economic health economic deprivation of a country. Analysis of mortality data can be useful in economic evaluations of social arrangements and public policy. Economic explanations of famine may be inadequately based on measures of food production and availability or income and purchasing power. A more complete understanding of famine is possible through analysis of the acquisition and distribution of food and the entitlement within different groups within society. Policy should be directed to the economic processes that affect a groups ability to procure food. The Bangladesh famine in 1974 could not have been predicted on the basis of food supply per capita because this measure was high in 1974. It was the floods and their destructive impact on rice production that left workers without the means to secure food. Panic led to hoarding which drove the prices up. US aid was delayed over political posturing. A similar example is given for the famine in Bengal in 1943 when the purchasing power of rural laborers real wages declined. The Ethiopian famine in 1973 was the result of a drought in Wollo province which did not substantially reduce national food production. Prevention of famine is possible by growing more food providing incentives to increase investment in agriculture diversification of production expansion of manufacturing investment in health care and education and increasing the purchasing power of the most famine-affected groups. Public employment programs could be directed to famine-affected groups as occurred in Maharashtra during the droughts of 1972-73. India after independence has been successful thus far in averting famine through this means. The approach relies in part on the market but also on politics. Chinas lack of political will allow their famine to continue for 3 years. Conflicts and wars affect famines. Famines can be averted only through luck in a dictatorship. A democracy more effectively guarantees attention to famine prevention. Famine reflects the failure in some economic and political structures.

The Role of Agriculture in Ensuring Food Security in Developing Countries: Considerations in the Context of the Problem of Sustainable Food Production

Abstract: Ensuring food security has become an issue of key importance to countries with different degrees of economic development, while the agricultural sector plays a strategic role in improving food availability. The aim of this paper is to identify relationships between the undernourishment scale and selected characteristics describing the agricultural sector within identified clusters of developing countries. Typological groups of countries were separated using Ward’s method. It results from the analyses that the greatest problems with maintaining food security are observed in the developing countries with a high share of agriculture in their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), adverse conditions hindering agricultural production and deficient infrastructure. Based on research results desirable and tailored strategies for food security improvement in individual clusters were developed. Promoting investments in agricultural infrastructure and extension services along with adopting measures aimed at increasing the households’ purchasing power, especially those in rural areas, appear to be key drivers for improving both food availability and food access. The paper focuses not only on identifying the reasons of undernourishment, but also contributes to recognition of the most effective ways to solve the hunger problem under a country’s unique conditions. It offers a comprehensive perspective for the policy formulation in various areas world-wide, which may be of interest to scholars and policy makers.

Creating an Urban Middle Class: Social Engineering in Beijing

Abstract: Dogs on a leash are a common sight in Hopetown,1 one of Beijing's "new cities", residential compounds for the professional middle class. Hairy and generally noisy, dogs are not allowed to grow beyond the 35cm limit set by the city government for the inner suburbs. Nonetheless, residents here are ready to pay a registration fee of 5,000 yuan plus a 2,000 yuan annual "management" fee to the city and to spend between 800 and 10,000 yuan to buy full-blooded puppies from the zifa (self-organized) market that rural breeders set up every Sunday in the eastern county of Tongxian. Dog food, dog health magazines2 and dog clothes fill the shelves of supermarkets.3 Dogs become attached to the household registration of their owners and obtain a document with a colour photo. In what is almost a metaphor of today's urban China, non-residents are not entitled to the privilege of walking a dog. Until a decade ago, there were ordinances against the possession of pet dogs, in recognition of China's poverty and because of a concern for urban health issues. Their recent reappearance indicates new affluence, embodied in an item that-unlike the modern electric appliances of previous years-can be showcased in the neighbourhood's playground, as a way of displaying who has "made it". For the purposes of this article, dogs help to introduce four questions: Who are their owners and where do a growing number of Beijing residents get the money to afford exuberant consumption in a society where average disposable income remains very low? What drives them upward? And what is the role played by housing reform, the growing residential segregation it creates and the rise of yuppie neighbourhoods in shaping status enhancement among the new wealthy groups? Hopetown is one such neighbourhood in northeastern Beijing. It is in Chaoyang District and has officially been described as a quarter developed "with the support of the central authority". The planning of the whole area is therefore influenced by the directives of the city planners. The housing-project developer of its two enormous gated communities is one of the largest state-owned construction corporations in the country.4 The long succession of high-rise buildings where Hopetown is nestled, just outside of the fourth ring road, is scheduled to become what is publicized as the largest residential development in Asia and is expected to be home to around 250,000 people by the second half of this decade. It is a very concentrated residential area, covering only about 3 per cent of the city's total area, but in 1999 accounted for about 13 per cent ofthat year's housing construction in the capital.5 Hopetown itself is a small area encompassing these two gated communities and, thus far, a total of about 25,000 people. The first neighbourhood of 26 buildings-each containing 20 to 29 floors-was completed in 1997 and hailed as the first fully commercial high-standard apartment block at the disposal of the increasing purchasing power of the Beijing middle class. The largest part of the almost 6,000 units in this housing development-which I will call Hopetown 1-had been sold on the free market by the end of 1998 to people who did not need bank mortgages, as these did not exist at the time.6 They had the money in hand to pay an average price of 5,017 yuan (around US$600) per square metre. Despite this being fairly high in absolute terms, housing prices here are around the city's average (4,764 yuan per square metre in 2002). The second neighbourhood (Hopetown 2), completed in 1999 by the same developer, is smaller (around 3,000 units) and includes both market-price "commodity" apartments (shangpin fang) and "economy apartments" (jingji shiyong fang) sold at a subsidized price. The prices of these units vary from around 4,000 yuan per square metre for the subsidized units to 5,500 yuan for the "commodity" units, despite a remarkable similarity in quality, location and services. …