If you are looking for an introduction, there is none this time.
Straight on to the facts by answering this question: How should the UAE's economy look like in 2050?
The UAE should focus on reducing unneeded expenses and deviating from oil revenues by increasing revenues from other sources. The below explains how that could be achieved.
* Taxes and other fees are estimated to now account for 35.4 per cent of revenues (CIA Fact Book), with taxes being 0.4 per cent (World Bank). Taxes should make at least 30 per cent of the UAE's revenues by 2050.
* VAT (value added tax) should be introduced at somewhere between 3 per cent and 5 per cent, and then maintained at that level to not curb consumption or undercut tourism when VAT proceeds are not refunded. The only exception here would be taxes on alcoholic drinks, tobacco, as well as foods and drinks deemed unhealthy.
* Corporate taxes, regardless of the percentage, wouldn't make much of a difference once additional countries sign the Avoidance of Double Taxation Agreement.
* There should be no income tax.
* There should be a gasoline tax. Though it would be better to adopt a mechanism that generally stabilises gasoline prices – minimally subsidised when too high and taxed when too low. A gasoline tax would signal the economy's official take-off from being an oil exporter. Therefore, the subsidy-tax mechanism should equate gasoline pump price with countries that are net importers of oil.
* A carbon emission tax should be levied on industries.
* A remittance tax with percentages tailored in accordance to each income bracket. The tax can be levied on exchange houses that could choose to pass it on to customers or not.
• There should be no water and electricity subsidies by 2050. Dubai has a tariff calculator, which shows, presumably, that only low residential and commercial consumptions of electricity – 0-2,000 and 2,001-4,000 – are subsidised, with tariff rates going up as consumption increases.
* Houses should be encouraged to install solar panels, not only to manage their consumption efficiently, but to also sell their excess energy back to the grid. Monthly payment will be the net of their consumption and production.
* There should be a cut-off date for pension payout – life expectancy minus retirement age.
* Contribution percentages paid by employees should be increased.
* Voluntary schemes should be introduced and carefully supervised.
* Gradual inclusion of non-UAE nationals working in the public sector into state pension fund should be considered – Singapore is an example. This would encourage people to retire in the UAE.
This needs to be done after a thorough analysis and understanding of the UAE's labour economics, taking into consideration long-term prospects of the jobs market and the level of Emiratisation that the UAE wants to achieve in the private sector.
• Part of net profits from sovereign wealth funds could be used in UAE's budget calculations, with the remainder being re-invested into the funds. The model should be constructed in a way that could sustain the funds in a time where excess oil revenues are not being deposited into the funds.
An ideal scenario would be to do without withdrawing from the funds and to keep growing them.
• By 2050, the UAE's dirham should not be pegged to the dollar as oil will represent 0 per cent of the UAE's economy. Instead, the UAE should peg its currency to currencies of its top 10 trade partners other than GCC and Arab countries, with the condition that those currencies are in the IMF's basket of reserve currencies.
The basket includes the dollar, euro, Japanese yen, pound sterling, and Chinese renminbi. The UAE's top 10 trade partners include: China, the US, Germany, Japan, the UK, and Belgium. A formula could be worked out based on trade volume, trade balance, public and private debt, correlations between currencies, analysis of the currency's performance, as well as the exposure that the UAE's central bank is willing to accept and work with.
* Unwinding the dirham-dollar peg would reduce incurred costs of supporting the UAE's dirham and would provide the central bank with a higher level of freedom to set its own interest rates, inflation targets, and dirham exchange rate.
The UAE gets almost all of its water by seawater distillation. So unless vertical farming is going to be adopted and only produce what can be produced and sold at a high value, spending money here would take from other sectors' resources.
* Tourism should at least replace the 30 per cent of the economy that oil is responsible for. Tourism in Dubai is estimated to make 30 per cent of its economy. Therefore, tourism should be expanded to different emirates with a specific theme attached to each one of them.
This will diversify and increase each emirate's revenues and improve the UAE's national brand as per the 'Nation Brands' study done by Brand Finance.
• In addition to that, retiree tourism needs to be nurtured and grown to attract pensioners who should find it easy to resettle in the UAE. The importance of such an industry would keep increasing as demographics in developed economies keep tilting towards aging and retiring people.
Posted in Published Articles in Gulf News and tagged 2050, Abu Dhabi, capital investments, carbon tax, currency peg, currency reserves, Dubai, Economy, electricity, energy subsidies, fiscal policies, fixed capital, gasoline tax, government spending, health, health economics, health services, income tax, interest rates, international trade, investments, monetary policies, Peg, pension, pension contribution, pension funds, petroleum subsidies, saving, subsidies, taxes, tourism, UAE, VAT, water. Bookmark the permalink.


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What If Yemen Is the First Country to Run Out of Water?
By Krista Mahr @kristamahrDec. 14, 2010
Experts cited by CNN say Yemen could be the first nation to completely run out of water in a few years, a prospect that does not bode well for its young population of 24 million that is expected to double in 20 years, or anyone worried about the rising influence (and ability to get bombs on planes) of an al Qaeda branch in one of the Middle East's poorest nations.
In Sana'a, which could be the world's first capital city to go dry, the population is growing at a rate of 7% per year as people flee from the parched outer reaches of the country. Part of the problem is qat, an addictive plant like chewed by about 75% of men in Yemen that takes a whole lot of water to grow. In places where vineyards used to be, farmers now are growing the more lucrative qat, which uses five times the amount of water as grapes but can be harvested and sold relatively quickly after it's planted.
Farmers' ambition to better their lot is more than understandable in a nation where five million people — over a fifth of the population — go hungry each day. And though Yemen's qat farmers are estimated to now be using some 40% of the nation's domestic water supply, they are hardly the only actors in this looming crisis. Yemen's water table is falling about 6.6 feet per year, yet the central government has been ineffective at managing the piecemeal drilling of water wells (the government itself estimates an astonishing 99% of water extraction in Yemen is unlicensed) or regulating water management in more farflung parts of the country. Instead, as Sana'a gets more and more water migrants, authorities have discussed relocating the capital to the coast where they might be better able to take advantage of desalination as other Middle Eastern countries have.
The water shortage is also a global problem, because, like Somalia across the Gulf of Aden, where desertification has been linked with that county's ongoing conflict, fights and desperation over water in Yemen would be exactly the kind of destabilizing factor that insurgents will need to continue to strengthen their base in remote areas far from the halls of power. As the water crisis has gotten worse, observers have noted that the government has concentrated its efforts to manage water resources in urban centers where it has (and wants to keep) political support, and many of the outlying areas not receiving help have been overlooked before.
As Christopher Boucek of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in testimony to Congress in February: "The failure to establish local water corporations in several governorates that historically have not received much support or social services from the central government has raised fear that a resurgent al Qaeda may seek refuge there."
Boucek goes on to list what could possibly be done, including stopping government subsidies and public purchases of qat, and constructing a better legal system to deal with the nation's increasingly scarce resource. "If such measures are not taken in the near term," he writes, "more dramatic steps will be required in the future, such as stopping rural populations from moving to overcrowded cities, and, more drastically, relocating population centers from the center of the country to the coasts." In other words, the government will be forced to create a lot more unhappy citizens. And that would make insurgents that find recruits in disgruntled communities very happy indeed.
