The provision of career information and guidance throughout a citizen's life has become an issue of great importance worldwide, as societies prepare themselves to meet the challenges that the transition to knowledge-based economies represents. An unprecedented research effort has in fact been initiated by the OECD, which has distributed a dedicated questionnaire to 14 countries internationally in order to create a baseline of information on the current state of policy development in career guidance. That same survey instrument has been used by CEDEFOP to gather data on the remaining EU countries, and by the ETF in relation to 11 ACCs . The World Bank has initiated a parallel review in a number of middle-income countries, again using the OECD questionnaire. The thematic review by these key partners will lead to the development of the most extensive harmonised international database ever on guidance policy and practice. This synthesis report summarises the state of play in the development of career information and guidance in both the education and labour market sectors in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Experts from each of these countries have written a report, structured around the OECD survey and on the basis of their own knowledge of the field, often following extensive consultation with key partners. The broad purpose of this exercise is, first of all, to provide an account of the most recent and most significant developments, trends, challenges and major issues, as well as the strengths and weaknesses, of national career information and guidance systems and policies, in such a way as to render the data susceptible to comparative analysis. Secondly, the synthesis report aims to facilitate the generation of benchmarks, enabling the countries that participated in the review to gauge how well they are doing in career information and guidance provision in relation to other comparable countries, and to facilitate the sharing of good practice. Thirdly, the report should prove to be a useful tool for the development of policy, particularly as ACCs have acknowledged the centrality of lifelong learning in their strategic response to the challenges of integration in the global economy generally, and in the EU more specifically, and the value of career information and guidance throughout life for citizens within that context. The synthesis report consists of six sections, which closely follow the OECD outline in order to facilitate comparison between the different reports once these become available. In the Annex, experts responsible for writing up the detailed country reports have contributed a summary providing an overview of the key elements of the national arrangements for careers information and guidance, outlining the strengths, weaknesses, issues and challenges for their systems. The first section provides a background to the Commission's involvement in the career information and guidance review. It also outlines briefly the geopolitical, economic and cultural contexts of the 11 countries surveyed, particularly in so far as these impact on career guidance provision. The second section focuses on the policy challenges for career information and guidance in terms of national objectives. The latter include the upgrading of the knowledge and skills base of the population, with a view to addressing unemployment, to meeting the demands of knowledge-based economies, and to ensuring that the labour supply and demand are in harmony. Another set of challenges arises from a social policy context that seeks to ensure equitable distribution of education and employment opportunities, with guidance services having a key role to play as active measures in combating early school leaving, facilitating the integration of at-risk groups in both education and the labour market, and reducing poverty. Governments in ACCs – and to a lesser extent, the private sector – have acknowledged the important contribution that career guidance can make in reaching these educational, employment and social objectives, and indeed have launched several initiatives to underscore their commitment to the cause. Nevertheless, while the discourse around career guidance has intensified, it appears that in some cases that discourse has outstripped practice, and plans tend to suffer from a lack of implementation. The third section constitutes the heart of the report, as it considers several aspects that contribute to the more effective delivery of career guidance. An initial focus is the services provided in the education sector. Here attention is given to the extent to which guidance is a stand-alone activity offered infrequently and at key transition and decision-making points, which seems to be the key modality of provision when compared to other models where guidance issues permeate the curriculum. Attention is also given to the initiatives that help to connect the school with the world of work; to the instruments used in delivering guidance; to the groups that are targeted; and to the education sectors where services are non-existent (namely primary schooling), or where they are most present (secondary level), or where they are on the increase (tertiary level, including universities). A second focus is on the employment sector, and the extent to which adults receive guidance as they negotiate occupational and further education and training trajectories in a lifelong learning society. The synthesis report highlights the fact that most adult guidance is offered in the context of public employment services, and that it tends to be remedial in nature, narrowly targeted at unemployed people, with the immediate goal of finding them employment. Other key trends noted are the lack of cross-sectorial collaboration, and the minor involvement of the private sector in the provision of adult guidance, where at best they function as job-brokerage services. One aspect of guidance that has witnessed a great deal of development in most ACCs is the use of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) to ensure more effective and widespread provision of education- and career-related information to the community. There is also a gradual trend to increased input and involvement by stakeholders, and to a shift in the modality of service whereby clients are provided with the resources to assess their needs and aspirations, and to match these with employment opportunities. A key issue cutting across the whole of this section is the lack of a sound evidence base that would permit the evaluation of the effectiveness of the guidance service in reaching its objectives. Section four considers the human and financial resources dedicated to career guidance. In most ACCs, staff involved in offering guidance services have a higher level of education – often in psychology or the humanities – though not all have had specialised pre-service training in the field. Trends include increased opportunities for in-service training, and the gradual professionalisation of career guidance through the specification of entry and qualification routes, the articulation of clearly defined occupational roles, the drawing up of a formal code of ethics, and the formation of associations and networks that may have a research and training function. Most ACCs report that the profession tends to attract women in the main, and that the qualifications and training routes for staff employed in the education sector tend to be different from those for staff engaged in the employment sector. The information about the financial resources allocated to career guidance is extremely sketchy and inconclusive. Most of the budget for careers information and guidance services comes from the state, with few ACCs reporting any substantial investment in the activity by the private sector. Section five synthesises the observations made by experts from the ACCs in terms of the strategic leadership that is exercised in the field of career guidance, and of how this could be strengthened. Despite the fact that there have been several noteworthy developments, a general conclusion that can be drawn is that there is a need for stronger mechanisms to provide coordination and leadership in articulating strategies for lifelong access to guidance within a national policy framework that is both dynamic and adequately resourced. As things stand at the moment, career guidance still tends to be seen by governments as a marginal activity. There is also much scope for a more vigorous role for the private sector and stakeholders, in a field where, curiously, trade union input seems to be particularly weak. Little evaluation is carried out to monitor quality in service provision, or to measure effectiveness, particularly in relation to specific performance targets and outputs. While examples of good practice exist in a number of the countries surveyed, a more robust evidence base is required if guidance is to be provided in a way that responds to the distinct needs of a differentiated clientele. Section six provides a concluding note identifying the main challenges as well as the way forward for career guidance in the countries surveyed. While none of the ACCs on its own holds the key for addressing the most pressing issues that are identified, collectively they certainly provide a rich thesaurus of good practice from which policy-makers and practitioners can draw inspiration. ; peer-reviewed
Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: The emergence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has launched a global debate (digital or technological revolution) about a paradigm shift from an industrialised towards an Information Society. In the front of this debate lies the assertion that the application of ICT is the impelling factor of transformation which will result in far reaching changes within all parts of the economy, the society and the State. The State plays therefore an important role for this transformation. First, the creation of a 'New Economy' which stands for a branch of industry that develops and produces hardware, software and communication equipment and its penetration and application into the whole economy. The emergence of e-buzzwords such as e-commerce or e-business are related to the application of ICT within the economy. Second, after a laissez-faire policy implementation through the State, it has to care for social aspects such as to connect the society to the internet and create a digital literate society. This 'second stage' of the Information Society has its expression in the common used catchword 'digital divide'. Finally, the State itself comes under pressure to apply ICT within government institutions, expressed by the latest catchwords of e-government and e-governance. Their hype (chiefly technologically determined) can be equated with the emergence of the 'New Economy' within the global debate about the Information Society. Emerged from developed countries, e-government and e-governance experience an increasing use in developing countries. Their advocates (i. e. international development organisations) stress the catchwords for the purpose of poverty alleviation, improved living standards and economic growth, in developed and particularly in developing countries. Furthermore, both subjects of the thesis have started up a new tractive force within the debate of public administration reforms. Both can be summarised as ICT-led public administration reform. They are deemed to be an 'impelling factor of organisational change and transformation' of governmental institutions. Moreover, the literature concerning both catchwords, is full of positive expectations (i.e. enhance participation, accountability, transparency and overall democracy) and thus, they are seen as a medium to implement and support their theoretical concepts New Public Management (NPM) and Good Governance. Fairly few observations in developed countries stressed the significance of internal structures within governmental institutions which can influence the introduction of ICT in general and the developing countries. However, they are unrecognised within the debate of e-government and e-governance. Furthermore, the debate of these catchwords contains a lack of concern about and notice of a possible influence of internal structures of public administrations on the implementation of e-government and e-governance