Renee Prendergast

Development and freedom

This paper is an attempt to understand how Amartya Sens thinking on development and freedom has evolved from his critique of welfare economics and his concern with underdevelopment and poverty. It is argued that Sen has done a great deal to rescue welfare economics from the consequences of methodological individualism by seeking an objective basis for comparisons of well‐being, by insisting on the need for interpersonal comparability and by creating a space for normative evaluations. Sens contribution to the human development approach with its emphasis on positive freedom has also helped to provide a valuable counterweight to the dominant free market approach. However, some concerns are expressed that the approach does not give sufficient attention to long‐run dynamics and that the conception of capability employed is not helpful for the understanding of development

A qualitative enquiry into the appropriation of mobile telephony at the bottom of the pyramid

Purpose – The paper aims to analyse bottom of the pyramid (BoP) customers’ (e.g. Bangladeshi farmers) use and appropriation of mobile telephony and to critically identify a suitable research strategy for such investigation. Design/methodology/approach – Concentrated ethnographic immersion was combined with both methodological and investigator triangulation during a four-month period of fieldwork conducted in Bangladeshi villages to obtain more robust findings. Concentrated immersion was required to achieve relatively speedier engagement owing to the difficulty in engaging with respondents on a long-term basis. Findings – The farmers’ use of mobile telephony went beyond the initial adoption, as they appropriated it through social and institutional support, inventive means and/or changes in their own lifestyle. The paper argues that technology appropriation, being a result of the mutual shaping of technology, human skills and abilities and macro-environmental factors, enables users to achieve desired outcom...

Marshallian External Economies

This paper argues that, in the absence of indivisibilities, the expansion of an industry cannot generate economies of scale unless individual firms introduce the same change s in the way they carry out their activities. In the absence of some plausible focusing device, there is no good reason to expect this to happen. Copyright 1993 by Royal Economic Society.

Ethnographic Approach to User-Centred Evaluation of Telecentres

Telecentres are considered to be an important means for providing disadvantaged communities with access to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) enabled services. However, there is a limited understanding of how targeted beneficiaries perceive the roles of these telecentres. Using an ethnographic approach, this paper examines the services offered by two telecentres in Bangladesh. An intervention was initiated that enabled groups of farmers to use mobile phones to access services. Based on farmers’ experiences and opinions the authors develop a framework which explicates the dynamic nature of use and appropriation of ICT services.

Government intervention in a dynamic economy

(1998). Government intervention in a dynamic economy. New Political Economy: Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 391-406.

Market Forces and World Development

Notes on the Contributors - List of Tables - List of Figures - List of Appendices - Acknowledgements - Introduction: Market Forces and World Development R.Prendergast & F.Stewart - Nationalism and Development N.Harris - Structural Adjustment, Global Integration and Social Democracy D.Ghai - Increasing Returns and Economic Development R.Prendergast - Market Forces and Development P.Smith - Disadvantaging Comparative Advantages: The Problem of Decreasing Returns K.Raffer - Development and Standard of Living A.R.Barros - The Appraisal and Evaluation of Structural Adjustment Lending: Some Questions of Method J.Toye - Education and Adjustment: The Experience of the 1980s and Lessons for the 1990s F.Stewart - Development Ethics: An Emergent Field? D.Gasper - The Decline of Food Aid: Issues of Aid Policy, Trade and Food Security E.Clay - Two Views of Food Aid H.W.Singer - Index

Scale of production and choice of technique in the engineering industries in developing countries

This article examines the relationship between scale of production, optimal choice of technique and costs for three engineering industries: nuts and bolts, iron founding and machine tools. In all three industries costs of production fell as the scale of output increased. This was associated with switches of technique and the spread of fixed costs over a larger number of units. The capital‐output ratio fell and labour productivity increased with increases in scale while, in most cases, the capital‐labour ratio increased. The implications of these findings are briefly discussed.

Philosophers and practical men: Charles Babbage, Irish merchants and the economics of information

Abstract Before the emergence of coordination of production by firms, manufacturers and merchants traded in markets with asymmetric information. Evidence suggests that the practical knowledge thus gained by these agents was well in advance of contemporary political economists and anticipates twentieth-century developments in the economics of information. Charles Babbage, who regarded merchants and manufacturers as the chief sources of reliable economic data, drew on this knowledge as revealed in the evidence of manufacturers and merchants presented to House of Commons select committees to make an important pioneering contribution to the theory of production and exchange with information asymmetries.

Causes of multiproduct production: The case of the engineering industries in developing countries

Abstract Concepts developed in recent literature on multiproduct industries are used to explain the absence of vertical and horizontal specialization in the capital goods industries in developing countries. Diversification of product mix generally occurs as firms seek to capture positive economies of scope due to idle machine capacity. It is argued here that in doing so they fail to take account of organizational diseconomies of scope which result from such diversification. With growth in market size, greater specialization might be expected as economies of scope due to idle machine capacity are eliminated. If, however, domestic prices for the products a firm produces are higher than world prices for those products, there will be a continued incentive for diversification rather than specialization.

Increasing Returns and Economic Development

Not so long ago, Deepak Lal claimed that the demise of development economics was likely to be conducive to the health of both the economics and economies of developing countries (Lal, 1983, p. 109). Lal attributed the analytical failures of development economics to a neglect of welfare economics and, in particular, to a misinterpretation of the theorem of the second best. Most development economists interpreted the theorem to imply that that there was a case against the introduction of piecemeal market reforms since there was no guarantee that they would lead to increased welfare. In Lal’s view, this emphasis was wrong. What the theorem really implied was that there should be a reduction in government intervention in the economy since there was no guarantee that any particular intervention would be welfare increasing. As Toye (1987) has shown, the function of the discussion of the second-best theorem in Lal’s argument seems to have been largely rhetorical. Ultimately his welfare economics argument involves little more than an assertion that the optimality results of competitive equilibrium hold, albeit approximately, in the real world. Some of the presumptions underlying this kind of argument have been addressed elsewhere, for example Toye (1987) and Killick (1989). This chapter seeks to supplement their critique by focusing on the question of the suitability of the neoclassical general equilibrium (GE) model for the analysis of developmental problems in the third world or elsewhere.