Inward investment and economic development in Poland

This paper summarizes results of a research project funded by the Overseas Development Administration of the UK Government. Its aims were to explore the nature and extent of foreign direct investment in Poland, and to assess the extent of integration of such investment with the indigenous economy. The research involved interviews with Polish government ministries, banks, development agencies, inward investors and indigenous firms. It concludes that there are numerous financial and technical obstacles to indigenous business development. The majority of inward investors aim to serve the Polish and other Central and Eastern European markets rather than simply selling cheaply produced products to the West. Moreover, most have already developed significant local sourcing from Polish suppliers.     

The changing pattern of urban fertility in Eastern Australia 1966-1976

This paper uses unpublished data from official sources to analyze variations in urban marital and overall fertility in Eastern Australia between 1966-71 and between 1971-76. It further attempts to assess the relevance of the convergence thesis to changing fertility patterns and to evaluate the utility of an ecologic analysis of interurban fertility differences. The data indicate that urban fertility levels declined dramatically in 1966-76 and interurban differentials were substantially reduced. By 1976, the 2-child family norm had been widely adopted throughout Australia, regardless of region, community size, or sociocultural composition. Examination of marital fertility trends suggests that, although different areas had different elasticities of response to cyclical fertility movements in the 1960s, the magnitude of these differences was insufficient to do more than slow the pace of the decline while increasing the pace of interarea differential convergence. Declines in both proportions married and marital fertility after 1971 were reflected in declining overall fertility in all urban areas in Eastern Australia. During this period, however, divergence replaced the convergence evident in the 1960s. The present high level of uniformity in both marital and overall fertility rates throughout the study area about mean levels means that the regionally variable effects of future cyclical changes in fertility levels may be difficult to identify. As a result, detailed analyses at the individual/behavioral level that focus specifically on attitudes, values, and family size preferences may be more appropriate for understanding of post-transitional demographic change than studies based on spatial analyses at the local level.     

High justice in fifteenth-century Normandy: the prosecution of Sandrin Bourel

By the fifteenth century the seigneurial exercise of high justice had become less common because of the growth of royal jurisdiction. The ancient and wealthy Benedictine nunnery of Montivilliers retained the right to high justice only during the octave of the Holy Cross. In 1493 Sandrin Bourel, a young man who had twice before been imprisoned for theft, was apprehended in the act of stealing from a bourgeois of Montivilliers. As the crime occurred during the octave of the Holy Cross the abbey claimed jurisdiction. A special tribunal was created to prosecute him. After having been tortured, Bourel was found guilty and hanged. The documents generated by this event provide the basis for a case study of the application of criminal procedure at the close of the middle ages. The condemned man's confession, rich in biographical detail, gives us a profile of a petty thief and vagabond on the margin of society. The financial account of the abbey's receiver-general documents in detail the total cost of the prosecution of a single medieval criminal.     

Growing up in a tourist destination: negotiating space,identity and belonging

There is little research on children’s experiences of growing up in a popular tourist destination, where place and space are contested with visitors, migrants and temporary residents. Existing literature on young people’s experiences of their socio-spatial surroundings has focused predominantly on the rural/urban dichotomy, often neglecting to explore how identity and belonging are negotiated in complex community contexts such as tourist destinations. This paper reports on recent research that suggests that young people’s experiences of growing up in such an environment are nuanced and diverse, with their rich narratives disrupting socially constructed distinctions between the rural and the urban, merging experiences from both worlds.     

DO CAPITAL TAX INCENTIVES ATTRACT NEW BUSINESSES? EVIDENCE ACROSS INDUSTRIES FROM THE NEW MARKETS TAX CREDIT

In this paper, we examine how government policy affects the sorting of industries across jurisdictions using the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) program. When estimating the impact of the tax credit on business activity, there are likely to be unobservable local characteristics that are correlated with business location decisions that would cause OLS estimates to be biased. To control for this endogenous selection, we use a plausibly exogenous eligibility cutoff and compare census tracts that are just eligible for the NMTC program to those that are just ineligible. Using data from the Dun and Bradstreet MarketPlace Files, we find that eligibility for the NMTC program caused industries to sort across eligible and noneligible tracts. In particular, we find that there is an increase in retail employment, both among new businesses and existing businesses, and an increase in manufacturing employment at existing businesses in tracts that were eligible for the program. However, we find negative effects on employment at new firms in the wholesale and transportation industries, and decreases in the number of new firms in FIRE and services. Policy makers should be cognizant of these results, as the implications of the sorting across industries on local areas must be considered to design effective policy.     