(Read about Yemen and the top 10 global news stories of 2011.)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Ilitch's big bet shows big gains for investors
$525M offer puts value of nearly $1B on MotorCity
Robert Ankeny
Marian Ilitch's $525 million offer to buy Mandalay Resort Group Inc.'s share of MotorCity Casino L.L.C. sets a value of nearly $1 billion on that property and highlights how some of the early local investors have become millionaires.
Many who backed Herb Strather 10 years ago with $25,000 each have seen that wager on the success of Atwater Entertainment Associates L.L.C. grow to nearly $425,000, Strather said. Atwater owns 11.5 percent of MotorCity Casino.
"If they bought two and one-half units - and many did, investing $62,500 - it's worth more than $1 million today," said Strather, who raised about $3.3 million through Atwater to help win approval for three Detroit casinos in a 1996 statewide election campaign.
Ilitch's offer of $525 million for Mandalay's 53.5 percent holding in MotorCity translates to a $981 million price tag for the entire property. That offer was cited in a Feb. 14 Oakland County Circuit Court lawsuit filed against Ilitch by other Atwater partners, claiming she improperly carried on secret negotiations to buy Mandalay's shares.
Ilitch denied that claim and Friday met with Atwater partners to discuss the potential deal.
"No decisions were made. Talks will continue next week," said Thomas Shields, president of Market Resource Group Inc. in Lansing, Ilitch's public-relations firm.
With a 25 percent interest in the casino already, Ilitch's stake is worth about $250 million. Businessman Thomas Celani's 10 percent is worth $100 million.
But 108 small investors in the casino also have seen the value of their equity grow exponentially.
When MotorCity was being organized in the days before the city's Detroit casinos were authorized, Strather said, 112 Detroit area people each bought one or more $25,000 units in the company that eventually founded the casino.
"Many put in $100,000, four units," he said, making their holdings worth about $1.7 million today.
Strather said this investment growth in MotorCity doesn't include the $38.5 million that he and three other initial investors - Nellie Varner, Ron Slavik and James Blain - received when they sold their shares to Ilitch and to Mandalay, operating partner for MotorCity.
These four, along with former New Detroit President Paul Hubbard, funeral director O'Neill Swanson, and Barbara Callaway, who was Strather's grade-school teacher, were the original investors in 1994 when the city of Detroit voted approval for three casinos, Strather said.
A big payday could be on the horizon for those investors. MGM Mirage Inc., which has a pending $7.9 billion buyout of Mandalay, must sell as part of the deal a controlling interest in either MGM Grand Detroit Casino L.L.C. or Mandalay's MotorCity Casino. The deal received approval from the Federal Trade Commission Feb. 16.
MGM must sell its interest in one of the two Detroit casinos to get approval from the Michigan Gaming Control Board for the Mandalay buyout. Michigan law prohibits a casino company from owning a controlling interest in two casinos in Detroit. The company can own no more than 10 percent of the second casino.
Wall Street analysts also have valued MGM Grand Detroit at between $800 million and $1.2 billion.
Marian Ilitch is among several potential buyers talking to MGM about a deal for one of its Detroit casinos.
The lawsuit filed last week on behalf of Celani and Atwater investors alleges that Ilitch was supposed to include them in any negotiations to buy additional portions of MotorCity. Mandalay and the local MotorCity investors have an agreement allowing the local investors first right of refusal if Mandalay sells its shares.
Robert Ankeny: (313) 446-0404; [email protected]


DAR ES SALAAM, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Tanzania has initiated a $1.33 billion project to pipe natural gas to its commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, and help relieve chronic power shortages in the city, the president's office said in a statement on Sunday.
Most new plants will be gas-fired but Tanzania also wants to use coal reserves and renewable resources such as wind and geothermal.
"Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete inaugurated the pipeline and gas processing plants ... ensuring availability of gas for electricity generation to power factories and for domestic use," the presidency said in a statement.
The expanding capacity will help meet domestic demand as the government connects more people to the national grid beyond the 40 percent who are connected now, and offer the opportunity to export to neighbours.
Tanzania estimates it has about 55 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of recoverable natural gas reserves off its southern coastline. Discoveries in Tanzanian and Mozambican waters have led to predictions the region could become the world's third-largest exporter of natural gas.
The government said it hopes by switching to gas-fired power plants to save around $1 billion a year in oil imports for electricity generation after the completion of the pipeline.
Kikwete also confirmed a project to build a new cement plant owned by Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote in southern Tanzania close to its natural gas fields.


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Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance
Oxford Research Encyclopedias Economics and Finance
Econometrics, Experimental and Quantitative Methods
Economic Theory and Mathematical Models
Environmental, Agricultural, and Natural Resources Economics
Labor and Demographic Economics
Micro, Behavioral, and Neuro-Economics
Public Economics and Policy
Economic Geography and...
Economic Geography and Trade
Anthony J. Venables
International Economics , Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
The Geography of Trade
The Location of Activity: Theory
Factor Costs
Market Size and Market Crowding
Factor Mobility
Linkages, Intermediate Goods, and Clusters
Issues and Applications
Trade and International Inequalities
Trade, Geography, and Emergent Structure
Economic Development and Coordination Failure
Empirical Studies
Accessible introductions:
Textbook treatment:
Surveys that cover several aspects of the literature:
Comprehensive statement of early development of the field:
PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, ECONOMICS AND FINANCE (oxfordre.com/economics). (c) Oxford University Press USA, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).
Economic activity is unevenly distributed across space, both internationally and within countries. What determines this spatial distribution, and how is it shaped by trade? Classical trade theory gives the insights of comparative advantage and gains from trade but is firmly aspatial, modeling countries as points and trade (in goods and factors of production) as either perfectly frictionless or impossible. Modern theory places this in a spatial context in which geographical considerations influence the volume of trade between places. Gravity models tell us that distance is important, with each doubling of distance between places halving the volume of trade. Modeling the location decisions of firms gives a theory of location of activity based on factor costs (as in classical theory) and also on proximity to markets, proximity to suppliers, and the extent of competition in each market. It follows from this that—if there is a high degree of mobility—firms and economic activity as a whole may tend to cluster, providing an explanation of observed spatial unevenness. In some circumstances falling trade barriers may trigger the deindustrialization of some areas as activity clusters in fewer places. In other circumstances falling barriers may enable activity to spread out, reducing inequalities within and between countries. Research over the past several decades has established the mechanisms that cause these changes and placed them in full general equilibrium models of the economy. Empirical work has quantified many of the important relationships. However, geography and trade remains an area where progress is needed to develop robust tools that can be used to inform place-based policies (concerning trade, transport, infrastructure, and local economic development), particularly in view of the huge expenditures that such policies incur.
Keywords: economic geography, trade, globalization, agglomeration, clustering
Spatial unevenness is a striking characteristic of the world economy. Per capita income levels vary across countries by a factor of more than 100 to 1: within countries population and economic activity concentrate in cities that cover a small fraction of the national land area: global activity in some sectors—finance, high-tech, film-making—is concentrated in relatively few cities. Some of this is explained by physical geography, but most of it is the outcome of economic processes. Textbook economic principles offer no explanation of this unevenness; under the standard assumptions of general equilibrium theory economic activity will tend to smear more or less uniformly across space. A recent literature combining insights from economic geography and from trade theory does offer an explanation, showing how trade may create spatial structures that are highly uneven. Relatively uniform distribution of activity may not be a (stable) equilibrium as clustering occurs.
