Sewerage works: public investment in sewers saves lives

Without sewers, more children die, and those who survive suffer in terms of physical growth and educational attainment. Donor policies and advice on sewers are wrong in three key respects. Sewers in cities are not optional extras but essential. Sewers need to be financed by taxation not user charges. And sewers in cities are affordable for most countries, many of whom are already investing in sewers in their cities. The aid needed is concentrated in a few countries, and this is affordable for rich countries.

2009 world nuclear industry status report

Although some countries plan to build new nuclear power plants in the near future, in aggregate the data indicates that nuclear power's influence will continue to dwindle across the globe in coming decades.

The determinants of business performance of estate agency in England and Wales

Purpose: This paper seeks to investigate the factors influencing the business performance of estate agency in England and Wales. Design/methodology/approach: The paper investigates the effect of housing market, company size and pricing policy on business performance in the estate agency sector in England and Wales. The analysis uses the survey data of Woolwich Cost of Moving Survey (a survey of transactions costs sponsored by the Woolwich/Barclays Bank) from 2003 to 2005 to test the hypothesis that the business performance of estate agency is affected by industry characteristics and firm factors. Findings: The empirical analysis indicates that the business performance of estate agency is subject to market environment volatility such as market uncertainty, housing market liquidity and house price changes. The firm factors such as firm size and the level of agency fee have no explanatory power in explaining business performance. The level of agency fee is positively associated with firm size, market environment and liquidity. Research limitations/implications: The research is limited to the data received and is based on a research project on transaction costs designed prior to this analysis. Originality/value: There is little other research that investigates the factors determining the business performance of estate agency, using consecutive data of three years across England and Wales. The findings are useful for practitioners and/or managers to allocate resources and adjust their business strategy to enhance business performance in the estate agency sector.

The Olympic Games and urban displacement: the case of Beijing

Urban spectacles such as the Olympic Games have been long perceived as being able to impose desired effects in the city that act as host. This kind of urban boost may include the creation of new jobs and revenue for local community, growth in tourism and convention business, improvements to city infrastructure and environment, and the stimulation of broad reform in the social, political and institutional realm. Nevertheless at the other end of the debate, the potentially detrimental impacts of Olympic urban development, particularly on disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, have also been increasingly noticed in recent years and subsequently cited by a number of high profile anti-Olympic groups to campaign against Olympic bids and awards. The common areas of concern over Olympic-related projects include the cost and debts risk, environmental threat, the occurrence of social imbalance, and disruption and disturbance of existing community life. Among these issues, displacement of low income households and squatter communities resulting from Olympic-inspired urban renewal are comparatively under-explored and have emerged as an imperative area for research inquiry. This is particularly the case where many other problems have become less prominent. Changing a city’s demographic landscape, particularly displacing lower income people from the area proposed for a profitable development is a highly contentious matter in its own right. Some see it as a natural and inevitable outgrowth of the process of urban evolution, without which cities cannot move towards a more attractive location for consumption-based business. Others believe it reflects urban crises and conflicts, highlighting the market failures, polarization and injustice. Regardless of perception,these phenomena are visible everywhere in post-industrial cities and particularly cannot be ignored when planning for the Olympic Games and other mega-events. The aim of this paper is to start the process of placing the displacement issue in the context of Olympic preparation and to seek a better understanding of their interrelations. In order to develop a better understanding of this issue in terms of cause, process, influential factors and its implication on planning policy, this paper studies the topic from both theoretic and empirical angles. It portrays various situations where the Olympics may trigger or facilitate displacement in host cities during the preparation of the Games, identifies several major variables that may affect the process and the overall outcome, and explores what could be learnt in generic terms for planning Olympic oriented infrastructure so that ill-effects to the local community can be effectively controlled. The paper concludes that the selection of development sites, the integration of Olympic facilities with the city’s fabric, the diversity of housing type produced for local residents and the dynamics of the new socioeconomic structure.

Much Ado About Nothing: The Limitation of Liability and the Market for 19th century Irish Bank Stock

Abstract Limited liability is widely believed to be a prerequisite for the emergence of an active and liquid securities market because the transactions costs associated with trading ownership of unlimited liability firms are viewed as prohibitive. In this article, we examine the trading of shares in an Irish bank, which limited its liability in 1883. Using this bank’s archives, we assemble a time series of trading data, which we test for structural breaks. Our results suggest that the move to limited liability had a negligible impact upon the trading of this bank’s shares.

The Trading of Unlimited Liability Bank Shares in Nineteenth Century Ireland: The Bagehot Hypothesis

In the mid-1820s, banks became the first businesses in Great Britain and Ireland to be allowed to form freely on an unlimited liability joint-stock basis. Walter Bagehot warned that their shares would ultimately be owned by widows, orphans, and other impecunious individuals. Another hypothesis is that the governing bodies of these banks, constrained by special legal restrictions on share trading, acted effectively to prevent such shares being transferred to the less wealthy. We test both conjectures using the archives of an Irish joint-stock bank. The results do not support Bagehot's hypothesis.

The causes and consequences of Rent-seeking in Northern Ireland, 1945-72

Northern Ireland's economic performance during the 'golden age' was weak. Crafts suggested that rent-seeking was an important determinant of this poor record. This article offers support for such a conclusion. It is suggested that the growth record was shaped by British regulations preventing conflicts of ministerial interest not being made operational until 1963. This institutional divergence tended to promote rent-seeking behaviour, which impeded the pursuit of an industrial policy that could promote economic efficiency. In 1963 the institutional structure and the industrial policy framework changed. These changes stimulated the pursuit of efficiency and contributed to an improved regional economic performance.

Review of Periodical Literature Published in 2008 (VI Since 1945)

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