AN EXAMINATION OF STATE FOREIGN EXPORT PROMOTION AND MANUFACTURING EXPORTS*

ABSTRACT As a means of promoting economic development state governments are increasing their levels of support for export promotion; however, there has been virtually no statistical analysis of the effects of the state export promotion expenditures. The present study specifies and estimates a cross-section model in order to quantify the relationship between state export promotion and exports. The empirical analysis allows for the calculation of the export promotion elasticity of exports on a state basis. Two conclusions are that the rationale supporting export promotion expenditures is supported empirically and that there is much diversity among states for the estimated elasticity.     

Charting the East European process of transformation

Central and Eastern Europe, 1944–1993: Detour from the Periphery to the Periphery. By Ivan T. Berend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Cambridge Studies in Modern Economic History, xviii + 414 pp. £45.00 cloth.

The Transition in Eastern Europe, vol. 2: Restructuring: A National Bureau of Economic Research Project Report. Edited by Olivier Jean Blanchard, Kenneth A. Froot, and Jeffrey D. Sachs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) £38.50/$55.25 cloth.

Children of Atlantis: Voices from the former Yugoslavia. Edited by Zdenko Lesic. (Budapest, London, and New York: Central European University Press, 1995 and Oxford University Press, 1997) 183 pp. £7.99 paper.     

The Optimal Nodal Location of Public Facilities With Price-Sensitive Demand

The purpose of this paper is to present some models for the location of public facilities in nodal networks that explicitly maximize social welfare by accounting for price-elastic demand functions. The models presented here are general; yet they are mathematically equivalent to the plant location problem and are therefore amenable to solution procedures developed for the plant location problem. The models presented here distinguish between two institutional environments that reflect the degree of power of the consumer to choose which facility to patronize. If consumers can be assigned arbitrarily to facilities and can be denied service, then the environment is one of public fiat. If consumers must be served at the facility of their choice, then a “serve-allcomers” environment exists. Separate models for each environment are specified, and the relationship between optimal assignments and pricing policies is developed.     

Heads or Tails? Modified Ceramic Gaming Pieces from Colonial California

Modified ceramic disks have been recovered from historic-era sites across the Americas. Small unperforated disks are commonly interpreted as gaming pieces and larger perforated disks are often classified as spindle whorls. Here, we examine these interpretations in light of collections from three colonial-era sites in central California: Mission San Antonio de Padua, Mission San José, and the Rancho San Andrés Castro Adobe. We argue that the small unperforated disks from our study sites were two-sided dice. These gaming pieces facilitated the social cohesion of Native people living in the large, multiethnic Indigenous communities that formed around Spanish colonial missions and later Mexican-era ranchos.     

Conflict and State Development in Ancient Tonga: The Lapaha Earth Fort

Warfare is often considered as a key factor in the formation complex societies, but in the Pacific archaeological evidence for inter-group conflict during political centralization is rare. Most earthwork forts in Tonga are assumed to have been built in the nineteenth century when the traditional system of rulership collapsed, yet few forts on Tongatapu have been excavated or 14C dated. A fort in the chiefly center of the ancient Tongan state was mapped with theodolite and LiDAR, and excavated. Radiocarbon and traditional history indicate the fort known as the Lapaha Kolotau was made in the fourteenth century AD at the same time that chiefly architecture was being built at an unprecedented scale at the new elite center. The construction of an earthwork fort provides the first evidence that political centralization in Tonga was likely to have been contested.