regarding developed and especially developing countries. Under this review and in bringing back the e-government/e-governance debate into reality, the central question of this thesis is: which preconditions have to be considered before the implementation of both catchwords in non-Weberian bureaucracies in developing countries? In answering this question, the case of Indonesia is taken as a basis because it is planning to implement an extensive e-government project since the end of 2001. The thesis will reveal that an ICT-led public administration reform through e-government or e-governance will certainly fail, as long as the developed preconditions in the constructed test model are unrecognised. E-government and/or e-governance will reinforce and strengthen existing internal structures within public administrations instead of transform them towards the normative concepts. In approaching the central question, the thesis is compiled as follows: First, chapter one discusses the catchwords' theoretical background under consideration of ICT and their general critiques. Then, the catchwords themselves are defined in the scope of the Information Society and their present critiques. Both sections expose the necessary preconditions for the implementation of e-government and e-governance. The preconditions are: The networking effects (totality of integration), the analysis of internal structures of public administrations (micro-level) and the analysis of related actors' interests (macro-level). From this point of view, chapter two constructs a test model where these more broad preconditions are substantiated and operationalised through the application of several theories. Chapter three applies the test model to the case of Indonesia. On the macro-level the theory of bureaucratic developmental State by Elsenhans is applied with an emphasis on the ICT sector. This section reveals that on the supply side within the ICT sector there are existing tendencies where indigenous and non-indigenous conglomerates regain there position on the economy, namely on the emerging ICT sector and their influence on IBRA (Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency). Furthermore on the telecommunication sector there exists a duopoly of State-owned companies. Both findings are related to a segmentation of the State Class which favours more indigenous conglomerates instead of non-indigenous as in the pre-Soeharto area. The demand side of ICT is summarised through the analysis of the stage of networking effects. It includes quantitative indicators from 1997 to 2001 and policy indicators. It emphasises that at the present stage of networking the internet is biased towards an educated high-income group within the Indonesian society. The speed of developing a 'connected society' is reduced by weaknesses in policy formulation, implementation and monitoring. On the micro-level the duality of structure by Giddens and applied by Killian/Wind (1997) is used. This analysis concludes that the mesh of formal and informal structures and the old vision of political thinking lead to a concentration of power, authority and control over resources in the hands of top officials who are part of the State Class. With the emergence of ICT a new powerful group within the public administration can evolve which will challenge existing power and authority holders. Thus, in stabilising and guaranteeing their traditional economic and informational resources, the patrons (top officials) have to co-opt the ICT unit (new powerful group) to obtain control over the access, transfer and selection of information. The thesis finishes with a conclusion that emphasises important questions which should borne in mind before implementing e-government and/or e-governance. Table of Contents: Table of Contents AcknowledgementsI Table of ContentsII List of FiguresV List of TablesVI IntroductionVII 1.E-Government and e-Governance Against the Background of Their Theoretical Classification1 A.Theoretical Classification: New Public Management and Governance2 I.New Public Management2 a)Reasons for the Adoption of New Public Management2 b)Objectives of NPM3 c)Raise the Issue of Internal Structures in Developing Countries5 d)ICT as Driving Power for Civil Service Reforms in Developing Countries?8 II.The Concept of Governance10 a)The Basics10 b)The Emergence of Networking within the Concept through ICT12 1.Characteristics of Networking12 2.Tendencies so Far13 3.Critical Issues14 B.Definitions in the Scope of the Information Society16 I.Framework of the Information Society17 a)Technological and Economic Dimensions18 b)Policy Dimension20 II.E-Government22 a)Definition and Orientation in the Scope of e-Buzzwords22 b)Reasons for the Adoption of e-Government Concepts25 c)Objectives of e-Government26 d)Barriers or Challenges: Do Structures Matter?27 III.E-Governance29 a)Definition of e-Governance29 b)Reasons for the Adoption of e-Governance Concepts31 c)Objectives of e-Governance31 d)Barriers or Challenges: Do Structures Matter?33 C.Further Development? A Provisional Result34 2.Preconditions of e-Government/e-Governance for Their Implementation: Constructing a Test Model38 A.The Macro-level: The Bureaucratic Developmental State38 B.The Micro-level: Theory of Structuring40 C.Networking Effects: Summary of Quantitative Indicators and the Policy Environment42 3.Testing the Model: The Case of Indonesia46 A.Why Indonesia?46 B.Polit- and Socio-Economic Conditions in Post Soeharto Era and Networking Effects48 I.Reinforcing Economy: Government-Business Networks and ICT48 a)The Government-Business Networks in Indonesia49 b)The Destruction of Conglomerates by IBRA52 c)The ICT Sector and Telecommunication Market: Conglomerate's Impetus and State-owned Duopoly56 II.Unconnected Society: Multiplicity of Divide59 a)The Development of the Telecommunication Infrastructure59 b)Evaluating Networking Effects63 C.The Public Administration in Indonesia69 I.Civil Service Reform in Post-Soeharto Era70 a)Decentralisation Reform70 b)ICT-led NPM Reform71 II.The Ascendancy of Duality of Structures Within ICT-led Reforms73 a)Following Old Visions: Political Thinking in the Public Administration74 b)Backing the System: Formal Structures76 c)Human Factor: Informal Structures80 D.Summarising the Test Results84 Conclusion86 AppendixVI BibliographyIX Eidesstattliche ErklärungXXIII
Part one of an interview with Settimio "Babe" Pellechia. Part of this interview has been redacted as per Mr. Pellechia's wishes. Topics include: Family history. How his parents came to the United States from Italy and settled in Leominster, MA. His father's work at the Leominster Button Company and then as an ash collector. Babe's memories of growing up in Leominster during the Depression. His father's construction work. The work his siblings did. What it was like for Babe working with his father on construction jobs. How his brothers turned the construction business into a concrete block manufacturing business. The different businesses Babe started and worked in. What the Lincoln Terrace neighborhood was like when Babe was growing up. His mother mainly spoke Italian and knew very little English. Speaking Italian in the home. What his mother was like. The types of food his mother would prepare. Babe's work in the motel business. What life was like when Babe was running an ice cream shop and a motel. His children's education. ; 1 BABE: And [DeMazzio]… [Icelano], and then after would actually be Joseph… Enrico. LINDA: Enrico? BABE: Enrico. LINDA: Enrico. BABE: Uh oh, we got caught. Enrico, and then myself, and then Olga. LINDA: Hi, I'm Linda. SPEAKER 3: Hi nice to meet you. BABE: Now there wasn't -- of course Dave passed four years ago. There was another DeMazzio [unintelligible - 00:00:53] Icelano. LINDA: Oh, there were two others that died? BABE: Well, they died at the age of three and one in the same weekend. LINDA: Okay. BABE: Before the others. That's why they renamed the others. LINDA: They renamed -- so. I'll put that in here there were two others. You want that in there? There was another one DeMazzio that died and they named it the next one DeMazzio. And Icelano was one that died, and they named the next one Icelano. SPEAKER 3: I would like that in there. LINDA: Okay. SPEAKER 3: [Unintelligible - 00:01:21] you should have hired her. LINDA: How are you, Tina? TINA: Oh good. I'm… LINDA: Now, your marriage. BABE: Now, there's a bad part. You had to spoil it. October 5, 1945. I'm sorry, October 6, 1945. LINDA: Uh-oh. SPEAKER 3: I was just waiting. I didn't want to say anything. LINDA: October 6, 1945 and you married Augustina, what? SPEAKER 3: Traini. BABE: T-R-A-I-N-I. 2 LINDA: Augustina Traini. BABE: This comes out of that because [unintelligible - 00:02:01] that's part of the book [unintelligible - 00:02:05]. SPEAKER 3: Babe, you're going to have to do this because -- I'm sorry, I have a class. I'm teaching down the college, so… BABE: What was that last one? LINDA: Your children, the names of your children. BABE: Okay, Linda… LINDA: Another Linda. BABE: And Barry David. LINDA: And Barry David. Residential history. Now, you lived on Grove Avenue. BABE: The different places we lived? Well, we started in Lincoln Terrace where I was born, and Miller Street, [Union] Street. After Union Street we went to Sterling, Westminster, to Grove Avenue, and then over here. LINDA: Norfolk, okay. BABE: I missed one, Litchfield Street. LINDA: Where was that at? BABE: That would before Union. LINDA: Litchfield? BABE: Litchfield. Is it recording now? LINDA: Yes. BABE: Then I can't joke as I go on. LINDA: Oh, you can joke. I just wanted to make sure that… BABE: Had I graduated it would've been the class of '40. LINDA: Okay. Work history. What did you do? Your father? BABE: What did I do? I started with contracting with my father. My father was a contractor, so I fit in that very good. And then I was self-employed in the following businesses: Babe's Ice Cream, Dennison Motel, West [unintelligible - 00:04:06] Motel, and Babe's Miniature Golf, subdivision of the real estate [unintelligible - 00:04:07] houses. LINDA: Subdivision of real estate? For housing? 3 BABE: Mm-hmm. That's all I did. LINDA: What about Blocks? BABE: Yes, true. That was another corporation. These were all my own. Blocks was a corporate… LINDA: That was with your father? SPEAKER 3: At least she remembered. LINDA: Contracting with father, Blocks -- was that the name of it? BABE: Well, Blocks was the name of the four brothers. SPEAKER 3: It's a great thing you guys are doing, you know. I'm so glad you got that older woman, that 100 year old lady, 106. Thank God you got her before she went. LINDA: We got a little bit. You didn't get to see her [unintelligible - 00:05:09]. SPEAKER 3: Not me. It was someone who was working before. BABE: To show that we're not always hiding. That first sheet down there, what's that say? SPEAKER 3: This one? BABE: Yeah. SPEAKER 3: The Joy of Growing Up Italian? BABE: No, no, the one above it. SPEAKER 3: American? BABE: No, what's the next one you have there? SPEAKER 3: This one, the Americans? BABE: Oh, that's what you had. [Unintelligible - 00:05:26] LINDA: Babe, my next question here is St. Anne the Church, and that's St. Anna. You always belonged to St. Anna Church? BABE: Off and on. LINDA: Off and on. SPEAKER 3: Yeah. BABE: And now it's off. SPEAKER 3: I'm just going to say bye. And I'll see you. LINDA: Good luck. Nice meeting you. [Unintelligible - 00:05:58] 4 BABE: It was a pleasure. SPEAKER 3: I got pineapples for my still life. LINDA: You're going to paint still life? SPEAKER 3: No, they're drawing. It's a drawing class that I'm taking [unintelligible - 00:06:05]. BABE: Before -- do you want to shut it for just a minute? SPEAKER 3: Not on there, so… LINDA: Thank you, Ann. I would have checked. Okay, we have to start again. I'm Linda Rosenblum with the Center for Italian Culture. It's Tuesday, October 30th at 1:20 p.m. We're with Babe Pellechia, and Rosa Farrell is with me, and we're at his home at 27 North Fourth Drive in Leominster. Hi, Babe. Thanks for letting us come and interview you. I thought that you could tell me a little bit about your parents first. Are they the ones that came to Leominster? BABE: Yes. My father came to Leominster in 1906, and… how far do you want me to expand on that? What he did? LINDA: Sure. Well, first of all, where did