Mainstream Economic Activities Research Articles

Effects of Stone Mining on Household Livelihoods in Londiani Sub-County

Globally, rural areas are dominated by households earning less than a dollar per day and engaging in subsistence agriculture to meet their basic needs. In Kenya, governments and non-governmental organizations have taken measures to promote agricultural activities and non-agricultural activities to alleviate poverty in rural areas. One of such none agricultural activity in Kenya is stone mining. Stone mining is an alternative source of livelihood for most rural households. The objective of the study was to establishment the effects of stone mining on household livelihoods in the Londiani, Sub-County. Primary data was collected by use of structured household questionnaires and Key Informant Interviews. Descriptive statistics was used during data analysis where percentages were computed and tabulated. The study revealed that: stone quarry activities have adverse effects on residents of Londiani sub-County, notably: respiratory diseases, chest and skin infections, eye problems, rashes, and body injuries. Stone mining has numerous benefits to the miners' livelihoods. The money generated from stone mining is used to pay school fees, purchase food for the family, clothing, and health services and even build shelter for the family. The study recommends for an audit of the number of households directly involved in quarrying activities with a view to extending credit facilities to boost mining sector. The findings are significant to policymakers in the county government of Kericho, and national governments in formulating policies aimed at streamlining informal sectors into mainstream economic activities

The impact of the Black Economic Empowerment concept in the South African public procurement systems on black construction professionals

South Africa's government in 2003 introduced Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) legislation aimed to uplift the blacks into mainstream economic activities. This study assessed the impact of the BEE policy on black construction professionals since its introduction. Due to COVID-19 restrictions and the participants' dispersed location, the telephone interview method was adopted to solicit information from 21 black construction professionals. The findings indicate that the BEE policy in the public procurement system, has improved black construction professionals' economic status, developed their skills, and increased access to public contracts, indicating an immense benefit from the BEE policy. However, issues such as nepotism, corruption, and exploitation by policy implementers with political acquaintances in the public procurement system prevent the policy from fully achieving its objectives. South Africa's government must institute measures to ensure all the hindrances adversely affecting the policy's successful implementation are eradicated for the intended policy objectives to be realised.

Developing Companionship with the Left-Behinds

The subject of regional inequality has been garnering the attention of scholars over the past decade and has generated debates on territories forgotten by mainstream economic activities. Left-behind places are a global phenomenon yet with various situated conditions in different development contexts that required customized, place-based solutions. This paper discusses a possible approach to work with the left-behinds: using the university as an institutional resource to engage people and places in regional regeneration. Using the [anonymised] project as an example, we describe the learning journey of developing the ground solutions and companionship between a research university and left-behind communities in the rural badlands region. Adopting a hybrid of an asset-based approach to community development and collaborative planning for regional development, this case demonstrates a potential level-up strategy for sustainable development for the lagging region.

Women entrepreneurship opportunities and deterrence in Garhwal Region

Governments all over the world including India now focus more and more on ‘Entrepreneurship’ through research innovation and empowerment. Women form a greater part of our society and are also encouraged to contribute to national development by involving themselves in mainstream economic activities. Women Entrepreneurship is a phenomenon that is getting the focus of Government, NGOs, NPOs, scholars, and other stakeholders. The reason for such interest is that it is something that is still untapped and lagging behind the event, today, especially in backward, hilly areas of the country. Garhwal Region of Uttarakhand is one such region which is our area of this research we surveyed 200 women involved in varied entrepreneurial activities. This research study and findings were aimed to identify key areas and factors involving Women’s Entrepreneurship such as opportunities involved and deterrence in entering such field and growing and thriving thereafter. Further, there are methods and initiatives proposed which would enhance such opportunities and nullify the deterrence involved.

Influence of church policies on the economic empowerment of the youth

Kenyan youths have been marginalized from mainstream economic activities since independence. This situation has had a negative impact such as slowed economic growth, a rise in crime and violence, and the spread of diseases. It is these issues that have prompted this study on the influence of church policies on the economic empowerment of youths with a specific focus on the PCEA Nyahururu Parish. The study was guided by the Positive Youth Development model. It employed the descriptive research design and targeted a population of 233respondents comprising of 220 youths and 13 leaders (2 congregation chairpersons, 1 clergy, 1 evangelist, 1 youth coordinator, and 8 youth leaders). From this population, a sample of 94respondentswas selected using the clustered random sampling method where the two congregations that make up the PCEA Nyahururu Parish formed the clusters. Quantitative data was collected from youths using structured questionnaires while qualitative data was collected from the church administrators using interview guides. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as percentages and means as well as inferential statistics. Qualitative data were analyzed using the thematic content analysis technique and results reported using quotes. Findings revealed that there is a low level of economic empowerment among the youths at the PCEA Nyahururu parish. Church policies on single parenthood and divorce/ separation have a statistically significant and negative contribution towards youth economic empowerment. Church policies on the use of modern technologies have a positive and statistically significant relationship with youth economic empowerment. The study recommends that churches should re-examine its policies in single parenthood and divorce/ separation.

