DOES AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AFFECT PRODUCTIVITY IN THE INDIAN RAILWAYS?

Our objective in this paper is to shed some empirical light on a claim often made by critics of affirmative action policies: that increasing the representation of members of marginalized communities in jobs – and especially in relatively skilled positions – comes at a cost of reduced efficiency. We undertake a systematic empirical analysis of productivity in the Indian Railways in order to determine whether increasing proportions of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in railway employment – largely a consequence of India's affirmative action policies – have actually reduced productive efficiency in the railway system. We find no evidence that higher percentages of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the railway labour force have reduced productivity. Indeed, some of our results suggest that the opposite is true, providing tentative support for the claim that greater labour force diversity boosts productivity.affirmative action; labour force; productivity; Indian railways

Heart and Minds: A Social Model of U.S. Productivity Growth

macroeconomics, product growth

"Economics in Context: The Need for a New Textbook"

economics education, textbooks, economic theory

The relevance of the Chinese experience for third world economic development

If the ten elements of Chinese development strategy discussed earlier are to provide object lessons relevant for other third world nations, they must be potentially transferable to other societies. The extent to which each element of the strategy is transferable depends on the conditions under which it can be successfully implemented, and on the degree to which these conditions are satisfied in other third world nations. I had also sought to determine what political-economic, geographical, and historical conditions are required for the successful implementation of each of the ten elements of strategy. The results of this analysis are summarized in the form of a matrix in Table 1. Each of the ten elements of strategy under discussion requires at least one - and often many more - of the major features of China's political-economic system. In all cases an effective and extensive system of public administration and/or a massoriented class structure are required, and in most cases a considerable degree of public ownership of the means of production and administrative control of resource allocation is either necessary or helpful. Less often required, but crucial in a few cases, are a central government with the power to mobilize resources on a large scale, a political leadership capable of influencing and involving people on a wide scale, and a ruraloriented class structure.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43659/1/11186_2004_Article_BF00207280.pd

Theories of American Imperialism: A Critical Evaluation

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68828/2/10.1177_048661347400600303.pd

Toward a Socialism for the Future, in the Wake of the Demise of the Socialism of the Past

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51230/1/464.pd

Large orders in strong-field QED

We address the issue of large-order expansions in strong-field QED. Our approach is based on the one-loop effective action encoded in the associated photon polarisation tensor. We concentrate on the simple case of crossed fields aiming at possible applications of high-power lasers to measure vacuum birefringence. A simple next-to-leading order derivative expansion reveals that the indices of refraction increase with frequency. This signals normal dispersion in the small-frequency regime where the derivative expansion makes sense. To gain information beyond that regime we determine the factorial growth of the derivative expansion coefficients evaluating the first 80 orders by means of computer algebra. From this we can infer a nonperturbative imaginary part for the indices of refraction indicating absorption (pair production) as soon as energy and intensity become (super)critical. These results compare favourably with an analytic evaluation of the polarisation tensor asymptotics. Kramers-Kronig relations finally allow for a nonperturbative definition of the real parts as well and show that absorption goes hand in hand with anomalous dispersion for sufficiently large frequencies and fields.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figure

Dependence and Imperialism in India

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69044/2/10.1177_048661347300500111.pd

Lead exposure in adult males in urban Transvaal Province, South Africa during the apartheid era

Human exposure to lead is a substantial public health hazard worldwide and is particularly problematic in the Republic of South Africa given the country’s late cessation of leaded petrol. Lead exposure is associated with a number of serious health issues and diseases including developmental and cognitive deficiency, hypertension and heart disease. Understanding the distribution of lifetime lead burden within a given population is critical for reducing exposure rates. Femoral bone from 101 deceased adult males living in urban Transvaal Province (now Gauteng Province), South Africa between 1960 and 1998 were analyzed for lead concentration by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). Of the 72 black and 29 white individuals sampled, chronic lead exposure was apparent in nearly all individuals. White males showed significantly higher median bone lead concentration (ME = 10.04 µg·g−1), than black males (ME = 3.80 µg·g−1) despite higher socioeconomic status. Bone lead concentration covaries significantly, though weakly, with individual age. There was no significant temporal trend in bone lead concentration. These results indicate that long-term low to moderate lead exposure is the historical norm among South African males. Unexpectedly, this research indicates that white males in the sample population were more highly exposed to lead