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231. Enhancing Minority Governance in Romania. Report on the Presentation on Cultural Autonomy to the Romanian Government

Author:
Christopher Decker
Publication Date:
03-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Centre for Minority Issues
Abstract:
ECMI organized the first event of the “Improving Inter-Ethnic Relations through Enhanced Minority Governance” project on 3 February 2005 in Bucharest, Romania. The deputy prime minister, the head of the Department for Inter-ethnic Relations and four members of parliament attended the meeting. ECMI and two experts met with the group in the Government Building to discuss the issues surrounding cultural autonomy and the draft law on the status of national minorities. The purpose of the meeting was to provide the government with information concerning the issue of cultural autonomy for the draft law on the status of national minorities, which is currently being drafted by the Hungarian Democratic Union from Romania (UDMR) and the other 18 national minority parties represented in the Chamber of Deputies. This report seeks to provide an account of the presentations and discussions that took place during this meeting, including the theory and practicalities of cultural autonomy and the model of cultural autonomy used in Estonia.
Topic:
Demographics, Government, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
Europe, Estonia, and Romania

232. National Minority 'Regions' in the Enlarged European Union: Mobilizing for Third Level Politics?

Author:
Tove H. Malloy
Publication Date:
07-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Centre for Minority Issues
Abstract:
The Laeken Declaration adopted by the European Council in December 2001 recognized, for the first time in European Union (EU) history, regions as potential co-architects of a new and more democratic EU. The Laeken Declaration also initiated the Convention to draft a new Constitution for Europe. The Constitution was negotiated during the Intergovernmental Conference and presented to the citizens of Europe in June 2004. On 29 October 2004, it was signed by heads of states and governments and sent to parliaments for ratifications and referenda. The Constitution provisions an expansion of the principle of subsidiarity affording greater influence to European citizens residing in self-administering and self-governing regions. Article III-270 of the Constitution will empower the Committee of the Regions (CoR) to petition the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on policy matters violating the principle of subsidiarity as laid out in the Constitution. This could become a substantial empowerment of European regions. Although most national minorities do not constitute designated European regions and the Constitution may not be ratified anytime in the near future, the envisaged empowerment of the CoR may nevertheless contribute to a redefinition of the national minority political space. With some of the new members and accession states representing 'regions' of strong national minority identities, the EU may be facing new challenges of integrating diversity. The influence of national minorities in the decision-making processes may therefore assume relevance in the enlarged EU.
Topic:
Demographics, Human Rights, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe

233. Consistent Testing for Poverty Dominance

Author:
Bram Thuysbaert and Ricardas Zitikis
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
If uncertainty exists over the exact location of the poverty line or over which measure to use to compare poverty between distributions, one may want to check whether poverty dominance holds. We develop a consistent statistical test to test the null of poverty dominance against the alternative of nondominance. Dominance criteria corresponding to absolute and relative poverty measures are dealt with. The poverty line is allowed to depend on the income distribution. A bootstrap procedure is proposed to estimate critical values for the test. Our results cover both independent and paired samples.
Topic:
Demographics, Development, Economics, and Poverty

234. The Microeconomics of Inequality, Poverty and Market Liberalizing Reforms

Author:
Rafael E. De Hoyos
Publication Date:
11-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper illustrates how the use of microeconometric techniques can be used to uncover the micro dynamics behind macro shocks. Using Mexican micro data we find out that—controlling for everything else—between 1994 and 1998 returns to personal characteristics in the tradable sector increase d particularly those of skilled labourers. By the year 2000 the positive shock upon the tradeable sector vanishes with returns to personal characteristics converging to the levels observed in the non-tradable sector. We use our model's results to simulate a scenario where the Mexican economy experienced the negative shock of the peso crises in the absence of trade liberalization (NAFTA) and find out that under such a scenario the poverty headcount ratio would have increased more than 2 percentage points above the one observed in 1996. The simulated second- order effect of these changes shows that the skill mixed changed in a way that favoured relatively skilled men and relatively unskilled women. These changes in labour participation and occupation had an overall positive income effect though adverse in distributive terms.
Topic:
Demographics, Development, and Economics
Political Geography:
Central America

235. Poverty Measurement and Theories of Beneficence

Author:
S. Subramanian
Publication Date:
10-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This note points to certain similarities of orientation and outcome between Derek Parfit's quest for a theory of beneficence and Amartya Sen's quest for a suitable real-valued representation of poverty. It suggests th at both projects, in a certain sense, have been instructive failures. Using Sen's own work, the note also suggests a logically natural way of dealing with some of the problems in poverty measurement reviewed in it—but only to reject this way out on other compelling grounds.
Topic:
Demographics, Development, Economics, and Poverty

