published_or_final_version / Transport Policy and Planning / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / Geography and Geology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The primary objective of this study was to estimate the impact that an increase in recreational expenditures, resulting from water quality improvements of Klamath Lake, would have upon the Klamath County economy. As the sales of the economy expand to serve the needs of the recreationists, real benefits will be forthcoming to the businesses and households of the county in the forms of more business and higher incomes. To estimate the total impact of the increased volume of recreational expenditures that may be made in the economy, the economic relationships of the local economy had to be determined. Primary data were collected from business firms in the county to construct an input-output model of the county's economy. The level of recreational expenditures that would be made in the county as the water quality of the lake improved were estimated. This was done for two different stages of water quality improvement. The estimated levels of recreational expenditures were then analyzed within the input-output framework to estimate the total increase in the sales of the economy and to estimate the increase in income of households in the county. / Graduation date: 1971

Although Sudan is a country with enormous agricultural potential, agriculture has not prospered over the last two decades and Sudan now finds itself a bankrupt net importer of food. Much of the country's agricultural resource base is found in the rainfed agricultural region of Western Sudan, which includes Kordofan. This study focuses on Kordofan, and reports on data gathered during work for the Western Sudan Agricultural Research Project. Rather than following the production orientation usually employed by economists, it addresses issues related to the role of marketing in agricultural economic development. Marketing in Kordofan, as well as production, is subject to disruption because of climatic variations characteristic of arid and semi-arid regions. Extended annual dry periods and droughts distort price performance for agricultural commodities and cause shifts in marketing channel structure. Risk levels are substantially increased for producers and small traders, while at the same time they must take on increased responsibility for many channel functions. Marketing also suffers from infrastructure deficiencies: roads are often impassable during the rainy season, and storage losses become huge over the course of a year. The private marketing system in Kordofan has adapted to these conditions, and is performing quite effectively, efficiently, and equitably, given the adverse conditions. Competition is extensive, farmers have many alternatives when selling crops, and merchants operate on fairly modest profit margins. A widespread bias against the private sector has led to extensive government intervention into marketing spheres. These policies include direct operation of some marketing channels, manipulation of price structures through artificial exchange rates and price controls, and restrictive licensing practices. Wherever such policies have been applied in Kordofan, they have led to declining production of government controlled crops, they have restricted competition in marketing channels, and they have lowered living standards for producers and consumers. Sudan has not successfully identified areas where private channels in Kordofan cannot solve problems, and which therefore require public intervention. The government seems to have based its economic decisions upon ideological considerations and intervened in areas which it cannot perform as well as the private market.

This dissertation examines the performance of the Liberian iron ore industry from 1950-1985 and its viability in global markets, assuming stagnation (World Bank) and expansionist (Leontief et al.) expectations. It examines past trends in trade and investment patterns in the light of equilibrium allocations which imply the existence of efficient transportation links. This model assumes that given world sources and sinks as constrained by the supply and demand structure of the ore industry, each individual region acts as a basing point to maximize net social payoff from its ore trade. The model is validated on recent (1984) industry data and "explains" 91% of actual demands and 79% of actual trade flows. Price discrimination is evidenced in the form both of monopsony power exercised by some buyers in the Pacific Basin over intra-regional (e.g., Australian) and extra-regional (e.g., Brazilian, Liberian) producers and monopoly power permitting modest rents to be collected by some producers in Africa, including Liberia, from the European markets. In North America, rents appear for some domestic producers in some simulations. These results confirm quantitatively the descriptive results of others while postulating a much more competitive environment for producers. The model assumes world trade doubles through year 2000 or stagnates. Liberia fares poorly in either case, losing significant portions of its U.S. and of its EEC markets to Canada and Brazil respectively despite the maintenance of some resource rents globally. This analysis quantifies for the first time the claims of earlier studies that price discrimination exists, but indicates actual prices may be closer to long-run competitive prices than has generally been assumed by others. Thus, realistic ways for Liberia to increase its market shares require not only an expansion of the industrialized countries' steel industries but an aggressive willingness to absorb transport and other costs by foregoing rents and lowering costs. Removing diseconomies of small transport scale, absorbing freight, and lower U.S. exchange rates combined with world steel expansion could increase Liberian annual shipments by as much as 50 million tonnes per year or $1 billion annually.

