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Despite significant improvements in per capita expenditures and a marked decline in poverty over the 2000s, a large fraction of Eastern Europe and Central Asias population reports their economic situation in the late 2000s to be worse than in 1989. This paper uses data from the Life in Transition Survey to document the gap between objective and subjective economic mobility and investigate what may drive this apparent disconnection. The paper aims at identifying some of the drivers behind subjective perceptions of economic mobility, focusing on the role of perceptions of fairness and trust in shaping peoples perceptions of their upward or downward mobility. The results show that close to half of the households in the region perceive to have experienced downward economic mobility, that is, that their position in the income distribution has deteriorated. The results also show that perceptions of higher inequality, unfairness, and distrust in public institutions are associated with downward subjective economic mobility. The findings from this study confirm that factors beyond objective well-being are associated with the perceptions of mobility observed in Europe and Central Asia and may explain why the region has had such a pessimistic view of economic mobility during the past two decades. Understanding what drives peoples perceptions of their living standards and quality of life is important, because regardless of objective measures, perceptions could influence peoples behavior, including support for reforms and labor market decisions. For Eastern Europe and Central Asia, a region that has undergone substantive transformations and which is still going through a reform process, accounting for these aspects is critical.

Evidence indicates that trade costs are a much more substantial barrier to trade than tariffs are, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper decomposes trade costs into: (i) trade facilitation, (ii) non-tariff barriers, and (iii) the costs of business services. The paper assesses the poverty and shared prosperity impacts of deep integration to reduce these three types of trade costs in: (i) the East African Customs Union–Common Market of East and Southern Africa–South African Development Community "Tripartite" Free Trade Area; (ii) within the East African Customs Union; and (iii) unilaterally by the East African Customs Union. The analysis employs an innovative, multi-region computable general equilibrium model to estimate the changes in the macroeconomic variables that impact poverty and shared prosperity. The model estimates are used in the Global Income Distribution Dynamics microsimulation model to obtain assessments of the changes in the poverty headcount and shared prosperity for each of the simulations for the six African regions or countries. The paper finds that these reforms are pro-poor. There are significant reductions in the poverty headcount and the percentage of the population living in poverty for all six of the African regions from deep integration in the Tripartite Free Trade Area or comparable unilateral reforms by the East African Customs Union. Further, the incomes of the bottom 40 percent of the populations noticeably increase in all countries or regions that are engaged in the trade reforms. The reason for the poor share in prosperity is the fact that the reforms increase unskilled wages faster than the rewards of other factors of production, as the reforms tend to favor agriculture. Despite the uniform increases in income for the poorest 40 percent, there are some cases where the share of income captured by the poorest 40 percent of the population decreases. The estimated gains vary considerably across countries and reforms. Thus, countries would have an interest in negotiating for different reforms in different agreements.

