[Review of] Hoerder, Dirk. Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium

Cultures in Contact is an ambitious tome of the annotated world history of human mass migrations both within and between national boundaries. This book provides a glorious descriptive wealth of when, where, and to a lesser extent why mass migrations have occurred across the largest and most populous regions of the planet earth over the span of the past millennium. In this regard it may serve as a valued reference work for anyone curious about the bigger picture of migration flows; however, those seeking a simplistic theoretical synthesis that would account for the myriad patterns of human migrations over the past millennium will not be much gratified by Hoerder\u27s tome. As the author highlights in his introductory chapter, human migration flows may be either voluntary or coerced and in either case must be viewed in a socio-historically specific systems context

The connection between democratic freedoms and growth in transition economies

The Freedom House democracy index is often used in regression analysis to estimate the relationship between democratic freedoms and growth. The index is comprised of two broad categories for political rights and civil liberties. However, the relationship between the underlying types of rights and liberties to growth remains unknown. A newer alternative democracy index developed by Freedom House specifically for the transition nations is compared to the original democracy index. The two are highly correlated but the latter entails a greater breakdown across six democracy areas including civil society, judicial framework, media independence, corruption, electoral process, and governance. Except for corruption, each is found to be individually significant in separate growth regressions, but when all are included simultaneously, only greater freedoms in civil society and electoral process are significantly correlated with higher growth, while greater freedom in judicial framework is significantly correlated with lower growth. The remaining areas are not statistically significant.democracy; economic growth; hedonic regression

Economic Freedom and Economic Growth: A Short-run Causal Investigation

The freedom and growth literature has consistently shown that nations which have fewer restrictions on private agents and transactions tend to higher levels of economic growth. It is less clear, however, whether freedom causes growth, growth causes freedom, or the two are jointly determined. To assess these possibilities, Granger-causality tests are performed on annual freedom indicators developed by the Heritage Foundation and national growth rates. The underlying component indexes, which include Trade Policy, Taxation, Government Intervention, Monetary Policy, Capital Flows and Foreign Investment, Banking, Wage and Price Controls, Property Rights, Regulation, and Black Markets, are also tested in addition to the summary freedom rating. The tests suggest the average level of freedom in a nation, as well as many of the specific underlying components of freedom, precedes growth. However, growth may precede one of the component indexes (Government Intervention), and no relationship is found to exist between growth and two of the indexes (Trade Policy and Taxation).economic freedom; economic growth; Granger-causality

Foreign aid and market-liberalizing reform

Market-oriented economic policies-reflected in limited economic activity by government, protection of private property rights, sound monetary policy, outward orientation regarding trade and efficient tax and regulatory policy-have been strongly linked to faster rates of economic growth. Foreign aid is often provided in the belief that it encourages liberalizing reforms in these areas. This paper analyzes the impact of aid on market-liberalizing policy reform, correcting for the possible endogeneity of aid. Results indicate that higher aid slowed reform over the 1980-2000 period, as measured by a broad index of policies. Disaggregating policy into five areas, aid is significantly linked to slower reform in some policy areas but not in others. Disaggregating by decade, aid's adverse impact on policy reform is much more pronounced for the 1980s than for the 1990s.Achieving Shared Growth,Governance Indicators,Environmental Economics&Policies,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,School Health

Health Benefits of Urban Agriculture

Health professionals increasingly recognize the value of farm-and garden-scale urban agriculture. Growing food and non-food crops in and near cities contributes to healthy communities by engaging residents in work and recreation that improves individual and public well-being. This article outlines the benefits of urban agriculture with regard to nutrition, food security, exercise, mental health, and social and physical urban environments. Potential risks are reviewed. Practical recommendations for health professionals to increase the positive benefits of urban agriculture are provided

Has assistance from USAID been successful in promoting and sustaining democracy? Evidence from the transition economies of Eastern Europe and Eurasia

Foreign aid, especially official development assistance (ODA), has received increasing criticism in past decades. In particular, it has been put into question if and to what extent aid can help foster the aims for which it has been paid. In most cases, it seems that there is no discernable effect or even a negative effect of ODA on economic development. One reason for aid ineffectiveness may be seen in a lack of good governance on the side of the recipients. It has been argued that aid should concentrate more on creating better institutions. In the past 20 years, democracy promotion has become a pillar of USAID's mission and the funding for democracy and governance has steadily increased. The transition economies in particular have received special attention upon the fall of the Soviet Union. We assess the success of this aid by testing whether US aid is enhancing democracy in 26 transition countries. Using Freedom House Nations in Transit data, we find that in simple linear panel regressions aid has generally not been a significant factor in a country's overall democracy score. However, aid has significantly contributed to certain components of the democracy score, namely civil society, electoral process, judicial framework, and media independence. In addition, the impact of aid is found to depend on the number of years of past central planning. Countries having a history of less than 50 years of central planning had a significantly negative association to aid, whereas countries with more than 65 years of central planning benefited from greater aid.ODA, transition economies, democracy

Corruption and the Institutional Environment for Growth

Several cross-country studies have found that corruption is detrimental to economic growth, but the findings are not universally robust. We utilize the economic freedom index to examine if corruption can facilitate growth by allowing entrepreneurs to avoid inefficient policies and regulations when economic freedom is limited. Using regression analysis, we find that corruption is growth enhancing when economic freedom is most limited but the beneficial impact of corruption decreases as economic freedom increases. Not all areas of economic freedom affect the corruption-growth relationship equally. In particular, we find that when we analyze individual areas of economic freedom the beneficial effect of corruption disappears most quickly when the size of government and the extent of regulation decrease.Corruption; Economic Freedom; Growth

Special-Interest Groups and Volatility

This paper explores the relationship between special-interest groups and volatility of GDP growth. In an unbalanced panel of 108 countries, we find a significant negative relationship between the number of interest groups in a country and the volatility of GDP growth.

SIZE OF THE MILITARY SECTOR AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS OF AFRICA AND LATIN AMERICA

We estimate the influence of defense spending and military labor use on economic growth in African and Latin American countries. Our model integrates disparate implications from the defense economics literature into a Barro-style model of economic growth that controls for political and economic institutional variation across countries. Our panel data analysis of 44 countries in Africa and Latin America from 1975 to 1989 also controls for cross-country variation in lost human capital and public sector production inefficiencies. We find empirical evidence that the defense burden on economic growth is non-linear, with low levels of military spending increasing economic growth but higher levels of military spending decreasing growth. We also find evidence that the influence of military labor use on growth is non-linear, and exhibits a greater drag on economic growth in those countries with relatively higher levels of adult male education attainment.defense burden; economic growth

Over bedrijfskunde en andere kundes

Een bedrijfskundige is iemand die organisatieproblemen (inclusief de door hen geproduceerde ‘negatieve externaliteiten’) analyseert met behulp van wetenschappelijke inzichten. Een bedrijfskundige combineert een praktische probleemoriëntatie met een brede wetenschappelijke belangstelling