Maintaining Natural Capital Stocks: An Insight into Traditional and Modern Approaches

Natural capital refers to the natural environment around us that provides the goods and services to sustain life on this globe and includes soil, air, water, plant and animal biomass, forests, fish populations and mineral deposits. Sustainability could be defined as the level of consumption that satisfies the demand of the present without compromising the need of the future generations and not demeaning natural capital stocks. A serious threat to the current framing of natural capital is its apparent seclusion from financial capital and mainstream economic and social activity. This seclusion leads to indiscriminate use of nitrogen fertiliser to increase productivity per unit area in crop fields or decreased protein returns in aquatic habitats ultimately leading to ecological mayhem. However, indigenous people living in traditional societies are found to have strong conservation ethics arising out of their age-old ecological knowledge, protecting natural capital in their native homeland. The sacred groves in India, Tukano Indians in North West Brazil, tribesmen in TransFly region in Papua New Guinea, Masai in African Savanna are some of the examples. This article highlights some of the novel approaches adapted to protect natural capital and includes Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and natural capital accounting. PES are evolving as a creative and motivational strategy for natural capital conservation in many parts of the world, especially in Latin America. The natural capital accounting assign monetary value to natural capital and could bridge the apparent seclusion of natural capital from financial capital. The national Governments and world leaders are taking a broader perspective to look into the options of sustainable development to maintain natural capital stocks and many such projects are put forth in different countries. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and Sustainable Development Goals lead to a system of largescale management called the Ecosystem Approach involving multiple stakeholders. The primary goal is protecting ecosystem components and processes for the long term, keeping an eye to the present needs also. The PES and natural capital accounting are two important gauge of sustainability protecting mother nature from indiscriminate handling by its most rational offspring.

The Size of the Crypto Economy: Calculating Market Shares of Cryptoassets, Exchanges and Mining Pools

Abstract Cryptoassets and related actors such as crypto exchanges and mining pools are now fully integrated into mainstream economic activity. A necessary corollary is that they have attracted heightened regulatory and investor scrutiny. Although some rules and obligations apply uniformly across all economic actors in a given sector, many others, such as antitrust laws and some financial regulations as well as investor decisions are informed by actors’ relative economic size—meaning that those with larger market shares can become more attractive regulatory or investing targets. It is therefore a foundational issue to properly measure the economic footprint of economic actors in the crypto economy, for otherwise regulatory oversight and investor decisions risk being misled. This has proven a remarkably difficult exercise for multiple reasons including unfamiliarity with the underlying technology and role of involved actors, lack of understanding of the applicable metrics’ economic significance, and the unreliability of self-reported statistics, partly enabled by lack of regulation. Acknowledging the centrality of cryptoasset size in a number of regulatory and policymaking areas and the fact that previous attempts have been incomplete, simplistic, or even plainly wrong, this paper presents the first systematic examination of the economic footprint of cryptoassets and their constituent actors—mining pools and crypto exchanges. We aim to achieve a number of objectives: to introduce, identify, and organize all relevant and meaningful metrics of crypto economic actors market share calculation; to develop associations between metrics, and to explain their meaning, application, and limitations so that it becomes obvious in which context metrics can be useful or not, and what the potential caveats are; and to present rich, curated, and vetted data to illustrate metrics and their use in measuring the shares of crypto economic actors in their respective markets. The result is a comprehensive guidance into the size of the crypto economy.