1. Diese Arbeit ist eine Nachfragestudie, die auf den Mikro-Daten des Verbrauches für Lebensmittel und im Rahmen einer statisch, Nutzenmaximierend, und partielle Modell bearbeitet ist. Die Studie ermöglicht eine Bereitstellung von Information über das Zusammenhang zwischen den konkurrierenden Warengruppen in einer vollständigen Nachfrage System. 2. Derzeitige Wirtschaftentwicklung, die unter anderen wegen der im Juli 1997 ausgebrochene Krise ausgeprägt ist, hat eine dringende Notwendigkeit für die Politik und Wissenschaftler der Lebensmittel und Landwirtschaft dieses Landes um eine Information auf die Konsumsverhalten der Haushalte in ihrer Reaktionen auf die Änderung der Verbrauch determinierenden Faktoren wie Einkommen, Preisverhältnis, Einführung neuer Marken in Lebensmittelprodukte, Intensivierung der Anzeigen, Änderung im Modus des Einzelhandels, usw., sowie die Änderungen in demographische Faktor der Haushalte. Der Bedarf nach dieser Informationen sind um so großer, weil es nach im Juli 1997 ausgebrochene Wirtschaftkrise ein tief greifende Strukturwandel gibt, die vielfältige Folge mitgebracht hat. Diese Folge sind unter anderen: (i) Indonesien ist daran gezwungen, die Wirtschaft, einschließlicher Lebensmittelmarkt sich an einem Markt System zu orientieren; (ii) die durchschnittliche Kaufkraft des Volkes ist zu der Ebene der vor zehn Jahre zurück gegangen; (iii) Der Preisverhältnis verändert sich. (iv) Politisch gesehen, steht die indonesischen Regierung derzeit vor einer Ära der Dezentralisierung. Diese Faktoren konnte es dazu führen, der sich Struktur der verschiedenen Haushaltsgruppen in Indonesien zu ändern. Dazu ist es Notwendig, eine Studie mit den lokalen spezifische Sicht des Verbrauchs verhaltens durchzuführen. 3. Zu den Zeitpunkt ist die existierende Information unzulänglich, weil die vorherigen Studien wenn überhaupt da sind, lediglich nur auf Einzel Gleichung schätzende Modell begrenzt sind, und sie sind meisten basiert auf einen argregierten Datei. Auf Grund der Wichtigkeit des Haushalts als die entscheidende Einheit in Verbrauch und auf Grund einer wachsenden Erreichbarkeit von Makrodaten, hat diese Studie einen disaggregierten Haushalt Mikrodatensatz von der Provinz Ost Java, Indonesien benutzt. 4. Die Studie hat folgende Ziele: Erstens, Nachfragenparameter für die untersuchten Lebensmittelgruppen zu finden, damit man die Wirkung einer Preisänderungen auf die Nachfrage der Lebensmittelgruppen für verschiedene Einkommengruppen in der Provinz Ost Java, Indonesien analysieren kann. Zweitens, um zu zeigen, wie man die Studienergebnisse für real politische Grundsatzfragen um die Lebensmittel und die Landwirtschaft nutzen kann. Drittens, um die spezifischen Wohlfahrtwirkungen der ausgewählten Preispolitik für verschiedene Einkommengruppen zu bewerten. 5. Ein historisch perspektive Überblick über die Republik von Indonesien zeigt an, dass Indonesien eine Wirtschaft mit schwerer staatlicher Einmischung in der Vergangenheit ist, und eine Änderungen von diesem grundlegenden Modell eine Sache des politischen Pragmatismus ist. Die ändernde Wirtschaftstruktur des Landes hat dazu zuführen, das die Rolle der Landwirtschaft im Brutto Inland Produkt (BIP) Beitrags verringert ist, obwohl diese noch wichtig ist für die Lebensmittelsevorkehrung und Anstellung. Steigende pro Kopfseinkommen pro Jahr auf dem Land hat nur geringe Minderung des Verbrauches auf Nahrungsmitteln zu Folge. Reiskonsum hat einen hohen Anteil der gesamter Nahrungsmittelausgaben in allen Haushaltgruppen. Daher hat sich Nahrungsmittelpolitik in Indonesien vorherrschend noch auf Reis konzentriert. 6. Dieses Studie hat den disaggregierten Mikrodatensatz von Haushaltsausgaben bearbeitet. Dieser Datensatz ist von so genannten SUSENAS (die nationalen Sozial Wirtschaftliche Datenerhebung), für die Perioden 1990 1993, 1996 und 1999 von Ost Java Provinz Indonesien eingestellt. Der Ausgaben und der Einkommenmodul von dem SUSENAS Verhebung bedecken alle Haushaltausgaben in einer Woche der Aufzählung mit voller Spezifikation von Waren. Aufgeführt in den Umfragen sind 231 Verbrauchwaren, die Daten auf Quantitäten und Werte gesammelt wurden. Der Datensatz für jede Verhebungsperiode ist von 5692 Haushalten (1990), 7638 Haushalten (1993), 8015 Haushalte (1996), und 8552 Haushalte (1999) in städtischen und ländlichen Gebieten gesammelt. Die zentrale Behörde der Statistik hat die dreistufige stratifizierte Probe für den SUSENAS angewandt. Für Verbrauchsdaten der Nahrungmittels war das Zeitreferenz eine Woche vor der Aufzählung von Daten. 7. Die theoretische Grundlage dieser Studie ist die Neonklassische Verbraucherwirtschaft. Theorie und die verwandten Methoden sind präsentiert, um das in dieser Studie gebrauchten Modell zu rechtfertigen. Wir haben aufgrund einige theoretisch, empirisch und pragmatische Berücksichtigungen die Entscheidung getroffen, die linearen Annäherung von der nahezu idealen Nachfragensystem ( (LA/AIDS) Modell zu benutzen. Es befriedigt die Axiome der Wahl, argregiert perfekt über die Verbrauchern, hat eine praktische Form, die verträglich mit Haushalthaushaltdaten ist, ist einfach zu schätzen, und kann prüfen die wahren Einschränkungen der Nachfragentheorie. Es kombiniert auch den Beste von theoretischen Eigenschaften von sowohl Rotterdam als auch Translog Modelle. Wenn man der Preisindex von Stone im Modell anwendet, ist das Modell als eine Lineare Annäherung der Nahezu idealer Nachfrage System (LA/AIDS) genannt. Der Gebrauch des Compensating Variation (CV) Konzeptes schlägt vor, dass die Ergebnisse der Nachfragenschätzung gut zur politische Analyse beitragen kann. Das CV ist die Entschädigungszahlung (Betrag des Geld) der den Verbraucher ebenso wohl als vor der wirtschaftlichen Änderung verlässt. Es mag positiv oder negativ sein. Es ist positiv, wenn die wirtschaftliche Änderung dem Verbraucher schlechter drauf macht, und Negativ, wenn die wirtschaftliche Änderung dem Verbraucher Verbesserung bringt. 8. Da das CV Geld metrisch ist, ist sein Ausdruck abhängig auf einem absoluten Wert der Währung des Landes. Dies ist weniger vergleichbar. Um dies zu vermeiden, kann es in einem relativen Begriff durch Gebrauch zum Beispiel, eines Preisindexes, umgestalten werden. Dadurch ist es metrisch unabhängig. Auf diesen Grund, wurde Fischer Idealer Preisindex in dieser Studie benutzt, der Wohlfahrtsänderung anzunähern. Fischer Idealer Preisindex ist ein geometrisches Mittel des Laspeyres- (PL) Preisindex, PL = , und der Paasche (PP) Preisindex Pp = . Es ist algebraisch als .ausgedrückt. Es vertritt eine Änderungskaufkraft, die als eine Annäherung der Wohlfahrtsänderung gilt. 9. Die geschätzten Gleichungen für das LA/AIDS sind in Tabelle 6. 2 zu 6. 9 zusammengefasst. Für die ganzen Perioden von der Verhebungen, die städtische und ländliche Gebiete bedecken, gibt es 88 Gleichungen für das LA/AIDS. Achtzig Gleichungen aus diesen 88 wurden direkt durch das SAS Program (die 6,12 Ausgabe) geschätzt, durch die Verwendung der iterativen scheinbar nicht verwandten Regression (ITSUR) Schätzungsverfahren. Die Parameterschätzungen für den Rest von 8 Gleichungen wurden von Gebrauch der Prinzip summierung (add up principle) wiedererlangt. In diesen Modellen wird die Veränderung der Budgetanteilen von elf Nahrungsmittelsgruppen in den Studiegebieten von den folgenden Faktoren bestimmt: Preise (das eigene- und kreuzt Preis), Einkommensnivue, die vom totalen Ausgaben der wöchentlichen Budget auf Nahrungsmitteln angenähert werden, die Einkommengruppe von den Haushalten, und der Haushaltgröße, die den Rest des demographische Merkmale vertritt. Insgesamt sind 220 Parameter in jeder Gleichung, die direkt oder indirekt von dieser Schätzung resultiert. Tabelle 6.10 fasst die Schätzungsleistung durch die Vorlage der Anzahl der statistisch signifikante Schätzungen von 170 Parametern der einzelnen Gleichungen zusammen, die direkt in dieser Studie geschätzt wurden. Statistik gesehen, wird die schlechter Leistung der Schätzung von einer vertreten, die 55 Prozent statistisch signifikante Schätzungen gibt (Tabelle 6.2: Urban90). Die beste Schätzungsleistung wird von einer vertreten, die 78 Prozent statistisch signifikante Schätzungen gibt (Tabelle 6.3: Rural90). Die Tatsachen, dass mehr als die Hälfte von Parameterschätzungen in jedem Gleichungssystem statistisch signifikant sind, gibt einen Grund zu beanspruchen, dass die Modellspezifikation passend ist. Auch direkte Beobachtung auf den Ergebnissen der Schätzung zeigt an, dass Mehrheit von Parameterschätzungen großer sind, im Vergleich mit ihren Standard Fehlern. Die liefern ein gewisses Maß an Vertrauen zu sagen, daß die Schätzungen zuverlässig sind. Diese i n allen vorschlagen, daß unsere Hypothese, wie ausdrücklich in der LA/AIDS Modell, von der Daten unterstuzt wird. Das ist zu sagen, dass die Nachfrage nach Nahrungsmittel in den Studiensgebieten ansprechend ist zu Preisen, totale Ausgaben für Nahrungsmitteln, Einkommengruppen und die Haushaltgröße. 10. Die asymptotische Likelihood Ratio Test auf die Nachfrage Ristriktionen zeigt an, dass das Ergebnis der Prüfung im Einklang mit der früheren algemeinen Ergebnisse von anderen Autoren steht. Das ist, der Homogenität und der Symmetrie Restriktionen in den meisten Fällen von der Daten übertreten worden sind. Es bedeutet aber nicht unbedingt, dass die Theorie falsch ist. Es kann der Fall sein, dass die Daten und Modell nicht die Theorie unterstutzen kann entweder wegen der Dateneigenschaft, und/oder Modell Spezifikation. 11. Die Zeichen von den AIDS Parametern liefern Informationen über die Eigenschaften der Nachfrage nach Nahrungmitell. Man kann durch Besichtigung folgern, dass Waren mit negativen Verbrauchparameter ( a) Einkommen unelastisch sind, und diejenige, die mit positiven Parametern ( , Einkommen elastisch sind. Beobachtung auf den AIDS Schätzungen hat angezeigt, dass Reis in alle Fälle einkommen unelastisch ist. Andere Waren haben eine Mischungsleistung ausgestellt, die von den Gebieten und Verhebungsperioden abhängen. Fisch, Fleisch, Tabake und Betel, und vorbereitete Speise haben eine Allgemeinheit ausgestellt, einkommen elastisch zu sein. Andere Ergebnisse, die im Einklang mit der Intuition haben, sind die Ergibnisse die angezeigt haben, dass alle Nahrungsmittelgruppen eine negative Preiselastizitäten besitzen. Meisten von der untersuchten Waregruppe, mit Ausnahme von Eiern und Milch, sind Eigenpreis unelastisch. Die Tatsache, dass die entschädigten eigenen Preiselastizitäten (compensated ownprice elasticity) deutlich verschieden sind von denen der gewöhnlichen eigenen Preiseselastizitäten hat angezeigt, dass es Nachfragenwirkungen in jeder Preisesänderung der Warengruppe gibt. Andere Warengruppen sind ansprechend (responsive) auf der Änderung des Reisespreises. Das Gegenteil ist nicht der Fall. In Allgemein ist kreuze Preisbeziehung unter den Speisengruppen weniger einflussreich ist. Die Einbeziehung der Haushaltsgröße in den ganzen AIDS Model fuer Nahrungsmittel wird gerechtfertigt von der Tatsache, dass die meisten Parameterschätzungen, die Haushaltgröße vertreten, statistisch bedeutsam (significant) waren. Deswegen, ist es fest gestelt, das die Ausgaben fuer die Mehrheit der Nahrungsmittel von der Anzahl von Haushaltsmitglieder beeinflusst werden. Ein zusätzliches Haushaltmitglied kann verursachen, dass einige Haushaltausgaben steigen fuer das eine oder mindern für das anderen, um auszugleichen. Als die Anzahl von Haushaltmitglied zunimmt dan verringern der Verbrauch des Tabaks, Früchte und Gemüse, vorbereite te Speisen, und Fisch und Fleisch. Diese Reduktionen sind gemacht, um der Verbrauch von anderen Nahrungskategorien mit positiven elastizitäten, hauptsächlich Reis, Nicht-Reisstoffen, und essbares Öl. Die Zunahme der Haushaltsgröße ist mit der Abnahme derjenigen Speisenqualität verbunden. Der Verbrauch der billiger Kohlenhydrats-reicher Speise ist hauptsächlich eine Strategie, die von Haushalten mit große Mitgliedszahl genommen wird. 12. Die geschätzten Nachfragenparameter versorgen einen vollständigen und gleichmäßigen Rahmen für Bewertenschläge irgendeiner Regierungspolitik. Die Kombination des direkten Reises- und indirekte Tabak Preispolitikes ist in diesem Studie benutzt worden, die Nützlichkeit der Ergebnisse dieses Studie vorzuführen. Der Preis des Reises hat einen wichtigen Auswirkung auf das Ausgabenmuster von privatem Haushalt; weil Reis ein wichtigen Einflusses auf dem Haushaltausgaben hat. Die Preisberechnung, die in diesem Studie geleitet wird, schlägt vor, dass die Liberalisierung des Reismarktes eine Wohlfahrtsverbesserung an aller Einkommensgruppen macht. Wenn der Verbrauch von Tabak besteuert wird (indirekter Preisberechnung), wird dann Regierungseinkünfte steigen, ohne das Schaden von so viel armen Haushalten. ; This is a micro-data based study of demand for food in the framework of a static, utility maximizing, and partial model that enables the provision of knowledge on the interrelatedness among the competing commodity groups in a complete demand system. The dynamics which took place in the economy of contemporary Indonesia has created an urgent need for policy makers and scholars of food and agriculture sector of this country to have a knowledge on the spending behavior of the households in their response on changing consumption determinants like income, relative prices, the introduction of new brands in manufactured foods, an intensifying advertisement, changing mode of retailing, etc., as well as the changes in the demography of households themselves. The need is reinforced, as Indonesia after enjoying two decades of economic booming was hit by a devastating economic crisis that broke out in July 1997, the ramification of which prevails until the time of study. The consequences of this crisis are manifold. Economically speaking, the crisis has (i) forced Indonesia to approach a market system that among others, liberalizes the previously intervened food market, (ii) set the purchasing power of the average Indonesian back to the level of ten years before (iii) also changed the prices relatively. Politically, the Indonesian government is now facing an era of decentralization. These factors in combination might change the consumption structure of different household groups in Indonesia. Additionally, it places an urgent need to conduct a study also with local specific perspective of consumption behavior. Until today, the existing knowledge is deficient, because previous studies are limited to the estimation of single equation model based on an aggregated data. Due to the importance of the household as the decisive unit in consumption, and due to an increasing accessibility of micro data, this study used a dis- aggregate micro data set from the province of East Java, Indonesia. Given that background, the objective of this study is firstly to find demand parameters for food groups under investigation, based on which one can analyze the effects of expenditure and price changes on demand of eleven food groups for different income groups in the province of East Java, Indonesia. Secondly, to demonstrates the use of the study results for real policy questions about the food and agricultural sector. Thirdly, to evaluate the specific welfare effects of selected price policies for different income groups. The brief exposition of the republic of Indonesia in a historical perspective indicates that Indonesia is an economy with heavy state intervention in the past and departing from this basic model is a matter of political pragmatism. Changing the economic structure reduced the role of agricultural sector in terms of GDP contribution, but it is still important for food provision and employment. Increasing income per capita per year in the country reduced slightly percentage of expenditure on food. Rice expenditure has a high share of total food expenditure in all household groups. Therefore, food policy in Indonesia has dominantly centered on rice. This study employed the cross sectional household consumption/expenditure micro data set from the so called SUSENAS (the National Socio -Economic Survey), for the periods 1990, 1993, 1996 and 1999 representing the province of East Java, Indonesia. The consumption and income module of the SUSENAS survey covers all household expenditures during a week of enumeration with full specification of commodities. Listed in the questionnaires are 231 consumption items, for which data on quantities and values were gathered. The data set of each survey periods is collected from 5692 households (1990), 7638 households (1993), 8015 Households (1996), and 8552 households (1999) in urban and rural areas. The central Bureau of Statistics applied the three-stage stratified sampling for the SUSENAS. For food consumption the survey reference period was one week prior to the enumeration of data. The theoretical framework of this study is the neo-classical consumer economics. Theory and the related methods are presented in order to justify the model used in this study. Some theoretical, empirical and pragmatical considerations have brought us to the decision to use the linearized approximation of an almost ideal demand system (LA/AIDS) model. It satisfies the axioms of choice, aggregates perfectly over consumers, has a functional form, which is consistent with household budget data, and simple to estimate and test the true restrictions of demand theory. It also combines the best of theoretical features of both Rotterdam and translog models. When Stone s index is used in the model it is termed as a linear approximation of almost ideal demand system (LA/AIDS). The use of the concept of compensating variation suggests that results of demand estimation contribute well to the analysis of policy. Compensating variation is the compensating payment (amount of money) that leaves the consumer as well of as before the economic change. It may be positive or negative. It is positive, if the economic change makes consumer worse off, and negative, if the economic change brings betterment to the consumer. Because compensating variation is money metric, its expression is dependent on an absolute expression in term of country s currency unit. This is less comparable. To avoid this, one can transform it in a relative term by using for example, price index, which is metric independent. Based on that, Fischer Ideal Price Index was used to approximate the welfare change. Fischer Ideal Price Index is a geometric means of Laspeyres- (PL) price index , PL = ), and the Paasche (PP) price index, Pp = . It is expressed algebraically as = . It represents a changing purchasing power as an approximation of welfare change. The estimated equations for the LA/AIDS are summarized in table 6.2 to 6.9. For all the periods of surveys, covering urban and rural areas, there are 88 equations for the LA/AIDS. Eighty equations out of these 88 were estimated directly using SAS program the 6.12 edition, by applying the iterative seemingly unrelated regression (ITSUR) estimation procedure. The parameter estimates for the rest of 8 equations were recovered by using adding-up principle. In these models, the variation of budget shares of eleven food groups in the study areas are determined by (the own- and cross) prices, income level which is approximated by the weekly household s total expenditure on food, the income group of the households, and the household size accommodating the rest of demographical characteristics of the households. In total, 220 parameters in each of equation are resulted directly or indirectly from this estimation. Table 6.10 summarizes the estimation performance by presenting the number of statistically significant estimates out of 170 parameters in each equation that directly estimated in this study. As a matter of statistics, the worse performance of the estimation is represented by the one that give 55 per cent statistically significant estimates (table code 6.2: Urban90). The best estimation performance is exhibited by the one that brought 78 per cent statistically significant estimates (table code 6.3: Rural90). The facts, that more than the half of parameter estimates in each equation system is statistically significant may be the basis to claim, that the model specification is appropriate. Also, direct observation on the results of estimation indicates that majority of parameter estimates are large relative to their standard errors. These deliver some degree of confidence to say that the estimates are reliable. These in all suggest that our hypothesis, as explicitly expressed in the LA/AIDS model, is supported by the data. That is to say, that food demands in the study areas are responsive to prices, total food exp enditure level, income groups and the household size as measured from survey data. The asymptotic likelihood ratio test on demand restrictions indicates that the result of the test is consistent with the previous common findings by other authors. That is, the homogeneity and symmetry restrictions were in most cases violated by the data. However, it does not necessarily mean, that the theory is wrong; it may be rather the case, that the data and model combined do not support the theory either because of data property, and/or model specification. The signs of the AIDS parameters deliver information on the nature of the demand for food commodities. So, by inspection one can infer, those with negative expenditure parameters are income inelastic, and those with positive parameters, are income elastic. Observation on the AIDS estimates indicated that rice is in all cases income inelastic. Other commodities exhibited a mix performance depending on the areas and survey periods. Fish, meat, tobaccos and betel, and prepared food exhibited a generality of being income elastic. Other findings that support the intuition is that all food groups showed a negative own price elasticities. Most of commodity groups under investigation, with exception of Eggs and Milks, are own price inelastic. The fact, that the compensated own price elasticities are different clearly from those of the ordinary own price elasticities indicated that there is a demand effects in each of price change of the commodities groups being analyzed. Other food groups are responsive on the change of rice price. The reverse is not the case. In general, cross price relationship among the food groups are less influential. The inclusion of household size in the AIDS model for food is justified by the fact, that most of the parameter estimates representing household size were statistically significant. So for the majority of food items it holds that an additional of household s member will cause some household expenditure to increase and others to decline to balance the household size variable. As the number of household member increases, households reduce their consumption of tobacco, fruits and vegetables, prepared foods, and some time, fish and meat. These reductions are made in order to increase the consumption of other categories with positive household size elasticities mainly rice, non-rice staple, and edible oil. The increase of household size definitely associated with the decline in the food quality consumed by the households. The consumption of cheap carbohydrate-rich food is mainly the s trategy taken by households having a large membership. The estimated demand parameters provide a complete and consistent framework for evaluating impacts of any government policy. The combination of direct rice- and indirect tobacco pricing policies has been used in this study to demonstrate the usefulness of the results of this study. The price of rice has an important impact on private household s spending pattern, because of its important influence on the household s budget. The policy exercise conducted in this study suggest, that liberalizing the market of rice will make households of all income groups better-off, and a combination of it with a tobacco-taxing (indirect pricing) will increase government revenue without harming so much the poor households.

