The Uses of Neoliberalism

Abstract: The term “neoliberalism” has come to be used in a wide variety of partly overlapping and partly contradictory ways. This essay seeks to clarify some of the analytical and political work that the term does in its different usages. It then goes on to suggest that making an analytical distinction between neoliberal “arts of government” and the class‐based ideological “project” of neoliberalism can allow us to identify some surprising (and perhaps hopeful) new forms of politics that illustrate how fundamentally polyvalent neoliberal mechanisms of government can be. A range of empirical examples are discussed, mostly coming from my recent work on social policy and anti‐poverty politics in southern Africa.     

A first fossil record for Scolytus scolytus (F.) (elm bark beetle): its occurrence in elm decline deposits from London and the implications for neolithic elm disease

A problem which has arisen in discussions of an elm-disease explanation for the Neolithic elm decline has been the lack of fossil records of Scolytus scolytus (F.) (elm bark beetle), which is the main carrier of the fungus which causes the present epidemic of Dutch Elm Disease. Now, the discovery of wing cases of two individuals from elm decline deposits at Hampstead Heath, London, proves that the beetle was present in Britain during this episode. The deposits in which it occurs are described, and the various implications for elm disease causing, aiding or at least occurring during this stage of the early Neolithic are discussed.     

THE SOCIAL BENEFITS OF URBAN CULTURAL AMENITIES*

ABSTRACT. This paper uses a two-stage hedonic wage approach to derive the benefits from improvement of five cultural amenities. It is argued that the hedonic approach permits valuation of both private and local public aspects of cultural goods since access to the amenity is an essential input in the production of the final service flow. Empirical estimates of willingness to pay suggest price and income elasticities are approximately unity. Lower-bound estimates of marginal benefits for a representative city range from $0.85 million for an additional theater to $57.9 million for an additional zoo facility.     

The Spatial Structuring of Central Places

The spatial structuring of “classical” central place systems is the primary concern of this research. Emphasizing the development of such systems from basic spatial relations between centers and hinterland locations (rather than as a result of an underlying geometry of regions), this paper takes an optimization approach to the siting of central places in a single-good system. The objective function is shown to be one that maximizes both market coverage of demand and market overlap. Access to this objective is given through the natural slack covering model.