This article reviews the theory and the implications that flow from it. The central question to be addressed is: What determines the location of economic activity? The question can be posed at different spatial levels: location across nations, across regions, across cities, or within a particular city. And it can be posed of different economic variables: the location of people or the location of jobs, in aggregate or in different sectors. The answer is important because the spatial distribution of income and prosperity follows from it. This article focuses on the international angle and on why some places are more attractive locations for production—and hence offer higher wages and incomes—than others.
As usual in economics, the fundamental determinants are endowments, technology, and preferences. At a point in space these are natural resources, stocks of labor and capital, available technologies and institutions, and the preferences of inhabitants. Trade and economic geography bring the extra ingredient of spatial interaction, determined by the mobility of factors of production, technology, and the goods and services that they produce. The spatial scale of mobility varies, with labor moving freely within a country but generally not between countries; capital flows between countries but is often subject to regulation; the mobility of goods and services spans the spectrum from instantaneous global transmission of digital products to nontradable supply of haircuts and restaurant meals. The impact of these spatial interactions depends on the economic environment in which they occur. Ideas can move quite freely, but the absorptive capacity of a firm or country to employ them varies widely. The effect of integrating separate national goods or service markets depends on characteristics of the regions that are integrating and of the sectors that are being integrated.
The tasks facing researchers in economic geography and trade are therefore twofold: (a) to understand the form and extent of spatial interactions—what is mobile, what is immobile, and why? and (b) to understand the implications of these interactions for the spatial distribution of activity and prosperity, recognizing the heterogeneity of types of interaction and of the economic environments in which they occur.
Partial answers to these questions come from the classic models of international trade dating back to Ricardo and the works of Heckscher and Ohlin. These models (at least in their current textbook form, e.g., Krugman, Obstfeld, & Melitz, 2015) concentrate on trade in final goods, trade being driven by international differences in technology (Ricardo), or endowments (Heckscher-Ohlin). These models give us the key insights of comparative advantage and the gains from trade. However, they have no geography—countries are "points," and mobility is either assumed to be perfect (frictionless trade in goods) or impossible (factor assumed immobile).1 The economic environment of these models is one of constant returns to scale and perfect competition. These assumptions limit the set of questions that can be addressed and also mean that the approach offers little insight into three predominant features of trade and economic geography: (a) most international trade flows are curtailed sharply by distance, (b) intra-industry trade is present (two-way trade flows in similar products between similar economies), and (c) spatial unevenness exists in economic activity.
Developments in economic geography and trade have gone a long way to fill these gaps. The "new" trade theory of the 1980s adds imperfect competition and increasing returns, focusing attention on the behavior of firms. This provides a theory of intra-industry trade and also a framework in which to analyze the location decisions of firms. Building on this it became apparent that sufficiently high levels of spatial interaction—or, to put it crudely, sufficiently many things being mobile—create the possibility that economic activity will tend to concentrate in relatively few places. In some circumstances trade is a driver of convergence between places, and in others it causes divergence and creates spatial unevenness.
This article provides a selective overview of this literature and the main results and insights that come from it. The overview is nontechnical, giving references to previously published technical surveys. The next section deals with the geographical pattern of trade flows; it is largely empirical but establishes the point that geography matters for trade. The following section turns to theory, outlining a basic model of location of "industry." Here the term "industry" is used to cover productive activities whose location is not fixed by dependence on natural resources (agriculture or mining) or by servicing geographically fixed assets (e.g., provision of utilities); the term therefore applies to manufacturing and large parts of the service sector. Following this applications of the theory and empirics are discussed, finally turning to directions for future research.
The point of departure for studying economic geography and trade is to look at the economic geography of trade. The overwhelming feature is that trade flows are sharply curtailed by distance. Thus, the UK trades more with Ireland than it does with China, an economy 50 times larger. Geography and spatial frictions evidently matter for trade, and the tool for researching them is the "gravity model," first written down by Jan Tinbergen in 1962. Stripped down to essentials, it says that the value of trade between two countries is approximated by the relationship
Xij=F(dij,Zi,Zj).
where Xij are the exports from i to j; dij are "between-country" characteristics, in particular the distance between the two countries; Zi are exporter country characteristics; and Zj are importer country features. A relationship of this type is consistent with a number of theoretical underpinnings, providing that there are some trade frictions between countries and some reason for trade.2
There is good data on bilateral goods trade between most countries in the world, so this relationship can be econometrically estimated. The simplest form is to assume the relationship is log-linear and use distance as the only between-country variable and gross domestic product (GDP) as the exporter and importer country characteristics. A thorough exposition of these models, the technical issues involved, and the main results are discussed in Head and Mayer (2014), on which following paragraphs draw.
The coefficients on income are generally close to unity, and the coefficient on distance is close to –1.3 This implies that the effects of distance are large: trade volumes are proportional to the reciprocal of distance so each doubling of distance halves the volume of trade (conditional on GDP). The relationship is typically estimated on aggregate goods trade and across a wide range of countries, so coefficients are average effects. These mask a lot of heterogeneity—trade in oil is quite different from trade in motor vehicle parts. Estimating the relationship for service trade is hard, as bilateral service trade data is not widely available, although estimates suggest that the effect of distance is only slightly less for services than for goods trade. There are some estimates of Internet trade, giving estimates of the gravity coefficient about two-thirds that of corresponding trade flows (Lendle, Olarreaga, Schropp, & Vézina, 2016).
Many other variables have been added to the minimal version sketched earlier. Additional between-country measures include contiguity (+, indicating more trade), common language (+), colonial relationship (+), membership of a common regional integration agreement (+), and common currency (+). Further measures of exporter and importer country characteristics include land area (–) and division of aggregate GDP into population and per capita GDP, both positive and the latter larger than the former.
Finally, there is evidence that the absolute value of the distance coefficient has increased over time, rising from around 0.95 in the 1970s to around 1.1 in recent studies (Disdier & Head, 2008). This seems surprising, particularly in view of popular writings on the death of distance (e.g., Cairncross, 1997), but it should be borne in mind that this is a slope coefficient and the intercept of the relationship was increasing through most of the period; trade was increasing relative to GDP, but long-distance trade increased less rapidly than short distance.
These findings all indicate substantial geographical trade frictions. What underpins them? Numerous mechanisms can be posited, although empirical study has not been successful in establishing the relative importance of each. Transport costs are the most obvious. Research suggests that the elasticity of transport costs with respect to distance is less than unity while the elasticity of trade with respect to transport costs is greater than unity (absolute value), these combining to give the trade/distance coefficient of –1. Time in transit is important and has probably become more so with the rise of international production networks. The importance of just-in-time delivery in these and other trades is put forward as one reason for the increase in the absolute value of the distance coefficient through time. Perhaps the most important factor, if hard to quantity, is a package of costs of doing business at a distance. Firms and traders are likely to have better information about nearby markets than remote ones, it is easier transacting in similar time zones, face-to-face contact is important for building trust in relationships, and so on.
Geography matters for trade, and trade matters for shaping economic geography. To capture this a theory of location of economic activity is needed. Classical trade theory offers a theory, but, as noted earlier, its assumptions proved too restrictive to provide insight into many important phenomena. In particular, the rise in the volume of intra-industry trade that occurred in the postwar period is not readily explained by models of trade under perfect competition. This fact, together with the increasing returns revolution in economic theory that took place in the 1980s, led to a change in the focus of trade theory with the "new trade theory."