Start-up factories,transnational entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial ecosystems: unpacking the lure of start-up accelerator programmes

This paper examines the role of accelerator programmes in promoting transnational entrepreneurship. Designed to assist the growth of start-ups by providing seed finance and structured entrepreneurship support, these programmes are now a prominent feature in many entrepreneurial ecosystems around the world. Drawing on in-depth qualitative evidence focused on one particular programme, the paper shows accelerators play an important intermediary or ‘brokerage mechanism’ providing start-ups with enhanced relational connections and networks. Transnational entrepreneurs attracted to these programmes are highly focused on exploiting these networks whilst maintaining multiple levels of embeddedness in various contexts to maximize the opportunities afforded by accelerators. While many governments are attempting to replicate accelerators programmes within the public sector, the paper concludes that such attempts may prove problematic within weaker entrepreneurial ecosystems.     

Book reviews

CHINA

ERIC KIT‐WAI MA.Culture, Politics, and Television in Hong Kong. London: Routledge, 1999. 242 pp. Introduction, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. £55.00, hardcover.

LILY XIAO HONG LEE and SUE WILES. Women of the Long March: the Never Before Told Story. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1999. 308 pp. Photographs, preface, chronology, maps, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. A$24.95, paper.

MARIE‐CLAIRE BERGÈRE. Sun Yat‐sen (trans. Janet Lloyd). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. xii, 480 pp. Illustrations, introduction, endnotes, bibliography, index. A$90.00, hardcover.

JAPAN, KOREA

MASARU KOHNO. Japan's Postwar Party Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. xiii, 172 pp. US$65.00, hardcover; US$19.95, paper.

SHARON A. MINICHIELLO (ed). Japan's Competing Modernities: issues in Culture and Democracy 1900–1930. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998. xiii, 394 pp. Illustrations, foreword, preface, introduction, index. US$54.00, hardcover; US$25.95, paper.

SOUTH, WEST & CENTRAL ASIA

DICK VAN DER MEIJ. India and Beyond: essays in Honour of Frits Staal. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. 696 pp. $US110.00, hardcover.

ASHISH KOTHARI, NEEMA PATHAK, R. V. ANURADHA and BANSURI TANEJA (eds). Communities and Conservation. Natural Resource Management in South and Central Asia. New Delhi: Sage, 1998. 505 pp. Rs. 495, hardcover; Rs. 325, paper.

JAMES BROW. Demons and Development: the Struggle for Community in a Sri Lankan Village. (Hegemony and Experience. Critical Studies in Anthropology and History, Series Editors Hermann Rebel and William Roseberry). Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996. xviii, 218 pp. Index. US$45.00, hardcover; US$19.95, paper.

REIDAR DALE. Evaluation Frameworks for Development Programmes and Projects. New Delhi: Sage Publications India, 1998. 150 pp. Index. Rs. 275, hardcover; Rs. 145, paper.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

HANS ANTLOV and SVEN CEDERROTH (eds). Leadership on Java: gentle Hints, Authoritarian Rule. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1994. viii, 197 pp. £25.00, paper.

CORNELIA ANN KAMMERER and NICOLA TANNENBAUM (eds). Merit and Blessing in Mainland Southeast Asia in Comparative Perspective. Monograph 45, Yale Southeast Asian Studies, 1996. 263 pp. No price given, paper.

IAN CHALMERS and VEDI HADIZ (eds). The Politics of Economic Development in Indonesia: contending Perspectives. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Author notes, preface, acknowledgments. xxx, 269 pp. £60.00, hardcover.