Agricultural Growth, Employment and Poverty: Theoretical and Empirical Explorations with Indian data (1970-1993)

There is a rapidly growing literature on the dual concern of promoting agricultural growth and reducing the incidence of rural poverty. However the analysis of the interaction of growth and poverty is an under researched area of economic policy. This paper attempts to further analyse these dual concerns in an integrated manner. A basic endogenous growth model is developed which explicitly includes poor households and a government that has to decide how to allocate resources to the provision of infrastructure and to the public distribution of food grains. The intertemporal maximisation clearly shows the trade-off the government is facing and the indeterminate outcome. The model derives five key relationships: an agricultural metaproduction function (which allows differing temporal and spatial technical progress), rural employment and wage functions, and relationships for the public distribution of food grains and for rural poverty. These structural equations are estimated in a simultaneous setting for fifteen Indian states using eleven years of data for the period 1970 to 1993. Care is taken in the treatment of missing values, the non-stationarity of many of the state variables, the high level of dependencies between the variables (in the form of extreme multicollinearity and endogeneity) and the presence of structural change. We believe that insufficient care has been taken with these important complications in some studies. Robust structural form, net average elasticities and reduced form impact elasticity multipliers are derived. These estimates give valuable insights into the complicated interdependencies of the policy and endogenous variables. Whilst our broad conclusions tend to reinforce the findings of recent studies there are major differences in our estimates and methodology, which includes the conceptualisation, analytic specification and application of appropriate estimation techniques.Agricultural growth, poverty, public food distribution, rural and social infrastructure, net average elasticities, impact elasticity multipliers

Endogeneity, Knowledge and Dynamics of Long Run Capitalist Economic Growth.

The revival of interest in economic growth and technological leadership issues has resulted in the re-examination of the theoretical foundations of the economics of growth. The neoclassical concerns with steady state paths and neo-Keynesian focus on short-term issues have remained intact in this process. However the 'new economics of growth' extensions proposed by Lucas (1988) and Romer (1986) and attempts by Scott (1989) to explain technological progress, do not address Arrow's (1962) concerns or explain Kuznet's (1957) and Maddison's (1991) empirical telescoping of the economic growth experience of the last two hundred years. This paper attempts to address some of these issues by developing a model which adopts Aghion and Howitt's (1992) suggestion to examine endogenous growth in the form of technological innovation in monopolistic capital goods production.ECONOMIC GROWTH ; ECONOMIC THEORY ; TECHNOLOGY

The Challenge of Child Labour in Rural India: A Multi-Dimensional Problem in Need of an Orchestrated Policy Response.

This paper is an attempt to provide a tentative framework for an objective, factual and systematic look at important dimensions of the child labour problem in rural India.CHILDREN ; LABOUR MARKET ; CULTURE

Determinants of Child Labour in Indian States: Some Empirical Explorations (1961-1991)

child labour ; India

Numerical modelling of plasticity induced by transcranial magnetic stimulation

We use neural field theory and spike-timing dependent plasticity to make a simple but biophysically reasonable model of long-term plasticity changes in the cortex due to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). We show how common TMS protocols can be captured and studied within existing neural field theory. Specifically, we look at repetitive TMS protocols such as theta burst stimulation and paired-pulse protocols. Continuous repetitive protocols result mostly in depression, but intermittent repetitive protocols in potentiation. A paired pulse protocol results in depression at short (∼ 100 ms) interstimulus intervals, but potentiation for mid-range intervals. The model is sensitive to the choice of neural populations that are driven by the TMS pulses, and to the parameters that describe plasticity, which may aid interpretation of the high variability in existing experimental results. Driving excitatory populations results in greater plasticity changes than driving inhibitory populations. Modelling also shows the merit in optimizing a TMS protocol based on an individual’s electroencephalogram. Moreover, the model can be used to make predictions about protocols that may lead to improvements in repetitive TMS outcomes

Ground state non-universality in the random field Ising model

Two attractive and often used ideas, namely universality and the concept of a zero temperature fixed point, are violated in the infinite-range random-field Ising model. In the ground state we show that the exponents can depend continuously on the disorder and so are non-universal. However, we also show that at finite temperature the thermal order parameter exponent one half is restored so that temperature is a relevant variable. The broader implications of these results are discussed.Comment: 4 pages 2 figures, corrected prefactors caused by a missing factor of two in Eq. 2., added a paragraph in conclusions for clarit

Evaluating Process-Based Integrated Assessment Models of Climate Change Mitigation

Process-based integrated assessment models (IAMs) analyse transformation pathways to mitigate climate change. Confidence in models is established by testing their structural assumptions and comparing their behaviour against observations as well as other models. Climate model evaluation is concerted, and prominently reported in a dedicated chapter in the IPCC WG1 assessments. By comparison, evaluation of process-based IAMs tends to be less visible and more dispersed among modelling teams, with the exception of model inter-comparison projects. We contribute the first comprehensive analysis of process-based IAM evaluation, drawing on a wide range of examples across eight different evaluation methods testing both structural and behavioural validity. For each evaluation method, we compare its application to process-based IAMs with its application to climate models, noting similarities and differences, and seeking useful insights for strengthening the evaluation of process-based IAMs. We find that each evaluation method has distinctive strengths and limitations, as well as constraints on their application. We develop a systematic evaluation framework combining multiple methods that should be embedded within the development and use of process-based IAMs

Young people, crime and school exclusion: a case of some surprises

During the 1990s the number of young people being permanently excluded from schools in England and Wales increased dramatically from 2,910 (1990/91) to a peak of 12,700 (1996/97). Coinciding with this rise was a resurgence of the debate centring on lawless and delinquent youth. With the publication of Young People and Crime (Graham and Bowling 1995) and Misspent Youth (Audit Commission 1996) the 'common sense assumption' that exclusion from school inexorably promoted crime received wide support, with the school excludee portrayed as another latter day 'folk devil'. This article explores the link between school exclusion and juvenile crime, and offers some key findings from a research study undertaken with 56 young people who had experience of being excluded from school. Self-report interview questions reveal that whilst 40 of the young people had offended, 90% (36) reported that the onset of their offending commenced prior to their first exclusion. Moreover, 50 (89.2% of the total number of young people in the sample), stated that they were no more likely to offend subsequent to being excluded and 31 (55.4%) stated that they were less likely to offend during their exclusion period. Often, this was because on being excluded, they were 'grounded' by their parents

Decoherence of electron spin qubits in Si-based quantum computers

Direct phonon spin-lattice relaxation of an electron qubit bound by a donor impurity or quantum dot in SiGe heterostructures is investigated. The aim is to evaluate the importance of decoherence from this mechanism in several important solid-state quantum computer designs operating at low temperatures. We calculate the relaxation rate $1/T_1$ as a function of [100] uniaxial strain, temperature, magnetic field, and silicon/germanium content for Si:P bound electrons. The quantum dot potential is much smoother, leading to smaller splittings of the valley degeneracies. We have estimated these splittings in order to obtain upper bounds for the relaxation rate. In general, we find that the relaxation rate is strongly decreased by uniaxial compressive strain in a SiGe-Si-SiGe quantum well, making this strain an important positive design feature. Ge in high concentrations (particularly over 85%) increases the rate, making Si-rich materials preferable. We conclude that SiGe bound electron qubits must meet certain conditions to minimize decoherence but that spin-phonon relaxation does not rule out the solid-state implementation of error-tolerant quantum computing.Comment: 8 figures. To appear in PRB-July 2002. Revisions include: some references added/corrected, several typos fixed, a few things clarified. Nothing dramati