The new trade theory consists of several ingredients, of which the most important is the focus on firms. Firms are modeled as having economies of scale (this giving them finite size and implying marginal cost below average cost); as having some market power, so able to price above marginal cost; and typically deriving this market power from product differentiation, modeled in the style pioneered by Dixit and Stiglitz (1977). Production sectors are typically modelled as monopolistically competitive (i.e., with the number of constituent firms determined by free entry/exit until a zero profit condition is satisfied). The approach provides a fertile framework for addressing numerous issues. Intra-industry trade arises naturally as each firm can make profit by selling its product in each market. Such trade is consistent with the gravity relationship as, given likely price elasticities of demand for the products of particular firms, quite small trade frictions have a large impact on trade volumes. The framework enabled rich seams of work on foreign direct investment (Markusen, 2002) and on firm level heterogeneity, the latter using micro-level datasets (Melitz & Redding, 2014).
The approach also provides a framework for analyzing firms' location decisions and hence the economic geography of trade and production. The different forces at work can be illustrated for a single industry in a simple reduced form framework. A single firm in country i has sales volume in country j expressed as Xij=f(dij,ci,mj). Sales decrease with distance, dij, and with costs of production in country i, ci, since both of these increase the price of goods supplied from i to j. However, they are an increasing function of the "market capacity" of country j market, denoted mj. Market capacity is the size of the country j market (expenditure in the sector under study) combined (inversely) with a measure of market crowdedness, that is, the competitive pressure from other firms that supply this market.4
The total sales of a country i firm across all markets are xi=∑jf(dij,ci,mj) and, in models of this type, each firm breaks even if sales reach a particular level, x¯, making positive profits if sales exceed this and losses if they are less.5 The number of firms in country i is denoted ni, and the monopolistic competition setting means that there is entry of country i firms, denoted Δni>0, if profits are positive, and exit, Δni<0, if firms are loss making, so
Δni=xi−x¯=∑jf(dij,ci,mj)−x¯.
Equilibrium is when the number of firms has adjusted such that Δni=0 for all i.
The mechanisms that bring about this equality are dependence of costs ci and market capacity mj on the number of firms, ni.6 The remainder of this section outlines four forces that drive this dependency and hence ensure that equation (2) is equal to zero.
The first mechanism—and that akin to classical trade theory—is that factor prices and costs of production in the country are increasing in the scale of operation of the industry, so ci is increasing in ni. Thus the scale of activity in country i, as represented by the number of firms, ni, increases until wages and costs are bid up to the point where no further entry is profitable. This obviously depends on the size, productivity, and elasticity of supply of factors of production used in country i.
Entry of firms will not only bid up factor prices in the producing country but also increase supply and therefore reduce prices in markets to which they export. Thus market capacity mj is a decreasing function of the number of firms in each of the countries that export to country j.7 If all countries are identical the solution is easy to see. The same number of firms operates in each country, and the number is such that factor prices and output prices have jointly adjusted to make equation (2) equal to zero.
What if countries are not symmetric? If one country is α% larger than another, one might guess that it has α% more firms, and this would be correct if each country's firms took the same share of each market. But if there are trade frictions and gravity holds, then firms have a larger share of their home market than of their export markets. The larger country must then have more than α% of the world's firms, as its firms have the largest share in the largest market. This is sometimes referred to as the home market effect, and it means that large centers (in different contexts large cities, regions, or countries) are advantaged by the geography of gravity. The advantage takes some combination of larger countries having disproportionately more firms and, if factor prices are increasing in the number of firms, also having higher wages and higher real incomes. Empirical support for this effect is discussed later.8
A further mechanism comes into play if factors of production—labor in particular—are mobile between places. The home market effect discussed in the previous paragraph suggests that a large country might have higher wages and real incomes. Labor mobility attracts immigrants, further enlarging the size of the market (tending to increase market capacity, mi) and perhaps also mitigating increasing factor costs (reducing ci). If this effect is strong enough then the right-hand side of equation (2) becomes an increasing function of the number of firms ni, so that having more firms creates a force for attracting still more. This mechanism is the driver of the "core-periphery" model of Krugman (1991b). The simplest version of this model has two regions that are identical in their underlying structure and parameters and some workers and firms that are mobile between regions. Symmetry of structure and parameters means that there is always a symmetric equilibrium with the same number of firms in each region, but this may be unstable—if one region becomes slightly larger it will attract firms and migrants and become still larger. In addition to the unstable symmetric equilibrium, there are therefore two asymmetric equilibria, in which all firms have moved to either one region or the other. The model provides no prediction as to which might occur but makes the fundamental point that spatial interactions can create divergence in economic outcomes between places that have identical economic fundamentals.
The combination of the home market effect and labor mobility create the possibility that the right-hand side of (2) is increasing in ni. Other mechanisms, perhaps more relevant in the international context, can have the same effect. One such mechanism is the presence of intermediate goods, produced under conditions of product differentiation and monopolistic competition (Venables, 1996). More firms in a place mean a larger market for intermediate goods (a backwards linkage creating a larger market capacity, mi for suppliers of intermediates). This attracts firms that supply intermediate goods, and proximity of suppliers to users brings a cost reduction (a forward linkage creating a lower ci) for firms using the goods. This reinforces the attractiveness of the place for final goods production setting off the process of cumulative causation and clustering of industry in one place.
This is one example of a wider set of agglomeration economies that are generated by close and intense economic interaction and have the effect of raising productivity in affected areas and activities. They arise through several different mechanisms.9 Thick labor markets enable better matching of workers to firms' skill requirements. Better communication between firms and their customers and suppliers enables knowledge spillovers, better product design, and timely production. A larger local market enables development of a larger network or more specialized suppliers. Fundamentally, larger and denser markets allow for both scale and specialization. A good example is given by specialist workers or suppliers. The larger the market, the more likely it is to be worthwhile for an individual to specialize and hone skills in producing a particular good or service. The presence of highly specialized skills will raise overall productivity. The specialist will be paid for the product or service supplied but, depending on market conditions, is unlikely to capture the full benefit created.10 Since the benefit is split between the supplier and his or her customers, there is a positive externality. And this creates a positive feedback—more firms will be attracted to the place to receive the benefit, growing the market, further increasing the returns to specialization, and so on. This is the classic process of cluster formation.
These mechanisms have both a spatial and a sectoral range. They may be sector specific, tied to particular labor skills, firm capabilities, or input-output linkage (in which case they are sometimes referred to as "localization" or "Marshall-Romer" economies), or they may operate across many sectors (in the regional economics literature referred to as "urbanization" or "Jacobs" economies). They are developed rigorously in the literature, being given micro-economic foundations and set in a full general equilibrium framework in which not only the determinants but also the full implications of location choices are established.
In sum, economic geography and trade gives a theory of industrial location determined by four mechanisms:
1. Factor costs, in turn a function of endowments and technology.
2. Market access, trade costs, proximity, market size, and market crowding.
3. Supplier access and agglomeration and proximity to suppliers of intermediate goods and other complementary activities or sources of technological spillovers.
4. Factor mobility: the mobility of factors of production, feeding back to influence endowments and market size.
The first of these is the subject of classic trade theory, and the second adds trade frictions and gravity. Together they imply diminishing returns to expanding activity and hence unique and stable equilibria. The third and fourth are at the center of economic geography. They create positive feedbacks and hence the potential for multiple equilibria and the clustering of economic activity.11
The approaches outlined in the preceding section have been applied to a number of issues, three of which are outlined in this section, starting with international inequalities, turning to emergent structure, and ending with trade and economic development.
