Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy

Introduction

This issue of the journal contains four papers. The first by Kanta Marwah and her Nobel Prize Professor of Economics Lawrence R. Klein points up the loss of productivity and growth due to excessive military expenditure in each of five Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Peru. The authors clearly point up the hidden costs in past military expenditures of these countries, specifically that these expenditures have led to loss of factor productivity in the 1970s and 1980s as a consequence of foregone economic growth of nonmilitary activity. Loss has also been realized in subsequent years as a result of the foregone growth of the nonmilitary sectors that would have spurred noneconomic development---that is there was loss of "Peace Dividends" in the 70s and 80s but also of "Peace Dividends" in subsequent years.

The second and third papers pertain to poverty reduction and elimination. The former attacks poverty in the Gaza Strip. Comparative cost analysis establishes the fact that outsourcing enterprises in the Gaza Strip can be economically feasible. It then examines possible spread effects that can lead to a multiplier effect such that an initial establishment of 25,000 outsourcing jobs in the Gaza Strip can generate altogether 75,000 new jobs of diverse character, a multiplier of 3. Such can also lead to economic development in the West Bank and perhaps help solve the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

However, to attack the problems of the many poverty-stricken regions of the world, there is the need to establish a Poverty Line for each region selected for development. This is so in order to have economic accountability of development funds made available. Here the paper on the Poverty Line for North Korea is a very careful and through construction of the Poverty Line for pre-famine and post-famine North Korea, a construction much more comprehensive and detailed than any other in the published literature.

In the last paper by Paul Han we are exposed to much new knowledge about the past operation of the North Korean economy. The author suggests basic changes in its agricultural development that can be associated with partial elimination of poverty in North Korea and further reduction of conflict on the Korean peninsular. It also presents data that supports the thesis that famine is not the result of inadequate food supply but rather gross inefficiency in the distribution of that supply.