We study labor productivity in agriculture within a two-region, two factor and two commodity economy. Increases in productivity can lead to higher or to lower agricultural prices, depending on the internal structure of the economy. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for either outcome;...

Current changes in Latin America include the abandonment of the economic pattern of import substitution, a growing opening of the national economies, a continental wave of political democratization, an apparent economic recovery from the "lost decade" (the 1980s), a growing social polarization,...

We study properties of the solutions to a parametrized constrained optimization problem in Hilbert spaces. A special operator is studied which is of importance in economic theory; sufficient conditions are given for its existence, symmetry, and negative semidefiniteness. The techniques used are...

This article outlines work in progress on a study of technological choice in the context of North-South development. Its main purpose is to describe the methodology being developed in the pilot phase of the study. This is of interest because it links together a number of analytic...

Global modeling has evolved remarkably in the last two decades. Such evolution led it to perform today's role as an experimental laboratory for the social sciences, and particularly for applications to policy planning. Two of the most interesting applications to policy are to resource economics...

A conference report on UNESCO and Fundacion Bariloche sponsored conference with policy-oriented scientists from Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the United States of December 1976. The focus was on global modelling, its formalization and reliability. The applications were to problems of...

The study of the local characteristics of equilibrium positions generated by the constrained maximization of some criterion functions (such as utility, profit, cost, etc.) goes back to Antonelli's paper [2] of 1886. Certain local properties have been proved to be particularly fruitful for...

Physical considerations alone cannot explain the volatile behavior of resource prices, or the effects these have on different regions of the world. An optimization analysis may not suffice either, since typically there are several distinct objectives: conservation, cost-minimization, and the...

Political economy views economic issues through the lens of political organisation. In today's world, it must focus on the roles of markets and of democracy, two concepts which are driving revolutionary changes in the political organisation of both Europe and Asia. There are two main paradigms...

I study connected manifolds and prove that a proper map f: M - M is globally invertible when it has a nonvanishing Jacobian and the fundamental group pi (M) is finite. This includes finite and infinite dimensional manifolds. Reciprocally, if pi (M) is infinite, there exist locally invertible...