A central concern of much work in economic geography has been imbalance between successful and lagging regions. This may be within countries or, in the international context, shaping global inequalities and economic development. Central questions are: How does openness to trade affect international inequalities? In what circumstances do some countries benefit from trade while others lose, in relative or absolute terms?
The simplest economic geography framework for addressing this question is a world containing two countries, and, to address the question in its purest form, the countries are assumed to have identical fundamentals.12 Each country has a single factor of production (labor, which is internationally immobile) and may potentially have activity in two sectors. One is perfectly competitive, operates under constant returns to scale, and is freely traded. The other is an industrial sector, monopolistically competitive as sketched in the previous section. This sector also has the feature that its output is used both as final consumer goods and as intermediates in the same sector. Thus inputs to "industry" are both labor and industrial products, and the output of industry is partly for final consumption and partly intermediate inputs for industry.13 What happens as the cost of trading industrial goods between countries are reduced?
This is a model in which mechanisms 2 and 3 of the previous list operate but mechanisms 1 and 4 are switched off. This captures the "fundamental trade-off in spatial economics," between costs of mobility and various types of scale economies (Fujita & Thisse, 2002). Mechanism 2 is a force for dispersion of activity; given that there are consumers in both countries and trade costs, firms want to locate in both countries. Mechanism 3 is a force for concentration and clustering; firms want to be close to supplier firms and customer firms. How does the balance change as trade barriers are reduced?
At prohibitively high trade costs industry must be located in both countries in order to meet the demands of consumers so, if the countries have identical fundamentals, the equilibrium will be symmetric, with production equally divided and both economies identical. As trade costs are reduced so there is intra-industry trade and consumers and producers (users of intermediate goods) gain from importing foreign industrial varieties and from the potential for exports. The symmetric outcome remains an equilibrium, but there are two critical levels of trade costs at which bifurcation of equilibrium takes place. These are illustrated in Figure 1a, which has the share of industrial employment in each country's labor force on the vertical axis and trade frictions on the horizontal. At critical value T(S) two further equilibria emerge, one with country 1 specialized in industry (λ1 = 1) and country 2 retaining a lower level of industrial employment (1 > λ2 ≥ 0) and the other symmetric (i.e., with country labels reversed). The reason is that, as outlined earlier, intermediate goods create an agglomeration force, with firms in an agglomeration benefitting from forward linkages (many suppliers in the same place) and backwards linkages (much local intermediate demand for their output).
The second critical value is T(B), the point of symmetry breaking. At trade costs lower than this, the symmetric equilibrium is unstable (and therefore indicated by a dashed line). If one country has just slightly more industry than the other, then it is profitable for further firms to move into this country, amplifying the difference between them. In the simplest model T(S) > T(B) and in the interval between these values there are five equilibria, three of them stable and two (the curved dashed lines) unstable.
Figure 1b gives the corresponding real wages in each country, ωi, relative to world average real wages (illustrated just for stable equilibria where country 1 has industry). Evidently, clustering of industry in one place creates international inequalities. The divergence of income levels reaches a maximum, beyond which further reductions in trade costs bring convergence of incomes, although not of economic structure. The reason is that, in this example, both the dispersion and concentration forces (mechanisms 2 and 3) are assumed to operate only via trade costs, so as these costs go to zero so too does their effect. In the limit of perfectly free trade (T = 1), the location of industry becomes indeterminate, and all prices and incomes are the same in both countries (factor price equalization).
How is this picture altered if other locations mechanisms are brought into play? Other agglomeration mechanisms (e.g., better labor market matching or skill development) increase the likelihood of agglomeration and makes it less dependent on trade costs, T. Thus, even with perfectly free trade, labor market forces might lead clusters to be persistent. Migration (mechanism 4) further increases the likelihood of clustering of activity as it tends to make large markets larger (the home market effect and core-periphery model). Migration may also operate by creating larger pools of labor—particularly skilled labor—in existing centers of activity. Pushing in the other direction are immobile factors and the fact that centers of activity will have relatively high prices of such factors. In the urban context this is high land rents, and internationally it is high wages and labor costs.
The structure of equilibria outlined here is radically different from that of classical trade theory and provides alternative insights into the effects of trade. At its broadest, it gives insight into the rise and fall of international inequalities, from the great divergence (the rise of international inequalities following northern Europe's industrialization and the accompanying deindustrialization of parts of Asia) through to the geographical spread of industry that has emerged during the era of globalization.
Figure 1a. International inequalities; the location of industry. Based on Fujita et al. (1999, pp. 253–254).
Notes: T: Trade cost factor; free trade where T = 1.
λi : Share of country i labor force in industry, i = 1, 2.
Figure 1b. International inequalities; relative real wages. Based on Fujita et al. (1999, pp. 253–254).
ωi : Real wage in country i relative to global average, i = 1, 2.
The preceding subsection took an example of a two-country world, with just two sectors of activity. What does the structure of equilibria look like more generally? With many locations and clustering forces operating (in particular sectors and perhaps also in aggregate), we expect to see industrial activity concentrated in a subset of locations, with other places dependent on their natural resource (e.g., agricultural) base. The question then becomes: What is the size and shape of these clusters of activity? Are they high frequency (e.g., industrial activity in lots of small villages) or low frequency (e.g., concentrated in one or two locations from which they serve the world)? To address these questions Fujita, Krugman, and Venables (1999) apply an approach from the classic work of Turing (1952) on morphogenesis.
The starting point is "flat earth"—a situation in which economic activity is smeared uniformly across space. If all points are identical (in fundamentals and outcomes), then this is an equilibrium, although it may be unstable. If so, slight perturbation will cause structure to emerge from the homogenous starting point as the system moves to an asymmetric equilibrium. The size and frequency of clusters that form at this frequency have a distinct eigenvalue, determined by parameters that drive the dynamic adjustment process. Thus in simple cases it can be shown that if trade costs are high and agglomeration forces weak, there will be high-frequency clustering (i.e., numerous small clusters of activity). Lower trade costs and/or stronger agglomeration leads to low-frequency outcomes, with fewer but larger centers. Increasing the share of immobile factors of production (whose prices are determined by demand at each point, rather than being set through international arbitrage) also leads to low-frequency outcomes and, if the share is large enough, will prevent clusters from forming at all.
These results are derived by starting, for each set of parameters, from "flat-earth." What happens if the starting point is an established pattern of clusters? The thought experiment is to suppose an initial situation of high-frequency clusters (established with high trade costs) and investigate what happens as trade costs are reduced. The answer is that the structure is robust over a wide range of trade costs, and only when a critical value of costs is reached does spatial structure reorganise to a lower frequency pattern. If the change was occurring through time, the pattern would be one of punctuated equilibria: long periods of stability punctuated by periods of radical spatial reorganization as existing clusters unravel and new ones become established.
The robustness of a given spatial structure derives from several forces. One is the rents of agglomeration. An established center has high productivity and hence an advantage over other places. In equilibrium the advantage is captured by immobile factors—land in the case of cities, labor in the international context. Small changes may squeeze these rents but not to the point where they cease to be profitable to operate. This argument is amplified by the fact that capital—buildings but also human capital in sector specific skills—is sunk in existing centers, as is earning quasi-rents. The other side of this coin is the difficulty of establishing new activities in new places, which creates obstacles to economic development.
