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No description available.

The study aims to analyse the oil revenue, its allocational pattern and impact on economic development in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE from the commencement of commercial oil production to the end of 1970. Chapter I, briefly presents the geographical features, discusses the economic activities and fiscal policies of the pre-oil period, and outlines the evolution of the Sheikhdom political system, pinpointing important factors still influencing the utilisation of petroleum resources and oil revenue. Chapter II, discusses the petroleum industry's development, importance, potential, and non-revenue impact on the local economies. Chapter III, assesses the actual oil revenue received, discusses factors influencing it, and explores relevant considerations for an optimum level of oil revenue. Chapters IV-VII, explore the allocational trends and patterns of the oil revenue in each of the Emirates, (the oil revenues examined represent about 88% of the total received in the period studied). A model, built to investigate the allocational patterns provides the basis for deducing the contribution of the oil revenue to different items through assessing the public revenue, expenditure and reserve. Chapter VIII brings together the findings of Chapters IV-VII, confirming an overall allocational similarity. A major and increasing proportion of the revenue goes on current and transfer expenditure. An exploration of underlying influential and determining factors takes up the greatest part of the chapter. Chapter IX examines the desirable relationship between oil revenue and economic development, notes the improvement produced in some aspects of the economies, in the social services, the standard of living and consumption. It also shows the limited impact of the oil revenue on structural change and prospects for sustained development, and discusses some problems impeding progress. In conclusion the need for alternative approaches is discussed together with considerations relevant to a development-oriented approach.

This thesis contributes to the body of research known as the new economic geography. According to this paradigm, increasing returns to scale at the firm level, monopolistic competition, and transportation costs interact in shaping the spatial distribution of economic activity. The introductory chapter lays out the motivation of this thesis and puts it into the perspective of the existing literature. Chapter 1 introduces a typical model of new economic geography: the nature of the agglomeration and dispersion forces it displays is recurrent in this body of research; the model also displays multiple equilibria. The welfare properties of these equilibria are also analysed. Chapter 2 completely characterizes the set of equilibria of a wide range of models that are the quintessence of the new economic geography paradigm. The model of chapter 2 is shown to share the qualitative features of these models. Chapter 3 integrates a simple version of the model chapter 2 within a political economy framework. The welfare analysis of chapter 2 provides the motivation for this theoretical exercise. Chapter 4 seeks to provide an answer to the important but thus far neglected question of what is the mechanism that actually determines the magnitude policies that seek to affect the equilibrium spatial allocation of industries. The geography model is integrated in a fully specified political economy process of policy selection. Chapter 4 extends the model of chapter 2 to deal with the issue of the 'fragmentation' of the production process when new economic geography forces are at play. Finally, the analysis of chapter 5 contributes to the growing literature on the labour market imperfections as a driving force for agglomeration. In particular it shows how the hold-up problem can be softened or worsened by the cluster of industries using workers with similar skills.

H.L.Gray, writing in 1915, stressed the fact that the Chiltern Hills lay in a transition area between Midland England, with its more regular open field arrangements, and the Southeast, with less regular systems. Basing his conclusions largely on sixteenth and early seventeenth century surveys, he showed that field systems within the Hills were different and distinctive from those on either side. The present study is the first comprehensive account of these distinctive systems. The medieval field arrangements of four parishes are examined in detail, and evidence for the whole region before 1850 is summarised. The most important features of the Chiltern field systems were: (1) the high proportion of enclosed arable land, particularly in the southwest; and (2) the existence of numerous, relatively small, common fields within the individual township. A three-course rotation had appeared as early as the twelfth century, and was later widely followed; but this does not imply the presence of a simple two- or three-field system. Farm holdings were concentrated in one part of a township, while the individual common arable holding was distributed irregularly between only a few of the many common fads. There was little meadow or grassland pasture, apart from that in parks, but woods and wastes were important elements, except in the northeast. The settlement pattern combined elements of both nucleation and dispersal. These features had appeared in the area by the mid-thirteenth century, when large-scale assarting was coming to an end. Their origins were, as Gray suggested, probably connected with the slow and piecemeal nature of colonisation in this hilly and heavily wooded region, and they survived largely unchanged until the mid-sixteenth century. After c.1550 the common field system began to disintegrate, with widespread piecemeal enclosure from the common arable, and almost all traces of the old arrangements bad disappeared by 1850.

No description available.

No description available.