he immigrate from? BABE: From Rome. LINDA: Rome? Did he travel with your mother? BABE: No, she came in 1909. LINDA: Okay. Who did he travel with? BABE: He just came on his own, I believe, at that time or whatever, people were coming. He left from Roma and landed in New York then came to Leominster. LINDA: Do you know why he came to Leominster? BABE: You know, that's one of the questions we never asked him, and I'm still trying to find out why he came to Leominster. It must be because of friends; that's where most of them was. You know, there was quite a colony of the Santa Maria Del Combo, and that's from the section of Italy where they came from. So it could have been from other friends where he… 5 LINDA: What do you call that, Santa Maria? ROSA: Del Campo. Santa Maria Del Campo. BABE: It's an Italian organization. ROSA: The particular region in Italy. LINDA: So, close to Rome? BABE: It's south of Rome. It's actually -- El Vita, and [unintelligible - 00:08:00]… which is part of -- give me a minute. My notes over there, please, these little papers here. It's [unintelligible - 00:08:17] Costa Lata. C-O-S-T-A, L-A-T-A, I believe it is. And that's where most of them came from. LINDA: And I had just read in some of the papers over here that he studied industrial agriculture when he was in Rome? Did you know that? BABE: He was a farmer, whatever that may mean. You know, like I say, [unintelligible - 00:08:41]… authority, and that sometimes these things happen like a good friend of ours that was a garbage collector, and he did wonderful things. The city of New York gave him an award, and they said he is a sanitation engineer. And the guy got up and says I am a garbage collector. So I don't think he did much studying at that age because there was -- things were pretty rough there in Italy. LINDA: Did he ever tell you any stories of Italy? BABE: Oh yes. LINDA: Would you like to share some? BABE: Well, he would say the way they used to work and so forth, and their living conditions, which was pretty rough at that time. That was the reason why they came here. Of course, supposedly our roads were paved with gold, and that's out there. But he was always a very hard worker and always wanted to do more, learn more, do more, which he did do in his life. Like the first thing he did when he came in to Leominster was he headed down to Leominster Button Company, which is near, 305 Whitney Street, and they're called [unintelligible - 00:10:01] now. And he was a rubber of buttons and combs. They used ashes, and it's surprising that 6 they [unintelligible - 00:10:11] health in that year one of the filthiest jobs that -- the men worked, and this is outlined -- let's see, this is put out by the Board of Health of Massachusetts. LINDA: So he was called a rubber? BABE: Mm-hmm. LINDA: Did you remember him explaining what he did? BABE: Well, what it is, you take the buttons or the combs or whatever they're working on [unintelligible - 00:10:37] was turtle, made from turtle then [unintelligible - 00:10:39], and what the ashes and what the wheels going at the RPMs that it does go, and the water, that polishes up, really polish it. But of course if you got water and ashes and a wheel going you know what that does to the person, and that's what he did for a few years. Surprisingly though in 1914 he sold that fine ashes -- this was a business for him. LINDA: So he realized that there was a use for that ash. BABE: Mm-hmm, and they got him out of that filthy working conditions. LINDA: I'm wondering what does an ash dealer mean? What would he do with the ashes? BABE: You go around and pick up the ashes from people's home, 10 cents a barrel, bring them down and screen it through a screen that water won't go through, and that's what they used for rubbing. That's the compound that they used for rubbing these plastic -- not plastic but the horns or hooks or whatever they were doing. LINDA: Did he get that idea from someone else, to go and collect the ash? BABE: Well, he got the idea from being in business. He got some wagons to collect the ashes, which were -- and the rubber district was a good business at the time, and then he felt that he had that, why not screen the ashes and sell it to the industries, which he did. Another byproduct of that too that the -- when you screen the ashes you always get the coal that never burnt, and half of Lincoln Terrace was the Italian Colony. He used to go down and pick up the coal, and it kept a lot of people warm up there 7 at that time, so that they would go down -- it was on Middle Street where they did that. So [unintelligible - 00:12:33] he helped out a lot of people by letting them go and they go through these screenings and pick out all the little black diamond gold that heats the house, and that was it. LINDA: So this 75 Lincoln Terrace, was that where you lived, or … BABE: That's where I was born, and that's where we lived at the time. LINDA: So he actually -- I just want to make sure that we get this on tape, so sorry to keep asking you… BABE: That's all right. LINDA: It's an old art, and it's not easily explainable. So he would go around to people's homes, or… BABE: Yes. Because everybody burnt coal in those days. You'd call up and you'd go there and then take the barrels out where -- which as he said was very, very heavy, because you'd either have to go up the stairs if they didn't have an outside door or to the bulkhead or something like that, and he aggravated at some people to get more ashes in the barrel [unintelligible - 00:13:26]. And so that's more weight, and then you couldn't screen it. Other than that he had the horse and wagons, put them on, bring them down -- the screening plant was on Millet Street, which is just off of Lincoln Terrace, and there he would screen what he picked up from the people's homes and separate it and sell the extra fine screened ashes to industry. And he shipped it to a few places all over the United States at the time. LINDA: Where did he get the money to begin this type of a business? BABE: By what most foreigners other than Puerto Ricans, saved their money [unintelligible - 00:14:09] saved their money and do it that way. LINDA: So at this time was he married? BABE: Probably should strike that out. That isn't too nice to say, but it's already on tape. 8 LINDA: Well, it's going to be edited. BABE: Okay. LINDA: What did I ask -- was he married to your mother by this time? BABE: Oh yes, he married my mother in 19… I'll put my glasses on. It would help, wouldn't it? LINDA: Okay, but we can figure out the dates later. BABE: Hmm? LINDA: We can figure out the dates later. BABE: Okay. LINDA: So we'll figure it out. So can you tell me a little bit about growing up on Lincoln Terrace? BABE: It's a good thing that we didn't know better. We enjoyed ourselves. It was a happy life and so forth, but I just wonder what would happen today if children had to go through what we did. Our fun would be getting in a sandbank and digging holes and whatever we could find, cups and make objects out of it. We'd play baseball. Whoever had the baseball and the bat would be the one that would pick the teams and when we'd play and how we'd play. And it was -- on today's standard it was really very, very rough living at the time. We had no entertainment to speak of. We hardly go to movies only it was only a nickel to go to the Gem Theater; we didn't get there too often. And the main highlight, or one of them, was at Christmastime at the -- one thing my father would do, he did everything for Christmas. You know, for food and things like that. And one of the big games as I remember would be getting the table like this and putting sawdust on it, and he'd hide coins in the sawdust, and you each had a shape to pick out a shape where you'd want hoping to get more coins than your brothers and sisters and so forth. So that was one of the fun things that we did. 9 But myself as I grew up I always had a tendency to follow him and get involved with his work. By that time [unintelligible - 00:16:36] he was in the contracting. He was more doing contracting at that time, became a contractor. So I always followed him around on jobs and things like that. So I learned more. I think even for myself I think I grew up real fast as far as a youngster. LINDA: Is that partly because you were the seventh son? BABE: No, because that's what I wanted to do. LINDA: Explain to me though what your name means again. BABE: Settmio is seven in Italian, and that's what it means. It's just that the Sette is seven, and that's where the name comes from. LINDA: So I forgot now. You're the seventh son or seventh child? BABE: Seventh son in rotation. LINDA: And how many sisters? BABE: Out of eleven. There was three girls in the family. LINDA: So by the time you came around your family already had six boys? BABE: Yes. I was the seventh and the last boy in the family. LINDA: So how were your brothers' lives different than yours? Were they harder? Were they… BABE: Oh yes. Well, my oldest brother was quite active in the business and so forth. He did all that. But then my next brother was a -- he worked very, very hard, and entertainment was out as far as that got. No vacations and things like that. It was strictly, as I remember it, when -- don't forget I'm entering about the time, well, 8 years old and that was the beginning of the Great Depression. I remember that quite well. The families were living on $12 a week, quite a few of them, which is what the welfare would give you. LINDA: So during the Depression your father was working? BABE: Whenever [unintelligible - 00:18:44] work. Yeah, he was doing contracting, whatever work he could get. On one job he was a supervisor for doing some work at city hall, and this is choosy but you have to do it 10 by the WPA program at the time. And to do a [unintelligible - 00:19:02] for city hall you did it at the time but they send them 30 men. You know, other people that were on the WPA, and they were on top of one another so my father had to let them be -- he had them closing doors, open doors and sweeping, everything but working because they were all in one another's way. But he was a supervisor at that time. But he did work like that there and then we plowed snow in the wintertime—there was income from plowing the snow, keeping the truck busy. Then he did odd jobs as they came up, but nothing -- it was a tough time. To backtrack, my father was very, very successful up until 1929. He owned 33 houses, and one by one he lost them all because people didn't have money to pay the rent and the banks wanted their money and they would just keep taking the house. You know, the foreclosing, keep doing that. LINDA: So he owned 33 homes and he lost every single one? BABE: All but the one we were living in. LINDA: Oh. BABE: Yeah. LINDA: How did he afford to buy 33 houses? BABE: Because he got to be a good-sized contractor. Like he built – he had the contract for all the concrete work in the Leominster post office, which was quite a job in those days. In 1926 he built the Main Street garage down on -- he did the fence around St. [Lido's] cemetery, which is quite a sizeable job, and he built numerous homes. In those days the first homes he built, regular homes like on Lincoln Terrace, there's probably eight homes up there that he built and was sold for the big sum of $2,800. LINDA: Wow. BABE: That's what they were at that time. In fact, numerous times, her dad would work for my father on his trade. You know, blocks and bricks, plastering 11 so that he and [unintelligible - 00:21:22], whenever they had a job that required brickwork and plaster and so forth, they were the first two that he called to do the work. So you see we would all get things first class with first-class people. But he couldn't -- the Depression was too much for everybody at that time, not only him. LINDA: Before we go on, let's back up a little bit. He came to this country, he started -- he used ash to rub buttons et cetera, then he opened his own business selling ash. BABE: He started that, yeah. LINDA: Right. So what kind of time frame are we talking about? BABE: I beg your pardon? LINDA: What's the time frame that we're talking about? BABE: [Unintelligible - 00:22:05] LINDA: Where was it, 1914? BABE: Yeah. LINDA: So he was selling ash in 1914, and then he went into the construction business? BABE: I can give you year by year. Let me show you. See, this is the -- you know, all the concrete work on this job there's his -- do you see that there on the box [unintelligible - 00:22:27] and Company? LINDA: Mm-hmm. Oh that's interesting. That's in '29, so this was a bad time. BABE: No, that was the good time; the beginning of the bad started right after that. So that the -- well, he worked the button shop, at Leominster Button… then he -- let's see as we go along here. Okay, now in 1913 he put a grocery store in the house. LINDA: He put a grocery store in your house? BABE: Well, [unintelligible - 00:23:14] to sell groceries, yeah. LINDA: So at 75 Lincoln Terrace? BABE: Yeah, that's still 75 Lincoln Terrace. And then of course he got both here the ashes and the grocery that he did. LINDA: So who's running the grocery store? 