Model Evaluation and Causality Testing in Short Panels: The Case of Infrastructure Provision and Population Growth in the Brazilian Amazon

In this paper we examine the relationship between infrastructure growth and population growth in the Amazon using a panel of 293 municipalities over the period from 1975 to 1985. Contemporaneous cross-section analysis confirms a strong positive correlation between infrastructure and urban population but does not indicate direction of causality. Thus, we employ a modified form of the traditional Granger causality tests to suit the short time series that we have available. Based on out-of-sample forecasting tests we conclude that the empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that growing urban populations lead to more infrastructure development, rather than vice versa.     

Exhibition review

Defining the Americas: Accounts and Images of Latin America from the European Encounter through Independence. Co‐curators Patrick Lenaghan and Mitchell A. Codding. The Hispanic Society of America, March 1‐May 30, 1997.     

Household Incomes in Cuban Agriculture: A Comparison of the State,Co-operative,and Peasant Sectors

This article presents the results of a 1991 household income survey of the three main groups in Cuban agriculture: wage workers on state farms, members of production co-operatives, and peasant producers. It is shown that since the 1959 revolution household income levels in the agricultural sector have improved dramatically, while regional differences have been ameliorated considerably. Households in the private sector of Cuban agriculture have fared the best. It is also demonstrated that agricultural households rely on multiple sources of income to generate their livelihood. Rather than being strictly proletarian, collective, or petty commodity producers, these households are best characterized by the multiple class relations in which they participate.     

The Paradox of Narrowing Wage Differentials and Widening Wage Inequality in Mexico

This article examines the parallel phenomena of narrowing wage differentials among major groups of workers and widening wage inequality in general in Mexico during the 1980s and 1990s. In trying to understand this paradox, it finds that a human-capital model cannot explain wage determination in the 1990s. Although employees with higher skills and education have enjoyed increasingly higher relative returns to their human capital, much of the variance in wages is not attributable to differences in human capital or rates of return. Discriminatory wage policies have combined with policies of trade liberalization to markedly widen the wage gap between lower-paid and higher-paid workers.     

“We Wia Ragai”: Missionary Collection and Synergetic Assemblages in the Solomon Islands 1920–1942

An entry in Edith Safstrom’s diary, We Wia Ragai, marks her first posting to the girl’s mission school in the Solomon Islands, and is a Mota phrase told to her by lay missionary colleague, Ida Wench. The phrase essentially means “it is good to be here among you all” and echoed Edith’s thoughts on life at the school on tiny Mbungana Island. The Safstrom collection of artifacts held in the Museum of Victoria and Edith’s diaries unwrap a synergetic dialogue between lay missionary women and Indigenous women and children. The collection circumscribes a lay missionary’s collective experience of Christianity and acceptance of Indigenous cultural heritage from 1921 to 1942 in the Solomon Islands.