Insecurity and economic marginalisation in Marsabit County

Ten years after the inauguration of the Constitution of Kenya 2010, the communities of Marsabit County are still living on the periphery of society. They remain systemically excluded from the nation’s mainstream social, political, economic, and cultural activities. Communities living within the North Frontier Districts (as it was known then) and within the Counties of Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, Isiolo and Marsabit are still considered ‘hostile tribes’ by the ruling elite since colonialisation and are treated as such. The colonial government enforced this isolation by enacting a series of Ordinances between the years 1901 to 1933 that systemically isolated and marginalised communities from this geographical area. The Ordinances largely criminalised the community’s main economic activity of pastoralism by allowing arbitral seizure and detainment as well as collective punishment for offences of members of the community. This negative and suspicious perception, systemic exclusion by the laws and policies, condensed economic activities limited to pastoralism, political under-representation, poverty, distance and inaccessibility have exacerbated the marginalisation of the communities living within Marsabit to date. Unfortunately, independence did not liberate these communities within the Northern Frontier Districts from systemic exclusion. They were still treated as a ‘special group’ within the context of section 19 of the Kenya Independence Order in Council. This section provides for the modification, qualifications and exceptions of laws and policies to be applied in respect of these communities. The state felt there was a need to subject these communities to screening, profiling, and overregulation in these areas in comparison to the rest of the nation. State institutions were further unable and unwilling to penetrate these areas. The application of different laws to these communities was carried forward during the post-independence where the Presidency was granted the power to govern these communities by decree. Despite the goodwill of the Constitution 2010 to reduce the levels of marginalisation within this county, there is a need to carry out a case study to assess whether the current legal, political, social and economic frameworks have reduced marginalisation within Marsabit which has been for a long time an ungoverned territory.

Integration, Inclusion or Invisibility? Language Education for Adult Transnational Migrants in the UK and Germany

The aim of the paper is to critically examine policy and practice in language education for adult migrants in the UK and Germany with the objective of interrogating the iteration of policy by national government through the perspective of pedagogic practice in two providers: a centre providing English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) in the UK and another delivering Deutsch als Fremdsprache / DaF (German as a Foreign Language) in Germany. Data will include the providers’ curricula and policies; pedagogic resources; lesson observations; and interviews with teachers and managers of the provision, to discuss their views of language education policy and the articulation of policy within their organisation. The conclusions will provide a commentary on the extent to which language education provides opportunities for a critical approach to learning for migrants or whether it is fulfilling government agendas for integration and supporting mainstream economic activity by preparing learners for work.

Educational Attainment And Child Labor Status Among Disabled Children In Tamil Nadu, India: An Econometric Analysis

Disabled children aged between 5–14 years replicate a double burden of vulnerabilities since they form a considerable part of the dependent population and are precluded from the activities of a normal life. The inextricable linkage between poverty and disability forces the disabled children to participate the labor market as child labor instead of attaining elementary education. This further makes it impossible for them to enter into mainstream economic activities. The accessibility of education and status of employment as child labor for them varies across different types of impairment and various socioeconomic indicators. In this backdrop, the objective of our present study is subsequently two-fold. Firstly, it investigates the discrepancy in educational attainment and child labor status of disabled children in Tamil Nadu across type of disability and various socio-economic indicators. Secondly, it examines the impact of Tamil Nadu Disabled Persons Act, 2007 on the educational status of the mentally disabled children. The 2011 Census has been used and multinomial logit model is applied to analyze the first objective. For policy evaluation, the 2001 and 2011 Census have been utilized and difference-in-difference (DID) framework in non-linear model is employed. Orissa is considered as our control state in DID framework. Our results show physically and mentally disabled children are more likely to attend educational institutions and participate less in child labor force as compared to children with multiple disabilities. Urban disabled children have higher chances of attending schools and are less likely to drop out compared to their rural counterparts. There is no significant difference across gender in workforce participation of disabled children, but in case of attaining education, male disabled children are more likely to attend educational institutions than their female counterparts. Also, disabled children who have never been married are less likely to work as child labor. The Disabled Persons Act, 2007 is found to have insignificant impact on educational attainment of mentally disabled children. Both national and state level need to be reprioritized to protect disabled children from exploitations like child labor and child marriage and to include them in the mainstream education.

Bringing Economics Back into Assimilation: The Select Committee of Inquiry into the Grievances of The Yirrkala Aborigines 1963

This article takes as its starting point Marcia Langton's argument for a clearer understanding of the role of economic history in Australian Indigenous affairs in order to examine the testimony presented to the Select Committee established to respond to the Bark Petitions in 1963. The testimony is discussed in four categories, dealing with questions of (a) land and land use; (b) employment, education and training; (c) infrastructure, water, health and housing, and (d) the distinct perspective of the Indigenous witnesses and those sympathetic to their viewpoint. I highlight the various ways in which the economic dimensions of the Yirrkala community's relationship to land were systematically ignored and suppressed, despite the claim among proponents of assimilation to be seeking the incorporation of Australian Aborigines into mainstream economic activity. I conclude by identifying the light thrown by the Select Committee's testimony on the ways in which Aboriginal Australians have been ignored as economic actors, thus systematically undermining the aims of assimilation policy rather than advancing them.“We would not mind the natives standing on the banks and watching the shovels work if they want to do so.”