12 BABE: My mother. LINDA: Oh, was it your mother? BABE: Yeah. It's just on Lincoln Terrace a small street though, there wasn't -- no store, like you think of stores today. And it keeps on changing. Now right now, then in 1916, he added trucking to that too. LINDA: Trucking? So that's when he's an ash dealer though? BABE: No, he started with regular trucking after that. Sand and gravel and so forth at that time. LINDA: So again, he'd buy the sand and gravel, and then… BABE: No, we had our own pit. LINDA: You had your own pit? BABE: Yeah. He owned the land down on Miller Street, which was back in there. LINDA: So at least we understand the chronological. BABE: Hmm? LINDA: At least we understand it a little bit more, I think. I was going from the ash business right to building. BABE: [Unintelligible - 00:24:43]. LINDA: That makes more sense. We get into trucking, gravel and sand, and then construction. And he would build these buildings himself? BABE: He did all kinds of construction work. He even built the 38 -- he had the contract for the bridge on [unintelligible - 00:25:05] Street in Pittsburgh, which was Route 2A at the time. ROSA: He put the sand and the gravel and the ashes. Didn't he make his own blocks, make blocks for construction? BABE: Started making blocks around 1920. That was part of the… LINDA: So he would use the materials that he was gathering or buying and selling? So who would he sell the blocks to? Or would he use the blocks for his own building? BABE: He would use the blocks or sell them to whoever needed them. LINDA: And how would he make the blocks? 13 BABE: From our own pit, with the sand and gravel we had there on North Smith. He would make the blocks at that time. LINDA: Was it a mold, or did people do them… BABE: It's a machine, the machine that the mold would take care of it. LINDA: What was the name of the construction company? BABE: Pellechia and Company. LINDA: Pellechia? Did they have many people working? BABE: At some times he had quite a few people. LINDA: You don't have to worry so much about those dates, because I can look through that after. I'm just trying to understand how someone comes here from nothing and owns 33 homes. BABE: It was 1925. LINDA: Sand and gravel, ashes and store. So he goes from his buggy to his truck. Now, who's Charles? BABE: That's my oldest brother. LINDA: Your oldest brother. Okay, so your brothers went into business with him? BABE: Yep. LINDA: All six of them? BABE: We all worked for him. We all worked for him. We built a lot of gas stations, too. We had quite a team. Because amongst the team there was my father, who strictly did supervisory work, figured the job and things like that. And then we had Charlie, who was [unintelligible - 00:27:09] equipment as well as piping and so forth; Red was a great laborer; Rico was a carpenter first class; I was a mason, but what I picked -- I went to trade school to be a mason, you know. So when we would get on a job we were pretty much able to do quite a bit of it ourselves. LINDA: Now, who's Red and Rico? Are those brothers? Red and Rico? BABE: Brothers. LINDA: So those are nicknames? BABE: Mm-hmm. LINDA: For who? 14 BABE: Well, DeMazzio and Enrico. LINDA: And where did you get your nickname? BABE: Babe? After 11 kids it's time to call somebody Babe. No, my sister Lena gave it to me as she said when I was a baby at that time. LINDA: So how did your brother Red learn how to build pipe for -- what did you say that he did? BABE: When you run a gas station there's a lot of pipings involved. You know, water and gasoline and so forth. That was how he -- my brother Red was a hard worker and the one that never asked for too much and always -- education-wise Red was very, very limited. In fact, one of the side stories on that is he couldn't learn his general orders in the Army, and as a result of it, on his record, they said he would never be anything other than a private, and he couldn't get any Class A pass. So they went overseas, and he had two companies that he was in that were completely all injured or so forth, and he became the top sergeant of the whole group. So he knew what to do when it was important. He had the smarts for that, but as far as the learning he just didn't have the ability to learn. LINDA: So, how did you all learn and know -- was it, were you apprenticed? Did you have any kind of… BABE: No, no you just learned from one another. That's how [unintelligible - 00:29:19] families just keep going, and it was just, you know, you started off -- and our father knew what was what and we picked it up real fast and just kept going on it. LINDA: Can you tell me or share with me an early experience of working with your father? BABE: Well, I just started, just jumped and started doing it. In fact, I was 15 years old and I built the gas station on the corner of Walnut and Main Street in Leominster. I was supervisor and so forth because they had other jobs, but it all came natural. I just enjoyed it and I just did it. In fact, 15 when I was with the trade school, at the end of the school year I was in the brick mason department, and the instructor told me, "Don't come back; you're wasting your time." LINDA: Wow. And is that why you didn't go back? BABE: Well, I had to go to work. LINDA: Well, bring me back though to a day when you're working with your father. What was it like? Did you all kind of disperse and go to different jobs? BABE: Go to different jobs. He never drove, so one of us had to drive him. One thing about him he was very honest, and he was very thorough. In fact whether we were doing a job contractor or day work he would even tell us, you do the same thing whether it's day work or contract, even if you lose money. So you know, with a bringing up like that, you can't go wrong. So of course when I was very young and we were doing a lawn on Berne Avenue, and we had the big roll that you use to roll with, and I was very young and the roll was banking, and I'll never forget I came close to the bank and I couldn't hold the roll, and it went down and right through a flower garden. That was one of the unpleasant days. [Unintelligible - 00:31:33] let me know that I did wrong. He never hit us or anything like that. But I was worried for a while on that score. But then I'd go figure jobs and then he'd take me with him, because I'm the one that probably liked it the most and did it the most. That was good days. I enjoyed it. I never resented -- I think he taught us an awful lot, so we couldn't lose with that combination. And with a mother that would watch us like we're all just a baby -- whether you're six years old or 40 years old, she wouldn't go to sleep until you were in the house. It was good times under the conditions. As I said though, we didn't know better. If I did that like -- I know that many a times on the job when things 16 were that the -- come time to eat and all we had the money for was probably a cheese sandwich or something like, that you know, just limited, which is -- my son now later on was putting in overhead doors, he had a business he did that, and he was developing by the South Shore there and he came home and he said, "Dad, you know I forgot my money today," he says, "I didn't eat." "What do you mean you didn't have no money at all?" He said "Well, I only had a dollar." I said, "You know, you still could have had a cheese sandwich." He said, "Dad, those days are gone." So that's the difference. LINDA: So, when you'd go with your father to figure jobs you said, did someone call him? Not call him probably, but contact him to build something? BABE: Yeah, people would call from his advertisement. He did advertise, and they'd call him too. You know, a lot of people wanted bids; you have to bid it. So I'd go with him a lot of times and do the bidding and help him do the bidding and so forth. As I grew older. LINDA: So would he write a contract out and then have a company sign it, or…? BABE: Most of the time you just did it with the individual, it was all by -- in those days everything was with a good shake hand, which they meant. Very rarely was there a contract drawn up. Unless it was a big job, and then they'd have that. LINDA: And who was his competitor? BABE: A lot of competitors. There was a lot of competitors. Must have been -- Leominster probably had about 15 to 20 contractors at the time when it got to contracting. LINDA: Were there any other Italians? BABE: Oh yeah. There was probably half a dozen or so I think Italians. LINDA: Did your father apprentice anyone? Did anyone begin working with him and then venture out on their own? BABE: Well, we wouldn't call it apprentice. They just did that, which is the American way to do things. You never met anybody better than 17 themselves, so that -- yeah, we had somebody. I mean, that never bothered him. LINDA: How long did your father do this kind of work? BABE: Until he retired at about age -- he stopped working I think at about age 60. LINDA: And did the company survive? Did the sons take it over? BABE: Well, what happened, we kept the thing going quite a while. Even by that time, the brothers, we went into the manufacturing of concrete blocks on a real production method. We used to manufacture quite a few a day, and that became our sole business then. LINDA: So tell me about that then. BABE: Well, we came back from the Army, and with the -- three of us were veterans, and we got a loan from the government on the G.I. Bill, and we bought this production machinery and put up a whole plant and went into manufacturing of concrete blocks all type on full production. We used to make at that time about 4,000 blocks a day and get out -- plus the building supplies that went with it. And my father first saw [unintelligible - 00:36:15] he gave us the land and he also would watch the building of it when we did that. That was in 1945. In 1946 we started selling the blocks from our new plant. LINDA: And what was the name of the company? BABE: Blocks Incorporated. LINDA: Blocks Incorporated. And you and your three brothers started… BABE: And myself yeah. [Unintelligible - 00:36:42] Well, there were three veterans, but then one wasn't there. One didn't go into the Army and he was part of the corporation. LINDA: So four brothers plus yourself? BABE: No, four brothers. LINDA: Oh, four brothers. Three [unintelligible - 00:36:55]. So you would make these blocks and then sell them to… BABE: To whoever wanted to buy them. LINDA: Do you have advertisement for that company too? 18 BABE: Yeah. LINDA: Good. And how long did you do this? BABE: We did it up until 1979. LINDA: Oh, so what happened to the business? BABE: Well, at the age of all of us at that time it was time to liquidate it, and we did. We just sold off the -- we had an auction for the equipment, we sold the real estate, and by that time we were all -- other than myself all my brothers were ready to retire. Well, one other brother, the one next older to me, he had passed away. So it was just the two oldest brothers, and it was too much at that time to run the business of that, because we built another plant after that. The original plant was at -- our second plant we were doing 8,000 a day, so -- but it's, it was competitive, and getting out to sell them and everything else, it was quite a job. So I decided -- well, what happened was actually while I was out doing all my things at the time, I left. I was still part owner, but I left to do my motels and everything else with it, and they did get in trouble financially. And I went in and helped them straighten it out again, and when we straightened it out. That's