Agglomeration forces are generally driven by economies of scale that are external to individual economic agents (firms or workers) but internal to a place, which, depending on context, may be a district within a city, a wider region, or a country as a whole. This externality creates a "first-mover problem" and means that it is hard to start an activity in a new place. If a place has the activity, then agglomeration benefits mean that productivity is high enough for the place to be competitive (even at relatively high wages). If the place does not have the activity, then the productivity of a potential entrant is low, so entry is deterred. Coordinated action by many firms could achieve scale, but coordination failure may mean that the place remains trapped in a low-level equilibrium.
This problem is fundamental for the regeneration of areas of a city, for policy toward lagging regions, and for structural transformation in developing economies. For example, a developing economy may be accumulating factors of production and technology and acquiring a potential comparative advantage in new sectors. However, in the absence of existing activity, productivity is low, it is not profitable for any single firm to enter, and this potential comparative advantage is not realized. This coordination failure means that development of such sectors will commence later than is efficient and that there is scope for policy intervention. This argument formed the basis of "big-push" models of economic development (Hirschman, 1958; Murphy, Shleifer, & Vishny, 1989) and for policies that promote linkages between related sectors (Hausmann & Hidalgo, 2009; Myrdal, 1957).
For practical purposes, the sectoral scope of agglomeration effects is important. Trade liberalization and falling transport costs have enabled the development of global production networks in which a particular country (or city) specializes in a narrow part of the production process, sometimes referred to as "task specialization."14 Such narrowly defined tasks may have an extreme factor intensity (e.g., be very unskilled labor intensive), so that factor cost differentials are particularly important in location decisions. Furthermore, it is easier for countries to achieve scale in production of narrow tasks than it is to gain scale and productivity across a whole sector or range of sectors. Thus a development path has been to create jobs through clusters of activity in sectors such as ready-made garments (employing 4 million people in Bangladesh, clustered around Dhaka), electronic components, or assembly. However, global production networks have their own economic geography. They form between countries that have both significant factor cost differences and proximity (i.e., within East Asia and between the United States and Mexico). And they are spatially uneven, as agglomeration economies have concentrated them in particular places. Coordination failure matters even at this fine task level and has made it hard for new centers to become established, as witnessed by the numerous special economic zones that have been created around the world but that have failed to achieve this objective.
Agglomeration economies are a key mechanism in generating unevenness. There are many studies of the effect of economic scale and density on productivity, often undertaken on city-level data, and the first raw finding is that the elasticity of productivity with respect to city size is of the order of 0.05 to 0.1. Thus, a city of 5 million inhabitants typically has productivity 12% to 26% higher than a city of half a million. This raw number has been refined in many directions.15 For example, the skill and occupational mix of the labor force varies across cities, impacting on measured productivity. Controlling for observed measures of skill (e.g., education) typically brings the elasticity down by about a quarter. This might only be part of the story, as there may be sorting, meaning that people with higher innate ability (regardless of education) are disproportionately drawn to cities. The only way to observe this is to track individuals as they move into cities or between cities of different sizes. Recent empirical work suggests that the pure agglomeration effect has elasticity of 0.02 to 0.04 (Combes & Gobillon, 2015). This is still a substantial number.16
Estimates can be produced by sector and indicate that productivity effects are largest in high-tech sectors and business services. Corresponding to this, sectoral clustering is apparent in many sectors (ranging from financial services and films to the production of buttons).17 The extent of clustering at the sectoral level has been demonstrated by authors including Ellison and Glaeser (1997), who show that many U.S. industries are much more clustered than would be expected by randomness. This is linked to the home market effect by Davis and Weinstein (2003). In a neoclassical model spatial variation in expenditure on a sector should be linked with less than proportional variation in production, whereas in a geography model the home market effect would cause the increase in production to be more than proportional. They find the latter effect present in many manufacturing industries.
Finally, does geography matter for income differences? Effects are expected to show up in the prices of immobile factors, and, within countries, this is apparent in variations in the price of land between rural and urban areas of different sizes. Internationally, several lines of research have looked at the impact of geography on income. The impact of natural geography is studied in a line of work following Sachs and Warner (2001), pointing to the sometimes negative impact of natural resource and fossil fuel abundance on per capita incomes. The impact of economic geography is studied by constructing various measures of access to markets and to suppliers (measures derived from estimating gravity trade models) and estimating their impact on income (Head & Mayer, 2011; Redding & Venables, 2004). These measures explain a substantial proportion of cross-country variation in per capita income, and estimated parameters are consistent with plausible values of model parameters. Establishing that the relationship is causal is problematic, particularly as other variables such as quality of institutions may be highly correlated with market access and income levels. In the search to find solutions to this problem, researchers have looked for natural experiments, one notable one being the partition of Germany (Redding & Sturm, 2008). West German cities close to the border with the East experienced substantial population decline, attributed by the authors to the loss of previous trading links and market access.18
Geography is now incorporated in economic models of international trade, although the focus has been predominantly on trade costs and gravity rather than the richer story of firm location, unevenness, and multiple equilibria. Firm location and spatial unevenness are developed more fully in the literature on urban and regional economics where there is both analytical and empirical work studying the location of activity and quantifying the agglomeration forces that shape it.
These developments have laid the foundations for thinking about policy, but the research literature is far from having a robust set of guidelines for formulation of spatial policy. Vast resources are spent trying to promote the development of lagging regions—internationally, within countries, and within cities. Much of this is done in the hopes of achieving transformational change (i.e., encouraging positive feedback mechanisms to come into play so that an area will develop), but little is yet known about circumstances under which this is more or less likely to occur.19 To take one example, China's belt and road initiative is a trillion-dollar experiment in economic geography and trade; do we have the tools to think through its likely effects? Developing such tools remains the challenge, and one route is through the emerging literature on quantitative spatial economics in which economic geography models are calibrated to urban or national data (Donaldson, 2015; Redding & Rossi-Hansburg, 2017). Effects of policy will always be context specific and, given increasing returns and multiple equilibria, have an inherent uncertainty. Prediction may not be possible, but quantitative tools firmly grounded in theory and data will provide a way of illustrating scenarios of possible outcomes.
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(1.) There are also distinct literatures on frictions due to trade policy and on the effects of factor mobility. See Norman and Venables (1995) for a synthesis of trade frictions and factor mobility in a Heckscher-Ohlin framework.
(2.) Trade can be generated by national-level product differentiation (Armington, 1969), Ricardian productivity differences in a multicommodity setting (Eaton & Kortum, 2002), or factor endowments with firm level product differentiation (Helpman & Krugman, 1985).
(3.) Nineteenth-century "social physics" hypothesized that human interactions were analogous to physical ones. Physical gravity operates in three-dimensional space so distance has coefficient –2. The surface of the earth is two-dimensional, so the analogous gravity coefficient would be expected to be –1.
(4.) The terminology follows Redding and Venables (2004). The familiar concept of country i market access is an inverse distance weighted sum of market capacities across countries j with which i trades, market accessi = ∑jmj/dij. See also Anderson (2011) for links with the gravity model.
(5.) The benchmark model sketched here assumes that all firms in a particular country/industry are symmetric. If firms are heterogeneous (e.g., in their productivity levels), then the marginal firm breaks even and firms with higher productivities make positive profits. For development of such models see Melitz and Redding (2014).
(6.) In a particular sector of a closed economy there is just one equation and a single variable n1. In a multicountry context i, j are values of an index over the total number of countries so that Equation 2 is a simultaneous system determining the number of firms active in each country. The solution is subject to the impossibility of a negative number of firms, so Δni≤0, ni≥0, complementary slack.