Women Entrepreneurs in Bangladesh- Challenges and Determining Factors

The aim of this study is to find out the major challenges that hinder smooth operation of women entrepreneurs of Bangladesh. It also finds the reasons behind the success of the women entrepreneurship. Both primary and secondary data have been used to conduct the study. The questionnaire included questions about economic problems, family related issues, social constraints and other limitations faced by women entrepreneurs and the reasons behind their success. Women involved in various small and medium enterprises take on the challenge to work in a male-dominated society, competitive and complex economic and business environment. However, the identified challenges are inadequate capital, sales promotion, getting permission to start-up a business, gender discrimination, illiteracy and lack of knowledge among women, non-availability of training program and technical support, lack of managerial experience, in some cases young people make ill talk about the enterprise and so on. Personal qualities such as hard work and perseverance, management skills and marketing skills, support provided by their spouses or family are the main reasons behind the success of the women entrepreneurs. The level of participation of women in mainstream economic activities remains insufficient and the percentage of women in business is still much below than that of their male counterparts.Journal of Business and Technology (Dhaka) Vol.9(2) 2014; 27-41

Transformation from Class Banking to Mass Banking through Inclusive Finance: A Paradigm Shift

The strategies of rural transformation in India focused on improving the standard of living of rural population has undergone several changes keeping in view the mammoth size of population, its changing dynamics and socio –cultural diversities of our country But the economic stagnation of vast chunk of rural population still suffers from social and financial exclusion resulting with high incidence of poverty, rising unemployment, growing inequality along with rich-poor divide widening. The high growth story of our country in the post reform era is not broad based, regionally imbalanced and socially inequitable Indian Banking industry in conformity with national policy objectives has reoriented from Class Banking to Mass Banking approach to enhance its outreach to bring the marginalized and excluded population into its fold for mainstream economic activity. The branch expansion was accelerated and institutional credit flow to poor rural households reached new heights to relieve them from the clutches of usurious informal money lenders. Modern banking in India has leveraged IT driven initiatives to bring the excluded population into the fold of mainstream banking, develop new products to suit their needs and more importantly educate them on financial products and services to enable them to take informed decisions. The Institutional mechanism, for enhancing access to institutional credit have been strengthened by establishing pro-poor institutions like Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) and National Agricultural Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) etc. The business delivery models like Self Help Groups (SHG)-Bank linkage programme, and Micro finance institutions have been encouraged to provide microfinance services at doorstep of marginalized households. The Agent/Correspondent Banking model of commercial Banks have been given a big boost to provide wide access of low income/marginalized people to Financial Markets. Financial inclusion being a gigantic task, it calls for an appropriate and well-coordinated/collaborative strategy by all the stake holders involved in its implementation. The government needs to increase investment in economic and social capital by increasing investment in basic rural infrastructure. Banking system is poised to provide efficient economic infrastructure like savings, access to easy credit and robust payment system. The community based organizations/NGOs should catalyze local participation to enhance efficiency and transparency in delivery of financial services to common man for making inclusive growth a reality.

Entrepreneurial Orientation of Spaza Shop Entrepreneurs Evidence From a Study of South African and Somali Owned Spaza Shop Entrepreneurs in Khayelitsha

Almost twenty years after democracy we find growing economic activity in the informal sector. The spaza market in Khayelitsha 1 can be seen as an example of entrepreneurial activity offering an entry point to many that are excluded from mainstream economic activities. This study included 352 participants and is comprised of South African (locals) and Somali (foreigners) owned spaza shop entrepreneurs operating in Khayelitsha. In recent years foreigners have become a dominant force in this market often resulting in the closure of many local businesses. This has often given rise to xenophobic violence resulting in deaths of innocent persons. We focus on the role of culture on business practices and entrepreneurial orientation on business performance. Entrepreneurial orientation is used as a psychological concept to reflect on the level of entrepreneurial potential within the informal sector. Business practices include rudimentary financial management practices that provide a measure of financial stability of the business.