when I told them we're selling the business, and so that's what we did. So we sold it in good graces [unintelligible - 00:38:47]. LINDA: So did any of your sons -- well, you have one son, but you must have some nephews. They didn't want to take over the business? BABE: We tried and it didn't work out. My son actually went to college and so forth, so he didn't fit into that. Then my -- there weren't too many boys in the family [unintelligible - 00:39:12], and Red had two boys, and one didn't want nothing to do with it all, and the other tried and he didn't like it. So it really was limited as to who could run it after that. LINDA: Now, did you sell the blocks locally or out of state, too? BABE: Well, out of state, New Hampshire, we sell New Hampshire. And we made a special block that we did one delivery in New York City with a special block, but we also had -- my brother had invented a new face for the blocks, and the -- it was a glazed block, and we did manufacture them, 19 and there are three school in Leominster have them. The Army has it in Leominster, and we sold a school in Gill, Mass. and [unintelligible - 00:40:07] and in Worcester, so that we did do quite well with that glazed block, which did very, very good. But like I say, age probably got that business why we finally sold it. LINDA: So the blocks though were they pretty standard size? BABE: They were all standard. LINDA: And then it only changed when your brother invented the glaze? BABE: Well, they were a standard block; it was just something added to it. LINDA: Added. Did he patent that invention? BABE: We worked on patenting it, but surprisingly when you patent something, there's always something close to it. In other words they did a whole lot of research on it and we didn't think it was patentable at the end, because the concrete goes way back year and years and years, and there's always somebody that did something close to it that you -- it just wasn't patentable. LINDA: So how did he develop the glaze? Do you know? BABE: Just working at it. In other words he just -- that was Joe, and Joe was the one in the family that was probably ahead on thinking of doing things and so forth. He was the one that always experimented, in other words, come up with ideas of doing special things. LINDA: So during the time as you're part owner of this company, you did other things. Can you explain? BABE: Did he do other things? LINDA: Yes. BABE: Yes, I did all those things that you wrote down in the book there. There were a few of them. LINDA: Yeah, I know. But could you explain some of them? BABE: Okay. What do you want me to start off? Which one, the first one, the ice cream place? 20 LINDA: Is that the first one that you started? BABE: Maybe I had a little of father in me that you do different things, you know. I went to an auction, and they had an ice cream machine, a brand new one, at the auction for sale, and I bought it for $1,000. And before I left, the salesman that sold it from the Mills Company came there and he found out that I bought it, and he offered me $1,500 for it. The minute he said that I immediately said if this thing is worth $1,500 to the salesman, I'm going to see what this machine will do. And I built an ice cream place around it. That was the beginning of Babe's Ice Cream at the time. LINDA: And where was that located? BABE: On Route 12. LINDA: Route 12. BABE: [Unintelligible - 00:42:44] started that, which is very interesting. We were going to open up on July 4th, and this was in 1950. On July 2nd it was one of those hot, miserable days, miserable, real miserable, [unintelligible - 00:42:56]. And this busload pulls in. There was 38 people on the bus, and one came out. They were monks from Rhode Island of the Vow of Silence, and one came in and he said could he please have 38 glasses of water. So my wife and I packed up 38 sandwiches, 38 ice creams, 38 cold drinks, and the bus leaves. And as the bus is going out of the circular driveway, there's a bus leaving, people just funneled in. And of course I knew most of them, and they said, "Babe, how can you be so lucky that you aren't even open and you get them by the busload?" not knowing what happened. And I said I hope I don't get too many busloads, I don't want to close before I get -- so that's how we started that there. But it growed real fast after that, just kept on growing and growing and growing. It meant nothing to sell a thousand ice cream cones on a Sunday afternoon. LINDA: So you knew nothing about ice cream? 21 BABE: I knew nothing about ice cream. I knew nothing about motels, and I built a motel and ran that. I bought another motel and ran that. But the -- I didn't know anything about subdivisions, but I did that. I think a lot of my father's in me. In other words, you just keep going. As long as you do what's right, work hard, you accomplish it. In other words I won't take no for an answer when it comes to trying to do business. Because I've had people, when I went into the [unintelligible - 00:44:41] and doing hardware, I didn't mention that one. When we were doing hardware, in other words it was on the wholesale level to sell to contractors. I did that, and that was very, very difficult because they felt that I should have went to school, you know, because you got to know what hardware's proper for certain jobs. You've got to know your fire codes and so forth. And a lot of people in the beginning wouldn't sell me. They said in other words we don't want to sell to you, you do things wrong and it could come back to us. So I made it clear to them if I got to go from here to California I'm going into the business and I'm going to buy the stuff. You're either going to sell it to me or somebody else is going to sell it to me. And what that did, I got them, built up that business, which was real good. So I just did it. I think maybe I was just blind. I just went into some of these things. We got kind of carried away. We're supposed to be talking on the Italian Colony, aren't we? ROSA: This is all part of that. LINDA: This is all part of it. But as far as getting the ice cream machine and maybe the motel, were you just in the right place at the right time? Just kind of… BABE: That's probably the story of my life, yeah. I think that -- I really believe the gift of the seventh son really played a part on me. Because everything always works out. 22 LINDA: So would you like to tell us a little more about Lincoln Terrace? You're the first person I've interviewed, I'm thinking, isn't it true that grew up on Lincoln Terrace? BABE: You read this book? LINDA: I've looked at it. I haven't finished it. BABE: You haven't finished it? LINDA: No. BABE: Our family's mentioned in that quite a few times. But first of all he just about hit it on the way it was, you know. It was close-knit, Lincoln Terrace, and it was different than what today is. If you did something wrong and somebody scolded you and you went back and told your parents that the neighbor or whoever it was did this to you, you would get a call down again from him. It isn't that knock at the door saying what -- like today, you got assault and battery like that. In other words, they all watched one another. It was really a family unit up there. So you couldn't do anything wrong, and if anybody came on the street that wasn't part of the street, everybody knew about it and they watched them. So it was quite a neighborhood, it really was. And like I say, we enjoyed the -- now, the early part of it is I can look the -- they all had gardens the way they all had pigs in the back of the house, and when the fall of the year come they would all slaughter and they'd all help one another. I got that on film by the way, 8 mm. LINDA: What, the slaughtering the pigs? BABE: Yeah. LINDA: Oh, that's interesting. Now, was there a smokehouse? BABE: No. They did things themselves. They take the hams and they make the prosciutto out of those. You know how they do that? LINDA: Nuh-uh. BABE: Actually, they take the hind of the pig, and they really salt it and pepper it, all that it will take, and then they put it in most cases in the cellar up 23 against some beam or another beam, and then with a hydraulic jack or whatever kind of a jack, they keep squeezing it until the ham starts this big until it [unintelligible - 00:48:37] that big, but the salt and the pepper is actually curing it out. You heard of that, did you? No? So they did that. They made the meat, they made the sausages. Very few people used to cook the blood. We never did that, but a few of them did and make the… use that. But the whole pork chops, the whole thing, they saved every bit of it. LINDA: Now, did most people have a pig? BABE: In Lincoln Terrace they did. LINDA: They did. BABE: Yep, in those days. LINDA: So they'd all get together on one day and … BABE: They always worked together. Helped one another do things. LINDA: Was that day called something in particular? BABE: No. LINDA: No. BABE: No, and then like the -- I got a large grapevine. See, the whole hill did [unintelligible - 00:49:37] grape used to make his own wine. Then they all had big gardens. And another thing the Italian women up on Lincoln Terrace, on tomato time they would actually make tomato paste. I don't know if you ever saw that. They would have all these boards of pine nice and clean, they spread all the tomato on it, and then put one of those nets on it that they used to cover babies in a carriage to keep the flies out and so forth. And just by working that they made their own tomato paste. And they'd do all different things like that, you know, which they don't do today. It's easier to go to the store today and buy it. 24 LINDA: So when they slaughtered the pig and they made the prosciutto and et cetera… BABE: [Unintelligible - 00:50:24]. LINDA: When they slaughtered the pig, how did they store the -- how did they store what they had made? BABE: Mostly in the cellar. The meats [unintelligible - 00:50:34] like they'd make the sausage and they'd hang them up to dry. They had them covered and they'd hang them up to dry, and they would dry until they dried out with the [unintelligible - 00:50:45] it was all ice boxes what they had then, you know. But they'd have a place in the cellar which was damp enough or so forth that would last -- none of it wasted; they certainly ate it all before anything got to be wasted. LINDA: Was there any trading between families? BABE: I wouldn't say so, no. They had it all. They would give it to somebody like that, but there wouldn't be any trading. If somebody needed something, they would give it to them. LINDA: For some reason I can't remember what you call this, but when you dig out, let's say, a little hill when you keep food in it, what is that called? BABE: They didn't do that. They had it all in the cellar. ROSA: They just used the cellar cold. They can't do it today -- you can't do it today with the heat in the houses, but in those days the cellars were damp and cold sausages could be strung up in the rafters. And prosciutto. They made their sausages with the tubing, I remember seeing them. LINDA: Was that a long process, making the sausage? BABE: Well you got a 300-pound pig; you got a little work to do. You've got quite a bit of meat there to… ROSA: They'd grind it … LINDA: Now, was that woman's work, men's work? BABE: Oh, they all worked. The women did the cooking. They did a lot of that there, and the women probably -- some of the women would put the 25 [rosin] in the hot water to clean the hair of the animals. Hot water and rosin [unintelligible - 00:52:29] take the hair all off. LINDA: Was the skin used for anything? BABE: Yeah, they cooked that up. ROSA: Salt pork. BABE: Yeah. LINDA: So that's really what salt pork is? BABE: There was no waste. Probably threw the hoof away, didn't use that. ROSA: The head. LINDA: Did they throw the head away, or did they use part of it? BABE: Some people ate the head. Yeah some did. We didn't. ROSA: The ears, too. BABE: They all had chickens. LINDA: [Unintelligible - 00:53:05] throw the head away! BABE: And they all had chickens. In fact, my mother had her own little hobby [unintelligible - 00:53:11] times she had chickens and the eggs, and you know, feed the family, and if there's any eggs over she would sell them to the neighbor. So she would do that. My mother never learned to speak English too well even though she did the answering