This paper hypothesizes that labor and credit market imperfections—by discouraging off-farm income-generating activities and restricting access to inputs, respectively—affect female farm productivity more deeply than male productivity. The paper develops a theoretical model that decomposes the contribution of various market imperfections to the gender productivity gap. The paper shows empirically that agricultural labor productivity is on average 44 percent lower on plots managed by female heads of household than on those managed by male heads. Thirty-four percent of this gap is explained by differences in labor market access and 29 percent by differences in credit access.

Peru's recent robust growth has raised its economic prospects and has been broadly shared. The next step in development - high-income status - is challenging for all middle income countries and requires sustained growth. Raising productivity growth is key to sustaining Peru's high growth rates of income per capita, including in the context of a less favorable external environment. This report looks at Peru's principal challenges and opportunities to maintain strong and inclusive growth through higher productivity. It will require a reduction of inefficiencies by reaping more benefits from international trade and an improved innovation framework. The report has five parts. Part one analyzes the sources of Peru's recent strong growth. Part two examines more closely the dynamics and challenges to Peruvian firms' productivity growth. Part three analyzes elements that will increase the efficiency of Peru's labor and capital resources - regulation, labor markets, and human capital. Part four is focused on further opportunities to reduce misallocation while at the same time speeding up within-firm productivity through expanding Peru's technological possibilities, particularly through innovation and the spillovers from international trade. Part five concludes.

 Draft Translation: Not for CitationWhat follows is another attempt at a translation of an important text by André Tosel on the Marx/Spinoza relation. It is not a finished, or polished translation, but a rough sketch put forward to help people get a sense of this overlooked articulation of the relation between Marx and Spinoza.For a Systematic Study of the Relation of Marx to Spinoza: Remarks and Hypotheses