236. Reckoning Inter-group Poverty Differentials in the Measurement of Aggregate Poverty

Author:
S. Subramanian
Publication Date:
09-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
In a heterogeneous population which can be partitioned into well-defined subgroups, it is plausible that the extent of measured aggregate poverty should depend upon the distribution of poverty across the subgroups. A judgment in favour of an equal inter-group distribution of poverty could arise in two ways. In the first approach, equality is upheld as an intrinsic social virtue, and the aggregate measure of poverty, in line with this view, is 'adjusted' to reflect the extent of inter-group disparity in the distribution of poverty that obtains. In the present paper, this approach is examined, with specific reference to the advancement of a diagrammatic aid to analysis called the group poverty profile. In the second approach, equality is upheld for instrumental reasons which arise from the observed fact that any individual's level of deprivation is a function not only of one's own income, but of the general level of prosperity of the group to which one is affiliated. Individual deprivation functions are specialized to a form which reflects this 'group-affiliation' externality, and the resulting poverty measure is studied with respect to its properties, and its implications for inter-group equity. The analysis is briefly extended to a review of the measurement of literacy, along externality-motivated lines suggested elsewhere by Basu and Foster. The paper concludes that social realism in the measurement of deprivation is often compromised by mainstream approaches to economic theorizing in which both heterogeniety and group-related externalities are generally de-emphasized.
Topic:
Demographics, Economics, Human Welfare, and Poverty

237. Why Do Poverty Rates Differ From Region to Region? The Case of Urban China

Author:
Guanghua Wan and Yin Zhang
Publication Date:
08-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper proposes a semi-parametric method for poverty decomposition, which combines the data-generating procedure of Shorrocks and Wan (2004) with the Shapley value framework of Shorrocks (1999). Compared with the popular method of Datt and Ravallion (1992), our method is more robust to misspecification errors, does not require the predetermination of functional forms, provides better fit to the underlying Lorenz curve and incorporates the residual term in a rigorous way. The method is applied to decomposing variations of urban poverty across the Chinese provinces into three components – contributions by the differences in average nominal income, inequality and poverty line. The results foreground average income as the key determinant of poverty incidence, but also attach importance to the influence of distribution. The regional pattern of the decomposition suggests provincial groupings based not entirely on geographical locations.
Topic:
Demographics, Economics, and Poverty
Political Geography:
China and Asia

238. Rising Spatial Disparities and Development

Author:
Ravi Kanbur and Anthony J. Venables
Publication Date:
09-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Amidst a growing concern about increasing inequality, the spatial dimensions of inequality have begun to attract considerable policy interest. In China, Russia, India, Mexico, and South Africa, as well as most other developing and transition economies, there is a sense that spatial and regional disparities in economic activity, incomes and social indicators, are on the increase. Spatial inequality is a dimension of overall inequality, but it has added significance when spatial and regional divisions align with political and ethnic tensions to undermine social and political stability. Also important in the policy debate is a perceived sense that increasing internal spatial inequality is related to greater openness of economies, and to globalization in general.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Demographics, and Development
Political Geography:
Russia, China, India, South Africa, and Mexico

239. The Rise of New Immigrant Gateways

Author:
Audrey Singer
Publication Date:
02-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
The United States is in the midst of a wave of unprecedented immigration. Immigrants comprised 11.1 percent of the U.S. population in 2000. During the 1990s alone, the foreign-born population grew by 11.3 million, or 57.4 percent, bringing the Census 2000 count of immigrants to 31.1 million. The rapidity of this influx, coupled with its sheer size, means that American society will con- front momentous social, cultural, and political change during the coming decades and generations.
Topic:
Demographics, Human Welfare, and Migration
Political Geography:
United States

240. La Interminable Posguerra: La Escritura De Enriqueta Antolin En Los Años Noventa

Author:
Alicia Goicoechea Redondo
Publication Date:
03-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
This paper seeks to explain why the Civil War and the post-war period are dominant themes in the Spanish novels published in the 90s. Those of Enriqueta Antolin are not unique, for the theme of the post-war appears regularly in the works of both men and women authors. The paper draws on historians and analyzes a short story and four novels of Antolin to reveal her literary art and find an historical explanation for the persistent obsession with this theme.
Topic:
Demographics and Gender Issues
Political Geography:
Europe and Spain