Long-term Stagnation Research Articles

Fifty Years of Changes in America's History Museums

Abstract History museums in the U.S. have become significantly more professional over the past five decades. Many can boast of new and expanded buildings, improvements in collection management and care, and better‐trained staff and volunteers. However, most museums struggle with long‐term stagnation in audience numbers and revenues. The greatest challenge may be an alarming decline in American historical literacy and civic responsibility, especially at the elementary and secondary school levels. This article examines three trends that are affecting both the strengths and weaknesses of history museums today: the emergence of federal support, regulation, and oversight; a more inclusive approach to interpretation of the American past; and the all‐pervasive impact of information technology on both institutions and audiences.

Human Progress — And Collapse?

Against the human experience of long-term stagnation and misery, the record of growing prosperity over the past two centuries, and in particular the last fifty years, is astounding. Economic growth owes much to the mobilisation of resources and structural flexibility, but this depends on the ‘software of economic development’ – institutions, which change slowly. Now, old fears and growth-impeding policies are being justified on environmental grounds. One example is Jared Diamond's recent book ‘Collapse’, which discusses the possibility of a swift descent of the world into social disintegration. To anyone familiar with long-term economic history and the theory of growth, the book is pure millennial pessimism. It could become self-fulfilling if environmentalist doomsayers win the political argument with the doers — the engineers, entrepreneurs and economists.

Efficiency, competition, and the development of life insurance in France (1870–1939): Or: should we trust pension funds?

French life insurance remained underdeveloped in comparison with other countries of similar financial development during the period between 1870 and 1939. We show that technical peculiarities of the contracts used and their interaction with macroeconomic fluctuations explain the wide fluctuations we observe in insurance operations. Nevertheless, these fluctuations are not sufficient to explain the industry’s long-term stagnation. Low returns paid to clients, resulting from very conservative investment strategies, were the main reason for that stagnation, since only those interested by the life-cycle related aspects of insurance contracts continued to put money in these institutions, while most savers invested directly in the market or through State-owned financial institutions. The main reason for such an investment (and then low-growth) strategy is the existence of a set of conservative regulations and a stable oligopoly in the industry from the 1880s onwards. We suggest that established insurance companies were able to impose regulations and barriers to entry blocking the access of competitors to their market, so maintaining a hold on a small but very profitable market.

Diagenesis and reservoir quality of the Sherwood Sandstone (Triassic), Corrib Field, Slyne Basin, west of Ireland

The Triassic Sherwood Sandstone in the Corrib Field, Slyne Basin west of Ireland on the European continental margin, is a dry gas reservoir with a Mercia mudstone top-seal. Petrographic analysis combined with X-ray diffraction, stable isotope, fluid inclusion and core analysis have been used to assess: timing of growth and origin of mineral cements, whether sandstone diagenesis involved mass flux, the controls on reservoir quality and how reservoir quality is likely to vary in more deeply buried sections. Depositional and early diagenetic characteristics of the Sherwood in Corrib are typical of a semi-arid fluvial environment, containing groundwater of meteoric origin. Early diagenesis included the development of copious dolomite cement, in the form of dolocrete, as well as the formation of abundant clay while less volumetrically important, grain-coating haematite and K-feldspar cement also grew. Burial diagenesis witnessed the initial growth of minor chlorite and albite. Quartz overgrowths and ankerite followed and are the most important burial cements growing over a temperature interval between 100 and 1165 °C. Albite commenced growth at about 90 °C, quartz cement at 100 °C and ankerite at 110 °C. These cements reached the zenith of their development at 105–110 °C for albite, 125–130 °C for quartz and 135–145 °C for ankerite. Siderite and anhydrite are relatively minor, late-stage cements. The formation water has been consistently highly saline during burial and, in terms of mineral cement-derived oxygen stable isotope values, is likely to be a diagenetically evolved version of the initial depositional water suggesting long-term stagnation of the pore-fluids. The diagenetic reactions that formed burial cements all seem to be essentially isochemical including the ankerite that has carbon isotope characteristics of the cannibalisation of dolocrete. Reservoir quality is mainly controlled by early diagenetic dolomite and clay although grain size is also important because only sandstones with >200 μm grain size have >50 md permeability. Both shallower and deeper sections than Corrib may have similar porosity and permeability since temperature-dependent diagenetic controls on reservoir quality, e.g. quartz and illite cement, are peripheral.

The Burma Development Disaster in Comparative Historical Perspective

This paper reviews the post-independence performance of the Burmese economy. It is argued that the devastation of war and the slow pace of economic recovery after 1950 meant that Burma took a very long time even to regain levels of per capita GDP that had been attained in the 1930s. There has been very little change in the sectoral shares of either national product or the labour force. The paper explores the reasons for this long-term stagnation, and examines the implications for long-term changes in living standards. Comparisons are also made with other countries in South East Asia.

Hypoxia in the Baltic Sea and basin-scale changes in phosphorus biogeochemistry.

