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This is the second of five country case studies on income inequality, and shows that income inequality in Venezuela has significantly worsened during the past 27 years; in particular, the worsening has taken the form not of higher inequality among workers, but of higher inequality between those who own and those who do not own capital. Factor shares (shares of factors of production) have moved decisively against labour during the last three decades, resulting in a transfer of approximately 15% of GDP from labour to capital income: the data show an average worker in the late 1990s to be roughly half as well off in terms of income as an average worker in 1970. The chapter examines several possible explanations for the change in income inequality. It has six sections: Introduction; What the data say; Factor Shares, Factor Prices, and Oil Booms—an attempt to explain the evolution of factor shares on the basis of the evolution in human and physical capital accumulation; Other Influences on Income Distribution—an examination of alternative influences on factor shares; Labour's Loss of Power and the Political Economy of Inequality—an in‐depth discussion of the loss of political power by the Venezuelan labour movement and the relationship of this with the main hypothesis presented by the chapter; and Concluding Comments. The main thrust of the explanation offered is that the increase in Venezuela's income inequality can to a great extent be traced back to the decline in the country's physical capital stock and its rigid production processes, although policies such as trade liberalization, contractionary macropolicies, and capital account convertibility have made a far from negligible additional contribution.

Since the use of information technology (IT) has become increasingly widespread throughout several industrial countries, this is expected to bring about many developments not only in the performance and the characteristics of the firm, but also in the firm's production function and in the quality and composition of the involved factors of production. In terms of its direct effects, machineries and other such equipment are becoming more dependent on computer software and on various electronic components, while a huge portion of the capital stock of companies involves the use of more computer equipment. To manage and maintain this equipment, the firms also have to employ specialized staff and workers need to have specific skills and knowledge for using IT. As such, several organizations have modified their production, sales, and administrative structures. This chapter attempts to provide a description about the correlations between productivity and skills and the use of IT and whether these are statistically significant.

Chapter 2 explores the traditions, myths, and instincts of locational strategy inherited from the post‒World War II era, when a strong economic performance was linked to the ability to attract and retain manufacturing. However, when this singular strategy stopped working, policymakers and leaders were left with an intellectual vacuum. The purpose of this chapter is to explain what emerged in response to this intellectual void, which is essentially a framework for the strategic management of places. This framework is organized into four main elements: (1) resources or factors of production, (2) spatial and organizational dimension, (3) the human dimension, and (4) public policy. This chapter introduces the framework in terms of the big picture, without becoming immersed in the specificity and richness of the separate literatures, which is the task of subsequent chapters.

This book has dealt with the exploitation and management of land and natural resources in the Roman economy, with the aim of investigating whether or not Roman strategies of land and resource exploitation were conducive to economic growth. Despite the recent surge of interest in Roman economic history, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the exploitation of land and natural resources. Drawing inspiration from insights developed within the field of NIE, the book has asked whether or not Roman institutions made possible forms of land and resource exploitation that would result in increased productivity and growth over time. The chapters have considered issues such as ownership, (legal) control, and the (organizational framework for) exploitation and processing of vital resources and raw materials such as agricultural land, livestock, water, precious metals, salt, stone, and others, throughout the Mediterranean region and beyond during Roman, late Roman, and immediately post-Roman times.