Angel investing in an austerity economy – the take-up of government policies in Portugal

Business angels (BAs) are recognized as playing a significant role in stimulating entrepreneurial activity. With the decline in both bank lending and venture capital investment since the onset of the global economic crisis, government efforts to stimulate BA activity have become a more significant component in strategies to increase the level of entrepreneurial activity. This paper examines the responsiveness of angels to such initiatives in so-called austerity economies – countries that were hardest hit by the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent global recession and, as a consequence, had to take extreme economic and fiscal measures to reduce their budget deficits. We examine this question in Portugal which experienced one of the deepest recessions in the European Union following the implementation of severe austerity measures. This study confirms that government intervention to support angel investing can have a positive impact. However, the different types of intervention have varied in take-up rates. Other countries can learn from the Portuguese experience in three ways: the types of interventions that have the highest and lowest levels of take-up, the link between the design and the take-up of incentives, and types of intervention that should be considered but have not been implemented in Portugal.     

Employment Change in Occupations in Urban India: Implications for Wage Inequality

This article analyses employment and wage change patterns in India for a period spanning almost three decades, from 1983–84 to 2011–12. Using data from the National Sample Survey Organization, the study finds evidence of job polarization (employment growth in low‐ and high‐skill jobs and decline in middle‐skill jobs) in urban India during the 1990s and 2000s, and employment upgrading in the 1980s. Consistent with the literature on job polarization, the article finds a reduction in employment share in routine task intensive occupations. The author argues that this reduction is a result of both mechanization and technological upgrading within Indian industry. On the other hand, an increase in employment share in both low‐skill and high‐skill occupations is argued to be a result of growing self‐employment and informal sector employment in urban India. The wage change patterns are largely consistent with the employment change patterns. The analysis suggests that structural change in occupation is an important factor for understanding earnings inequality in India.     

Location Equilibrium for Cournot Oligopoly in Spatially Separated Markets

Consider a two-stage non-cooperative Cournot game with location choice involving n≥ 2 firms each with several facilities. There are m≥ 2 spatially separated markets constituting the vertices of a network. Each firm first selects the locations of their facilities and then selects the quantities to supply to the markets to maximize its profit. There exists a Nash equilibrium in the quantities offered by each firm at the markets. Furthermore, when the demand in each market is sufficiently large, each firm chooses to locate its facilities only at vertices. With linear demand in each market, there exists a Nash location equilibrium.     

The North Atlantic Population Project: Progress and Prospects

The North Atlantic Population Project (NAPP) is a massive database of historical census microdata from European and North American countries. The backbone of the project is the unique collection of completely digitized censuses providing information on the entire enumerated populations of each country. In addition, for some countries, the NAPP includes sample data from surrounding census years. In this article, the authors provide a brief history of the project, describe their progress to data and plans for the future, and discuss some potential implications of this unique data resource for social and economic research.     

Product Differentiation and Location Choice in a Circular City*

Abstract. The paper analyzes spatial competition among firms that sell substitute and/or complementary products. The firms first choose locations on the perimeter of a circular city and then compete in quantities (à la Cournot). Both linear and convex (quadratic) transport costs are considered. In general, multiple location equilibria are encountered. Complete agglomeration, partial agglomeration, and complete dispersion are possible. Convex (quadratic) transport cost substantially shrinks the set of equilibria obtained under linear transport cost. In general, the results obtained for a larger number of firms selling complementary products are strikingly different from those obtained under a duopoly.     

The Making of a Non-Aligned Nuclear Power: India's Proliferation Drift, 1964–8

The article examines the strategic circumstances leading to non-aligned India's safeguard of its nuclear option during a crucial period in its proliferation trajectory, when it was one of the states closest to nuclear-weapons development, and faced US pressures to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that was being negotiated at the time. Based on Indian, US, and French primary sources, this paper demonstrates that India's regional strategic insecurities and bilateral tensions with the United States were too great for it to sign the NPT. Yet, New Delhi's capability to successfully reprocess weapons-grade plutonium permitted the developing country substantial leverage that it exploited through advancing on a slow dual-use nuclear programme.     

Rapid denudation of Higher Himalaya during late Pliestocence, evidence from OSL thermochronology

Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) of quartz, with closure temperatures of 30–35°C in conjunction with Apatite Fission Track (AFT; closure temp. ～120°C) and ⁴⁰Ar-³⁹Ar (biotite closure temperature ～350°C), were used to obtain cooling ages from Higher Himalayan crystalline rocks of Western Arunachal Himalaya (WAH). Cooling age data based on OSL, AFT and Ar-Ar thermochronology provide inference on the exhumation — erosion history for three different time intervals over million to thousand year scale. Steady-state exhumation of ～0.5 mm/yr was observed during Miocene (>7.2 Ma) till Early Pleistocene (1.8 Ma). Onset of Pleistocene glacial/interglacial conditions from ～1.8 Ma formed glaciated valleys and rapid erosion with rivers incising deep valleys along their course. Erosion enables midcrustal partial melts to move beneath the weak zone in the valley and causes an erosion-induced tectonic uplift. This resulted in a rapid increase in exhumation rate. The OSL thermochronology results suggest increased erosion over ～21 ka period from Late Pleistocene (2.5 mm/yr) to Early Holocene (5.5 mm/yr) and these are to be contrasted with pre 1.8 Ma erosion rate of 0.5 mm/yr. Enhanced erosion in the later stage coincides with the periods of deglaciation during Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 1 and 2. The results of the present study suggest that in the present setting OSL thermochronology informed on the short-term climatic effect on landscape evolution and techniques like the AFT and ⁴⁰Ar-³⁹Ar provided longer-term exhumation histories.     

Looking for Feminism

This paper explores the linkages between metropolitan intellectual politics and the process of knowledge production within third‐world/anti‐imperial locations – defined geographically or otherwise – about previously understudied subjects from or in the third world. Specifically, the paper focuses on the growing body of research on Muslim women in colonial India to foreground ways in which a certain notion of feminism, as a metanarrative of emergence and progress towards an apparently known end, informs and shapes this literature. In terms of its broader implications, the paper is an attempt to think through some of the problems of writing histories of difference, and especially feminist histories, in any context.