André Tosel Published in 2008 in the book Spinoza au XIXe Siècle  The question of relation of the thought of Marx to that of Spinoza has up until now been the subject of more of a hermeneutic investigation than a philology. It is easier to construct a history of the different interpretations of Spinoza at the center of different Marxisms then to have determined the precise function of the reference to Spinoza in the work of Marx and to define the use Marx made of the spinozist problematic and the elaboration of his thought.  More or less the Marxists that were first developed a relation to Spinoza were an important milestone on the way to developing what could be called a historical and materialist dialectic. The relation begins in the midst of the Second International. The singularity of Spinoza's thought has often been reduced to a stepping stone on the way to "monist" immanentism, which is supposed to be its philosophical structure at least in the reception of two thinkers, as Plekhanov has asserted in some preliminary texts working from some notes of Engels in manuscripts published in the USSR under the title of the Dialectic of Nature. In the dogmatic frame of the struggle between idealism and materialism, Spinoza anticipates materialism by his thesis of the unity of nature and by his doctrine of the equal dignity of the attribute of extension in relation to the attribute of thought. The doctrine of mode and substance causality, coupled with the critique of final causality and the illusions of superstition, signifies at the same time an overcoming of mechanistic thinking and the first form of the dialectic. Rare were those who, like Antonio Labriola, were careful not to oppose two conceptions of the world head-on and maintained a certain distance with polemical opposition, preferring instead to indicate that Marx did for mode of production what Spinoza had done for the world of the passions—a geometry of their production. In the Soviet Union before the Stalinist freeze, this interpretive tension is reproduced: Spinoza becomes the terrain through which the clarification of the dialectic takes place opposing mechanists and anti-mechanists, and original articulation of the thesis of liberty as the comprehension of necessity. These problems have been clarified somewhat. (Zapata, 1983; Seidel, 1984; Tosel, 1995)One would have to wait for the deconstructive enterprise of Louis Althusser for this movement to be reversed. Spinoza is no longer a moment in the teleology which is integrated and surpassed on the way to Marxism-Leninism. His work is the means of theoretical production for reformulating the philosophical and scientific revolution of Marx without recourse to only the Hegelian dialectic. Spinoza is the first to have elaborated a model of structural causality that makes it possible to think the efficacy of the structure as an absent cause over its effects. The theory of knowledge is not one that authorizes absolute knowledge, but it announces this infinite exigency of a break with ideology without the hope of arriving at transparent knowledge. It obliges one to renounce any idea of communism as a state of a final reconciliation in social relations which would be deprived of any contradictions. "We have always been spinozists,' Althusser announces in the Elements of Self-Criticism, and then proceed to the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect from the Hegelian dialectic. It is then only an epistemological obstacle which prevents Marx from realizing the full power of his critique of political economy and to explore the continent of history that he discovered. Spinoza for clarifying Marx himself. Everything has been clarified. (Cotten 1992; Raymond, Moreau, 1997).  In terms of historical research, the spinozist studies that have been made after the end of the nineteen sixties in France and Italy have often been made by researchers who have rubbed shoulders with Marxism. We find the same oscillation between a tendency to read Spinoza according to a pre-marxist perspective, in the sense of a dialectic of emancipation, or liberation from a theological political complex and disalienation, even constituent power, and another tendency insisting on the infinity of the struggle against all illusions, even those of total liberation, affirming the unsurpassable dimension of the imagination in the constitution of the conatus and in the production of the power of the multitude. This oscillation is manifest often in the same commentators, often itself a function of the change of the historical conjuncture. However, up until now, there has never been an attempt to study from Marx's works themselves the structural function of the spinozist reference in the constitution of Marxist theory, one which would permit us to better understand the understanding that Marx made of Spinozist work. The interpretations have anyway have developed from a certain exteriority to the letter of Marxists texts.  Several years ago, a German researcher, Fred E. Schrader, in a short text dedicated to the thematic of "substance and concept" chez Marx (Substanz und Funktion: zur Marxsrezeption Spinoza's) drew attention to this situation (1984). He rightly noted that it was necessary to distinguish two moments in the research to avoid any merely external confrontation: a) first, obviously, document the explicit and implicit mentions of Spinoza in Marx's text; 1) then, reconstruct the position of the reference to Spinoza in the process of the constitution of the critique of political economy which is the central Marxist work, alongside of the references to "Hegel" which one knows were constitutive in the years of 1857-1858. Only this philological and philosophical work can permit us to renew the state of the question.
Schrader's study must be considered. We propose to develop it and comment on it because up until now it has not received the attention that it merits. Before everything else, it is necessary to be precise. The work envisioned must be considerable, it includes taking into account the texts published by Marx, those published posthumously by Engels and by Kautsky, and all of those—collections of notes and thematic notebooks—which make up the incomplete nature of Capital, including Marx's correspondence. The MEGA 2, Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, still incomplete, has not finished being scrutinized. This work could begin from the hypothesis that we can conceptualize two periods in Marx's work from which it is possible to reassemble occurrences that conceptualize the reference to Spinoza in order to determine their structural function. The first period corresponds to the years of his formation and the interlinking of the critique of politics and the early critique of political economy, it begins with the concept of history underlying the German Ideology and culminates in the Poverty of Philosophy and the Communist Manifesto. The second period begins with the research operating under the title of the critique of political economy beginning in 1857, interrupted provisionally in January of 1859 and beginning again in 1861. The reference to Spinoza is more explicit in the first period where it is a matter of an specifically political practice, articulating a materialism of practice. It is less explicit in the second period, it functions nonetheless as a fundamental operator in the essential theory of the substance of value in capital. The Philosophical Intensifier of Spinoza of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Destruction of the Theologico-Political Complex and Democratic Radicalism.  Marx encounters Spinoza in the beginning of his theoretical and political journey. In 1841 we know from the preface by Alexandre Matheron (Cahiers Spinoza), Marx, after his doctorate, reproduced the extracts he copied from the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (MEGA 2 VI/I Berlin, 1977). He is curiously presented as the author of these texts and moreover they are reorganized in their own order which is not that of the Tractatus itself. The chapters containing the critique of the supernatural, of the miracle, and all of all forms of superstition are brought forward as essential and open on the properly political chapters dedicated to the freedom of thought (XX) and the foundation of the republic (XVI). The Ethics is not ignored but it is not reproduced, Letter XII takes the place of a speculative text and is accompanied with Letter LXXVI to Burgh. Everything takes place as if Marx considered as the most important question to be that of theological politics and is concentrated on the question of human freedom in its radical ethico-political dimension. What is important is that the revolutionary democratic state is realized according to this concept.  One could also consider that Spinoza is utilized here as one of the figures that a Doctorate of Philosophy considers along with Aristotle, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel as provocations, of that which puts knowledge in the service of a life liberated from the fear of authorities, which reappropriates humanity's power of thinking and acting confiscated in the service of gods and fetishes. In a certain manner Epicurus is the paradoxically the first of the thinkers who claims that "it is a misfortune to live in necessity, but it is not necessary to live under necessity." This truth finds a new application, after the French Revolution, in the age of a new ethics, where free individuals recognize themselves in a free state.  2. The explicit reference to Spinoza is displaced in the texts of the years 1841-1843—the Kreuznach manuscript dedicated to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, followed by the introduction and the Jewish Question. These constitute the Feuerbachian moment of Marx, at the heart of his theory of the alienation of the human essence. One must not make this critique of politics a simple transition towards the discovery of the alienation of social powers, nor understand it as an end of a politics understood as primarily statist. It is the ethico-political liberation which requires a transformation of social relations and which is a transvaluation or emancipation of social powers. Spinoza is not named, but certain passages from the TTP are repeated almost to the letter: Spinoza figures as the index of a new task , that is lacking in Hegel which is that of thinking beyond the dualism of civil society and the state. The name of this passage is democracy or true democracy. Marx returns to the letter of the Spinozist thesis according to which democracy is not only the name of a constituted political regime, but the essence of politics, the most natural regime, constituting the power of the people. The intensive force of Spinoza is that of democracy not as a mystical act or utopian ecstasy, but as a process of constitution that replaces actual void of the Hegelian state where the people lack themselves, in which the state becomes something separate, still theologico-political. Democracy is the active process by which the people is refigured as the negative instance of any separate political form and gives a political form to its social power. "Democracy is the truth of monarchy, monarchy is not the truth of democracy. Monarchy is necessarily democracy in contradiction with itself, whereas the monarchial moment is no contradiction within democracy. Monarchy cannot, while democracy can be understood in terms of itself In democracy none of the moments obtains a significance other than what befits it. Each is really only a moment of the whole Demos. In monarchy one part determines the character of the whole; the entire constitution must be modified according to the immutable head. Democracy is the generic constitution; monarchy is a species, and indeed a poor one. Democracy is content and form; monarchy should be only form, but it adulterates the content.
In monarchy the whole, the people, is subsumed under one of its modes of existence,. the political constitution; in democracy the constitution itself appears only as one determination, and indeed as the self-determination of the people. In monarchy we have the people of the constitution, in democracy the constitution of the people. Democracy is the resolved mystery of all constitutions. Here the constitution not only in itself, according to essence, but according to existence and actuality is returned to its real ground, actual man, the actual people, and established as its own work. The constitution appears as what it is, the free product of men." It is possible to remark that this constituent power of the demos tends to be presented as a sort of causa sui in the order of world of social relations. The naturalist dimension thematized in the Ethics is not posited here with the insistence of humanity as part of nature, with the thematization of the relations between internal and external causality. Necessity seems to have disappeared for an instant. It is notable that this in the same moment that Feuerbach defends Spinoza's naturalism against Hegelian idealism and makes the author of the Ethics the Moses of modern thought who has destroyed theology by his pantheism, while reproaching him, for not having arrived at a radical humanist affirmation, since he maintained an equivocal equivalence between the naturalization of god and the divinization of nature. The Marxist reference is primarily to the ethico-political Spinoza, one of the "intellectual heroes of morality" as he says in a text contemporary with it, "Comments on the Latest Russian Censorship—" along with Kant and Fichte he is one of the heroes that found and defend the principal of moral autonomy. Spinoza makes it possible to undertake a philosophical political of Hegel, the people would be the only ontological instance that constitutes the political constitution, which is to say democracy, of civil society. Spinoza makes it possible to introduce a new dialectic within the incomplete dialectic of The Principles of the Philosophy of Right. This dialectic is simultaneously a critique. The object of this critical dialectic is the self-constitution of political activity in the struggle to overcome the domination of abstract entities erected into speculative abstractions defining the latest avatars of the theological-political complex.  Schrader does not say more in the exposition of the reference to Spinoza in this first period. We could take a step beyond his analysis. A unpublished path seems to be presented. We could in fact explore it as Yovel has done (Spinoza and Other Heretics); also the first book of Matheron, Individu et communauté chez Spinoza (1968) examines the double relation of the human conatus to other conatuses and objects that suit them or do not suit them the rudiments of a theory of objectification of the human essence that Marx elaborates in the texts of 1844 where he analyzes the people under the figure of the proletariat subject and object of alienated labor. The reading can shed light on Spinoza, but Marx has for his interlocuters Hegel, Adam Smith, and Feuerbach. Spinoza does not intervene here explicitly. It is preferable to follow the letter of his texts.  