Social movements and the crisis of neoliberalism in Malaysia and Thailand

Of the Southeast Asian countries most badly affected by the 1997 financial crisis, Malaysia and Thailand remain the most unsettled by its political fallout. Their present political situations are not akin to 'politics as usual'. Instead, they capture the unpredicted outcomes of post-crisis struggles to reorganize structures of economic and political power. Comparing the situations in Malaysia and Thailand, this paper focuses on their differing state and civil society engagements with neoliberalism. It is suggested that the post-crisis contestations, sometimes tied to pre-crisis conflicts in political economy, left something of a stalemate: neither neoliberalism nor the social movements satisfactorily fulfilled their agendas in either country.Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Thailand, Social movements, Economic policy, Financial crises, Neoliberalism, East Asian financial crisis

Changes in poverty and the stability of income distribution in Argentina: evidence from the 1990s via decompositions

From 1992 to 2001, despite its rapid economic growth during the early 1990s, Argentina experienced a period characterized by increasing income inequality and poverty. An axiomatically modified Datt-Ravallion decomposition, that separates changes in poverty rates into mean and inequality components, will illustrate how each of them has contributed to those changes. Contrary to the claims of much of the recent cross-country literature, income inequality does not appear stable in Argentina. Previous results are extended in two key ways. First, the empirical density function is used to calculate the inequality component, without assuming a particular functional form for the Lorenz curve. Second, both components are recomputed without the vaguely defined Datt-Ravallion residual, which improves interpretability.decomposition of changes in poverty, poverty measures, inequality and growth.

Economic valuation of forests and nature : a support tool for effective decision making

Included are several case studies, like: The Leuser ecosystem, Sumatra; The Borivili National Park, India; Tropical rain forests, Costa Rica; Mangrove forests, Philippines. This document has been prepared by: IAC and EC-LN

Development of a Sinkhole Raveling Chart Based on Cone Penetration Test (CPT) Data

Naturally occurring sinkholes in Florida are formed when the soluble limestone bedrock weathers and creates cavities at its interface with the overburden finer-grained soils. The overburden soil then erodes into the limestone fissures, thus weakening the strength and holding capacity of the soil above. This initial stage of a sinkhole is referred to as soil raveling and is considered to be the most effective time to perform soil improvements measures, such as grouting, to mitigate further expansion of the subterranean void. Geotechnical engineers and scientists use subsurface exploration techniques such as Cone Penetration Testing (CPT) to stratify soils and estimate soil properties. This paper presents a CPT-based raveling chart, to be used in identifying raveled soils in Central Florida during initial subsurface exploration. The raveling-chart was developed by collecting a large sample of CPT data (i.e cone tip resistance, qc, and sleeve frictional resistance, fs) from multiple sites within the same geological formation. CPT data was grouped within three categories: collapsed sinkholes, suspected raveling, and no1n-raveled, and plotted using a scatter of data points with coordinates (fs, Qtn,); that is sleeve friction resistance, and normalized tip resistance. A simple statistical analysis was applied for the resulting data group to create envelopes, or threshold lines, which bound the data to create certain categories. The resulting chart provides quantifiable measure of sinkhole raveling due to soil erosion

Miniature electrometer preamplifier effectively compensates for input capacitance

Negative capacitance preamplifier using a dual MOS /Metal Oxide Silicon/ transistor in conjunction with bipolar transistors is used with intracellular microelectrodes in recording bioelectric potentials. Applications would include use as a pickup plate video amplifier in storage tube tests and for pH and ionization chamber measurements