Operation Of Market Forces Research Articles

The politics of renewable power in Spain

Government support for renewable power in Spain has varied over time. After fostering a boom in the first decade of the 2000s, public support dried up in the early 2010s before making a reappearance in the last several years. This paper details and explains the fluctuating political fortunes of renewable power in Spain. It argues that the recent revival of support for renewable power should no come as no surprise. Rather, it reflects a reassertion of the underlying imperatives that prompted support by governments of different parties in previous years. Nevertheless, the role of government in promoting renewable power is now undergoing a fundamental change, as it shifts from directly subsidizing new generating capacity to removing barriers that might discourage private investment and facilitating the operation of market forces.

Grooming interchange for resource tolerance: biological markets principles within a group of free-ranging rhesus macaques

In group-living animals, allogrooming is a common, heterogeneously distributed affiliative behaviour. Among non-human primates, Barrett et al. (1999) predicted ways in which Biological Markets principles interact with competitive regimes to influence grooming reciprocity and interchange. Most tests of these predictions, done at a group level, have produced inconsistent results. Here we take a novel approach by testing these predictions across individuals within a group. This is based on the premise that in groups facing moderate-to-high within-group-competition, individuals vary in their abilities to access resources based on their competitive abilities, causing them to pursue different grooming exchange strategies. We examine evidence for grooming reciprocity and interchange for tolerance at drinking sources among adult females within a group of rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) on Cayo Santiago. We test the above premise by assessing hierarchical steepness, and the relationship between individuals’ David’s scores (DS) and access to drinking sources. Finally, we examine the relationship of DS with grooming reciprocity and interchange to see whether they are consistent with the operation of market forces among individuals. Social network comparisons revealed that giving grooming was strongly predicted by both receiving drinking tolerance (interchange) and receiving grooming (reciprocity), despite strong associations with proximity and maternal kinship. The group showed a moderately steep hierarchy, and negative correlations between individuals’ David’s scores and difficulties in accessing drinking stations. Finally, we found partial support for a market-based explanation. Individuals with relatively low David’s scores were more likely to interchange grooming with drinking tolerance. However, grooming reciprocity wasn’t greater among individuals with higher David’s scores. Our findings suggest that multiple explanatory frameworks — reciprocity, market-based interchange, and/or proximity-mediated interchange/social bond investment — may all shape rhesus grooming exchange patterns. Future directions include examining evidence for additional forms of grooming interchange, and the influence of between-group-competition and stress-indicators on grooming reciprocity.

Enhancement of Rural Women Employment through Shg-Bank Linkage Strategy in Andhra Pradesh

In India, productive employment is central to poverty reduction strategy and to bring about economic equality in the society. But the results of unfettered operation of market forces are not always equitable, especially in India, where some groups are likely to be subjected to disadvantage as a result of globalization. Women constitute one such vulnerable group. In this context, there is a need to give importance in addressing the issue of inclusive growth of India from the banking perspectives. The concept inclusion should be seen as a process of including the excluded as agents whose participation is essential in the very design of the development process and not simply as welfare targets of development programmes. Growth is inclusive when it creates economic opportunities along with ensuring equal access to the women. Apart from addressing the issue of inequality, the inclusive growth may also make the poverty reduction efforts more effective by explicitly creating productive economic opportunities for the poor and vulnerable sections of the society. Self-Help Group Bank Linkage Strategy is taken as a key strategy for addressing both poverty alleviation and women's empowerment. The government of Andhra Pradesh has become a role model initiating this programme more effectively when compared to other regions. The main objective of the study is to examine the impact of SHG bank linkage strategy on occupation, employment and income patterns of rural poor women in Andhra Pradesh. A multi stage random sample method is used for the purpose of the study. Totally two hundred sample women SHG respondents were interviewed for the purpose of the study with a well structured questionnaire through schedule method. The study finally reveals that there is a positive impact of SHGs on creation of economic activity, employment and income generation of the rural poor women SHG members in Andhra Pradesh.

Childcare in the Netherlands: Lessons in privatisation

ABSTRACTIn 2005 the Child Care Act was introduced in the Netherlands. The explicit objective of the childcare reform has been to stimulate the operation of market forces so that childcare services are provided in an efficient way. The change towards a demand-driven financing system implies that there is no longer public provision of childcare services in the Netherlands. The emerging picture shows that the availability and use of childcare clearly increased since 2005. Due to the focus on working parents there is still inequality in childcare use by family type, yet this inequality does not seem to translate into unequal use of high quality childcare services by different socio-economic groups. Quality has been on a downward trend since process quality information was first collected in 1995. Yet, it seems likely that this negative trend is not the result of privatisation, but rather the rapid expansion in supply.