“The Role of Universities in Rural Development”

This paper deals with the role of universities in the process of Rural Development. This paper tries to define Rural Development, the problems and challenges involved in Rural Development. This paper then discusses the Eco system of Rural Development & the different roles needed to be played by universities; steps in the process of Rural Development & suggests a sustainable model for Rural Development making universities as the change centers. human lives. Latest World Bank reports show that a third of worlds poor lives in India.In 2010, World Bank stated, 32.7% of the total Indian people fall below the international poverty line of US$ 1.25 per day (PPP 3 ) while 68.7% live on less than US$ 2 per day. A study by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative using a Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) found that there were 650 million people (53.7% of population) living in poverty in India, of which 340 million people (28.6% of the population) were living in severe poverty, and that a further 198 million people (16.4% of the population) were vulnerable to poverty. 421 million of the poor are concentrated in eight North Indian and East Indian states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. This number is higher than the 410 million poor living in the 26 poorest African nations. Since India moved to an open economy in 1991, an enormous amount of social wealth is created. Indias economy has grown very steadily over the past two decades. Despite significant economic progress, almost one fourth of the nation's population still earns less than the government-specified poverty threshold of 32 rupees per day (approximately US$ 0.6) 4 . The government & the existing mechanisms failed to bring down the trickle-down effect of wealth creation, i.e. Wealth Distribution, from Top to the bottom end of the Social ladder. As against the theories, Economic Liberalization in India has in fact, widened the Gap between the Rich & the Poor. As an effect, two types of Indiacame into existence within India. One, The Urban Landscape - India, that is poised & poignant with success stories, producing more no. of Millionaires & Billionaires every year; and the other, the Rural Land Scape - Bharat, that is striving very hard to produce at least a Dollar-a-day-wage for many. Approximately, 65%of Indias population lives in Rural India 5 and it is also estimated that about 78% of the total Indian poor lives in Rural India. Which only says - thatabout two thirds of the total population of India, are either staying away or not participating enough actively in the Economic Development process. India cannot have a sustainable growth rate without the participation of the Rural India (Bharat) in main stream economic activity. Hence, Rural Development is the Need-of-the Hour for the overall & sustainable growth of India. Rural development generally refers to the process of improving the quality of life and economic wellbeing of people living in relatively isolated and sparsely populated areas 6 .

Mobile Banking the Future to Rural Financial Inclusion: Case Study of Zimbabwe

The vitality of technology utilisation by banks in establishing competitiveness in rural areas is unarguable. This paper provides primary information to guide banks in structuring their marketing strategies, quality improvements and business processes on the backdrop of rural milieus in order to achieve financial inclusion. The sample comprised of respondents drawn from various banks, agents of mobile operators, rural residents including farmers from irrigation schemes in Gwanda District. The hypothesis of study was that mobile money is reducing rural financial exclusion faster than traditional rural banking, microfinance and financial development aid. The majority of small scale rural business people were influenced to bank with banks which use advanced modern banking technologies and are partnering with mobile network operators because of convenient service and the reduction of trips made to urban centres for banking purposes. A lot of credit was given by rural dwellers to the Ecocash product of ECONET which enables small scale rural business people to undertake many low value money transfers as well as payments for their business activities. The study concludes that mobile banking has potential in reducing poverty by bringing into mainstream economic activity the previously excluded rural communities.

The economic burden of blindness in Pakistan: a socio-economic and policy imperative for poverty reduction strategies.

State and nonstate health programs in developing countries are often influenced by priorities that are defined in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In the wake of recessionary pressures, policy makers in the health sector are often seen to divert significant budgets to some specific health programs and make only token allocations for other health problems that are important but do not fall under the traditional MDG box of health priorities. This paper illustrates the economic argument for investment in one such program: The eye health program and employs a country case study of Pakistan to demonstrate that there are significant economic gains that are being foregone by not addressing the needs of the blind in poverty reduction strategies. By applying appropriate growth and discounting factors and using the average wage rate, the paper estimates the total productivity gains that are realizable over a period of 10 years if the blind population in Pakistan is rehabilitated and their carers released to participate in the mainstream economic activity. Our findings indicate that significant productivity gains accumulated over 10 years, range from 61 billion (US$ 709 million) to 421 billion (US$ 4.9 billion) depending upon whether the entire blind population or only those affected by a specific cause are rehabilitated. The per annum productivity gains of rehabilitating the entire blind population represents 0.74% of the current gross domestic product of Pakistan, which is higher than the total public spending on health. In order to reap these benefits, the subsequent absorption of the rehabilitated blind and their carers into mainstream economic activity is as important as their effective rehabilitation.