This research uses a case study approach, looking at two smaller cities (Bolton, in North West England and Lowell in Massachusetts, USA) and their main universities, to assess the path cities can take in seeking to become knowledge cities, how we can judge where a particular city is on that path, and the role a university can play in contributing to local economic and social development. Globalisation and the knowledge economy are having a profound effect on the way in which higher education operates in society and the role it is perceived as playing in relation to local and regional economies. The policy arena in particular has embraced the concept of the knowledge economy and with it the concepts of the learning region and the knowledge city as means of regeneration, in turn placing much more emphasis on the relationship between universities and their localities. At the same time, we see greater prominence given to the role of partnerships, within processes of governance, in contributing to urban regeneration. , The processes a city can take to become a knowledge city, and the role of higher education therein, is an underdeveloped area of research, especially in relation to smaller cities. This research is aimed at exploring this area, by addressing the extent to which the knowledge economy can be used as a vehicle for the urban regeneration of smaller cities, and the role higher education can play within. Looking at smaller, post-industrial cities which are in close proximity to large metropolitan cities, this research takes into account the impact that being a `satellite' city can have on these processes. The research builds on an existing typology of knowledge cities before moving on to analyse processes of governance and the role of higher education within these processes. The research then focuses on what implications these changes have for higher education, in terms of both the internal and external functioning of universities. The research concludes by addressing implications for theory and making policy recommendations.

With the reinvigoration of cultural and social geography in the 1980's, alongside the Moral Turn of the 1990's, moral questions in consumption have become commonplace in geography (Smith 2000). The moral turn also coincided with increased public protests against companies engaged in unethical or unsustainable production practices (McGregor 2006). Today, consumers have access to a wide range of products, or 'devices' (Barnett et a/ 2005), that are considered to be 'ethical' in terms of their production, through which consumers may express their morals, such as fair trade, organic, and locally produced goods. In more recent years, these Ethical Consumer discourses have been opened up to critique. However, ethical consumption still remains vastly under-theorised in relation to many other aspects of consumption studies and human geography, and little is known about how ethics in consumption form and how they are translated into consumption practices. Similarly, ethical consumption has previously been researched only in terms of shopping habits and market projections, and not as an everyday grounded practice. More research is needed that manages to capture these 'lived' elements of everyday consumption, which currently remain to be a 'black box'. By addressing the grounded, real-life nature of consumption, we might be able to think beyond the monetary values of products, to explore how consumption practices are connected to, and create, a variety of moral geographies, and how everyday practices are intertwined with these moral networks. One way is by recognising the ethical decisions that people make in their everyday consumption choices, and how these values are related to wider global issues. This thesis therefore aims to identify; how consumers incorporate their morals into their consumption choices and decisions; the impacts of education, family practices and marketing strategies in shaping consumption; and whether 'ethical consumption' can be disentangled from 'ordinary consumption'. To do this, the research adopts an innovative methodological approach, using a multi-sited, three-pronged research design. This includes ethnographic research with families from 2007-2009, focus groups and lesson observations in three schools, and interviews with thirteen companies, to effectively and thoroughly explore the ethics of consumption in narrative and practice. Using these data, the research explores where morals come from, how they are influenced and by whom, the ways in which ethics are expressed on a daily basis, and how morals are performed as a means of fulfilling ethical responsibilities. Therefore, this thesis contributes to discourses surrounding ethics, consumption, ethical consumption, care, responsibility and accountability. It is argued that geographers need to reassess and reconfigure how to address ethics in consumption, since current ethical consumer discourses are prescriptive and limiting, and are laden with assumptions, judgements and class distinctions. This thesis creates an argument for an ethics of consumption, rather than ethical consumption, which recognises the importance of everyday ethical decision-making, and consumption as a behaviour that goes hand-in-hand with moral debates.

This thesis examines the impact of the current land ownership arrangement on the use and management of collective forestland in China. Increasingly, the focus of China's forest and forestry is shifting from timber production to the conservation and protection of the forest ecosystem. So far the Chinese government has carried out a number of major programmes that seek to increase the forest cover and to reduce commercial exploitation in its natural forests. These large-scale state-sponsored programmes involved not only the state but also the collective forests. The government has overwhelming control over the collective forests in relation to the production and use of forest resources. This thesis argues that this is mainly induced by the current land ownership arrangement. Although the collectives are 'self-governing' bodies and democratic elections are practised, the collectives nevertheless act more like the 'agents' of the government than true representatives of the collective members. By retaining control over collective governance, the state manages to assert control over the use of collective forests in other words, the state has chosen to regulate land and forest use via the ownership structure. With little protection for individual rights, the state imposes rigid and intrusive measures that severely limit the autonomy of land users and create instances of abuse of power by those who are in control. This has resulted in various serious and negative consequences: inefficient use of forest and land resources slow growth of rural economy limited and incomplete private rights increasing wealth gap and last but not the least, slow development in the rule of law. As a result, future reforms of collective forests will be futile if the ownership regime is not changed. It is argued that a private ownership regime is now viable and will help China's rural society to achieve further economic, social and legal development. Under a private ownership regime, the government can exercise control over forest and land use via public regulation, which would allow land use to be regulated in a more transparent and efficient way without compromising individual autonomy.