Hayek and Liberty

ABSTRACTHayek's political theory is directed against coercion, which he defines as the intentional control of one person by another. The element of personal intention ensures a clear conceptual distinction between the freedom from coercion—i.e., the “liberty”—that is exercised in the private sphere, and the freedom of choice and opportunity that may be severely constrained by the impersonal, unintentional operation of market forces. Hayek's narrow definitions of coercion and liberty therefore suggest that he was more intent on defending the benefits conferred on us by market forces than on affirming any value intrinsic in freedom—a suggestion confirmed by his lack of interest in species of freedom, such as autonomy, that might conceivably be fostered by state coercion. Hayek's consequentialist defense of liberty, however, was grounded in economic doctrines such as his own view that prices served a vital epistemic function. Given his strictures against the ignorance of modern electorates, Hayek was driven to propose extravagant limits on democracy and to embrace traditionalism; a different Hayekianism might limit inequalities of wealth and encourage the ability to learn from experimentation.

Government And The Economy: Student Perspectives From South Africa

The economic role of the state is in the forefront of international news, following the collapse of major financial groups in some countries, and ballooning government deficits and debt in others. While the extent of government intervention, such as bailouts and takeovers, has been unprecedented elsewhere, political interference in the economy is nothing new in South Africa. This research investigates student opinions about state intervention vis vis individual freedom and the operation of market forces in the South African economy. A fourteen-item Likert scale measuring student opinion was developed based on the Economic Attitudes Survey (Soper & Walstad, 1983). Interrelationships between economic opinion and student gender, prior economics knowledge, field of study and socio-economic background are explored.

Conscripts of Competitiveness: culture, institutions and capital in contemporary development

Through the lens of the new institutional economics development is represented as a process of cultural and institutional transformation in which informal social institutions that hinder the operation of market forces are dismantled and replaced with formalised, liberal institutional frameworks to facilitate rational economic activity. The World Bank has deployed these arguments to legitimise reforms aimed at reshaping the values and conduct of postcolonial citizenries to facilitate entrepreneurship and competitiveness. To deconstruct this discourse, the article points to its underlying contradictions; specifically, to the way that the idealised formal rationality of impersonal markets is necessarily subsumed in practice within the substantive irrationalities of capitalist development. Consequently the informal social relations that the Bank deems instances of cultural atavism and a barrier to competitiveness arise as intrinsic features of global capitalism. Seemingly impervious to reform, informalised populations appear as objects to be restrained or removed by the state. Coercion, I argue, emerges as the inevitable concomitant of competitiveness.

The economics of drugs in sport

This essay explains the approach that economists take when explaining the phenomenon of drug-taking in sport. The economic method models such drug-taking as a rational activity in which athletes respond to the existing incentives. The ‘solution’ to the drugs in sport problem is to alter the incentives under which athletes operate. The essay notes that there are two means for implementing such alterations. The first is via regulation, and the second is via the operation of market forces within the market for different sports. The latter modality is naturally suggested as the preferred one by the economic method. However, as the essay reports, the full analysis of this issue has not been completed, so the essay is agnostic on the matter of the optimal manner for changing the incentives under which athletes operate.

The Perverse Effects of High Brideprices

Marriage payments are conventionally explained by economists as resulting from the operation of market forces. Characteristically, this type of explanation rests on the assumption that the individuals concerned do not behave strategically. When strategic behavior is posited, parents are able to anticipate the perverse effects of high brideprices on their daughter's happiness and on the probability of break-up of her marriage. As a result, brideprices may be set at levels lower than those justified by the brides' relative scarcity in the marriage market. Using both quantitative and qualitative evidence, such a strategic approach is tested on the basis of original data collected in the Senegal river valley. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Biofuels: What a Biopact between North and South could achieve

With very few exceptions, such as the recent remarks by International Energy Agency (IEA) head Claude Mandil, commentators on the world's energy issues have yet to recognize the enormous contribution that biofuels producers from the South could make to solving the world's greenhouse gas emission problems and problems to do with the peaking of oil supplies. Once the equation between biofuels and high-cost, land-intensive cultivation in the North is broken, and a quite different scenario involving production in the South is adopted, then the possibilities are dramatically changed. The argument of this paper is that a transition to substitution of 20 percent of OECD gasoline needs by 2020 could be met from the South by creating the equivalent of 18 Brazils over the course of the next decade. Such an enormous transition will not occur by itself, or through the operation of market forces alone. It needs an institutional framework, one that guarantees for the countries of the North regular supplies of biofuels produced in a responsible manner, and guarantees for the countries of the South open markets for the biofuels produced. The OECD is in the best position to bring about such an arrangement, through taking the initiative of offering developing countries a ‘Biopact’ between North and South, thereby creating for the first time a global market for biofuels. The launch of an International Biofuels Forum under the auspices of the UN in early 2007 is a step towards the creation of such an international framework where North-South issues on biofuels may be fruitfully addressed.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Citizenship: Towards Corporate Accountability

Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Citizenship: Towards Corporate Accountability

