Economics

This paper aims to explore the space of possible particularistic approaches to Philosophy of Science by examining the differences and similarities between Jonathan Dancy’s moral particularism—as expressed in both his earlier writings (e.g., Moral Reasons, 1993), and, more explicitly defended in his book Ethics without Principles (2004)—and Nancy Cartwright’s particularism in the philosophy of science, as defended in her early collection of essays, How the Laws of Physics Lie (1983), and her later book, The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science (1999). I shall argue that Dancy’s particularism is more radical, but also more plausible, than Cartwright’s, concluding that we have good reason to embrace a scientific particularism that is far closer to Dancy’s ethical particularism than any view defended by Nancy Cartwright, or any other philosopher from the ‘Stanford school’ of scientific theory.

The analysis of the structure and evolution of (complex) networks has recently received considerable attention. Although research on networks originated in mathematics studies dating back to the 19th century (or earlier), and developed further in the mid-1900s with contributions to graph theory, there is nowadays growing interest in its application to the social sciences, particularly in regional science and transportation, because of the spatial relevance of networks. This paper presents a dynamic outlook for the German commuting network from the perspective of the German labour market districts. The focus of this paper is to explore how the German commuting network evolves, from two perspectives: space and connectivity. We consider home-to-work commuters moving between 439 German districts for the years 1995 and 2005. The results of the present analysis allow us to identify, amongst the main German districts, the most ‘open’ and connected ones. These emerging districts can be considered as candidates for a position as ‘hubs’ in the German commuting system, that is, attractors in the spatial economic perspective, as well as interconnectors in a network perspective.

Using a panel of 439 German regions we evaluate and compare the performance of various Neural Network (NN) models as forecasting tools for regional employment growth. Because of relevant differences in data availability between the former East and West Germany, the NN models are computed separately for the two parts of the country. The comparisons of the models and their ex post forecasts are carried out by means of a non-parametric test: viz. the Friedman statistic. The Friedman statistic tests the consistency of model results obtained in terms of their rank order. Since there is no normal distribution assumption, this methodology is an interesting substitute for a standard analysis of variance. Furthermore, the Friedman statistic is indifferent to the scale on which the data are measured. The evaluation of the ex post forecasts suggests that NN models are generally able to correctly identify the fastest-growing and the slowest-growing regions, and hence predict rather well the correct ranking of regions in terms of their employment growth. The comparison among NN models – on the basis of several criteria – suggests that the choice of the variables used in the model may influence the model’s performance and the reliability of its forecasts.

SHARED MONETARY GOVERNANCE:
Exploring the role of regulatory frameworks in the institutional evolution of  General and Special Purpose Currencies


This thesis aims to enhance our understanding of how General and Special Purpose Monetary institutional governance structures interact with state regulatory frameworks, which thus enhance or restrict their degree of Shared Monetary Governance. Another important aim is to develop an analytical framework that will allow the comparison of differently scaled currencies not only in terms of their functional roles but also in terms of the external and internal governance of these functions.  Fung and Olin-Wright argue for decentralized governance.  Decentralized currencies, known as alternative or Complementary Currencies theoretically offer more socially embedded forms of governance.  This conceptualization of embeddedness recognizes that governance mediates the relationship between 'general purpose money' and institutional responses to Polanyi's 'special purpose money'.  While general money tends to be regulated through closed forms of governance, special purpose money may be more amenable to shared forms of monetary governance.  One theoretical contribution of this work is to explain how the relationship between general and special purpose monetary institutions is mediated by regulatory frameworks which shape their internal institutional policy setting processes. This study asserts that the 'embedding' nature of endogenous governance of many CCs (Polanyi's 'special purpose moneys') contrasts with the 'dis-embedding' governance of general money.  It further asks whether responses to special purpose monetary institutions by regulatory framework bodies discourage attempts by new forms of monetary institutions to devolve monetary governance.  A new methodology combining Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) with ordinal scoring is used to quantify rising degrees of Shared governance based on State regulatory framework treatment of various currency institutions, Special purpose currencies as elements of the re-embedding through shared governance, and the role of scale in those interactions.

The purpose of this volume is to bring together a set of chapters that investigate the communication practices through which Chinese societies are creating their civil foundations for the next millennium. Civic Discourse, Civil Society, and Chinese Communities, reflects both the emphasis on analyzing specific discursive practices in particular Chinese societies and on understanding the role that discursive practices play in the development of civil society more generally.

