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Google has started a new feature- News Archive Search. I tried searching for Maldives news items- some interesting things came up (slight spelling corrections made below);

“Holland Evening Sentinel - NewspaperArchive - Jul 7, 1952, THE BENIGHTED MALDIVES LACK CIVILIZED WOES; Now that the Maldive islands, in the Indian ocean, have adopted a republican form of government, it is obvious that something ought to be done to bring the benefits twentieth century civilization to the inhabitants. The MALDIVES, known chiefly to stamp collectors, seem to be singularly backward. They have no relations to speak of with other nations, and hence no cold war tensions. They have no television, and only a few automobiles, limited to one' of the inhabited islands. They have no crime and no jails. The islanders never need aspirin or pheno-barbital. The people, it seems, spend most of their time fishing, fashoning lacquer work, making rope and collecting. They've never learned to get stirred up over things. When the time comes to change their government, they don't make a lot of fuss and speeches; they simply tell some- ody to sit under a palm tree and up a constitution. It's something of a mystery why these benighted people have not tried before this to improve their sorry lot and learn how to enjoy he boons we civilized people take or granted. There's a possible answer which we hate to consider, .faybe they're smarter than we.”

Native Revolt In Maldives Is Disclosed; LONDON, Jan. 8 1959 (AP)--Angry mobs swarming from a canoe armada have wrecked and burned offices of the native Government on a remote ...

BookMooch- a barter system for books (via Boing Boing)

Here is their economics section.

John Allen Paulos in his latest ‘Who’s Counting’ column reviews this paper, ‘A Theory of Prostitution’ which tries to answer the puzzle: Why is it that prostitution is so relatively well-paid?

“Developing the consequences of their mathematical model, Edlund and Korn argue that the primary reason for the income differential is not the risk sometimes associated with the practice of prostitution but rather that prostitutes greatly diminish their chances for marriage by virtue of their occupation. Men generally don't want to marry (ex)prostitutes, and so women must be relatively well-compensated in order to forgo the opportunity to marry….the authors also conclude that prostitution generally declines as men's incomes increase…Wives and prostitutes are competing "commodities" (in the reductionist view of economists, that is), but wives are distinctly superior in that they can produce children that are socially recognized as coming from the father. ..Thus, if men have more money, they tend to buy the superior good and, at least when wives and prostitutes come from the same pool of women, tend to buy (rent) the cheaper good less frequently….Putting these two tendencies together suggests that if one wishes to reduce prostitution, increasing the incomes of both men and women is likely to be more effective than imposing legal penalties.”

Abstract of the paper;

Paul's weekend puzzle below requested answers to the question "What would happen if a community that only produces bananas decides to save more?" It's no longer the weekend, so I figured I'd answer separately:

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Forgive my ignorance, but exactly how does one "save" a banana?