Deep-water oxygen concentrations in the Baltic Sea are influenced by eutrophication, but also by saltwater inflows from the North Sea. In the last two decades, only two major inflows have been recorded and the lack of major inflows is believed to have resulted in a long-term stagnation of the deepest bottom water. Analyzing data from 1970 to 2000 at the basin scale, we show that the estimated volume of water with oxygen, <2 mL L(-1), was actually at a minimum at the end of the longest so-called stagnation period on record. We also show that annual changes in dissolved inorganic phosphate water pools were positively correlated to the area of bottom covered by hypoxic water, but not to changes in total phosphorus load, thus addressing the legacy of eutrophication on a basinwide scale. The variations in phosphorus pools that have occurred during the past decades do not reflect any human action to reduce inputs. The long residence time and internally controlled variation of the large P pool in the Baltic Sea has important implications for management of both N and P inputs into this eutrophicated enclosed basin.

Copper corrosion by-product release in long-term stagnation experiments

The effect of long-term stagnation on copper corrosion by-product release and corrosion rates was studied in pipe-rigs according to the German standard DIN 50931, Part 1. The analysis of the water phase was supplemented by surface analysis of corrosion scales. Copper concentration during stagnation did not follow a solubility process. The characteristic curves obtained can be explained by subsequent copper release and copper refixation processes. Oxygen consumption can be described by the first-order kinetic rate law. The corrosion scales consisted of cuprite (Cu2O) and malachite (CuCO3·Cu(OH)2). Malachite grew in well-defined crystals during stagnation, served as sink for dissolved copper and did not protect the pipe against corrosion attack. Copper concentrations measured after long-term stagnation (up to 122h) correspond to the solubility of malachite in the testwater.

Doctoral Education: The Short-Term Crisis Vs. Long-Term Challenge

Recent speculation about the "overproduction" of PhD's has overlooked the long-term stagnation in doctorates relative to bachelors' degrees and in doctorates granted to American citizens. PhD programs have failed to develop the flexibility needed for articulation with nonacademic careers due to departmental sovereignty, a queuing pattern of demand, the quality imperative, and institutional sponsorship. The PhD today represents too much training for many potential students, yet it is too little training for its traditional markets. Hence, a more segmented structure for graduate education ought to be explored.

Metropolitan planning in the developing countries: Tasks for the 1980s

It is a truism that in the contemporary experience of planning there appears to be a growing gap between aspiration and performance, a gap increasingly visible over the past 15 years or so. ’ It has become difficult quite often to identify unequivocal benefits flowing from the more or less elaborate machinery of planning, benefits that can be unambiguously related to real improvements in popular welfare. The disillusion is an element in the revival of a faith in the market and, in economics, in the ‘automatic’ mechanisms said to flow from monetary policies. Improvements there have certainly been, but how far has planning achieved them? Could more have been achieved with the same effort? Would things have been better or worse without the planners? In retrospect, the long-term ‘crisis in planning’ was largely an intellectual problem; it became a real and painful one with the onset of the world slump in 1974-75, and apparently long-term stagnation thereafter. In the past there were hosts of problems, particularly in securing the coordinated action of many competing public agencies; the Ministry of Agriculture’s fertiliser plant defied the metropolitan ban on new industry; sudden urgent projects with the Presidential seal of priority the new Conference Hall, the new complex of government buildings, the new capital, the new facilities for the international sporting occasion drove a coach and horses through the best laid plans. But those were at least the problems of growth, of growing incomes and aspirations. World downturn, although affecting countries differently, tends to put universal pressure on the sources of public revenue and to create an increasingly unstable environment. Governments are driven to live from week to week, eschewing hopes of longer term coherence. It is understandable that people should grow sceptical of the possibility of defining mediumor long-range objectives and pursuing them; that there should be increasing irritation at the planner, apparently fiddling while great Rome burns. The disillusion was epitomised in the conclusion of an important multinational company in a 1979 discussion of company planning: “Planning is just a waste of time nowadays, especially so-called strategic planning. In today’s world, there’s no point in looking further forward than a one or two year budget. Anything long term is just not worth the paper it’s written on.“2 It emerges in the laconic comment on the performance of a government which has prided itself on its planning machinery for 25 years two-thirds of the projects

Formation of nickel-black selective surfaces by a conversion coating process

A conversion coating process is described for the preparation of nickel-black selective surfaces on zinc-plated steel, galvanized iron, zincated aluminium and Zincalume. With this process, it is possible to obtain surfaces with solar absorptances ranging from 0.90 to 0.94 and thermal emittances ranging from 0.08 to 0.15 (except Zincalume, where the emittance averaged 0.22). The surfaces are stable to 200°C, but the zinc-plated steel and galvanized iron substrates show some degradation during long-term stagnation testing, which appears to be due to substrate corrosion. The performance of flat-plate collectors that contain absorber panels prepared with this process is consistent with measured optical properties.

Crisis in the West European Automobile Industry

The automobile industry in the developed capitalist countries has entered a period of long-term stagnation. As Table 1 shows, the key markets of the developed capitalist world are only now returning to the sales volumes reached in 1973 before the oil crisis. Indeed, the Italian, British, and especially Japanese markets still remain well below their 1973 peaks, while the more buoyant West German and French markets are both expected to decline by some 6 percent over 1977-1979. Similarly, car sales in the United States which climbed in 1977 to within 5 percent of their 1973 peak are also expected to fall in the near future. Market projections furthermore suggest a long-term decline in the rate of growth of the U.S. market from a postwar average of 4 percent to an estimated 1.5 percent.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.