This study analyzes economic and governmental factors in political violence, using both a cross-national quantitative analysis and an historical case study of El Salvador. Since at least the time of Aristotle, political violence has been a concern of social philosophers and social scientists. While it has often been seen primarily as revolutionary, political violence can be reconceptualized to include violent acts for political purposes carried out by an established regime as well as by its opponents. Such a broadening of the concepts facilitates neutral measurements of political violence, such as by death rate per population from domestic political conflict. For convenience, useful theories of political violence may be broken down into two main types. The first type, which may be called inequality theory, postulates some type of inequality, generally economic inequality, as a major cause of political violence. The second type of theory, which may be referred to as collective action theory, generally emphasizes the influence of the political interaction of competing actors. Other theories stress factors such as land inequality and population density. The cross-national analysis of this study found that income inequality and government sanctions were two of the more robust independent variables contributing to political violence. Similarly, the historical case study of El Salvador, particularly a comparison of the outbreaks of political violence occurring in 1932 and in 1979-84, suggests an important role in political violence was played by both income inequality and government sanctions. The findings that both of these variables contribute significantly and simultaneously to political violence implies that inequality theory and collective action theory may be partly compatible with each other. Also, the relationship between income inequality and political violence was found to be much stronger than the relationship between land inequality and political violence. This finding suggests that attempts to prevent political violence solely by addressing land inequality, as in many government land reform programs, will likely fall as long as they do not address the more fundamental factor of income inequality.

Economic development is a major concern to the majority of countries in the world today as they strive to catch up to the industrial West. Japan has been the most successful non-Western country in building an economy which qualifies it as developed. Most studies of economic development in Japan focus on macro-level issues, particularly on analysis of the role government played in the development process. It is generally recognized that Japan's central government played a major role in fostering industrial development. It is unfortunate that this fairly centralized political structure has somewhat obscured the role that local government may have had in helping local economies grow. In a sense, these local development efforts were at least as important as what was going on at the national level, because if peripheral areas had not developed at all, they would have become a liability for the central government and the core areas. This study examines one particular aspect of the development process in Japan; specifically, local government's role in fostering economic development throughout the Meiji (1868-1912) and Taisho (1912-1926) eras. The silk industry in Shimane prefecture provides the context of the case study approach used. The analysis focuses on two key issues: the mechanisms used by local government and the impact of growth on the local silk industry and on the standard of living.

The dissertation examines how changes in the race, gender and age composition of poverty over the past twenty years are linked to the unique experiences of particular birth cohorts. Demographer Richard Easterlin argues that generations born between 1944 and 1963 (the 'baby boom') face exceptional labor market competition and economic vulnerability due to their large numbers. Extending this theory, the central question of the dissertation is: Have families headed by the baby boom generation been more likely to be poor in the 1970s and 1980s compared to families headed by generations born prior to the baby boom? The findings indicate that among whites, the answer is clearly 'yes.' For African Americans, the answer appears to be 'no.' Results consistently show that the risk of poverty has been increasing with each successive generation of white family born since 1944. On the other hand, there is no evidence that black families headed by an individual born during the baby boom are more likely to be poor than those headed by previous generations. For both races, however, the most striking finding concerns the generation which was born after the baby boom. White and black families headed by adults born since 1964 are more likely to be poor compared to families headed by the older generations. The cohort effects on poverty are net of family structure, age of the family head, and period. The effects also persist controlling for employment variables which reflect labor market competition. Hypotheses about demographic trends in poverty from 1967 to 1987 are tested using multivariate analyses of a cross-sectional dataset (the Current Population Survey) and a longitudinal dataset (the Panel Study of Income Dynamics). Log-linear analyses of the Current Population Survey decompose the effects of family structure, age, period and cohort on poverty for all families as well as families headed by women. Discrete-time event history analyses of the PSID are used to model poverty among all families in any given year between 1969 and 1987. The dynamics of poverty are further examined in comparisons of nested multinomial logistic regression models of poverty entrances and exits among wives and female-headed families.

Prepared by the Arid Lands Information Center, Office of Arid Lands Studies, University of Arizona ; Mark Speece, compiler.