(7.) In the Dixit-Stiglitz framework, the measure of market crowdedness is the price index of all varieties sold in the country j market.
(8.) For generalization of the home market effect to many countries and industries, see Behrens, Lamorgese, Ottaviano, and Tabuchi (2009).
(9.) Discussion dates back to at least Alfred Marshall (Marshall, 1920). For a modern survey, see Duranton and Puga (2004).
(10.) The supplier will capture the full benefit only if able to perfectly price discriminate. Otherwise, the customer will also receive some consumer/user surplus on the introduction of a new product. This observation is central to the wide range of economic models in which the number and variety of goods and services offered is endogenous (see Dixit & Stiglitz, 1977).
(11.) For an elegant synthesis of the tension between dispersion and agglomeration forces and an application to intracountry unevenness, see Allen and Arkolakis (2014).
(12.) This section draws on Venables (1996); see also Fujita et al. (1999).
(13.) In general this would be through a full input-output matrix. In this example it is aggregated to a single sector using some of its own (differentiated) outputs as inputs.
(14.) See Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg (2008) and, for a wider view of global production networks, Baldwin (2016).
(15.) See Rosenthal and Strange (2004) for a survey.
(16.) In some contexts, it may not be appropriate to impose all these controls. Suppose someone achieves high productivity by undertaking education to acquire a skill that is in demand only in large cities. Then both the city and the education are necessary for attaining the productivity, and it would be wrong to attribute it all to education.
(17.) The city of Qiaotou produces 60% of the world's buttons and 200,000km of zippers per year.
(18.) There are substantial recent literatures re-evaluating the gains from trade and looking at the effects of transport improvements. These are outside the scope of this article and are both surveyed in Donaldson (2015).
(19.) An exception is the careful study of the Tennessee Valley Authority by Kline and Moretti (2013). See Duranton and Venables (2018) for further discussion of issues and a review of some of this literature.
Department of Economics, University of Oxford


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Charlotte Halsey
BA Graphic Design Alum
Charlotte talks about her typographic work which saw her nominated for the Nova Awards in 2013.
CSM's Nova shortlisters are put forward by their Course Leaders and represent the very best talent across the degree shows. Here, Charlotte provides an insight into the work which earned her the prestigious nomination.
Typographic pathway
"Most of my work experiments with the process of collage; using found imagery – predominantly from botanical textbooks – and decomposing the elements to recombine them in new contexts. The inspiration for my visual aesthetic comes from a range of sources such as literature, surrealism, geometry, natural forms and psychedelia.
Part of a larger series, Kaleidoscope II is a visual response to the work of Philip K. Dick. Philip K. Dick was a science fiction novelist whose work examines social and political themes, metaphysics and altered states. Continually questioning reality, Dick often explored paranoia, schizophrenia and drug abuse. Inspired by psychedelic and optic art, this piece is a kaleidoscopic collage influenced by Philip K. Dick and particularly A Scanner Darkly.
'Circles', is a selection of work from a larger collection that examines the attempts to explain order in nature and explore the idea that everything in nature can be interpreted mathematically thus resulting in the emergence of patterns, such as the spiral of seeds on a sunflower. Influenced by research into mathematical theories and concepts, such as, geometry, chaos theory, Fibonacci numbers and the golden spiral, this piece consists of nine collages inspired by patterns in nature.
The selection of letters on show are a part of Luciferous Logolepsy, a project dedicated to the exploration of words and their definitions; culminating in a collaged alphabet inspired by my fondness of words. Each word is represented by a decoratively designed letter informed by the words definition. The explanation of this project is also in its title, Luciferous ('illuminating, literally and figuratively') Logolepsy ('an obsession with words').
Finally, Wandering in Circles initiates the beginning of a new series of work. Investigating and exploring my inherent curiosity of circles; particularly concerning the notion of symbolism, as well as geometry, divination, mysticism and semiotics".


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Altruism, Welfare, or Development Aid? Swedish Aid for Family Planning in Ceylon, 1958 to 1983
Darshi Thoradeniya
Colombo Branch Office, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany
e-mail: darshi@sai.uni-heidelberg.de
Darshi Thoradeniya has been the Colombo branch manager of the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, since 2014. She completed her PhD in history at the University of Warwick in May 2014. Her thesis is "Women's Health as State Strategy: Sri Lanka's Twentieth Century." In 2013 she won the joint runner-up award of the William Bynum Prize (an international essay competition coordinated by the Medical History Journal) for her pioneering article on birth control pill trials in Sri Lanka. She has published in the book Women's Global Health: Norms and State Policies (2014) and has articles in two local journals.
Darshi Thoradeniya; Altruism, Welfare, or Development Aid? Swedish Aid for Family Planning in Ceylon, 1958 to 1983. East Asian Science, Technology and Society 1 December 2016; 10 (4): 423–444. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/18752160-3684005
In engaging critically with the history of the Sweden-Ceylon Family Planning Programme, the author brings in both local and global debates on population, development, the welfare state, and Swedish neutrality in Cold War politics to show that these were not necessarily one-way processes but reciprocal processes. The methodology included the analysis of secondary sources, archival records, and contemporary debates that were published in Sri Lankan newspapers.
It is clear that global debates did not simply transfer to Third World countries; this encounter (global and local) allowed space for negotiations and translations of global and local politics of development. These were reciprocal processes in many ways. On the one hand, for example, a social engineering project cemented the population and national development plans of postindependence Sri Lanka, while on the other hand Sweden was acting strategically so as to maintain its neutrality in Cold War politics.
Sweden-Ceylon Family Planning Programme, welfare state, national development plans, Cold War, Sri Lanka
Postcolonial Nativism? Exploring the Postsecularist Critique of History on Sri Lanka
Introduction: Architecture as a Form of Knowledge
The Dog That Almost Barked: What the ACA Repeal Fight Says about the Resilience of the American Welfare State
No-Fault Murder: Neoliberalism from the Viewpoint of Nordic Noir
Sweden-Ceylon Family Planning Programme
national development plans
Introduction Labor, (Workers') Autonomy, (Art) Work
Policy Ethnography as a Combat Sport Analyzing the Welfare State against the Grain
Populist Cosmopolitanism
Cold War Crucible


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Music Showcases
World Voice
Bella Hardy in China
2015 Residencies
Composer in Russia
Musicians in Residencies, China 2012
Musicians in Residence, Brazil 2017-18
SuperEverything*
Musicians in Residence, Brazil
We have three fantastic artists taking part in three remarkable residencies
Podcast: Musicians in Residence, Brazil 2017-18
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We are delighted to announce that Phantom Chips, Lady Vendredi and Nathaniel Mann are the three artists selected for the first Musicians in Residence, Brazil programme with PRS Foundation. They will each travel to different parts of Brazil for up to six weeks to explore creative opportunities, engage with the local community and create new music.
"A fabulous way to understand another part of the world is through its music," explains Cathy Graham, Director Music at the British Council, "and Brazil offers up a wonderful variety for us to discover through our musicians in residence. From the rich and lively carnival heritage of Recife to the underground experimental scene of Rio de Janeiro to the music of the Xingu indigenous communities, there will be so much to enjoy over the next few months. In turn, each resident will take their own brand of UK music to South America so there are sure to be some fascinating collaborations."
These residencies follow the success of the Musicians in Residence, China programme which began life in 2011 with Gareth Bonello, Imogen Heap, Jamie Woon and Matthew Bourne.