3. The text which follows, The Holy Family of 1845, indicates an unexamined reversal of perspective. Far from finding in Spinoza a radical thinker of liberty through the radicalization of the democratic process and developing Feuerbach's theses of the virtues of Spinoza's naturalization, far from continuing the anti-idealist elements of Spinoza, Marx for the first time distances himself from Spinoza placing him on the side of Descartes, of Malebranche, of Leibniz, of abstract rationalist metaphysics, in a paragraph before celebrating the materialists in which he inscribes himself. These are the materialists of the French Enlightenment, La Mettrie, Holbach, Helvétius, which are lauded for having operated outside of metaphysics. These are the authors that Plekhanov reinscribes as a defenders of monistic materialism in the thought of nature and in the theory of history. Certainly as Olivier Bloch in an important contribution has demonstrated ("Materialism, genesis of Marxism, 1981, reprinted in Matières à penser, Vrin, 1997), this chapter of the history of philosophy is a plagiarism by Marx who literally takes it from the Manuel d'histoire de la philosophie moderne by Charles Renouvier (1844). The soviet Diamat has been founded by a French critic… But the fact remains that Marx endorses this reconstruction which prefers Bacon, Hobbes and Locke to Spinoza, lauding them for the empiricism and nominalism: the English thinkers critique metaphysic speculation and open directly the way to materialism. Pierre Bayler in France can be considered the only fellow traveler of British empiricism by his scepticism he dissolves the metaphysics of Spinoza and Leibniz (The Holy Family, 171).  The Spinoza criticized here is that of the Ethics understood as a dogmatic treatise of metaphysics which has a "profane content" but it has lost its historical condition. This is no longer the antitheological political Spinoza but the speculative philosopher. Is it necessary to conclude that this is a contradiction on the part of Marx and to forget his previous theses? It is a surprising oversight because that which Marx and Renouvier give credit to Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke can be imputed to Spinoza as well. Everything takes place as if Marx, put off by the metaphysics of the Ethics forgets what he had found in the TTP—and this seems to be a permanent transformation. In fact the contradiction is not only apparent, or, more to the point, it concerns Spinoza himself. Marx does not have as his object an analysis of Spinozism. He uses the latter by breaking it down according to the needs of his task which is at this moment is to study the activity of real man and the possibility of his transformation by bringing together the theoretical humanism of Feuerbach, the French communism and socialism, and the English thinkers who represent this humanism in the domain of practice. "[Metaphysics] will be defeated for forever by materialism which has now been perfected by the work of speculation itself and coincides with humanism. As Feuerbach represented materialism in the theoretical domain, French and English socialism and communism represent materialism in the practical field which now coincides with humanism." (The Holy Family, pg. 168) One can detect in this passage the presence of a schematic of the history of modern philosophy which has echoes of Moses Hess and Ludwig Feuerbach, the two have confronted the problem of the critical comprehension of Hegel and have begun to present a reinterpretation of the grand moments of the history of philosophy after their master.  Marx deviates from the interpretation of Hess given in a text which had a particular impact: The Sacred History of Mankind by a Young Disciple of Spinoza (1838). Hess appropriates Spinoza's theory of knowledge and exploits his theory of the imagination to develop a positive sense of social utopia, and overall makes Spinoza the true alternative to Hegel's Christian philosophy. Far from being an acosmism, the theory of substance is the perfect incarnation of the Hebraic idea of the unconditional unity of all. It is paradoxical, the other part, of the interpretation by Renouvier followed by Marx recovers and conceals that of Feuerbach that one can find in the same period in Preliminary Theses for the Reform of Philosophy (1842) and Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843). Marx brushes up against these theses of Feuerbach on Spinoza without reproducing them in their entirety. They make Spinoza an important moment in modern philosophy: at the heart of this movement they make this philosophy an important realization of the humanization of God, Spinoza remains still a speculative philosopher who is at once produces the realization and negation of God. Speculative metaphysics realizes with him its ultimate phase which is determined contradictorily as theism and atheism in the form of pantheism. "Spinoza is the originator of speculative philosophy, Schelling its restorer, Hegel its perfecter."(Thesis 102) Pantheism becomes the only consequential theology in that it anticipates the end of theology in atheism. The Spinozist substance transforms all independent beings into predicates, into attributes of a unique and independent being. God is no longer only a thing thought, it is equally an extended thing (Thesis 3). Spinoza does not make the self-activity of self-consciousness the attribute that unifies and transforms substance into subject. This was Hegel's tour de force but he paid for it with an absolute idealism of spirit since once again spirit prevails over extension and concrete man is subject to abstraction separated from reality of self-consciousness.
This inscription of Spinoza in metaphysics is all the more paradoxical because Marx finds in empiricism and British materialism the theses that Feuerbach attributes to Spinoza, and Marx accepts a definition in which materialism coincides with communism. As can be seen in this passage from Principles of the Philosophy of the Future  Pantheism is theological atheism or theological materialism; it is the negation of theology while itself confined to the standpoint of theology, for it turns matter, the negation of God, into a predicate or an attribute of the Divine Being. But he who turns matter into an attribute of God, declares matter to be a divine being. The realisation of God must in principle presuppose godliness, that is, the truth and essentiality of the real. The deification of the real, of that which exists materially – materialism, empiricism, realism, and humanism – or the negation of theology, is the essence of the modern era. Pantheism is therefore nothing more than the essence of the modern era elevated into the divine essence, into a religio-philosophical principle. Empiricism or realism – meaning thereby the so-called sciences of the real, but in particular the natural science – negates theology, albeit not theoretically but only practically, namely, through the actual deed in so far as the realist makes the negation of God, or at least that which is not God, into the essential business of his life and the essential object of his activity. However, he who devotes his mind and heart exclusively to that which is material and sensuous actually denies the trans-sensuous its reality; for only that which constitutes an object of the real and concrete activity is real, at least for man. "What I don't know doesn't affect me." To say that it is not possible to know anything of the supersensuous is only an excuse. One ceases to know anything about God and divine things only when one does not want to know anything about them. How much did one know about God, about the devils or angels as long as these supersensuous beings were still objects of a real faith? To be interested in something is to have the talent for it. The medieval mystics and scholastics had no talent and aptitude for natural science only because they had no interest in nature. Where the sense for something is not lacking, there also the senses and organs do not lack. If the heart is open to something, the mind will not be closed to it. Thus, the reason why mankind in the modern era lost the organs for the supersensuous world and its secrets is because it also lost the sense for them together with the belief in them; because its essential tendency was anti-Christian and anti-theological; that is, anthropological, cosmic, realistic, and materialistic. [In the context of the present work, the differences between materialism, empiricism, realism, and humanism are, of course, irrelevant.] Spinoza hit the nail on the head with his paradoxical proposition: God is an extended, that is, material being. He found, at least for his time, the true philosophical expression for the materialistic tendency of the modern era; he legitimated and sanctioned it: God himself is a materialist. Spinoza's philosophy was religion; he himself was an amazing man. Unlike so many others, Spinoza's materialism did not stand in contradiction to the notion of a non-material and anti-materialistic God who also quite consistently imposes on man the duty to give himself up only to anti-materialistic, heavenly tendencies and concerns, for God is nothing other than the archetypal and ideal image of man; what God is and how he is, is what man ought to be or wants to be, or at least hopes to be in the future. But only where theory does not belie practice, and practice theory, is there character, truth, and religion. Spinoza is the Moses of modern free-thinkers and materialists. 4. The anti-metaphysical fury of Marx, the blind submission to Renouvier, limits him in developing an interpretation of the Ethics more nuanced and sensitive to the historical contradictions. This situation is even more strange because it is in The Holy Family that Marx interprets materialist philosophers such that they are a Feuerbachian Spinoza. On can find then three theses that Marx distributes to different representatives of materialism and that can also be imputed to Spinoza. --Thesis 1. Nature is a primary reality, it can be explained by itself without recourse to the principle of a creator. Nothing comes from nothing. One can then have recourse to Bacon for who "the primitive forms of matter are essentially living forms, individuals, and it is they that produce specific differences." He follows, as does Hobbes, in adding that "one cannot separate thought from the matter which thinks." Thought cannot be separated from matter capable of thought.  --Thesis 2. The human order is inscribed in a specific manner in nature. This specificity does not specify anything extra-worldly of human activity. Hobbes has demonstrated the sensible nature of activity. "Man is subordinate to the same laws that nature. Power and liberty are identical." The Holy Family) This order is known to promote the art of forming ideas, the human species is fundamentally educatable. ---Thesis 3. What is important is to think the constitution of this human order according to radical possibilities of the ways of transforming these necessary conditions of experience of liberty-power. "If man is unfree in the materialist sense, i.e., is free not through the negative power to avoid this or that, but through the positive power to assert his true individuality,
crime must not be punished in the individual, but the anti-social source of crime must be destroyed, and each man must be given social scope for the vital manifestation of his being. If man is shaped by his surroundings, his surroundings must be made human. If man is social by
nature, he will develop his true nature only in society, and the power of his nature must be measured not by the power of separate individuals but by the power of society." (The Holy Family 176).  It is not necessary to give the history of philosophy presented in The Holy Family a structural importance. It acts as a provisionally constructed polemical text where Marx has given the means for his own philosophical conception in broad strokes in order to better understand the intersection of humanism, materialism, and communism. The incongruence of the treatment of Spinoza, reinterpreted to be behind Feuerbach's position, was not overlooked by Marx's comrades in combat since H. Krieg (himself denounces by Marx in a virulent circular as a confused partisan of religious socialism), he wrote in a letter of June 6, 1845 in order to restore Spinoza's battle against metaphysics overlooked by Marx, "you're probably right about what it says in the English Hobbes and Locke [i.e. that they vacillate contradictorily between materialism and theism], the same for Voltaire and his direct partisans; but Holbach is practically Spinozist, and it is with and Diderot that the Enlightenment reaches its summit and becomes revolutionary." (cited by Maximilien Rubel and his edition of the philosophical texts of Marx titled Philosophie) 5. The instrumental and fluctuating character of the reference to Spinoza as a metaphysician is confirmed precisely by The German Ideology. Marx returns in passing to the place of Spinoza in modern philosophy. Spinoza has developed the principle of substantial immanence but he has not integrated the principle with self-consciousness. Hegel would be the unity of Spinoza and Fichte (The German Ideology, 107). But for Marx this representation consigns him to a partial aspect of the Hegelian synthesis. Self-consciousness is at once a hypostasis of the real activity of human beings in the process of their self-production and the "the real consciousness of the social relations in which they appear to exists and to which they appear to be autonomous." In a similar manner substance is "an ideal hypostatized expression of the world as it exists" that is take as the foundation of the world "existing for itself." Marx returns to Feuerbach for clarification of substance and it anthropological resolution. We do not know much more, but the text seems to distinguish the Hegelian critique of substance and its possible materialist significance as "the existing world." We would have expected considerations on the immanence of modes in natura naturans and of their dynamic interdetermination.
In any case, Marx refuses the young Hegelain opposition between self-consciousness and substance, and proposes to maintain the category of substance as an inseparable unity of the existing mode and the beings which constitute the world in the play of their relations. Marx's criticism has as its target the mystification of self-consciousness and its anti-substantial phobia. Everything takes place as if the ontological categories of Spinoza up until now rejected as conservative metaphysics have an intensive force irreducible to the critique of the young Hegelians. However, it remains that in this complex itinerary the use value of the reference to Spinoza is concentrated in the theological political constellation and the political constitution of the political force of social force. This reference becomes the presupposition of the materialist conception of history, but it does not intervene in the texture of these concepts.  The Spinoza Reference in the Critique of Political Economy, Substance and Concept Returning to Schrader and his propositions for the study of the second moment of the reference to Spinoza, that of the Marxist use of Spinozist concepts from the Ethics in the development of the critique of political economy in the development of Capital. Schrader pays particular attention to the reappearance in the margins of the reference to Spinoza in the period of the creation and exposition of the critique of political economy which is developed from 1851 to 1863. An important letter from Marx to Lassale from May 31, 1858 which was published in an obscure book on Heraclitus, gives to Spinoza's metaphysics the same status that he gave to Hegel in a famous letter to Engels a few months before.  Even among philosophers who give a systematic form to the works, as for example Spinoza, the true inner structure of the system is quite unlike the form in which it was consciously presented. The true system is only present in itself. (Marx MEW, 29, Berlin, 1963, 561).

