Alasdair I. MacBean

China's Environment: Problems and Policies

Historically, rapid growth has produced environmental destruction. China is no exception. Because of its huge and growing population, 20 years of over nine per cent per annum growth, a history of neglect and adverse geography, China faces crises. Floods devastate in the south while droughts afflict the north. One in three of Chinas rural people lacks safe drinking water. China suffers air pollution, deforestation, loss of grasslands, and species, erosion, encroaching desert, acid rain, dust storms that engulf cities such as Beijing and can carry far abroad. It has 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world. Environmental degradation grows and Chinas development is threatened by it. Water shortages have hit industries and factories have been shut by energy crises. The costs of cleaning up the environment will grow still greater if prompt and effective action is not taken. Chinas government recognises these problems and developed laws and institutions to protect the environment, but at grassroots level they fail to be implemented because local governments value short-term gains in growth and jobs over a better environment. The international community can help, but only China can deal with the problems.

The role of transport costs as a determinant of price level differentials between the isle of man and the United Kingdom, 1989

The Isle of Man experiences price levels which, for consumer convenience goods, are some 10% higher than those in nearby regions of the UK mainland. The observed price differentials indicate incomplete economic integration with the United Kingdom. This paper presents the results of two major research projects undertaken on behalf of the Isle of Man Board of Consumer Affairs by a team of researchers at Lancaster University. The research analyzes the role which transport costs to the island play in determining the observed price differentials between the Isle of Man and the United Kingdom. Transport costs (both marine and road haulage) were found to account for only a relatively small part of the observed price differentials. Other major causes of price differentials between the island economy and the mainland were found to include: high stockholding and inventory costs; the failure to exploit economies of scale fully in the on-island wholesaling and retailing sectors (as a result of small market size); and imperfect competition among island business sectors. The study highlights the difficulties faced in integrating island and mainland economies. Freight transport improvements alone cannot eliminate price differentials.

Agricultural Exports of Developing Countries: Market Conditions and National Policies

The share of developing countries in world exports of agricultural products has declined sharply over the last 15 years. How far is this decline the result of factors beyond anyone’s control or of policies in the industrial nations or of policies in the developing countries themselves? A rough assignment of causes is the modest objective of this paper.

Source of the Challenge

The economic distance between nations can be measured in many ways. The most widely used and probably the most misleading of these measures is that of annual income or gross national product per head. On the one hand it exaggerates the gap between rich and poor nations, making one despair of ever seeing that gap close significantly, and on the other it diverts attention from the real and tragic differences between the lives of the poor and the rich. What meaning can be attached to the statement that the national income per capita in the United States is

Challenge of Trade and a New International Economic Order

5,000 while in India it is

Growthmanship and Industrialisation

100?1 Does it really mean that the average American citizen is fifty times better off than the average Indian? In one sense this is patently absurd. Merely to survive, to be able to buy enough basic food, clothing and shelter in the United States would cost over

Official Aid to Developing Countries

1,000 while

Challenge of Technology

100 would suffice for these in India, so that someone with

Response to the Challenge: the Role of the State

1,000 in America may be worse off than someone in India with

Myths and Realities in Development: Prescriptions for Policy

100. The fault lies in the fact that the international exchange rate between the Indian rupee and the American dollar does not reflect the domestic purchasing power of these currencies. In both of these nations foreign trade is a mere 5 per cent of total national product, yet only this tiny part affects directly the exchange rate.