for my father, but it was -- my father could interpret what she would say even though she was saying it wrong. Like there was a company called Bowen and Fuller in Leominster, and my father always said this to people that they called my mother and have your husband come, we've got some deliveries to make, and she asked what company they said Bowen and Fuller. She said "Damn Fool?" He said no, Bowen and Fuller. She asked two or three times and yes. So my father came home, and she said, "Damn Fool wants you to pick up." So he knew them when he went there. The guy says, [unintelligible - 00:54:09] your message and the guy says yes. But they did understand one another. Of course the guy knew that she wasn't doing it to insult him 26 or anything. She didn't know any different on that. But she never learned the -- very, very little English. My father, working with the French people, he learned to speak French, and he learned the English right away, and of course he had the Italian. LINDA: Well, what about you and your brothers and sisters? Did you speak Italian? BABE: We understood it and so forth. They can speak it, but very [unintelligible - 00:54:50], and I can understand quite a bit what happens. Incidentally the three oldest children went to a French school at that time, and they learned French also. LINDA: What school? St. Cecelia's? BABE: St. Cecelia's, yeah. They went three years and then the French people needed a school for themselves and they transferred to St. [unintelligible - 00:55:14] school. LINDA: Now, I heard some people tell me that they weren't allowed to speak Italian in their homes after they learned English at school. Was that true for your family? BABE: Nope. No, we always spoke it. But my wife now, when she came over -- she came from Italy, and I didn't -- and when she came home with the school -- she's not from here, she's from Pennsylvania. But she refused to learn English until the teachers got -- one friendly teacher, "But why don't you want to learn?" She says, "I won't be able to speak to my mother and father then." She thought she'd lose the English. And after that day she made all kinds of honors in school. So she -- but in our house, now, my children, two of them they didn't speak -- we never spoke in Italian, but -- so we [unintelligible - 00:56:12] secret family thing when you're in front of the children, we'd speak Italian, my wife and I, not to be heard, but that's all done now because my daughter went out and became a professor of Italian history, so that brought us out. We can't even… 27 LINDA: So was it important for your family, your father and mother, for their children to assimilate, to become more American? BABE: We never discussed that. I don't think that ever came a thing -- you do the best you can do. That was about the biggest teaching that my father ever gave. Do the best you can do, stay out of trouble. And the other thing he always was a stickler for was he said you always respect authority. He said if someone does something wrong you respect it, you do it when you come home, you tell me about it, and I will take care of it. Of course it was just [unintelligible - 00:57:06] he never did anything everything after it, but meanwhile he kept peace in the family. LINDA: So he didn't want you to confront an adult; he would. BABE: Nope, and you know, in most cases you don't win with authority. You listen to it, and that's it. LINDA: So tell me about your mother. What was she like? BABE: My mother was strictly a loving for her children. She'd do anything for us. To quote my wife, which we shouldn't put on tape… LINDA: You don't want to? BABE: No, I'll tell you what my wife says about my mother. If it's not on tape. LINDA: If it's not on tape, okay. BABE: One of the things that happened though before [unintelligible - 00:57:56] we got married, my wife would go with my sister shopping and so forth. And in our house everybody -- they're all married now, but everybody would end up at the kitchen table at nighttime after the day's work, and my mother would -- you know, there was just the two of them, my mother and father at home, but there was always two or three pounds of spaghetti made, and we'd all eat there and then go home and say we're not hungry. But there was this one day we're there and my wife and my sister went shopping. They were late when they came in, so my brother-in-law and I said so let's have some fun. So the minute they came in, I says "Tina, where have you been? You know I worked all hard all day. I come home 28 and I want to eat." And so she says, "Well, we shopped." And my mother spoke up, she says, "That's not right. You got to feed your husband when he comes…" Well, then my brother-in-law to my sister says the same thing, you know. And my mother spoke up, and maybe she had something important to do. Same conversation. So -– but she was [unintelligible - 00:59:07] she was sick for a while. She had lost one eye too, and so for a while she was a -- but she could find -- after that she could find things that we couldn't, with that one eye. We would lose something and she would find it, even a pin or something like that, but… LINDA: Did she come from -- she came from Italy but differently than your father? I mean … BABE: Three years later. 1909 she came. LINDA: Did she come directly to Leominster? BABE: Well, she landed in Boston. Now, how she got there from Italy I don't have any information on that. LINDA: Do you know how your parents met each other? BABE: Probably out in the farm someplace, I would guess, because that's all they did; they were farmers. Even the woman worked the farms out there and so forth. So, a lot of them out there worked in [unintelligible - 01:00:03] actually who worked for the people that owned the land. LINDA: Where? BABE: In Italy. LINDA: Oh, they knew each other in Italy? BABE: Oh yeah. LINDA: Oh. 29 BABE: When she came here she -- well, that picture there shows her when she came in 19 -- with her children there, that's the picture when she came in 1909. LINDA: Okay. BABE: One of those. LINDA: Okay, so they knew each other in Italy? BABE: Yeah, they got married in Italy. They got married in Italy. LINDA: Then came here separately. BABE: Yes. LINDA: Not at the same time? BABE: No. LINDA: Okay, I didn't understand that. Did they have children [unintelligible - 01:00:45]? BABE: Yeah, yeah. This one here it was 1910 when she came. There was three of them. There was the three. They would be 1, 2, 3 that she came back with. Of course she came here in 1909, 1910 there was another one added at that time. LINDA: So your father came without the family first and then brought them over? BABE: They all did that. They all boarded. If you will look at the directory, they all, the Italians all boarded someplace. They -- none of them had their own home or anything like that in the beginning, so their wives came over and then they would find a place. LINDA: So growing up and you're working with your father, did you work six days a week? BABE: Sometimes seven. Not too often, but sometimes we'd have things to do and we'd do it. So in other words you have to realize when I got to the working age, I was in the Depression, actually. So you took it as you could get it as far as work is concerned. LINDA: Did you work out during the daylight hours? 30 BABE: Oh yeah. We generally got home [unintelligible - 01:02:06] unless there was an emergency job you stayed later. We'd get home about five, five thirty from a job, start at eight o'clock in the morning. LINDA: And then you would eat dinner with your parents? BABE: Mm-hmm. LINDA: And who made the dinner? BABE: My mother. LINDA: What about your sisters? BABE: They were married by that time. Don't forget, they were completely -- they were much older than I was, so they were -- by the time that I started eating, you know, they were married. LINDA: So tell me what kind of things you ate. The types of things your mother made. BABE: All the good things that I like. LINDA: Which is what? BABE: She made spaghetti, pasta [la jour], even polenta. I know you know what that is. LINDA: Mm-hmm. BABE: In those days that was a poor man's meal. Today you go in restaurants you pay a fancy price for it. LINDA: I should have said no, I don't know what it is so you can explain to us on tape. I'll have to get that sometime. So what's polenta? BABE: Lentils, I like lentils. She used to make that, different soups. I'm sorry, what did you say? LINDA: What's polenta? What is it? BABE: Corn -- mush is what it is, actually. LINDA: How would she serve that? BABE: We'd put it on the board, on the table, you spread it all over a board, and then what we'd do, the fun we'd have is try to decide what we're going to carve, and everybody would just carve whatever shape we wanted. And another thing she'd do too at times would be so we would eat all of it, 31 she'd put meat in the middle, and you had to work your way. If you didn't work your way you wouldn't get to the meat. You know, whether it was a meatball a piece of pork chop something like that. LINDA: So it was kind of polite eating. You eat from the outside in? You don't just dig in. BABE: No, no you have to work your way in, clean the road as you go. But on holidays, surprisingly, my father would do the cooking. I know on Easter especially he would make the ham and fix it all up and put the garlic in it and so forth. He always did that. LINDA: Now, during the Depression, did you eat meat at all, or was that really a luxury? BABE: It was a luxury. LINDA: Were different foods prepared on a Sunday compared to the rest of the week? BABE: Yes, Sunday you would have a bigger meal. And during the height of the Depression, we'd probably get oranges at Christmastime, maybe a banana at Christmastime. The rest of the year you didn't need it, so you didn't get it. LINDA: Do you want to go back to your jobs then? BABE: My jobs? LINDA: Yeah, jobs. BABE: Such as? LINDA: Or your companies or your interests. Like the motels. How did you get involved in the motels? BABE: Well, we went out to get some materials. It was in New Jersey, picking up some pallets for the block plant at that time, and it was next door to a motel, the pallets and so forth, and I started talking to the fellow and so forth. And [unintelligible - 01:05:44] the business, and now I had the ice cream place, I had the tourist stopping, so the brain just clicked in it would be nice to have a motel in Leominster. We had none. That was the first one. So that's what I did. I built a motel. 32 LINDA: Where did you build it? BABE: On Route 12 right next to my ice cream place. So that -- I didn't have any money at that time, so that was a problem. I went to the bank, it was the first bank I went to, told them I wanted $25,000, to borrow $25,000, said what are you going to do and I explained. They said you can't do that for that price. I said oh yes, I can I buy all my materials wholesale, and I do all the work myself. And he said well, in that case you have to give me a list of what it's going to cost you because I can only loan you 80 percent of what you're going to pay. So my answer to him was you really don't want me to build the motel, do you? But I fought it. Like I say, I made up my mind I was going to fight it and I did, so I just kept going and we built it. LINDA: So did you end up borrowing the money from a bank? BABE: Oh yeah, I got money from a bank—not that bank though, another bank. But then I started with eight rooms and built another eight and built another eight, and then four more on that same site, and so that worked out good. That was a good business. LINDA: And you kept the ice cream business in addition? BABE: Yeah. LINDA: So who ran the motel? BABE: Hmm? LINDA: Who ran the motel? BABE: I did. There was nobody else to run it. My wife was busy with the children at that time. LINDA: I thought there were only 24 hours in a day! That's why I'm asking. BABE: Well, I still slept three hours. You get up in the morning at eight o'clock. About eight we'd go have some breakfast and then close about two o'clock. Three nights a week I'd make ice cream until about three or four o'clock in the morning. Then with the motel beside it, you get -- break up during the night, people checking in late, so that was the schedule for a number of years. 