What was of great use to me as regards method of treatment was Hegel's Logic at which I had taken another look by mere accident... If ever the time comes when such work is again possible, I should very much like to write 2 or 3 sheets making accessible to the common reader the rational aspect of the method which Hegel not only discovered but also mystified. (Correspondence Marx-Engels)  Marx makes it clear that the elaboration of the critique passes through the utilization of elements of philosophical works which others appear to have completely bypassed. The presence of Hegel is the center of the interpretation of Capital. It would appear certain to this period that Marx no longer takes inspiration from the Feuerbachian critique of abstract speculation. In this case, the Idea separated from its contents generates the latter in a mystified way by legitimizing the crudest aspects, losing the benefit of seizing the real as a contradictory process, as is explained in The Holy Family or The Poverty of Philosophy. Hegel is from now on solicited for his dialectical discoveries: he elaborates the dialectic as an immanent process of thought and his discoveries serve Marx in developing his proper critique. The presence of Hegel in the period up to the publication of the first volume of Capital in 1867, in passing through diverse manuscripts of 1857-1858 (The Grundrisse) and the manuscripts from 1861-1863, has been attested to and demonstrated by works, either to reaffirm the heretical Hegelianism of Marx, (Rosdolsky, Reichelt, Zelenyi, all dedicated to research the logic of Capital, all following one of the most famous injunctions of all times, Lenin in the Notes on Dialectics) or to combat it in order to argue that Marx was Hegelian or anti-Hegelian (Althusser, and Bidet in his famous study, The Making of Marx's Capital).
This usage of Hegel consists essentially in using the categories of logic to expose the theoretical structure of the passages which operate from the commodity to value, from money as the measure of value to money as the means of exchange and as the universal means of payment, from money to capital. Schrader proposes the following recovery of the Marxist exposition of Hegelian categories: --Exchange value and the form of value correspond to the pure quantity of Hegel: this value and its measure is realized as money. The Marxist measure of value adopts the Hegelian determinations of the quantitative relations and their measure. --The circulation of commodities and money is described by the concepts of an infinite qualitative and quantitative process.  --Finally the passage from money to capital transposes the passage from being to essence. Marx has thus read and reused these conceptual determinations for the diverse functions of commodity, value, money and circulation.  And what about Spinoza? According to Schrader, he intervenes to resolve a logical problem that is at this point unresolved, that of the determination of the concept of capital supposed to integrate the logically preceding determinations. In good Hegelianism, Marx has made the movement of capital that of the essence of the concept. When Marx maintains that exchange value is realized in the circulation of other substances, in an indefinite totality, without losing the determination of its form, always remaining money and commodities, he makes capital the totality of substances. However, it thus impossible to maintain the internal connection between capital and labor, and more precisely abstract labor. Spinoza intervenes to make possible another use of the category of substance: that would not have its function to subsume the plurality of all substances, but to determine the quality of the fluent quantity that defines abstract labor.  One can see this in the text of Volume One of Capital, revised by Marx in 1873 for the French translation of J. Roy. The category of substance is introduce in the passage from the commodity to its determination as the contradictory unity of use value and exchange value. The exchange of commodities is only possible if the their values are "expressed in terms of something common to them all, of which thing they represent a greater or less quantities." This something is a substance specific to all commodities. "This common "something" cannot be either a geometrical, a chemical, or any other natural property of commodities…[] it is evident that one makes an abstraction from use value when one exchanges, and that the relation of exchange is characterized by this abstraction (Capital). Exchange and the production process which supports it operate this real abstraction from the useful qualities of the objects to be exchanged. This utility, although necessary, does not render possible the exchange of objects of value insofar as they products of labor. Exchange concerns the objects considered as products of labor.  If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour. But even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands. If we make abstraction from its use value, we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use value; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight. Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labour. Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract.  Capitalism cannot be grasped as a subject enveloping the totality of the process of the development. It is no longer a simple quantity in indefinite expansion. It is thought as the "social substance of as exchange values." This substance can be determined as capital, but it goes beyond this process of determination by constituting a remainder, a "residue" that constantly reappears. "Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous human labour, of labour power expended without regard to the mode of its expenditure. All that these things now tell us is, that human labour power has been expended in their production, that human labour is embodied in them. When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are – Values." The concept of Capital is not that of the concept of substance becoming subject., it returns to the concept of social substance defined as abstract labor creator of value, substance of value, and substance which increases value: purely progressive quantity reduced to its infinity which is a true infinity irreducible to the logic of bad infinity, that of capital which nonetheless subsumes it.  However it is said that this reconstruction does not rest on an explicit reference to Spinoza. The objection is well founded. Schrader responds that it is Marx who reread Hegel and saw that the formal system of Spinoza could be used against Hegel critique of the concept of substance in the Logic. It is a matter of the problem of determination. Omnis determination negatio, Marx keeps reminding everyone of this. If it is Hegel who validates Spinoza's judgement by demonstrating its insufficiency which for Marx transforms into a sufficient truth to permit him to avoid identifying capital with the Hegelian concept. Capital can increase its reality only by determining this social substance of abstract labor, by negating it. The tendency of capital, its ideal, is the absolute negation of this substance. Marx makes the insufficiency of Spinoza's substance according to Hegel into a virtue.  In the Logic the principle according to which determination is negation is recognized as essential. But Spinoza, according to Hegel, remains with determination as limit which is founded on an other being. The mode is in another from which it derives its being but this other is in itself. It is the integral concept of all realities. But its immanence is only apparent. Each mode negates each other, determination of each is the result of the determined negation of all of the others. Far from determining itself in these negations, substance is negated in its absolute indifference. It does not reflect itself in these negations no more than they reflect it. The Spinozist principle does not arrive at absolute negation that it anticipates contradictorily. The substance is posed by an external reflection which compromises the otherwise affirmed subsistence of the determinations which become an effervescent moment (attributes and modes). This can be read in the texts from The Science of Logic dedicated to Spinoza.  "Of this proposition that determinateness is negation, the unity of Spinoza's substance — or that there is only one substance — is the necessary consequence. Thought and being or extension, the two attributes, namely, which Spinoza had before him, he had of necessity to posit as one in this unity; for as determinate realities they are negations whose infinity is their unity. According to Spinoza's definition, of which we say more more subsequently, the infinity of anything is its affirmation. He grasped them therefore as attributes, that is, as not having a separate existence, a self-subsistent being of their own, but only as sublated, as moments; or rather, since substance in its own self lacks any determination whatever, they are for him not even moments, and the attributes like the modes are distinctions made by an external intellect. Similarly, the substantiality of individuals cannot persist in the face of that proposition."Hegel, Science of Logic  "Since absolute indifference may seem to be the fundamental determination of Spinoza's substance, we may add that this is indeed the case in so far as in both every determination of being, like every further concrete differentiation of thought and extension and so forth, is posited as vanished. If we stop short at the abstraction [of substance] then it is a matter of complete indifference what something looked like in reality before it was swallowed up in this abyss. But when substance is conceived as indifference, it is tied up with the need for determining it and for taking this determination into consideration; it is not to remain Spinoza's substance, the sole determination of which is the negative one that everything is absorbed in it. With Spinoza, the moment of difference — attributes, thought and extension, then the modes too, the affections, and every other determination — is introduced empirically; it is intellect, itself a mode, which is the source of the differentiation." Hegel, Science of Logic  3. It is capital which fails to realize its ideal determinations of essence and which falls back into the residue of the social substance, of the abstract labor which it masks. Capital as a mode of production is ruled by the real abstractions of exchange value which are not comprehended by social agents. Value is a social abstraction that is produced from the base of multiple dispersed evaluations, that the understanding of the economist produces only after the fact, but can be known as a real abstraction operated by society and which is determined as a social substance of abstract time. The determination of the common substance as abstract labor makes it possible to dissipate the mystification produced by the appearance of capital as the self moving essence of value. All of the people, who are modes of this substance, cannot immediately represent to themselves the internal determinations of this substance in which they appear other than as representation of theological-political complex, the same as the agents of capital who cannot represent to themselves the determinations of capital (commodity-value-money-forms of capital) without fetishizing them as autonomous movements of the value form. Theoretical knowledge, the Wissenschaft, does not dissolve this fetishism because the mechanisms of its social reproduction are founded on the constitution of these forms of representation and their real efficacy. Capital cannot arrive at self-identity in terms of an absolute reflection. The determination that Hegel imputes to Spinoza negatively of substance as exterior reflection can better convey the determinations of moments of its critique. This places within the development of initial economic forms this sort of equivalent of the attribute of extension that is human labor, this common social substance comprising the forms of modal representations which capture it, that is to say that the forms of consciousness and their functional relations in the material process of reproduction. It is therefore the relationship between the substances of abstract human labor and mystified or adequate forms of social representations of this substance that Marx finds in in the hidden Spinozian system and that he utilizes in order to escape the limits of Hegel's categories, which tend to sublimate substance into the concept and therefore annul the contradictions of capital in the passage from substance to the essence and the concept. From this point of view, Hegel and Spinoza would both be utilized without reservations by Marx as the complimentary and constitutive means of production of the critique of political economy. Spinoza would thus be primarily critical to the extent that the process of the development of the determination of capital cannot be ruled by the teleological order of being-essence-concept. The theory of the substance of abstract labor interrupts the movement of the idealization of capital from the mimesis of the Hegelian order that has been opposed. Spinoza is a moment of the emendation of the intellect internal to the Marxist critique, not an external instance that would be opposed in the confrontation with exteriority.  On an Incomplete Analysis  1. Schrader goes no further. The outline of his work remains open. In particular this analysis
Postulates as evidence a substantial theory of abstract labor, one that has come under criticism from multiple non-marxist thinkers (Croce, Pareto, Menger) and also, more recently, by Marxists (Althusser and Bidet). In this case the relation to Spinoza would lose its fecundity. But if one leaves to the side the labor theory of value and its supposed foundational role, on the internal level the analysis still remains allusive, because it would have been necessary to exceed the level of Volume One of Capital in order to demonstrate the decisive character of Spinoza's conceptuality in the Marxist conception.  Despite these uncertainties, the perspective opened by Schrader is stimulating in that can necessitate a more rigorous study, tempering the contradictory interpretations by the rigors of philology.  2. Schrader's final remarks seem to us be more provocative. Starting from the idea that
Spinoza and Marx begin from two different historical moments—that of manufacturing capital limited by the desire of hoarding and that of capitalism fully developed—the logical and ethico-political thesis of the submission of needs to absolute monetary enrichment, and that therefore the refusal of money as an end in itself, he begins to construct a shocking analogy between the third type of knowledge in Spinoza and the knowledge of the capitalist which exposes its money to circulation in order to multiply it. The determination of particular things sub specie aeternitas, as deepening the knowledge of their essence would symbolize with the effort of capitalists to insert money to measure things in their circulation sub specie capitalis. The reference to Marx attests to the irony of Marx: if the movement of true knowledge is infinite, this infinity cannot be confused with that of monetary accumulation which becomes a bad infinity because the means of accumulation are reversed and perverted to be posited as an end in itself.  3. It is more correct, as Schrader makes apparent, to find a space more effective for the
forma mentis common to Marx and Spinoza: the two both diagnosis the pathology of the understanding and that of a form of life proper to a given historical world. Both understand the irreversible character of modern passions and set to understand and eventually cure these pathologies.
Spinoza, son of a merchant enriched by international trade and a merchant himself in his youth, does not have contempt for money and the new wealth of nations promoted by capitalist economy. He does not dream of a return to oikos of finite needs in a household setting, he is not an aristoltean who condemns bad infinity of the circulation of merchandise which has as its object money and not the use value of merchandise. He registers the emergence of exchange value, he sees, as Aristotle did, that it is the subordination of true value.
Remember the famous text from Ethics IV Appendix, consecrated to the function of money.  XXVIII. Now to achieve these things the powers of each man would hardly be sufficient if men did not help one another. But money has provided a convenient instrument for acquiring all these aids. That is why its image usually occupies the mind of the multitude more than anything else. For they can imagine hardly any species of joy without the accompanying idea of money as its cause.  XXlX. But this is a vice only in those who seek money neither from need nor on account of necessities, but because they have learned the art of making money and pride themselves on it very much. As for the body, they feed it according to custom, but sparingly, because they believe they lose as much of their goods as they devote to the preservation
of their body. Those, however, who know the true use of money, and set
bounds to their wealth according to need, live contentedly with little. The realization of money as a concept, the accumulation of money for accumulation, is unrealized. Marx adds that this goal is inaccessible because the character of use value of commodities contradicts the universal sociality of value. The common social substance in so far as it is measured in abstract labor time is measured according to quantitatively determined portions. Money is supposed to represent value in its infinite becoming of an end in itself, but it can only effectively represent a determined part. This contradiction is resolved in the deplacement that money makes in becoming capital, exchange value multiplied in profit. Spinoza's therapeutic of desire also concern the intellect of calculation: the latter is not condemned, it is superior to the intellect of avarice which theorizes by avarita and does not develop the capacity to act and think. This understanding, however, is called upon to better understand the monetary economy by subordinating it to immanent true utility, that which is inscribed in the republic of free citizens. It is only in this sense that the accumulation of wealth under the monetary form can enter into the correct perspective of knowledge of the third kind. Marx in his own way wants to understand the action of human beings without deploring or flattering them. Capital cannot be understood going from substance to the essence of the concept, but it has its basis in substance, the social substance of abstract labor, and can be rethought and regrouped in the forms of economic understanding. Capital also has as its goal a particular therapeutic manner, the health and well-being of a social body that cannot be subsumed under capital but must encompass the increase of the capacities of acting and thinking that capital subordinates to itself.  4. This anti-teleological function of the concept of substance/abstract labor is not
maintained by Marx for long in his dialectic. Certainly the function of the subject cannot be attributed to capital, but it is displaced and given a different support, not that of abstract labor with its internal multiplicity and impersonality, but its bearer, that of the working class, the proletariat, the people of the people. The substance of abstract labor becomes subject in the determination that Marx always uses with the English term general intellect. One could thus see a final return of Hegel which interrupts Marx's return to Spinoza. The communism developed by the general intellect is the practical substitute of the Hegelian concept and imposes an anthropological version and anthropocentric teleology that Spinoza would not accept. What does the general intellect represent? It represents the capacity of the proletariat to organize the ensemble of forces defining the collective worker and the cooperation associated with it, under the direction of formation of the factory in the constitution of the unqualified worker, all representing the advance front of the progressive socialization of the social productive forces. Communism is not something that is imposed as a simple moral ideal, it is a product of the real historical process.  However, Marx does not escape here the teleologism that he shares with majority of
German idealism. The socialization of productive forces—that for Marx leads the process of the self-production of humanity realizing its immanent end and to which he attributes the function of the concept—is not realized at the level of society. It cannot in any way constitute itself as a causa sui. The human world remains a world of world of modal relations and interactions: if the effects of liberation can realize themselves at the level of the individual (by the knowledge of singular things) or at the level of collectivity ( by the democratic constitution of the multitude), these effects would not be made from a mode as a complete cause of itself under all points of view. The capacity of a mode to act and think, human individual or society, can be more or less adequate, but this adequation does not annul the difference that separates the mode which is produced by and in another which it requires to subsist and which is produced in and by itself and becomes a cause of itself. The identity of natura naturata and natura naturans cannot grant a mode the capacity to be cause of itself under all points of view: it permits it to do so under certain points of view and certain conditions which are sufficient for an ethical realization. Communism to the extent that Marx thinks in terms of the becoming concept of the collective worker exceeds the conditions and possibilities of action predicated on modes.  To this structural impossibility we can add the consideration of an analytical one: modern society is not immense and singular enterprise under the order of the collective worker, it is, to say the least, a network of antagonistic enterprises in which on the contrary the process of work is fragmented to the point where it loses all material and ideal unity, a fragmentation that has been imposed by the imperative of capitalist society. Exploitation is not only maintained but it is generalized, it is only in compensation that the recomposition of labor process itself as something collective, cooperative, and associated that Marx believes leads the dialectic of the process of capitalist production. Spinozist realism is here irreducible. It does not limited us in taking the measure of the problem posed generally by Marx, it excludes, however, the solution envisioned from speculative teleology and it compels us to attempt to comprehend the modal form in which exploitation is reproduced. How can we form a new theory of the capacity for insurrection of the multitude subordinated to capital while they also resist it. What effects of liberation can still be manifested by producing new subjectivities which are embedded in real productive activities, not prisoners of unproductive ghettos ravaged by self-destructive violence, nor recluse themselves in the powerless rumination of a moral salvation? How can we escape forms of historical impotence? How can we avoid being reduced to the status of spectators of this impotence? Such are the questions posed by Marx and which are posed again today along with Spinoza and his critique of the teleological illusions of the general intellect, questions which have not arrived at the end of their road. But it is historically vain to ask Marx these questions: they are ours and it is up to us to answer them.

