Search results

Although much lip service is paid to brotherhood in this country by preachers, teachers and politicians, the concept remains poorly understood. For the purposes of this article, the brotherhood ideal is defined broadly as behaviour among adult male human beings of the same generation, belonging to the same extended family, and living in a community, that ensures maximum well being and survivability of the entire family or community. In other words, it is behaviour that maximises the social welfare function of the entire family or community. A sisterhood ideal can be defined analogously, and group‐enhancing behaviour by family members of both sexes might be termed the brotherhood‐sisterhood ideal. Since this behaviour is learned gradually as the individual matures, it can be described as voluntary in the sense that it is not imposed by a legal authority external to the family.

In a recent article, I demonstrated that Jesus's parable of the talents given in Matthew (25: 14–30) describes a co‐operative or monastic economy of self‐starting servants that is both efficient because it maximises total output and equitable because distribution is based on needs. However, I did not analyse the ostensibly similar story, called the parable of the minas, appearing in Luke (19: 11–26). This article demonstrates that the message contained in the parable of the minas is not only radically different from that of the parable of the talents, but was intended to caricature the political and economic ideas propagated by the Zealots during the first and second centuries until their final destruction by the Romans in 135 AD.

Economists have had problems interpreting the gravity model, particularly as applied to migration behaviour. Its physical analogy is unappealing and theories of economic behaviour do not generally give rise to gravity laws. Some years ago Niedercorn and Bechdolt (1969) published a paper in which they provide a derivation of the gravity model using utility theory. Their approach is, however, much more applicable to other flows of human interaction across space, such as travel or communication flows, than it is to migration flows. The major purpose of this paper is to indicate a set of assumptions which might underlie a gravity model of migration and to show that these assumptions are quite severe. One important implication is that we should fully expect any real world migration pattern to deviate from the predictions of a gravity model. Nevertheless, the gravity specification may be a useful starting point in the analysis of migration behaviour, as it imposes restrictions on the formulation of the estimating equations. Thus we may fruitfully study how and why the real world migration patterns diverge from gravity flows.

In 1933, Edward H. Chamberlin published the Theory of Monopolistic Competition (1962). The work, based upon a dissertation submitted for a PhD degree in Harvard University in 1927 and awarded the David A. Wells prize for 1927–28, has since become a milestone in the development of economic thought. Its impact on industrial organisation theory, general equilibrium and welfare economics, international trade theory and, to a greater or lesser degree, all other branches of economic analysis, has been pervasive and enduring. The ideas set out in the book have been developed, expanded and refined in ways too numerous to be identified precisely, and the books and articles which take Chamberlin's contribution as a starting point arguably exceed in number those on any other single subject in the lexicon of economics.