Some probabilistic aspects of the number variance statistic are investigated. Infinite systems of independent Brownian motions and symmetric α-stable processes are used to construct new examples of processes which exhibit both divergent and saturating number variance behaviour. We derive a general expression for the number variance for the spatial particle configurations arising from these systems and this enables us to deduce various limiting distribution results for the fluctuations of the associated counting functions. In particular, knowledge of the number variance allows us to introduce and characterize a novel family of centered, long memory Gaussian processes. We obtain fractional Brownian motion as a weak limit of these constructed processes.

This paper tests between the standard "random matching function" approach and "stock-flow" matching while controlling for temporal aggregation bias. Consistent with previous empirical work, the random matching function fits the matching data reasonably well. But match flows are more highly correlated with vacancy inflows than is consistent with the random matching approach. Instead the data support stock-flow matching, where unemployed workers match directly with suitable new vacancies as such vacancies come on to the market.

In this paper we o¤er a new theory of religious organizations. Our theory links between two important aspects of religion: individual beliefs about the causality between private actions their and consequences, and the social aspects of religious practices. The model has three main ingredients: (i) a social interaction game; (ii) heterogeneous beliefs about the statistical relation between private actions in the game and uncertain events that a¤ect individual's utility; (iii) observable actions (interpreted as rituals) that allow religious individuals to identify themselves.

The credible identification of endogenous peer group effects-i.e. social multiplier or feedback effects-has long eluded social scientists. We argue that such effects are most credibly identified by a randomly assigned social program which operates at differing intensities within and between peer groups. The data we use are from Project STAR, a class size reduction experiment conducted in Tennessee elementary schools. In these data, classes were comprised of varying fractions of students who had previously been exposed to the Small class treatment, creating class groupings of varying experimentally induced quality. We use this variation in class group quality to estimate the spillover effect. We find that when allowance is made for this 'feedback' effect of prior exposure to the Small class treatment, the peer effects account for much of the total experimental effects in the later grades, and the direct class size effects are rendered substantially smaller.

We study a two-country two-sector model of international trade in which one sector produces homogeneous products while the other produces differentiated products. The differentiatedproduct industry has firm heterogeneity, monopolistic competition, search and matching in its labor market, and wage bargaining. Some of the workers searching for jobs end up being unemployed. Countries are similar except for frictions in their labor markets, which include efficiency of matching, cost of vacancies, firing costs, and unemployment benefits. We study the interaction of labor market rigidities and trade impediments in shaping welfare, trade flows, productivity, and unemployment. We show that both countries gain from trade but that the flexible countrywhich has lower labor market frictions-gains proportionately more. A flexible labor market confers comparative advantage; the flexible country exports differentiated products on net. A country benefits from lowering frictions in its labor market, but this harms the country's trade partner. And the simultaneous proportional lowering of labor market frictions in both countries benefits both of them. The model generates rich patterns of unemployment. In particular, better labor market institutions do not ensure lower unemployment, and unemployment and welfare can both rise in response to a policy change or falling trade costs. for editorial assistance, and Helpman thanks the National Science Foundation for financial support. simple way, which can be related to a variety of labor market features, such as the cost of vacancies, the efficiency of matching in labor markets, firing costs and unemployment insurance. We focus the analysis on search and matching frictions in Sections 2-6, and show in Section 7 how the results generalize to economies with firing costs and unemployment benefits. We show, however, that even the simpler search and matching frictions generate rich patterns of unemployment in response to both variation across countries in labor market rigidities and changes in trade impediments.

We develop a simple general equilibrium model for studying the impact of workers'relativewage concerns on resource allocation and the organization of production. We characterize equilibria for the closed economy and for an open economy in which an intermediate input can be produced o¤shore. In the closed economy, …rms that are otherwise identical may have di¤erent hiring practices and pay di¤erent wages to low-skill workers. In the open economy, some …rms perform all production at home while others produce all of the intermediate input o¤shore. We show that relative-wage concerns add to incentives for o¤shoring. O¤shore production may take place in the presence of relative-wage concerns in situations where it would not be pro…table in their absence. And if o¤shoring takes place with or without such concerns, the extent of o¤shore production is greater in the former setting than in the latter. We further show that when workers are concerned about relative pay, the equilibrium does not maximize the economy's net output. Nonetheless, the competitive equilibrium with o¤shoring is constrained Pareto e¢ cient.