This paper quantifies the contributions to poverty reduction observed in Sri Lanka between 2002 and 2012/13. The methods adopted for the analysis generate entire counterfactual distributions to account for the contributions of demographics, labor, and non-labor incomes in explaining poverty reduction. The findings show that the most important contributor to poverty reduction was growth in labor income, stemming from an increase in the returns to salaried nonfarm workers and higher returns to self-employed farm workers. Although some of this increase in earnings may point to improvements in productivity, defined as higher units of output per worker, some of it may simply reflect increases in food and commodity prices, which have increased the marginal revenue product of labor. To the extent that there have been no increases in the volumes being produced, the observed changes in poverty are vulnerable to reversals if commodity prices were to decline significantly. Finally, although private transfers (domestic and foreign) helped to reduce poverty over the period, public transfers were not as effective. In particular, the reduction in the real value of transfers of the Samurdhi program during 2002 to 2012/13 slowed down poverty reduction.

I det nuværende danske energisystem bliver hoveddelen af den benyttede el og varme produceret på et kraftvarmeværk (KVV). Med stadig større produktion af el fra vedvarende energikilder bliver det en stadig større udfordring at tilpasse el og varmeproduktion til behovsprofilet, da produktions kapacitetens tekniske restriktioner begrænser den effektive produktion på KVV. Varmepumper (VP) kan benyttes til at afkoble sådanne begrænsninger, men den nuværende teknologi er ikke konkurrencedygtig. Metoder til at forbedre energi effektiviteten er nødvendige, for at kunne opnå de politisk fremlagte mål for CO2-emmisioner. Det præsenterede studie undersøger den mulige introduktion af VP fra både et termodynamisk- og system/operationsanalyse perspektiv, for at finde optimale integrations løsninger for både nutidige og fremtidige energisystemer. Fem generiske konfigurationer for VP i fjernvarme- (FV) systemer blev identificeret og sammenlignet ud fra en termodynamisk analyse. Den operative præstationsevne af konfigurationerne blev undersøgt både for den enkelte enhed og fra et system perspektiv for forskellige FV temperaturer, forskellige drivmidler og ved systemer med forskellige produktions teknologier i FV netværket. Analysen viste at tre konfigurationer er særligt fordelagtige, hvorimod de to tilbageværende konfigurationer, set fra et system perspektiv, præsterer tilsvarende eller endog dårligere end det der kan forventes af en elektrisk vandvarmer. Den ene af de tre fordelagtige konfigurationer skal lokaliseres hos forbrugeren, hvorimod de to resterende kan placeres på lokaliteter med særligt gunstige temperaturer, hvor FV netværket benyttes til at distribuere varmen. En stor mængde operative og økonomiske restriktioner begrænser anvendelsen af VP som benytter naturlige arbejdsmedier, hvilket kan være de eneste mulige valg for Danske forhold. Begrænsningerne er meget afhængige af integrationen af energistrømmene for varme kilde og dræn. En vurdering af fordelagtige operative anlæg blev udført ud fra restriktioner som tilgængeligt køleteknisk udstyr og behovet for en positiv nutidsværdi for investeringen. Seks kompressions varme pumper (KVP) blev analyseret sideløbende med ammoniak-vand hybrid absorption kompressions varme pumpe (HAKVP), hvilket korresponderer til en øvre begrænsning i dræn temperature op til 150 °C. Den bedste disponible teknologi blev bestemt for hver mulig kombination af kilde og dræn temperaturer. Resultaterne viste at fem forskellige VP systemer fremsætter den bedste tilgængelige teknologi ved forskellige dele af det samlede arbejdsområde. Ammoniak-vand HAKVP og ammoniak KVP systemer med enten lav eller højtrykskomponenter er fordelagtige for en meget stor del af de analyserede dræn temperaturer og temperaturløft. Krav til dræn temperaturer og temperaturløft kan ikke tilfredsstilles for mange FV systemer hvis VP varmer til fremløbstemperaturen, med de benyttede økonomiske begrænsninger inkluderet i analysen. Den specifikke ydeevne for to FV VP konfigurationer blev undersøgt i yderligere detalje, hvortil der benyttes endelige temperatur niveauer som svarer til en række typiske FV netværk. Otte systemer blev analyseret for deres anvendelighed, og systemerne blev optimeret til hvert driftspunkt ved brug af exergoøkonomisk analyse. De enkelte VP blev sammenlignet baseret på prisen af den producerede varme. Resultaterne viser, at de tekniske begrænsninger medfører en betydeligt forøget pris på varme ved høje FV temperaturer, sammenlignet med den mest konkurrencedygtige termodynamiske kredsproces. Ved høje og mellemhøje temperaturløft er det muligt at opnå en kredsproces effektivitet på op til 45-50 % af det teoretisk mulige (i forhold til Lorenz processen), hvorimod så lave virkningsgrader som 36 % må forventes for lave temperaturløft. Tre typisk anvendte operations analyse metoder blev analyseret for deres påvirkning på driftsstyring for energiteknologier. Ved at fokusere på den fysiske repræsentation af KVV, synes det klart at den simple repræsentation tillader ugennemførlig produktion. Når blandet heltals programmering (BHP) og ikke lineær programmering (ILP) benyttes, bliver antallet af driftstimer og produktionen af varme fra VP betydeligt forøget, da VP kan benyttes til at udligne driftsprofilet for KVV i energisystemer med betydelige tekniske begrænsninger. En BHP energi system model blev udviklet, med fokus på detaljeret repræsentation af KVV og VP. To energiscenarier blev benyttet til analysen, et nuværende, som er valideret for året 2011, og et fremtidigt scenarie, som modsvarer det energiplanlæggere foreslår for 2025, hvor reduktioner af CO2-emissioner er en særlig indsats. Den ændrede drift for elektricitets produktions enheder fører til genovervejelse af optimum for FV netværks temperaturer, for at opnå den laveste pris og de laveste CO2-emissioner. Den udviklede energisystem model blev benyttet til at analysere den ændrede produktion. Produktions ændringer fra typiske KVV teknologier blev benyttet til at repræsentere den ændrede produktion af el og varme for ændrede FV temperaturer. Resultaterne viser at forbruget af primær energi og systemets omkostninger kan reduceres med ca. 5-7 % ved FV fremløbstemperaturer på 60 til 70 °C for 2025 scenariet. Yderligere reduktion i FV temperaturer resulterer i modsat rettede tendenser, da varmt brugsvand skal benytte stadig større mængder el for at opnå de nødvendige temperaturer. Resultaterne er netværks specifikke, da de repræsenterer specifikke FV forsyningsværker og netværk restriktioner, men tilsvarende tendenser kan forventes for andre store FV netværker. ; In the current Danish energy system, the majority of electricity and heat is produced in combined heat and power (CHP) plants. With increasing shares of intermittent renewable power production, it becomes a challenging task to match power and heat production to its demand curves, as production capacity constraints limit the efficient operation of the CHP plants. Heat pumps (HPs) can be used to decouple such constraints, but current state of the art are not competitive all things considered. Methods to improve the high energy efficiency are required to match the politically agreed carbon emission goals. The presented study investigates the possible introduction of HPs from both a thermodynamic and a system/operation management perspective, in order to find optimal integration schemes in both current and future energy scenarios. Five generic configurations of HPs in district heating (DH) systems were identified and compared based on a thermodynamic analysis. The operational performance of the configurations were investigated at both local and system level considering different DH network temperatures, different fuels and different production technologies in the DH network. The analysis show that three configurations are particular advantageous, whereas the two remaining configurations result in system performance close to or below what may be expected from an electric heater. One of the three advantageous configurations is required to be positioned at the location of the heat demand, whereas the two remaining can be located at positions with availability of high temperature sources by utilising the DH network to distribute the heat. A large amount of operational and economic constraints limit the applicability of HPs operated with natural working fluids, which may be the only feasible choice in Danish conditions. The limitations are highly dependent on the integration of heat source and sink streams. An evaluation of feasible operating conditions was carried out considering the constraints of available refrigeration equipment and a requirement of a positive net present value of the investment. Six vapour compression heat pump (VCHP) systems were considered along with the ammonia-water hybrid absorption compression heat pump (HACHP), corresponding to an upper limit of the sink temperature of up to 150 °C. The best available technology was determined for each set of heat sink and source temperatures. The results showed that five different HP systems propose the best available technology at different parts of the complete domain. Ammonia-water HACHP and ammonia VCHP systems utilising either low or high pressure components are preferable very broad range of sink temperature and temperature lifts. With the considered economic constraints in place, the requirements in terms of sink temperatures and temperature lift are not met for many DH networks considering the configurations which heat to forward temperatures. The specific performance for two DH HP configurations were studied in detail, using the finite temperature levels of a range of common DH networks. Eight systems were examined in terms of applicability, and the systems were optimised for each operating condition using exergoeconomic theory. The HPs were compared based on cost of heat. The results show that including the practical applicability of components causes a significantly increased cost at high temperature lifts, compared to the most competitive thermodynamic cycle. At high and medium temperature lifts cycle efficiencies of 45 - 50 % of the theoretical maximum (Lorenz cycle limit) can be achieved, whereas for low temperature lifts, efficiencies as low as 36 % may be expected. Three frequently used operation optimisation methods were examined, in order to investigate their impact on operation management of energy system technologies. By focussing on the physical representation of a CHP-plant, it is clear that a simple representation allows infeasible production. Using MIP or NLP optimisation, the number of operation hours and the total production of heat from HPs are significantly increased, as the HPs may be used to shave the load patterns of CHP units in significantly constrained energy systems. A MIP energy system model was developed with focus on the detail level of features for representation of CHP and HP units. Two energy scenarios were considered, one current, which is a validated model for 2011, and a future scenario, as proposed by energy planners for 2025, where reductions in carbon emissions for heat is of major interest. The changed distribution of electricity generation technologies may suggest a reconsideration of optimum for DH network temperatures, in order to achieve low cost and minimum carbon emissions. The developed energy system model was used to investigate the changed operation. Production curves from typical CHP-plant technologies were used to represent the changed power and heat production for changed DH temperatures. The results show that both primary fuel consumption and cost can be reduced approximately 5-7 % at DH forward temperatures of 60 - 70 °C in 2025 scenario. Further reduction results in contrary tendencies as hot tap water requires increasing amounts of electricity to reach required temperatures. The results are network specific, as they represent the specific DH utility technologies and network constraints, but similar trends can be expected for other large DH networks.

Can cash transfers promote employment and reduce poverty in rural Africa? Will lower youth unemployment and poverty reduce the risk of social instability? The authors experimentally evaluate one of Uganda's largest development programs, which provided thousands of young people nearly unconditional, unsupervised cash transfers to pay for vocational training, tools, and business start-up costs. Mid-term results after two years suggest four main findings. First, despite a lack of central monitoring and accountability, most youth invest the transfer in vocational skills and tools. Second, the economic impacts of the transfer are large: hours of non-household employment double and cash earnings increase by nearly 50 percent relative to the control group. The authors estimate the transfer yields a real annual return on capital of 35 percent on average. Third, the evidence suggests that poor access to credit is a major reason youth cannot start these vocations in the absence of aid. Much of the heterogeneity in impacts is unexplained, however, and is unrelated to conventional economic measures of ability, suggesting we have much to learn about the determinants of entrepreneurship. Finally, these economic gains result in modest improvements in social stability. Measures of social cohesion and community support improve mildly, by roughly 5 to 10 percent, especially among males, most likely because the youth becomes a net giver rather than a net taker in his kin and community network. Most strikingly, we see a 50 percent fall in interpersonal aggression and disputes among males, but a 50 percent increase among females. Neither change seems related to economic performance nor does social cohesion a puzzle to be explored in the next phase of the study. These results suggest that increasing access to credit and capital could stimulate employment growth in rural Africa. In particular, unconditional and unsupervised cash transfers may be a more effective and cost-efficient forming of large-scale aid than commonly believed. A second stage of data collection in 2012 will collect longitudinal economic impacts, additional data on political violence and behavior, and explore alternative theoretical mechanisms.

This study examined advertising, exhibiting multilingual structures to reach the Nigerian audience. Halliday's mood system and morphological processes served as the theoretical configurations for analyzing textual elements of advertisements. These contextual terminologies permitted quantitative and qualitative approaches to thrive in order to culminate the investigation. Thus, the analysis showed political motifs, religious spheres, royal domains, musical settings, and friendship environment, as the fascinating panaceas to motivate readers. English, Yorùbá, and Hausa languages were functional facilities to mesmerize consumers. However, the advertisements displayed textual interruptions: FEBUHARI, FELABRATION, OBIdiently, and ATIKUlating, being strong prerequisites in persuasive designs. Creativity indicates the logically-minded behavior of publicists in blending grammatical structures of different languages together, yielding a unified whole, generating novel semantic values for regurgitation. It seems indisputable that such textual constructs have the capability to influence lexicographers, increase word-stock(s) of languages, and projecting the advertising industry as possessing cerebral proficiencies in linguistics' advancement. ; tdalamu@aul.edu.ng ; Taofeek O. Dalamu earned a PhD from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, under a methodical supervision of Prof. Adeyemi Daramola, with specialization in Systemic Functional Linguistics, Discourse Analysis, and Digital Humanities in relation, mostly, to advertising communications. Currently, Dr. Dalamu is a member of International Systemic Functional Linguistics Association, and teaches English courses at Anchor University, Lagos, Nigeria. This scholar has a variety of 32 publications in reputable international journals across the globe. See: www.hq.ssrn.com/taofeekdalamu/papers, www.researchgate.net.cdn/taofeekdalamu, www.academia.com/taofeekdalamuuniversityoflagos. ; Anchor University, Lagos, Nigeria ; Akinnaso, N. N. 2015. The politics of language planning in education in Nigeria. Word 41 (3): 337-367. Retrieved on 12 June 12 2018 from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00437956.1990.11435827?src=recsys. ; Alt, F., Evers, C. & Schmidt, A. 2009. Pervasive computing group users' view on context-sensitive car advertisements. Pervasive Computing 9-16. ; Ang, I. 1991. Desperately Seeking the Audience. London: Routledge. ; Arora, N., Dreze, X., Ghose, A., Hess, J., Iyengar, R., Jing, B., Joshi, Y., Kumar, V., Lurie, N., Neslin, S., Sajeesh, S., Su, M., Syam, N., Thomas, J. & Zhang J. 2008. Putting one-to-one marketing to work: Personalization, customization, and choice. 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Recent academic research has questioned the role of economic policy as a determinant of long term growth rates. While there seems to be a correlation between several policy variables and growth rates, this correlation disappears when controlling for other factors. As an example, the significance of key economic policy variables such as inflation or government size disappears if we account for the quality of institutions. This paper looks at recent empirical research that questions the conclusion that macroeconomic policy does not matter for growth. By looking at the volatility of economic policy (whether it is fiscal policy or exchange rates), the authors find that policy is still a relevant and robust explanatory variable of cross country differences in economic growth. These results have strong policy implications. Improvements in the conduct of macroeconomic policy can have beneficial growth effects even if institutional reforms are not taking place. These results do not deny the importance of institutional reforms. By setting the right institutions one can ensure the proper conduct of macroeconomic policy without having to rely on the 'quality' of the decision maker.

