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2331. The Determinants of Child Weight and Height in Sri Lanka: A Quantile Regression Approach

Author:
Harsha Aturupane, Anil B. Deolalikar, and Dileni Gunewardena
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Reducing child malnutrition is a key goal of most developing countries. To combat child malnutrition with the right set of interventions, policymakers need to have a better understanding of its economic, social and policy determinants. While there is a large literature that investigates the determinants of child malnutrition, it focuses almost exclusively on mean effects of these determinants. However, socioeconomic background variables and policy interventions may affect child nutrition differently at different points of the conditional nutritional distribution. Using quantile regressions, this paper explores the effect s of variables such as a child's age, sex and birth order; household expenditure per capita; parental schooling; and infrastructure on child weight and height at different points of the conditional distributions of weight and height using data from Sri Lanka's Demographic and Health Survey. Results indicate that OLS estimates can be misleading in predicting the effects of determinants at the lower end of the distributions of weight and height. For example, even though on average Sri Lankan girls are not nutritionally-disadvantaged relative to boys, among children at the highest risk of malnutrition girls are disadvantaged relative to boys. Likewise, although expenditure per capita is associated with strong nutritional improvement on average, it is not a significant determinant of child height or weight at the lower end of the distribution. Similarly, parental education, electricity access, and the availability of piped water have larger effect son child weight and height at the upper quantiles than at the lower quantiles. The policy implication is that general interventions—parental schooling, infrastructure and income growth—are not as effective for children in the lower tail of the conditional weight and height distributions. These children, who are at the highest risk of malnutrition, are likely to need specialized nutritional interventions.
Topic:
Development, Education, and Health
Political Geography:
Asia and Sri Lanka

2332. Development Path of China and India and the Challenges for their Sustainable Growth

Author:
Yuefen Li and Bin Zhang
Publication Date:
04-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The segmentation of global manufacturing and services provided China and subsequently India with a golden opportunity to make full use of their absolute advantage—low cost yet educated labour—to integrate into the world economy within a comparatively shorter period of time than some earlier industrialisers. Though international trade functioned as a vent of surplus in view of the narrowness of their domestic markets at the beginning of their economic catch-up, the label of export-led model may not reflect the real picture as imports underwent dramatic increases during their respective growth periods, in particular for China. Foreign direct investment has played a pivotal role in their economic growth and has major presence in international trade and investment in leading sectors of both countries, giving rise to certain special features and weak links for their economic expansion and sustainability of fast economic growth. To maintain more broad-based, fast and balanced growth, it seems that both countries have to redress sectoral imbalances, encourage technology upgrading and cope with future changes in demographic profiles which constituted a trigger to fast economic growth at the time of their respective economic reform.
Topic:
Development and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
China, India, and Asia

2333. North Caucasus Weekly: Attempt on Ramzan Kadyrov's Life Reported

Publication Date:
08-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov on July 30 denied reports that he had been the target of an assassination attempt. “Those rumors are being generated either by the Wahhabis themselves or provocateurs straining for cheap sensationalism,” Gazeta.ru quoted Kadyrov as saying during a meeting with Chechnya's education and science minister, Anzor Muzaev. The Chechen president insisted that the situation in the republic is peaceful and stable. “Naturally, there is a circle of persons whom this [situation] doesn't suit,” he said. “This sort of verbiage has only one goal—to destabilize the situation in the region. These provocative fantasies are engendered by ideologists of the extremists and their henchmen. Jackals who don't have the guts to go into the woods themselves.” The Chechen president's press service also denied that there had been an attempt on Kadyrov's life, calling the reports “provocations aimed against the Chechen Republic and its president.”
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Asia, and North Caucasus

2335. Higher Education Reservations and India's Economic Growth: An Examination

Author:
Gurpreet Mahajan
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
In 2006 the Indian Parliament passed legislation reserving an additional 27 percent of seats in all institutions of higher learning, funded by the central government, for the category of socially disadvantaged groups officially known as "Other Backward Classes." At a time when India is opening its economy to global competition, this initiative has re-ignited the debate on the efficacy of reservations and triggered fresh anxieties about the impact of this policy on India's economic growth.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, Education, and Globalization
Political Geography:
India and Asia