We generalize the Antràs and Helpman (2004) model of the international organization of production in order to accommodate varying degrees of contractual frictions. In particular, we allow the degree of contractibility to vary across inputs and countries. A continuum of firms with heterogeneous productivities decide whether to integrate or outsource the production of intermediate inputs, and from which country to source them. Final-good producers and their suppliers make relationship-specific investments which are only partially contractible, both in an integrated firm and in an arm's-length relationship. We describe equilibria in which firms with different productivity levels choose different ownership structures and supplier locations, and then study the effects of changes in the quality of contractual institutions on the relative prevalence of these organizational forms. Better contracting institutions in the South raise the prevalence of offshoring, but may reduce the relative prevalence of FDI or foreign outsourcing. The impact on the composition of offshoring depends on whether the institutional improvement affects disproportionately the contractibility of a particular input. A key message of the paper is that improvements in the contractibility of inputs controlled by final-good producers have different effects than improvements in the contractibility of inputs controlled by suppliers.

In this paper, we study the initial recruitment of individuals in the political sector. We propose an equilibrium model of political recruitment by a party who faces competition for political talent from the lobbying sector. We show that a political party may deliberately choose to recruit only mediocre politicians, in spite of the fact that it could afford to recruit better individuals who would like to become politicians. We argue that this finding may contribute to explain the observation that in many countries the political class is mostly composed of mediocre people. (JEL: D72, J44, J45; Keywords: politicians, parties, political recruitment.) * We thank the participants of the 2005 Meetings of the SED for their useful comments. Financial support from National Science Foundation grant SES-0617901 is gratefully acknowledged.

In this paper, I discuss recent developments in political economy. By focusing on the microeconomic side of the discipline, I present an overview of current research on four of the fundamental institutions of a political economy: voters, politicians, parties and governments. For each of these topics, I identify and discuss some of the salient questions that have been posed and addressed in the literature, present some stylized models and examples, and summarize the main theoretical findings. Furthermore, I describe the available data, review the relevant empirical evidence, and discuss some of the challenges for empirical research in political economy.

While endogenous asset-price bubbles cannot exist without informationally monopolistic market conditions, even when such conditions exist, such bubbles occur under laissez faire only for relatively short durations and only as random and therefore unpredictable phenomena such as in mixedstrategy-equilibria. In contrast, governmentally generated bubbles -identifiable by their enormity, long-duration, and concomitant supply increases -are predictable. Two alternative causal observations reveal when one of these enormous bubbles is about to be rationally, albeit probably subconsciously, created by a state's rulers. The first causal observation, government-debtinduced-imminent-revolution, and its underlying model, predict history's most notorious stock-market bubbles (i.e. the South Sea and Mississippi Bubbles.) The modern emergence of strong central governments, which came with the advent of government-debt-holding central banks, has made such bubbles obsolete.

Data on the individual export destinations of French …rms shed light on the nature of entry barriers to national markets. While …rms are very heterogeneous with respect to where they sell and how much they sell, the data reveal some striking regularities: (1) Looking across destinations, the relationship between market size, French market share, and the number of French …rms selling there is very tight, with the number of participants rising almost in proportion with respect to market share and with an elasticity of about two-thirds with respect to market size.

The Internet AS-level topology is a highly dynamic structure that evolves over time under diverse technical, economical and social forces. Up to now the few efforts on topology visualization have taken only static snapshots of the topology graph. In this poster, we present Cyclops, an interactive visualization tool that highlights the changes in the Internet AS-level topology. We use case studies to demonstrate how Cyclops helps reveal and understand AS topology changes. We also propose a new set of functionalities to be added to Cyclops, which can greatly benefit from the community input and feedback.

We analyze a banking system in which the class of feasible deposit contracts, or mechanisms, is broad. The mechanisms must satisfy a sequential service constraint, but partial or full suspension of convertibility is allowed. Consumers must be willing to deposit, ex ante. We show, by examples, that under the socalled "optimal contract," the post-deposit game can have a run equilibrium.

This note contains information about job search for DPhil graduates. The first -and longest --part is devoted to the American job market, a large organized clearing house that meets once a year. The second part covers the European market. The emphasis is on academic and research jobs, although useful information is also provided on nonresearch jobs in the internet section. A list of Oxford resources appears at the end, as well as references to journal articles on the job market for economists and the ranking of various departments.