33 LINDA: Where were you living at this time? BABE: We built a house in back of the motel and ice cream place. LINDA: Okay. So did you advertise for the motel? BABE: Yeah, we did advertise on that. LINDA: So who was staying in the motel, people visiting? BABE: We had -- mostly it was a commercial motel and we had mostly salesmen, engineers, buyers. It was all very good class of business that we had, and tourists and so forth, but we had quite a reputation that we even had quite a few of the national companies that if they were within 50 miles of our place such as Gates Rubber from Colorado, Singer Sewing Machine, if any of their people were within 50 miles of our motel, we had direct billing with them, they'd stop with us. But we made it very, very comfortable for them, because we learned very early that a salesman or an engineer or anybody that's traveling alone is the most lonesome guy in the world. So the thing that we would do is if a guy comes in and he could be with the plastic industry, he's alone, somebody else we know is in the motel in the plastic business he's alone, we have them meet one another. They'd go out and from then on they'd come back, because they knew that it was always -- they were going to meet somebody there instead of just sitting in a room all night long. And we built up a wonderful business that way. In fact, even -- we had a regular customer of ours once got in an automobile accident, and he couldn't go back home and we were full, and we asked [unintelligible - 01:09:51] two people of other customers that one of our customers was in an accident and can't go home, would you mind packing up and leaving? They did. LINDA: Wow. BABE: You know, which is so unusual. We explained what it was, but even that was a family affair that they would. It was a lot of fun. We had a lot of 34 fun doing that. One of the regulars that came in would we would always be pulling jokes, stuff like -- one time he brought somebody in and my wife was in Florida with her mother at the time, so I don't know what made me do it, but this guy was saying I've got to meet your wife, I hear so much about it from the other guys. So I said, yeah, but you know, when you talk to her she's hard of hearing, so then I pick up my wife and I said this wonderful guy from Chicago is in room 9. Wonderful guy. He was doing management surveys for the [unintelligible - 01:10:58] on Adams Street. So I told Tina he's hard of hearing. So now when they come in, they're all there, because they always -- we had a lawn area that we sit at, and so I said, Tina there's the guy, so, "How are you," and they're hollering like two idiots back and forth, and everybody starts laughing. But it was good for a joke. But they all accepted it as such, and that's it. Now, the one I got to say on the ice cream place now, I'm going to take a [unintelligible - 01:11:30] had his favorite place. I gave ice cream to every church in Leominster but my own. We'll have to continue. LINDA: We were talking about you had a story about churches and giving ice cream. BABE: Yes, I gave ice cream to every church in Leominster but St. Anne's, my church. Because what would happen, even the synagogues, the Jewish would call up and they want ice cream, how much is it. And I'd say $5 a tub. When I'd bring it up I'd give them a receipted bill. My own people, when they'd call, they'd say, "Oh, we can buy it for $4.50," so I never had the opportunity to give it to them, right? LINDA: Really? BABE: That was in six years I think I gave to every church in Leominster but my own. Now, I never told them I was going to give it to them for nothing. They asked me what the price was. The price was $5 a tub. So I guess that's all right. We all still made it. 35 LINDA: How long did you keep the ice cream? BABE: From 1950 to 1958. LINDA: And what about the motel? BABE: Motel, sold that in '64. LINDA: You had two didn't you? BABE: Yep, sold the other one about the same time. The other one I bought. I didn't build the other one. LINDA: And what was that, West… BABE: West [unintelligible - 01:12:59] Motel. LINDA: Is that the one that's across from -- well, it's Sam's now -- I mean, not Sam's, Walmart. Is that the one? BABE: No, it's up further. It's at the junction of 110 and 12. LINDA: All right. So again, give me an idea of what a day was like for you when you owned both the ice cream shop and the motel. BABE: Hectic. Get up in the morning, help out at the place… you know, noon time was busy there and so forth. And then at night start checking in people at the motel, then come back and make the ice cream. Like I said, I did all my building in the wintertime, too. [Unintelligible - 01:13:48] like I built the motel myself, I did that all. And the other thing we did during that time again was one summer, which was really -- my wife got me involved, and we built -- with the people of Leominster now, they're very generous; we built a swimming pool for the Nazareth Home for Boys. So I'm the owner, I'm doing the blocks, and I'm doing all the rebuilding of it. And people always like to have fun, and I had fellows working for me, a police officer mowing my lawn at the motel and stuff. And I know that the day I laid blocks I was just about dead, and I come home and [unintelligible - 01:14:35] is really doing good you hired people to do work for you, you're getting lazy. 36 But that was all, it was a lot of work, just busy, busy. But I enjoyed it. I think someone said one time that work won't kill you, and it didn't. LINDA: It sounds like your wife was supportive. Very supportive. BABE: Yeah, she is. She did. She had to take care of the children, and she also, at the same time, she was taking care of her sister's. She was one of the waitress I had. She had to waitress, she took care of their two children too, then at night she would come up and help with serving customers. Although she was a troublemaker. She's the one that liked to joke with the customers. For example, we used to have -- a new product came out, the ketchup that you squeeze it, the pump it, they called it. On Saturday night we'd get those big gang of dancers come in, dress suits, ties. So this one guy was trying to get the ketchup on and it wouldn't work on a hamburger. We said, "Tina, why don't you throw these away? They don't work." So she says, "You don't mind if I squeeze it at you?" "Go ahead," he says, so of course, ketchup all the way down his face. She never worked on Saturdays, but one Saturday she's working and one of our good customers from Connecticut would come by every Saturday with his wife and family going to New Hampshire camping. I'm outside talking to the guys and he came out and said, "You know, I don't know who that new waitress you got, but you better fire her or you won't have no customers left." I said, "Which one?" I said, "I can't fire her, she owns it!" But it was always funny, and I think that's what kept it going. It wasn't -- we enjoyed it, and that's probably what kept us going. We didn't look at it as a job or as work. We looked at it as something to do, and we were happy while we did it. LINDA: Did you have many employees? 37 BABE: Well, probably on the weekends was the most. It was probably about eight or nine of us on a weekend working. LINDA: Working at the ice cream shop, or… BABE: As far as the motel, it only required -- two girls would work just in the morning. That was separate girls, you know. A few hours they would have the rooms all ready. Then my children, we had the miniature golf. LINDA: Oh, that's right did. You built the miniature golf next to the ice cream shop? BABE: Yeah. LINDA: Now, where did you get that idea? BABE: I saw one, and I thought it would be nice to have, so I built one. LINDA: So, again, would that be the first miniature golf place in Leominster? BABE: No, there had been one for years and years up on North Main Street behind the bowling alleys. The motel was the first one in Leominster. LINDA: Well, then tell me about building the miniature golf. You actually designed it and built it? BABE: No, I didn't design it. The people I bought the equipment from did the designing of it. But I built it, I put it in there. Everything was designed by them, and I bought all the fixtures and so forth from them. LINDA: And then your children worked there? BABE: Yeah. LINDA: So how did you and your wife feel about education for your children? BABE: We felt tops for education. We probably made a couple of mistakes educating our children. To be very honest, I think St. Ann's, my son went there, and I think that was a mistake because there was [unintelligible - 01:18:44] 60 kids in the first grade. And had he went to where I went to school, they had 11 children. It would have been almost like a private tutoring. So what we did with him to pick up, we sent him to Julie Country Day afterwards, which is a private school, and from there he went to Worcester Academy. LINDA: I guess I'm interested to know how something like that happens. 38 BABE: Like what? LINDA: Like that you went to the 9th grade, you said, and your father is an immigrant who came over here to work so hard, and you know, he may not have had much schooling, and then all of a sudden your son is going to Worcester Academy. BABE: Because I wanted him to go there. LINDA: Because you wanted him… BABE: Oh yeah. LINDA: And why did you want him… BABE: In fact, [unintelligible - 01:19:34] when people ask me what I did I say I'm a bum. And of course my son must have heard me two or three times and, I know when he was ready to go to college, he said, "Dad, I don't want to go to college. I want to be a bum." I said, "You're going to be an educated bum." And he went to college, which he did very, very good [unintelligible - 01:19:51]. But no, we felt that the he lacked the basic knowledge at the very beginning. /AT/pa/mlb/es
Empirical work in labor economics has focused on rent sharing as an explanation for the observed correlation between wages and profitability. The alternative explanation of risk sharing between workers and employers has not been tested. Using a unique panel data set for four African countries, Authors find strong evidence of risk sharing. Workers in effect offer insurance to employers: when firms are hit by temporary shocks, the effect on profits is cushioned by risk sharing with workers. Rent sharing is a symptom of an inefficient labor market. Risk sharing; by contrast, can be seen as an efficient response to missing markets. Authors evidence suggests that risk sharing accounts for a substantial part of the observed effect of shocks on wages.
Albania provides a small amount of social assistance to nearly 20 percent of its population through a system that allows some community discretion in determining distribution. This study investigates how well this social assistance program is targeted to the poor. Relative to other safety net programs in low-income countries, social assistance in Albania is fairly well targeted. Nevertheless, the system is hampered by the absence of a clear, objective criterion to determine the size of the grants from the central government to communes as well as limited information that could be used to implement this criterion. Substantial gains in targeting could be achieved if the central government better allocated transfers to local governments, even holding local targeting at base levels.
The paper seeks to provide a basis for identifying common issues, and operational synergies between monitoring, and evaluation capacity development (MECD), and governance in Sub-Saharan Africa. It summarizes experiences, and lessons from governance support in the region, and their implications for MECD work, and common issues, and, modalities between governance support, and MECD. In addition, the paper analyzes opportunities to maximize synergies between MECD, and broader governance capacity building efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa, and suggests implications from experience in evaluation support. The paper emphasizes that future interventions should focus on the quality of leadership for reform, and local capacity to design, and implement those reform programs. Furthermore, accountability as it relates to the level of corruption in the public sector should be taken into account, addressing the need for decentralized capacity building, as well as centralized forms of governance. Cases studies in specific countries illustrate promising interventions in governance reform.