"Based on the very positive outcomes of previous residencies we've supported with British Council, I'm convinced that Phantom Chips, Lady Vendredi and Nathaniel Mann will benefit enormously from this unique opportunity," says Vanessa Reed, Executive Director of PRS Foundation. "I look forward to following the progress of their very different approaches to making music and to hearing about the relationship they build with local artists, communities and audiences. Congratulations on being selected."
Phantom Chips (Tara Pattenden)
"Like an electrocuted typewriter" – Radio Free Midwich
Tara Pattenden is a performer, improviser and instrument maker based in Glasgow. As Phantom Chips she performs with an array of home-made electronic instruments, samplers and wearable noisemakers that can be stretched and squeezed to create sound. Concocting rhythms from found and recorded sounds where playfulness and improvisation are never far away, she invites the audience to wear costumes and join in with the music making themselves.
Phantom Chips (Tara Pattenden) will collaborate with Novas Frequências Festival, the main international event of experimental music and sound explorations in South America, while staying in Rio de Janeiro. Her residency is supported by Creative Scotland.
"Making new work in Rio de Janeiro and performing at Novas Frequencias is a really exciting opportunity," she says. "I'm looking forward to creating new instruments and collaborating with locals to make a new performance influenced by the energy of the city."
Lady Vendredi (Nwando Ebizie)
"Surely one of the most compelling stage performers out there, with a rich, worldly repertoire that means whatever she does next will surely be fascinating" – Upcoming
Nwando Ebizie is an experimental performance artist, musician, producer, DJ and dancer whose work eschews boundaries but incorporates her training in classical piano, electronic music production (British Academy of New Music), circus, aerial arts (Circomedia), physical theatre and various forms of dance. As Lady Vendredi, her EP The Passion of Lady Vendredi garnered the support of names including Emanative, Tom Robinson and Floating Points.
Lady Vendredi will travel to Recife and work closely with a local museum and cultural centre, Paço do Frevo, which presents the traditional northeast rhythms, such as Frevo and Maracatu, to the surrounding barrio. Her trip will also coincide with Rio Carnaval.
"MIR Brazil fulfils a dream of mine to explore Afro-brazilian ritual music in Recife," she says. "Working with the musicians, dancers, learning more about Frevo all whilst being immersed in Carnaval is such a perfect opportunity to gain a real understanding of the music culture. This will enrich my research into Afro-diaspora syncretic ritual music and be an invaluable learning experience. I would like to thank British Council, PRSF and Paco de Frevo for this amazing opportunity."
Nathaniel Mann
"Subverting the stolid conservatism that has come to be associated with much of today's folk music and reconstructing it from the ground up" – The Quietus
Nathaniel Mann is a sound artist, composer and folk singer but perhaps best known for his work with avant-folk ensemble Dead Rat Orchestra. His past work includes installations, site specific performances and electroacoustic work and he has written for Tate, BBC Scotland and London Contemporary Orchestra. He has had works performed by Ukraine's State Camera Orchestra (Kievskaya Kamerata) and was Sound and Music's Embedded Composer in Residence at Oxford University's Pitt Rivers Museum and Oxford Contemporary Music for just under two years. He is also co-founder of the Nepali & English Joint Traditional Music Band.
Nathaniel will stay in Mato Grosso where he will work with the Mato Grosso State Orchestra, the Instituto Homem Brasileiro (Institute for the Brazilian Man) and the Wauja Tribe – an indigenous tribe of Xingu, for whom music plays an integral part of society and culture.
"It will be an extraordinary privilege to engage with the diverse musical cultures and histories of Brazil," he says. "I hope to open a musical dialogue which assists in amplifying the voices of the Wauja community, and eventually widens that dialogue to reach entirely new audiences. The works we create will explore the interconnectedness of traditional rites, music and the natural environment, exploring both Wauja and British musical traditions; all interwoven with more pressing contemporary themes of power and agency."
Explore the cities
Our residents will each travel to a different location in Brazil to immerse themselves in the local music and culture.
Phantom Chips travels to Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city in Brazil (the largest is São Paulo) and located on the South Atlantic coast. With a population of 6.3 million, Rio is the sixth most populous municipality in the Americas. The city is known for its beautiful landscape and iconic geographic features amongst sprawling favelas and the famous annual carnival.
While staying in Rio, Phantom Chips will collaborate with Novas Frequências Festival, the main international event of experimental music and sound explorations in South America.
Lady Vendredi travels to Recife, the capital of Brazil's northeastern state of Pernambuco with a population of 1.5 million. The city stands out for its vibrant cultural and entertainment scene as well as its historical importance, dating back to both the Portuguese and the Dutch colonization of the region.
Lady Vendredi will partner with Paço do Frevo, a local museum and cultural centre in Recife which serves the surrounding 'barrio' with exhibitions, local radio and performances.
Nathaniel Mann travels to Mato Grosso, meaning "thick forest". The inland state is situated in west-central Brazil, largely covered by the Amazon rainforest, whilst the Pantanal and Cerrado ecosystems also meet within its borders. The population of the state is 3.3 million.
In Mato Grosso, Nathaniel Mann will work with Mato Grosso State Orchestra, the Instituto Homem Brasileiro (Institute for the Brazilian Man) and the indigenous Wauja people in Xingu National Park.
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When Edina (Jennifer Saunders) takes up with her first boyfriend in ages, Patsy (Joanna Lumley) finds her role in her best friend's life suddenly reduced even though she's recently moved into the Monsoon household. Even worse, she actually has to show up at work for once -- to attend a meeting with fast-talking editor Magda (Kathy Burke); dim, ornamental staffers Catriona (Helen Lederer) and Fleur (Harriet Thorpe); and the ridiculously erudite gourmand Hamish (Adrian Edmondson). Suckered into giving a pair of fashion nobodies a makeover on a chat show hosted by unassuming everywoman Kathy (Dawn French), Pats makes a Faustian pact with Saffron (Julia Sawalha): If Saf and Gran (June Whitfield) will become her sartorial guinea pigs, she'll move back into her own flat and she won't try to destroy Eddy's new romance. Originally broadcast on BBC 1 on December 10, 1992, Absolutely Fabulous: Magazine marked series one, episode five of this popular Brit-com. French, who co-created the original sketch on which "AbFab" was based, appears as cheerful TV host Kathy. Acclaimed comedic and character actress Burke makes first of several appearances as the no-nonsense Magda. In a flashback sequence, Eleanor Bron also appears as Patsy's mother; Bron would appear again in Absolutely Fabulous: Birth.


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JASPER -- Memorial Hospital will be hosting a Medic First Aid Refresher course with AED.
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Old school medicine was known for wacky syrups that calmed teething infants to nostrums and liniments, even traveling medicine shows. But it also offered things like house calls from the doctor and a much more human touch; doctors who took the time to get to know their patients.
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Q: How to add newly added data from firebase to the top of the GridView/ListView and not at the bottom in ANDROID I have an app in which I'm retrieving firebase data, but the newly added data shows at the bottom of the list. I want the new data to appear at the top of the list view...

A: For ListView you can use yourListView.getAdapter().insert(item, 0), same will work with GridView probably
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This no bake mini egg cheesecake from Taming Twins looks so delicious! This would be a perfect dessert recipe for Easter or spring parties and gatherings. See below for the link to the recipe and instructions to see how you can make your own yummy mini egg cheesecake.
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Very good. Some creasing and toning along original centerfold, with some discoloration. Rust marks in top and bottom left margins.