2336. China's Role as a Trade Bridge for Expanding Regional and World Trade

Author:
Min Gong and Wenpu Li
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
To understand China's trade relations with the US, Japan, and South Korea, we estimate a vector autoregressive model (VAR) model to investigate the trade interactions among these four countries using data from the period of the first quarter of 1993 to the fourth quarter of 2005. We find substantial Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)-induced indirect trade from Japan and Korea to the US through China, and between Japan and Korea through China. These indirect trade flows lead to increases in China's trade deficit with Japan and Korea as well as China's trade surplus with the US. The indirect trade flows through China also indicate the importance of China's role as a trade bridge. From the viewpoint of world trade growth, as a trade bridge, China contributes to the stable growth of the regional and world economies. However, China's role as a trade bridge may negatively affect its long-run economic growth.
Topic:
Globalization, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Asia, South Korea, and Korea

2337. No Way Out: An Assessment of the Romani Community in Georgia

Author:
David Szakonyi
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Centre for Minority Issues
Abstract:
The Romani community is the most marginalized and disadvantaged ethnic community in Georgia. Although accurate estimates are hard to establish, the population is thought to number up to 1,500 persons, living in multiple small settlements across Georgia. Extreme poverty, unemployment, lack of education and health care, and isolation from larger society comprise several of the major problems the community as a whole is facing. The overall situation for the Roms in Georgia has significantly deteriorated since the Soviet period, leaving the population practically devoid of any means to lift themselves out of their often devastating circumstances.
Topic:
Education, Ethnic Conflict, Health, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Europe, Asia, Soviet Union, and Georgia

2338. Representation and Democracy in Eurasia's Unrecognized States: The Case of Transnistria

Author:
Oleh Protsyk
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Centre for Minority Issues
Abstract:
Like the majority of modern states, non-recognized or de facto states are governed indirectly through elected representatives who are entrusted with the task of carrying out most of the functions of government. Issues of representation are central to an understanding of modern polities and have therefore generated substantial academic interest with regard to the identity and performance of representatives. Non-recognized states have largely been spared such detailed scrutiny of their domestic politics and patterns of representation, even though requests by these states for recognition draw increasingly on claims to democratically-secured genuine representation.
Topic:
Democratization and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe, Eurasia, and Asia

2339. Lust/Caution in IR: Democratising World Politics from Postcolonial Asia

Author:
L.H.M. Ling, Ching-Chane Hwang, and Boyu Chen
Publication Date:
12-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
International Relations (IR) needs democratising. Currently, IR theorising remains under the hegemony of a singular worldview ('warre of all against all') with a singular logic ('conversion or discipline') for all actors and activities. This top-down, state-centric, and exclusivist approach is fundamentally anti-democratic for a field of inquiry and practice crowded with multiple worlds. The Humanities, we propose, will help to mitigate these totalitarian tendencies by expressing and examining what hegemonic IR cannot but must: that is, a richness of being in global life. We present Ang Lee's 'Lust/Caution' (2007) as an example. If seen as an allegory for Taiwan-China relations, this film shifts attention from the national security state, a defining concern for hegemonic IR, to the trans-national solidarities that bind peoples and societies despite inter-state conflicts, thereby offering a way out of the statist impasse that incarcerates the region. This approach extends beyond recent calls for a 'linguistic' or 'artistic' turn in IR. Culture, we argue, can serve as a method.
Topic:
Democratization, Post Colonialism, International Affairs, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, and Asia

2340. Postcolonialism and Postcoloniality: A Premortem Prognosis

Author:
Narasingha P. Sil
Publication Date:
12-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations
Institution:
Center for International Conflict Resolution at Yalova University
Abstract:
Postcolonialism as theory, contrasted with postcoloniality as reality, was born sometime during the earlier period of the Cold War that had developed Sphinx-like following the World War II announcing the death of Europe and the rise of two extra-European superpowers. Naturally, the end of the War also began a decade-long process of decolonization, marking the end of European political domination over most of Asia and Africa. The collapse of the continent that owned almost one half of the globe generated a profoundly unsettling soulsearching and re-examination of the values and norms of metropolitan civilization informed by the Enlightenment masculist and quasi-racist rationality, although a critique of Western bourgeois views and values dates back to the works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and later Rudolf Pannwitz (1881-1969), author of The Crisis of European Culture (1917), and Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), author of The Decline of the West (1918).
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and Asia