We begin our study of international trade with a model that has two goods and two factors (labor and capital). We shall suppose that the two goods are traded on international markets, but do not allow for any movements of factors across borders. This reflects the fact that

Using original survey data collected at the county (commune) level, we examine the relationship between insecurity and welfare. Correcting for unobserved heterogeneity at the commune level, we …nd that insecurity is associated with lower incomes and health status in all our analysis, and it associated with lower school enrollment and higher infant mortality in regressions. Results are robust to the inclusion of shocks potentially a¤ecting both welfare and insecurity. We further …nd a signi…cant association between insecurity and the provision of certain public services, notably schooling and health care. A similar relationship is found with the placement of development projects. Taken together, the evidence suggest that insecurity is an important determinant of welfare in the country studied.

This paper tests whether manufacturing exporters pay more to educated workers in an e¤ort to ascertain whether the productivity of human capital is raised by exports. Using a panel of matched employer-employee data from Morocco, we …nd no evidence that the education wage premium is higher in exporting sectors and …rms. Although exporters pay more on average, much of the wage di¤erential can be explained by the fact that exporters have a larger workforce and more capital. Educated workers who start working for an exporter do not experience a larger wage increase relative to their previous job. We …nd a mild positive association between exports, technology, and product quality, part of which is due di¤erences in …rm size. We discuss why our results di¤er from those obtained using di¤erent countries and methodologies.

Using detailed survey data from Uganda, this paper examines whether co¤ee producers sell to itinerant traders or directly to markets, where they can get a higher price but must incur a transport cost. We …nd that selling to the market is more likely when the quantity sold is large and the market close by. Wealthy farmers are less likely to sell to the market, possibly because the shadow value of their time is higher. But if they have a large quantity of co¤ee for sale, they are more likely to sell it to the market. They are also more likely to travel to a distant market. These …ndings are consistent with their better ability to pay for public transportation. We …nd no evidence that the decision to sell at the farm-gate is driven by a self-control motive.

This paper examines the determinants of assets at marriage in rural Ethiopia. We identify and test three separate processes that determine assets brought to marriage: assortative matching; compensating parental transfers at marriage; and strategic behavior by parents. We Þnd ample evidence for the Þrst, none for the second, and some evidence of the third for brides. We also Þnd no evidence of competition for parental assets among siblings. Results suggests that parents do not transfer wealth to children in ways that compensate for marriage market outcomes. Certain parents, however, give more assets to daughters whenever doing so increases the chances of marrying a wealthy groom.

Using original survey data, we document the activities, resources, and governance structure of NGOs operating in Uganda. The NGO sector is funded primarily by international non-governmental organizations and bilateral donors. We …nd large di¤erences in size and funding across NGOs, with only a few NGOs attracting most of the funding. Most NGOs are small and underfunded and focus on raising awareness and advocacy. Few NGOs are faith-based. Most screening and monitoring is done by grant agencies. Some monitoring is also done internally by members and trustees. Little monitoring is done by government. NGOs do not …le an income tax returns and few respondents are able to provide coherent …nancial accounts.

This paper examines the determinants of human and physical capital at marriage. Using detailed data from rural Ethiopia, we …nd that assets brought to marriage are distributed in a highly unequal manner. For …rst unions, assets brought to marriage are positively associated with parents'wealth, indicating that a bequest motive a¤ects assets at marriage. Parental wealth a¤ects the inheritance of neither groom nor bride. Sibling competition from brothers a¤ects grooms' inheritance, but sisters have no e¤ect. The marriage market is a major conduit for rural and gender inequality, although avenues do exist for couples to accumulate wealth over their life cycle.

This paper tests the efficiency of insurance markets in the Pakistan Punjab by examining how crop choices are affected by the presence of price and yield risk. We estimate reduced-form and structural models of crop choices. Although we cannot reject the hypothesis that village members efficiently share risk among themselves, production choices are shown to depend on risk. Existing risk sharing and selfinsurance mechanisms thus imperfectly protect Punjab farmers against village-level shocks. Results also indicate that households respond to consumption price risk, thereby suggesting that empirical and theoretical work on risk should avoid putting an exclusive emphasis on yield and output price risk.

This paper examines how relationships and networks affect market exchange in Sub-Saharan Africa. After noting that market exchange arguably plays a larger role in Africa than in developed economies, we show that the presence of transactions costs naturally leads market participants to enter in long-term trading relationships. These relationships form business networks that shape market outcomes. We argue that network segmentation can have large efficiency and equity costs, particularly in international trade. Because of network externalities, groups and countries that are familiar with a particular activity tend to continue investing in that activity.