Low tax revenue and slow economic growth are two central concerns in developing countries. However, policies that raise tax revenue also harm economic growth. With tax revenue coming mainly from large capital-intensive firms, and with a large informal sector, policies that aid large firms and policies that discourage entry of new firms both help increase tax revenue. Entrepreneurial activity as a result is discouraged, lowering growth. There is a basic tension in policy design between current tax revenue and economic growth. In fact, a loss in tax revenue can itself reduce growth, due to less spending on education and infrastructure. It can also undermine political support for the reforms from the poor and from government bureaucrats, both of whom are key beneficiaries of government expenditures. What policies encourage growth without undue loss of current expenditures? One is debt finance, but this creates the risk of a financial crisis if tax revenue rises too slowly to repay this debt. A second is user fees, but such fees still undermine political support from the poor. A third is partial reform, maintaining both higher taxes on and some protection for easily taxed firms, even while barriers to entry are eased.

Recent academic research has questioned the role of economic policy as a determinant of long term growth rates. While there seems to be a correlation between several policy variables and growth rates, this correlation disappears when controlling for other factors. As an example, the significance of key economic policy variables such as inflation or government size disappears if we account for the quality of institutions. This paper looks at recent empirical research that questions the conclusion that macroeconomic policy does not matter for growth. By looking at the volatility of economic policy (whether it is fiscal policy or exchange rates), the authors find that policy is still a relevant and robust explanatory variable of cross country differences in economic growth. These results have strong policy implications. Improvements in the conduct of macroeconomic policy can have beneficial growth effects even if institutional reforms are not taking place. These results do not deny the importance of institutional reforms. By setting the right institutions one can ensure the proper conduct of macroeconomic policy without having to rely on the 'quality' of the decision maker.

Infrastructure is crucial for generating growth, alleviating poverty, and increasing international competitiveness. For much of the twentieth century and in most countries, the network utilities that delivered infrastructure services such as electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, railroads, and water supply were vertically and horizontally integrated state monopolies. But this approach often resulted in extremely weak services, especially in developing and transition economies and especially for poor people. Common problems included low productivity, high costs, bad quality, insufficient revenue, and shortfalls in investment. Over the past two decades many countries have implemented far-reaching institutional reforms restructuring, privatizing, and establishing new approaches to regulation. This article identifies the challenges involved in this massive policy redirection within the historical, economic, and institutional context of developing and transition economies. It also reviews the outcomes of these policy changes, including their distributional consequences especially for poor households and other disadvantaged groups. Drawing on a range of international experiences and empirical studies, it recommends directions for future reforms and research to improve infrastructure performance.

 Watching Barbie reminded me of two essays that I had not read in a long time, Luce Irigaray's "Women on the Market " and "Commodities Among Themselves". In those essays Irigaray considers to what extent Marx's theory of the commodity form can be used to make sense of the status of women in society. Irigaray's texts takes as its start the idea of a society founded on an exchange of women, an idea integral to structural and psychoanalytic theories of kinship. From this it is possible to posit that relations among women would have the fantastic character of Marx's brief foray into describing the world of commodities amongst themselves. It is precisely such a world, Barbie Land, that Barbie: The Movie opens. The only difference is that women, Barbies, in this world do not so much exist as things to be exchanged, as daughters to be given away as wives, but are defined by their use value, or, more to the point, their concrete labor. It is a world of Barbie doctors, presidents, supreme court justices, and so on--a Barbie for every career and full employment for all Barbies. Greta Gerwig's film taps into an aspect of Barbie that often falls beneath the image of the Barbie stereotype, or, in the world of the film, Stereotypical Barbie, and that is the myriad number of Barbies that have been manufactured with different careers, from veterinarian to astronaut. The Barbie stereotype of blond hair, impossible proportions, and pink, well everything, dominates our image of Barbie, it is what adults think of when we think of Barbie, so much so that we forget that for a lot of girls (and boys) who play with her she that is less a supermodel than the model for every kind of activity and career.  Whatever you want to be they have a Barbie for that. I remember once watching a relative's kid play Barbie and it was less a foray into a world of beauty and fashion than it was an hour of being a large animal veterinarian, giving check ups to horses. A far cry from the image of fashion and beauty that comes to mind when you say Barbie to an adult. The two sides of Barbie, the blonde and pink stereotype that adults think of and the various different Barbies of every career and hobby that kids play with, are the central contradiction of the film.The Barbie pet care centerBarbie Land is that imaginary place where Barbies amongst themselves can be anything or anyone. There are Kens in this world too, but since this world is the world of children playing, no one really knows what Ken is for. Ken is more sidekick than boyfriend. (Pietro Bianchi has offered a great Freudian reading of this world of innocence). The Barbies in Barbie Land are aware of the real world, that it exists, and as far as they are concerned they have fundamentally altered it. An imaginary world where Barbie can be anything must in some sense produce a reality where kids can be anyone. It is the logic of meritocratic role models taken to its logical conclusion. All the world needs is the right role models for the world to change. Trouble begins when stereotypical Barbie (played by Margot Robbie) begins to have some very un-Barbie thoughts, like of death, aging, and cellulite. These intrusive thoughts must be the product of the kid that is playing with her so she has to go out into the "real world" to find this kid and fix things. This brings us back to the commodity form. The commodity, as Marx tells us, is both an exchange value and a use value, it is both something with its own properties, or in the case of labor, capacities, and with a value, a capacity to stand in for other commodities, to be exchanged. In the world of the film we get two sides of Barbie, there is the Barbie Land Barbie in which there is a Barbie that can do anything, and there is the real world Barbie, where Barbie is defined not by her capacities, what she can do, but by her appearance, what she looks like. It is on arriving in the real world that Barbie finds herself not as an object of little girl's dreams, but the object of male fantasies. (As A.S. Hamrah points out in this great roundtable discussion of the film, the patriarchy that Barbie is subject to is incredibly mild and gentle, more befitting a cartoon world than the real world). If I wanted to add another grad school reference, namely Jean Baudrillard, I would say that Barbie's conflict is less between use value and exchange value as it is between use value and sign value, between what Barbie can do and what she signifies, what blonde hair, impossibly long legs, and gravity defying curves signify. To put it back in Irigaray's terms, her capacities might define what she is capable of, but her appearance for men defines her place in society. As Irigaray writes, "just as, in commodities, natural utility is overridden by the exchange function, so the properties of a woman's body have to be suppressed and subordinated to the exigencies of its transformation into an object of circulation among men." Use Value/Exchange Value, the two sides of the commodity are dominated by exchange value just as women in society are dominated by the demand to be seen, and exchanged, by men. Upon arrival in the real world, Barbie and Ken learn that making Barbie role models for every career has not ended patriarchy. Barbie and Ken react differently to the persistence of patriarchy. Barbie is horrified and confused. Ken is happy and excited. Ken finds himself being respected just because he is a man. He immediately hatches a plan to bring the patriarchy to Barbie Land with the help of some books checked out from the library. (I thought for a long time about what this particular plot point reminded me of, a story where two characters have opposed reactions to the new world they are transported to, and eventually I thought of Time after Time, The film in which H.G. Welles and Jack the Ripper end up time traveling to the seventies. Welles is horrified of the lack of social progress while Jack the Ripper revels in the violence of the twentieth century. For sake of this digression, and because I really love that film, I include the following clip.)
Back to the film in question, and skipping several plot points, by the time Barbie discovers the source of her angst, an adult playing with Barbies and returns to Barbie Land it has been transformed. The Barbie dream houses have all been remade into Mojo Dojo man caves for Ken and the Barbies have abandoned their various careers as veterinarians and the President to dote after their Kens, bringing them snacks and beer. The spell of patriarchy is broken, however, when Gloria (America Ferrara) , the adult from the real world who has brought anxiety to Barbie, spells out the contradictions of being a woman. This speech is the thematic and emotional core of the film. Since I found the whole thing online, I post it in its entirety below. "It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we're always doing it wrong.

You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can't ask for money because that's crass. You have to be a boss, but you can't be mean. You have to lead, but you can't squash other people's ideas. You're supposed to love being a mother, but don't talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people.""You have to answer for men's bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you're accused of complaining. You're supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you're supposed to be a part of the sisterhood.

But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful.

You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It's too hard! It's too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.

I'm just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don't even know."The speech is a long list of the "too contradictory" situation of women in the real world. In the film this bit of wisdom from the real world restores Barbie Land, frees Barbie from the rule of Ken. However, the film does not connect the contradictions of the real world to the contradictory unity of Barbie as a commodity, a commodity with use value, all of Barbie's various careers from doctor to president, and an exchange value, her appearance. In the film there are two worlds, Barbie Land defined by Barbie's capacities to do anything, and our world, where Barbie is defined by her appearance, but it never really reflects on the contradictory unity of those two worlds, on the fact that while Barbie dolls can do anything they still have to look like Barbie. Making a movie about Barbie is strange endeavor because the logic of Barbie is the logic of Hollywood. It is a world where women can be scientists and superheroes, at least some of the time, but in doing so they still have to look like at least one of the varieties of Barbie. Ability is subordinated to appearance, use value to exchange value.The film presents Barbie Land and the real world as two different realities, one dominated by the different abilities of Barbie and the other by the circulation of her appearance, but the reality of the commodity, of capital, is that use value and exchange value exists side by side even as they contradict each other. As Isabelle Garo puts it, "The originality of Marx's approach attaches to the dialectical nature of his analysis of contradictions, which is no mere juxtaposition of opposed tendencies: the capitalist labour process is not alienating in one respect and emancipatory in another, but it interweaves these two tendencies at the very heart of the labourer's individuality and of social relations."Or, to put it back in the terms of the film, it is not that one gets to choose between a land where Barbies are recognized for their abilities and one that they are reduced to their appearances but they are always both. This is the too contradictory situation referenced in Gloria's speech. The fact that the film does not connect these dots connects brings us back to the question the film asks but does not answer, why has a Barbie Land where dolls can be anything not transformed our world where women are all too often reduced to being dolls? That the film has no reflection on the failure of its own world of role models is its real limit. All Barbie the movie can do is diversify Barbie Land, adding a few different body types and a little more diverse product line, but it cannot address the question as to why all the positive role models in the world have not changed patriarchy. Perhaps that question is for the inevitable sequel.