The 1990s have witnessed several financial crises, of which the East Asia and Mexico tequila crises are perhaps the most well-known. What impact have these crises had on labor markets, household incomes, and poverty? Total employment fell by much less than production declines and even increased in some cases. However, these aggregates mask considerable churning in employment across sectors, employment status, and location. Economies that experienced the sharpest currency depreciations suffered the deepest cuts in real wages, though deeper cuts in real wages relative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) were associated with smaller rises in unemployment. To some extent, families smoothed their incomes through increased labor force participation and private transfers, though the limited evidence available suggests that wealthier families were better able to smooth consumption. The initial impact of the crises was on the urban corporate sector, but rural households were affected as well and in some instances suffered deeper losses than did urban families. School enrollment declined, especially among poorer families, as did use of health facilities, but the impact on children's nutrition levels appears to vary. Crises have typically proved short-lived, but whether households plunged into poverty during a crisis is able to recover as the economy does remain an open question.
During the last five years, Bolivia received more than $US 3,000 million in foreign aid and more than $US 3,500 million in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The country also received debt relief with a net present value of $US 1,300 million and implemented a National Poverty Reduction Strategy. During the same period, however, the GDP growth rate fell from an average level of 4.7% between 1993 and 1998 to an average level of 1.7% between 1999 and 2002, relative and absolute poverty increased, and the fiscal deficit increased to 8.7% of GDP in 2002. These numbers suggest that neither foreign aid, nor debt relief, nor FDI has the capacity to increase growth rates and reduce poverty in Bolivia. This, however, is not necessarily true. It could be the case that without these positive shocks, the situation would have been even worse due to other negative shocks. The only way to separate the effects of different shocks is to use a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, where the effects of changes in one variable can be analyzed while holding all other exogenous variables constant. The model used for this project contains a variety of sectors and household types which permits the analysis of aggregate effects on the GDP growth rate, the balance of payments, the fiscal deficit, etc, as well as distributional effects indicating who benefits and who is hurt by different policies. The distributional analysis is of particular importance when poverty is a main concern since aggregate GDP growth does not necessarily reduce poverty. Estimations by UDAPE indicate that the elasticities of poverty with respect to changes in GDP are extremely low in Bolivia: Only 0.3% in rural areas and 0.6% in urban areas[1]. This means that during the last decade, growth in Bolivia has clearly not been pro-poor, despite the stated emphasis on poverty reduction. During the period 1998-2002, Bolivia received on average $614 million in foreign aid per year. For the period 2003-2006, there are commitments implying that this amount will increase to $872 million per year, which means an increase in the level of annual foreign aid of $258 million. This report used the CGE model to simulate the effect of additional foreign donations of $258 million per year for four years, after which the level of aid returns to its "normal" level. Such a simulation allows us to see the effects of the initial expansion, the effect of the subsequent contraction, as well as the long run effects after the temporary increase in foreign aid.The effects of this extra aid will obviously depend on how the money is used. Applying the combination of public spending and public investment that we consider most likely, the simulations show an increase in the GDP growth rate of approximately 1 percentage point per year during the four years of extra aid, but when the extra aid disappears, the growth rates return to their normal levels. It is important to stress that public investment in the model is assumed to produce public goods, which increase the productivity of everybody. The extra aid has a corresponding positive effect on average incomes of the households for four years, but those who benefit most are skilled workers who are already among the richest in Bolivia, while the biggest and poorest group in Bolivia, the rural small-holders, are worse off every year during and after the extra aid, compared to the base scenario (without extra aid). This means that foreign aid, despite the very best intentions, tends to increase inequality and deepen poverty. This is not due to project failure at the micro level, but rather to adverse secondary effects at the macro level. It is perfectly possible that all aid projects are successful at the micro level, while the impacts at the macro level remain very close to zero. This paradox between the success of projects at the micro level and the lack of success at the macro level can be explained by the following arguments: First, aid projects distract resources away from other activities. Even when projects are 100% funded by foreign donations (the assumption used in the simulations), the project will use human resources which, in the absence of the project, could have been applied elsewhere. Since foreign aid projects usually skim the cream in terms of local human resources, this may imply a large social opportunity cost. This effect is particularly important in Bolivia, where the public sector (with the heavy support of foreign aid) is so attractive that few professionals are interested in working in the private, productive sector. And since this system appears to be relatively permanent, the new generations of students are demanding education that qualifies them to be politicians and bureaucrats, while few students are planning on working in the private sector, and much less create their own enterprises. Besides, not all aid projects are fully financed by donations, the majority of projects are financed by loans, and those that include a donation component, usually requires counterpart financing. This means that aid projects not only distract scarce human resources away from other activities, but also scarce financial resources. The second adverse macroeconomic effect arises through the real appreciation of the exchange rate that invariably follows from a large influx of dollars into the economy. This negatively affects most exporting sectors as their products become relatively more expensive on the international markets, and it negatively affects domestic producers of tradable goods as they have to compete with cheaper imports. The result is a reduction in the domestic production of tradable goods. Theoretically, the Central Bank could neutralize this effect by increasing its reserves of dollars or by paying off foreign debt, but this is unlikely to happen as most aid is tied to specific projects. The fact that the macroeconomic effects of foreign aid on monetary indicators tend to be small and temporary does not imply that foreign aid is useless. Many non-monetary indicators of well-being have increased substantially during the period, especially the indicators related to school enrollment, health, water, and sanitation. The Bolivian government is well aware of the asymmetry between progress in the provision of basic services and the lack of progress in the capacity of the population to increase its incomes: The real per capita income in Bolivia is practically the same as it was 50 years ago, despite the advances in education, health and basic services. The government is therefore changing the focus of its Poverty Reduction Strategy, laying more emphasis on the productive sectors. Fourteen sub-sectors with a high employment generation capacity have been selected for particular interventions in terms of infrastructure, market access, technical assistance, training, etc. Ten of these sub-sectors are part of modern agriculture, a sector whose expansion, according to our CGE analysis, would be beneficial not only because it raises average incomes, but also because it improves the income distribution. This is in contrast to the hydrocarbon sector and the mining sector, whose expansions tend to worsen the income distribution. Another sector whose expansion is highly desirable from a poverty reduction viewpoint, is the one producing consumer goods, usually through small and medium sized enterprises. The expansion of this sector would benefit the two big groups of poor households in Bolivia: the rural small-holders and the urban informals, and thus have a beneficial effect on both rural and urban poverty. In order to generate the largest and most sustainable impact possible of future foreign aid, it is recommended that donors and the government revise projects in three dimensions: First, they should check to which extent the projects create true public goods that increase the productivity of large groups of people, and to which extent they just generate short run activities which substitute for other, and possibly more sustainable, activities. The larger the public good component, the better the long run impact. Second, they should evaluate whether the projects help reduce the scarcity of skilled workers. It is the scarcity of skilled workers and the abundance of unskilled workers that generate high inequality in Bolivia, and projects which improve the quality of unskilled workers would tend to have a positive effect on the distribution of income in Bolivia and thus a beneficial effect on poverty. Third, they should check which sectors are likely to benefit or suffer from different projects, as the expansion of the sectors modern agriculture, coca, and consumer goods will have a much better impact on poverty than the expansion of mining, hydrocarbons, and formal services. It is often difficult to predict the impact of specific projects, and particularly difficult to assess how big the public good component of the project is. In order to learn from the past, it would be interesting to make a detailed retrospective analysis of past aid projects in Bolivia, evaluating which public goods have been created and what has been their impact on productivity. Specifically, donor agencies could provide a complete list of projects completed during the year 2000, and an independent team could analyze the project documentation and visit the project site some years after conclusion in order to evaluate the impact of the project. With a sample of 60-100 projects, it would be possible to make a statistical analysis, identifying what kind of projects would be most likely to generate not only positive impacts at the micro level but also at the macro level.
A political economy model of protection is used to determine endogenously the intersectoral patterns of protection. Three propositions are derived that are consistent with the stylized patterns of tariff protection in rich and poor countries: Nominal protection rates escalate with the degree of processing, protection is higher on average in poor countries, and rich countries protect agriculture relatively more than they protect manufacturing, whereas poor countries do the reverse. Numerical simulations for archetypal rich and poor economies confirm that the endogenously determined structure of protection is broadly consistent with observed patterns of protection.
The paper analyzes the linkages between the reform strategies in transition countries and economic performance. We focus on agriculture because of the sharpness of the policy changes, fundamental differences among countries, and relative simplicity of agricultural relationships. We document post reform performance in the transition countries of Asia and Europe. We show how: a.) pricing reform and subsidy reductions; b.) land rights reform and policies that affect farm restructuring; and c.) the presence institutions that facilitate exchange (either markets or market substitutes) affect output and productivity. The paper ends with general lessons on reforms and transition.
The objective of this study is to analyse the impact of various types of government spending on growth and poverty reduction, using provincial level data over the last decade. Government spending reduces poverty through many channels such as agricultural growth and improved nonfarm employment. We will try to capture all these different effects in the analysis if the data allow. This paper opens with a review of Vietnam's economic reforms and growth over the past decade. We then sketch Vietnam's poverty profile, highlighting changes over time, regional distribution, and differences among population groups. In the next two chapters, we will review the trend and composition of government spending, agricultural R&D and infrastructure endowments in Vietnam over the last decade. Chapter 5 presents the analytical framework used to estimate the effect of various types of government spending on growth and poverty reduction. The data, model estimation, and results are presented in chapter 6. We conclude the paper by offering future priorities for government investments in chapter 7.
After decades of high trade restrictions, fiscal distortions, and currency overvaluation, Cameroon implemented important commercial and fiscal policy reforms in 1994. Almost simultaneously, a major devaluation cut the international price of Cameroon's currency in half. This article examines the effects of those reforms on the incentive structure faced by manufacturing firms. Did the reforms create a coherent new set of signals? Did they reduce dispersion in tax burdens? Was the net effect to stimulate the production of tradable goods? The results of applying a cost function decomposition to detailed firm-level panel data suggest that the reforms created clear new signals for manufacturers, as effective protection rates fell by 80 to 120 percentage points. In contrast, neither the tax reforms nor the devaluation had a major systematic effect on profit margins. The devaluation did shift relative prices dramatically in favor of exportable goods, causing exporters to grow relatively rapidly.