Credit from suppliers is an important but often neglected source of finance for manufacturing firms. Zimbabwe is no exception. Unlike credit from financial institutions, trade credit does not rely on formal collateral but on trust and reputation. Contract enforcement is flexible.

This paper investigates the extent to which poor households are discouraged from making a non-divisible but profitable investment. Using data on irrigation wells in India, we estimate the parameters of a structural model of irreversible investment. Results show that poor farmers fail to undertake a profitable investment that they could, in principle, self-finance because the non-divisibility of the investment puts it out of their reach.

We investigate whether available enforcement mechanisms a¤ects who shares risk with whom in sub-Saharan Africa by applying dyadic regression analysis to data from a lab-type experiment, surveys and a genealogical mapping exercise. During the experiment participants were invited to form risk sharing groups under three enforcement mechanisms: external, intrinsic, and extrinsic, i.e., social sanctioning. Same sex dyads and dyads who belong to the same economic community-based organizations (CBOs) are more likely to share risk.

Does capital-embodied technological change play an important role in shaping labor market inequalities? This paper addresses the question in a model with vintage capital and search-matching frictions where costly capital investment leads to heterogeneity in productivity among vacancies in equilibrium. The paper Þrst demonstrates analytically 1) how technology growth affects equilibrium wage inequality, income shares and unemployment, and 2) how its impact depends on the presence of labor market institutions (welfare beneÞts, Þring taxes). Next, it applies the model to a quantitative evaluation of vintage capital as an origin of wage inequality: through labor market frictions, a 10-year age differential in capital translates into a 4% wage gap among exante equal workers. Finally, the model allows a U.S.-continental Europe comparison: a common embodied technological acceleration interacted with different labor market institutions can explain a substantial part of the differential rise in unemployment and capital share and some of the differential dynamics in wage inequality.

Byzantine and rational behaviors are increasingly recognized as unavoidable realities in today's cooperative services. Yet, how to design BAR-tolerant protocols and rigorously prove them strategy proof remains somewhat of a mystery: existing examples tend either to focus on unrealistically simple problems or to want in rigor. The goal of this paper is to demystify the process by presenting the full algorithmic development cycle that, starting from the classic synchronous Repeated Terminating Reliable Broadcast (R-TRB) problem statement, leads to a provably BAR-tolerant solution. We show i) how to express R-TRB as a game; ii) why the strategy corresponding to the optimal Byzantine Fault Tolerant algorithm of Dolev and Strong does not guarantee safety when non-Byzantine players behave rationally; iii) how to derive a BAR-tolerant R-TRB protocol: iv) how to prove rigorously that the protocol ensures safety in the presence of non-Byzantine rational players.

We present the first peer-to-peer data streaming application that guarantees predictable throughput and low latency in the BAR (Byzantine/Altruistic/Rational) model, in which nonaltruistic nodes can behave in ways that are self-serving (rational) or arbitrarily malicious (Byzantine). At the core of our solution is a BARtolerant version of gossip, a well-known technique for scalable and reliable data dissemination. BAR Gossip relies on verifiable pseudo-random partner selection to eliminate non-determinism that can be used to game the system while maintaining the robustness and rapid convergence of traditional gossip. A novel fair enough exchange primitive entices cooperation among selfish nodes on short timescales, avoiding the need for long-term node reputations. Our initial experience provides evidence for BAR Gossip's robustness. Our BAR-tolerant streaming application provides over 99% convergence for broadcast updates when all clients are selfish but not colluding, and over 95% convergence when up to 40% of clients collude while the rest follow the protocol. BAR Gossip also performs well when the client population consists of both selfish and Byzantine nodes, achieving over 93% convergence even when 20% of the nodes are Byzantine.

Climate change governance is an emerging topic in the citizen engagement discourse.  This is an Expert Group Meeting (EGM) report focused on the socioeconomic impacts of climate change on citizen engagement that reciprocate creative solutions from the bottom-up in public administration processes.  The EGM held during the World Civic Forum 2009 initiative on May 5 - 8 May 2009 in Seoul, Korea. The overarching theme of the forum was Building Our humanitarian Planet, espoused by three sub-themes: 1. Civic Values for Global Justice; 2. Civic Engagement in Public.  It was agreed that there is a need for UNDESA to boost its activities to enhance citizen engagement to cope with climate change challenges was emphasized during the EGM. Promotion of public awareness, preparedness, adaptation, and mitigation were recognized as critical to success. Over ten concrete policy and programme proposals were identified for further analysis, which will be presented by UNDESA as input to the forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen, 7-18 December 2009, as well as to ECOSOC through its subsidiary body, the Committee of Experts on Pubic Administration (CEPA).