The role of government in the information society: lessons from Germany

In view of the turbulent development of electronic information markets one could – rashly perhaps – arrive at the conclusion that this area of economic activity could without hesitation be left to the operation of market forces (supply and demand). But is this really the case? Have important social and wider aspects not been taken into consideration? In order to put this question into its historical context, the development of national information policy over the past 30 or 40 years will be outlined. Taking accepted criteria used in fiscal science, consideration will be given to which part of information provision could be organized most efficiently on a free enterprise basis and in which part of this sector of the economy the state has to accept some responsibility. A responsibility which extends beyond merely creating the framework conditions for the functioning of a free enterprise system. Finally, from these fiscal science criteria, different phases of German information policy will be examined critically under the magnifying glass, from the beginning of the 1960s to date (up to 1990 those of the then German Federal Republic). This article is based on a paper given at the International Conference ‘Information Provision – Policy and Strategy’ 28 June–July 1998 at the Frankenwarte Academy, Würzburg (Germany).

Competition, selection and inclusive education: some observations

This paper seeks toprovide an introduction tothe complex matrix of issues tobe considered by the papers in this Special Issue. The focus is placed upon the contradictory educational policy imperatives of ‘competition’ and ‘selection’ on the one hand, and ‘inclusive education’ on the other. At the core of this discussion lies a rejection of the belief in the operation of market forces as the optimal instrument for planning educational provision. Rather than narrowing the definition of ability and effectiveness, this paper asserts the importance of education for all and the issues of identity, recognition and redistribution that such an assertion necessarily implies.

Unemployment In A Northern Hinterland: The Social Impact Of Political Neglect

Abstract This article examines unemployment within a regional hinterland of Canada, traditionally a “high-unemployment” country. The social consequences of high unemployment in various types of community within the region are outlined. Many of the region's employment probles are attributed to its exposure to the unhindered operation of market forces. Since public policy tends to promote and strengthen the operation of markets the authors consider it unsurprising that the region derives little benefit from existing government policy. Such policy initiatives and instruments as are implemented tend to be symbolic rather than effective.

Is Total Advertising Going Up or Down?

The normal way of analysing total advertising by measuring it as a proportion of the gross national product is inadequate because it can conceal movements, notably a very long-term tendency for advertising budgets to be depressed as a result of the operation of market forces which lie below the surface. This downward pressure is mainly (although not exclusively) important to the large category of packaged consumer goods.The two causes of this downward pressure are, first, a gradual change in the balance of power between the manufacturing sector and the retail trade, because of the growth in the strength of the latter. The second cause is connected with the behaviour of large advertisers. They are increasingly learning how to benefit from the scale economies accruing to their brands by reducing advertising expenditures on them. They are also the types of advertisers accustomed to carrying out econometric investigations, which always demonstrate the eventual onset of diminishing returns to incremental adver...

THE PATTERN OF TRADE AND SPECIALISATION IN THE CENTRAL AMERICAN COMMON MARKET

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the structural changes and pattern of specialisation that followed the formation of the Central American Common Market (CACM) in the early 1960s. In the first section it is shown that the fear did exist that trade‐creating and “backwash” effects would dominate as a result of unrestricted free trade in the region. In sections two and three, evidence is presented to suggest that these fears have proved to be largely unfounded. The operation of market forces has led to an unplanned reciprocal exchange of manufactures for manufactures and non‐manufactures for non‐manufactures. Moreover, most of the structural changes within the manufacturing sector appear to have taken the form of intra‐industry specialisation, i.e. specialisation in the differentiated products of an industry with no need to abandon entire high‐cost industries.

Safety in Transportation: The Role of Government

We can be too safe. Achieving safety costs us time and other scarce resources. For example, if all transportation vehicles were restricted to speeds of one mile per hour, there would be a marked decrease in the accident rate, but few people would find they were better off than they are at present. A good transportation mode is one that gets me to my destination quickly, cheaply, and safely. In general, one attribute can be bettered only by worsening another-that is, additional safety is available only by trading for it higher cost or slower speed. Safety is a scarce resource. To allocate this resource optimally, two basic questions must be answered. What level of safety should we be seeking? (How safe should we be?) What is the least costly way of achieving this level? (In what ways can we buy safety most cheaply?) Transportation safety results from the interaction between passenger, government, law, and the insurance system.1 The unique role each plays in optimizing transportation safety is the subject of this paper. Particular emphasis is given to automobile safety, and the ultimate objective is to identify analytically the proper role of government fiat and regulation in accomplishing society's safety goals. The paper begins with a discussion of concepts used in the subsequent analysis. There follows a consideration of transportation safety in a society with no liability laws and no government controls on transportation but in which the individual can insure himself against certain risks. In such a society, insurance has a somewhat remarkable role, although chaos is the rule. In the next section liability laws are introduced. With liability laws and insurance, individuals are encouraged to act in such a way that a more nearly optimal level of transportation safety is reached. However, as shown in the analysis, there are many practical and theoretical reasons why relying on the market alone, including the legal system and insurance incentives, will not bring society to an optimal level of safety. Thus, the discussion moves on to the ways in which government action might be appropriate to improve or even to replace the operation of market forces as a means of achieving particular safety