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As the exchange rate, foreign demand, and production costs evolve, domestic producers are continually faced with two choices: whether to be an exporter and, if so, how much to export. We develop a dynamic structural model of export supply that characterizes these two decisions. The model embodies plant-level heterogeneity in export profits, uncertainty about the determinants of future profits, and market entry costs for new exporters. Using a Bayesian Monte Carlo Markov chain estimator, we fit this model to plant-level panel data on three Colombian manufacturing industries. We obtain profit function and sunk entry cost coefficients, and use them to simulate export responses to shifts in the exchange-rate process and several types of export subsidies. In each case, the aggregate export response depends on entry costs, expectations about the exchange rate process, prior exporting experience, and producer heterogeneity. Export revenue subsidies are far more effective at stimulating exports than policies that subsidize entry costs.

Aims: To assess how a 10 year extension of the follow up period affected cancer incidence in the Swedish leather tanning cohort. Methods: A cohort of 2027 tannery workers (of which 482 were women) who had been employed for at least one year between 1900 and 1989 at one of three Swedish leather tanneries, was established. The start of observation varied between 1958 and 1966 for the three plants. Through linkage with the Swedish Cancer Registry, incident cancer cases were recorded up to 1999. Cause specific expected cancer incidence was calculated for 1958–99 based on calendar year, sex, and five year age group specific incidence rates for the counties where the plants had been located. Altogether 56 022 person-years at risk were generated. Results: A total of 351 incident cancer cases were observed compared to 302 expected, which resulted in an increased standardised incidence ratio (SIR) of 1.16 (95% CI 1.04 to 1.29). An enhanced risk for prostate cancer was observed (SIR 1.44, 95% CI 1.10 to 1.86), mainly attributable to the later part of the observation period (1990–99). In this updated analysis the previously observed risk excess for soft tissue sarcomas was no longer significant (SIR 2.62, 95% CI 0.96 to 5.70). For multiple myelomas and sinonasal cancer the slight non-significant excesses remained, still based on very few cases. Conclusions: The increased risk for prostate cancer in the present study might be a chance finding, but is noteworthy, since it is in acccordance with the finding of increased SIR for prostate cancer among leather workers in another recent Swedish study. Moreover, excess risks for prostate cancer among farmers have been reported, indicating pesticides as possible causative agents. Leather tanners have also been exposed to pesticides.

A unique find was made by the seventh expedition of the Italian Archaeological Expedition in the Temple of Amenhotep II, Western Thebes, directed by Dr. Angelo Sesana: a total of seven shoes, stored in a Ptolemaic jar. The shoes are extraordinarily well preserved and show, if we accept the date, the first record ever of several technological features. The present paper describes the shoes, compares them with other Egyptian footwear and discusses the results as part of the Ancient Egyptian Footwear Project.

In 1960, women in southern Ethiopia's rural Konso district faced a violent campaign by local men to eradicate leather clothing following a ban imposed by the local governor, Tesfaye Hailu. Tesfaye, a man of the northern Amhara ethnic group, banned leather clothes along with bead necklaces and arm bracelets as part of imperial Ethiopia's “modernization,” which was influenced by disparate sources, including the United States. Tesfaye saw women's attire as “backward” and “unhygienic” and as obstructing modernization; its elimination was a means to improve Konso culture and help the empire join the community of modern nations. The “culture” of “the Other” has often been cast as impeding “modernity” and requiring elimination or change, particularly the practices of women, from genital cutting in eastern Africa to veiling among Muslim women in the Middle East and Europe (Hodgson 2009; Masquelier 2005; Merry 2009a). So it was with the widespread, politicized transition to cotton clothing in nineteenth- and twentieth-century eastern Africa. The target was clothing worn by all women in Konso and made by women in the low-status category of “Xauta,” sometimes referred to as a “caste.” Leather skirts signaled important stages in women's lives, and became extensions of individual women's tastes, experiences, and identities. Women today recall the violence and punishments of the campaign, including being chased, beaten, imprisoned, and fined, and even having their skirts forcibly removed at home and in public. They offer contradictory explanations of who initiated the ban and the reasons for it, but they remember clearly the local men involved in eradication efforts.

Leather industry is one of the high employment generating industries in India. As per one estimate the sector can generate about 6 million direct and indirect employment by the end of 2015. Trade unionism is a common practice in many of the leather manufacturing organizations. The trade union formation shows a great deal of variations from small, medium to large organizations. In the small and medium leather organizations trade unions are functioning under the industrial union banner whereas in large organizations unions are mostly organization specific. This paper attempts to study different factors like union loyalty, union instrumentality, 'them and us' attitude, workplace collectivism etc. as the determinants of trade union participation in the organized leather industry in Kolkata.

This paper argues that the trade in leather and other pastoralist products, which the tradition ascribes to the Meccans, could make sense on the assumption that the goods were destined for the Roman army, which is known to have required colossal quantities of leather and hides for its equipment. The hypothesis that the Meccans were servicing the Roman military is examined and found to be impossible to prove in our current state of knowledge; it is at least compatible with the evidence, however, and also highly promising in terms the light it could throw on the political aspects of the rise of Islam.

The manufacturing technology of an extraordinary pair of leather open shoes in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo is described and discussed. A detailed comparison with previously described footwear shows that some technological features (especially the configuration of the pre-strap) as well as the shape indicate a close relationship with the leather composite sandals and the eared sandals. Other leather open shoes have several characters in common (sole/upper construction), although other details, such as the extra closing system on top of the upper, are unique. A date comparable to the aforementioned sandals is suggested for the pair of shoes, i.e., 18th and 19th Dynasty.

This paper on Amburt town of Tamil Nadu, an important hub for leather goods production, catering primarily to an international market, explores how the town's proximity to a metropolis can be a source of underdevelopment rather than a spur to steady and rapid urbanisation. It puts the spotlight back on a class of small industrial towns, where the dirty work of production, particularly of recycling industrial cast-offs, assembling secondary products and catering to low-end domestic markets is not moved out of urban spaces. Instead it is kept hemmed into unplanned and unserviced town spaces, while large formal manufacturing firms colonise rural hinterlands. It also highlights how disconnects among sectors, space and place can keep a town at low levels of dynamism and social welfare.