The aim of this paper is to estimate the power of the French automatic stabilisers using the macro-econometric model MESANGE. The main appeal of MESANGE lies in its very detailed description of public finances. Automatic stabilisation denotes the capacity of the public budget to dampen economic cycles. For instance, during a downturn, taxes (indexed on consumption, profits, etc.) decrease while cyclical public expenditures (mostly unemployment benefits) expand, both contributing to the reduction of the initial downturn in a Keynesian fashion. In the Euro area, automatic stabilisers gain importance as national monetary policy is lost, all the more since the Growth and Stability Pact seeks to limit discretionary fiscal policy.  Recently, several authors have undertaken cross-country comparisons of the power of automatic stabilisers, with mixed results for the performance of France’s a priori large fiscal stabilisers (Van den Noord (2000), Barrel and Pina (2000, 2003), Brunila et al. (2002)). This study focuses on a detailed analysis of automatic stabilisers, leaving aside the issue of cross-country comparisons. I compute the contribution of each budgetary item to stabilisation, for different demand and supply shocks, and explain it by the sensitivity of the budgetary items and their fiscal multipliers. According to the model MESANGE, after a demand shock GDP fluctuations are only slightly dampened (by around 10%) during the first the year of the shock, whereas stabilisation is stronger during the second year (20%). Indirect taxes, production taxes and unemployment benefits are found to be the most efficient stabilisers. The strength of stabilisers depends, however, on the dynamic profile of shocks. Sudden shocks that revert to the mean gradually are best stabilised, because of the lags in the behavioural and fiscal equations. The paper finally assesses stabilisation of supply shocks taking into account the effect on potential GDP. Contrary to widely accepted claims (e.g. Blanchard, 2000), I show that public finances are indeed beneficial after a productivity shock in neo-Keynesian models, although automatic stabilisers worsen oil-price driven volatility.

This paper develops a critical international political economy analysis of the processes that we commonly understand as globalization and their application in the development of Poland's transition from state socialism. It does so by tracing the rise of social forces shaped by the restructuring of social relations of production and the form of state in Poland. The paper argues that a series of important social shifts occurred to move Poland towards a neoliberal strategy of capitalist accumulation with the failure of state-socialism as a development project and the uncoupling of the social basis of Communist Party hegemony. It is social forces most intimately associated with transnational capital, irrespective of their party or social position, that are most successful in the struggle over competing reform strategies. These strategies eventually coalesce through material and ideological changes associated with a new openness to transnationalized circuits of capital.

This article aims to address a fundamental question for analysts and students of MERCOSUR : what explains the bloc's survival despite its recurrent crises and frequent pessimistic forecasts predicting its collapse ? It argues that the maintenance of co-operation after 1999, when the economic and political economy rationale of the project had almost disappeared, is best understood in terms of the convergent strategic interests of MERCOSUR partners. This convergence of interests in the continuity of the regional regime reflects three types of strategic incentives. First, defensive considerations reflecting external forces and a shared sense of vulnerability vis-à-vis the external environment have provided the main motivation for partners to engage in negotiations and attempt to move the process of integration forward. Secondly, the offensive incentives faced by Brazil, given its relatively stronger position within the region have also worked to foster regional co-operation. But besides these power considerations, the sustainability of co-operation has been at least partially assisted by an emerging process of socialisation among executive officials taking place within regional institutions. These processes of increased interaction and enmeshment have reinforced interests in regional integration, giving way to positive incentives to maintain MERCOSUR.

"In 1984, the world was shocked at the scale of a famine in Ethiopia that caused over half a million deaths, making it one of the worst in recent history. The mortality impacts are clearly significant. But what of the survivors? This paper provides the first estimates the long-term impact of
the famine twenty years later, on the height of young adults aged 17--25 who experienced this severe shock in-utero and as infants during the crisis. Improving methodologically on other studies, famine intensity is measured at the household level, while impacts are assessed using a difference-in-differences comparison across siblings. We find that by adulthood, affected children who were under the age of 36 months at the peak of the crisis are significantly shorter than the older cohort, by at least 3cm. They are also less likely to
have completed primary school, and more likely to have experienced recent illness. Indicative calculations show that this may lead to income losses of between 3%  and 8% per year over their lifetime. The evidence also suggests that the relief operations at the time made little difference."