Review of \u3cem\u3eInequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies.\u3c/em\u3e James J. Hechman and Alan B. Krueger. Reviewed by Sondra Beverly.

Book review of James J. Heckman and Alan B. Krueger, Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies? Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. $40.00 cloth

P. Nicole King, Kate S. Drabinski, and Joshua Clark Davis, eds. Baltimore Revisited: Stories of Inequality and Resistance in a U. S. City

New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 2019. ISBN: 9780813594026 (cloth) Laura Hapke There is little doubt that Baltimore’s problems with institutional racism and systemic inequality mirror those of numerous dried up postindustrial towns such as Detroit, Newark, and the onetime company towns dotting the United States. But all politics are indeed local. A once vibrant East Baltimore, in the euphemistic phrase inner city, is of particular interest—even before the President’s damning it..

Corporate collective action and the market cycle of the cloth industry in Nieuwkerke, Flanders, 1300-1600

This article addresses the connections between corporate collective action and economic development in the pre-industrial Low Countries. It focusses on a micro-historic case study: the textile industry of the village Nieuwkerke in the county of Flanders. This rural cloth centre witnessed an exceptional industrial expansion between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.. Following the recent proposition by Bas van Bavel that market economies follow a fixed pattern of development, the chronology of the evolution of Nieuwkerke’s cloth industry can be discussed in terms of three phases. This article argues that the first phase of development (1358-c.1500) was characterized by limited success because of pressure from the city of Ypres. The second phase (c.1500-c.1550) was marked by an industrial boom, predicated upon successful corporate collective action intertwined with the perception of social equality among the village’s cloth entrepreneurs. The third and final phase (>c.1550) was one of stagnation and decline, caused by the breaking down of the collective and concomitant social polarization. The case study thereby closely conforms to van Bavel’s theory about market cycles. Yet, the correlation between economic decline and social polarization should in this case be understood in terms of changing perceptions of inequality, rather than increasingly unequal opportunitie

Women’s Work: Labor Market Outcomes and Female Entrepreneurship in Ghana

This paper is an investigation of female entrepreneurship in Ghana. It seeks to answer the following question: Why are Ghanaian women so heavily concentrated in microenterprise in the informal economy? The literature review explores labor market trends for women on three different scales including an overview of developing countries, Sub-Saharan Africa regional, and Ghana-specific analysis. After exploring issues women face in formal employment, the study delves into business operations of informal, urban-based market participants by analyzing data pertaining to Ghanaian microenterprise. Additionally, the paper details the experiences and views of female entrepreneurs through in-depth interviews and participant observations with thirty female textile traders conducted in Makola Market in Accra, Ghana during the summers of 2012 and 2014. This study will contribute to the growing body of work on female entrepreneurship in the West African region

The impact of mobile telephony on developing country micro-enterprises: a Nigerian case study

Informational challenges-absence, uncertainty, asymmetry-shape the working of markets and commerce in many developing countries. For developing country micro-enterprises, which form the bulk of all enterprises worldwide, these challenges shape the characteristics of their supply chains. They reduce the chances that business and trade will emerge. They keep supply chains localised and intermediated. They make trade within those supply chains slow, costly, and risky. Mobile telephony may provide an opportunity to address the informational challenges and, hence, to alter the characteristics of trade within micro-enterprise supply chains. However, mobile telephony has only recently penetrated. This paper, therefore, presents one of the first case studies of the impact of mobile telephony on the numerically-dominant form of enterprise, based around a case study of the cloth-weaving sector in Nigeria. It finds that there are ways in which costs and risks are being reduced and time is saved, often by substitution of journeys. But it also finds a continuing need for journeys and physical meetings due to issues of trust, design intensity, physical inspection and exchange, and interaction complexity. As a result, there are few signs of the de-localisation or disintermediation predicted by some commentators. An economising effect of mobile phones on supply chain processes may therefore co-exist with the entrenchment of supply chain structures and a growing 'competitive divide' between those with and without access to telephony

Real inequality in Europe since 1500

Introducing a concept of real, as opposed to nominal, inequality of income or wealth suggests some historical reinterpretations, buttressed by a closer look at consumption by the rich. The purchasing powers of different income classes depend on how relative prices move. Relative prices affected real inequality more strongly in earlier centuries than in the twentieth. Between 1500 and about 1800, staple food and fuels became dearer, while luxury goods, especially servants, became cheaper, greatly widening the inequality of lifestyles. Peace, industrialization, and globalization reversed this inegalitarian price effect in the nineteenth century, at least for England

Africa's media: democracy and the politics of belonging

status: publishe