Bridging sustainability and the social economy: Achieving community transformation through local food initiatives

Sustainability and the social economy are two approaches that provide critiques of mainstream economic growth based on the failure to integrate environmental and social concerns. This article explores the potential for community transformation by bridging these two approaches — bringing more environmental considerations into the social economy and using the social economy to advance equity concerns within sustainability. We examine this potential through local food initiatives in two Canadian cities that are striving to create a synthesis of social and environmental objectives to achieve structural change in the way that food is produced, accessed and consumed. Both projects are founded on commitments to sustainable community development and social justice. While the initiatives illustrate the potential for community transformation by integrating sustainability and the social economy, they also illustrate the challenges associated with an incremental approach to change in the context of competition with mainstream economic activities that are heavily subsidized and do not account for negative social, economic and environmental externalities.

In Hock: Pawning in Early America

In a 1782 letter, Robert Morris broke bad news to Richard Butler, a colonel in Continental army, that he couldn't loan him any money. Mortifying as it is, Morris confided, because of scarcity of cash the Jew Brokers and others have informed me in course of my inquiries that Sub Rosa they frequently get 5 per Cent per month from good for use of Money with pledges lodged for repayment. He added that, before establishment of Bank [of North America] they frequently got ten per Cent and upwards.1Yet Morris's Substantial men were not only ones who found themselves in financial straits. The less economically able-whose capital rested in material possessions rather than large-scale commercial enterprises-also obtained loans by pawning goods, offering up more modest forms of capital as loan collateral. Part of informal economy of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, pawning was something people resorted to when they needed cash but didn't have it, when tax bills came due or accounts had to be settled by something other than paper currency. Neighbors often offered a horse, plow, or similar piece of capital as collateral in exchange for a short-term loan. Innkeepers, who had ready cash and access to a diverse and mobile clientele traveling with all manner of personal belongings, also became de facto pawnbrokers in eighteenth century.2While ability to secure small, short-term cash loans by pawning personal goods was an important economic survival strategy for early Americans, it was a practice that has been largely overlooked by scholars, who have typically aimed their sights on more visible (and legitimized) economic activities of merchants, retailers, and farmers. But pawning, which began as one among many kinds of informal (and often undocumented) transactions in early American economy, became, by nineteenth century, an essential way for middling sort to short-term loans.3It is tempting to describe pawning as a activity. Certainly pawnbroker appeared to be a marginal figure operating on fringes of urban areas. And his customers, unconnected to credit economies of merchant elite and constantly living on financial margins, needed someone like pawnbroker. Pawning, in fact, was anything but marginal. It constituted an essential way to ready cash for everyone but privileged few, and was therefore a mainstream economic activity. The small, short-term cash loans provided by pawnbroker supplemented laborers' insufficient wages, buttressing industrial capitalist system within which they operated. Yet a specious distinction separating from mainstream, drawn in their own interests by early republic's privileged and wealthy (the ones who did not want to acknowledge inequities of early American capitalist economy) then held sway, and continues to shape scholarly analysis.An appreciation of shifting nature of pawning and pawnbroking in America from late eighteenth century to antebellum era requires an understanding of workings of process and roles played by main actors: pawners and pawnbrokers who participated in transactions, and their critics, whose increasing anxiety about pawning reflected broader anxieties about emergent capitalist system and its effects on their notions of traditional American society.The first reference to pawnbrokers in America complained that they enabled people to waste money. The Minutes of Court of Burgomasters and Schepens, regarding Dutch settlers in 1657, documented concerns brought to magistrates of New Netherland colony against many tapsters and tavernkeepers who profited from money that drinkers should have instead been spending on their families. Moreover, when their customers' cash was gone, offending proprietors accepted furniture, clothing, and other goods in pawn, enabling their clientele to obtain means of continuing their usual drinking bouts. …

The Theoretical Aspect of Muhammad Yunus's Dream - 'Putting Poverty in Museums'

Poverty is an irrevocable curse of our existing institutional structure and a grey area of existing economic theories. The micro-credit can support a mere semi-subsistence economic structure since its targets are those poor people who are dependent on borrowings for their subsistence. The concept of social business described by professor Yunus is insufficient to put “poverty in museums” because the social businesses can not provide the incentives required for the entrepreneurs to stretch their business for the poor people beyond their existing business pace. This article describes an Unbiased Pareto Improvement (UPI) model to steadily integrate the poor people with mainstream economic activities. Eventually the economy will be benefited in terms of new values, welfare and employment opportunities.