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This chapter investigates disguise in the Holmes canon, and offers reasons for its relative scarcity in the adaptation Sherlock. Drawing on Alec Charles’s identification of Holmes as an example of the “trickster” archetype, the chapter considers the connection between the trickster and the anti-hero, and the different attitudes of Holmes and Sherlock to disguise. Analyzing Sherlock’s “The Empty Hearse” and “His Last Vow” – and their canonical precursors – the author argues that the contemporary Sherlock’s inability or unwillingness to disguise himself asserts his authenticity, and distinguishes this anti-hero from villainous characters. The aspects of disguise and slumming that the canon and the TV series expand upon or downplay are also, the author suggests, reflections of different approaches to storytelling in these two mediums.

We concluded in the previous chapter that garments and textiles are showing signs of “de-maturing” with the advent of microelectronics-based production, data-processing, and communications systems. It seems likely that the higher wage NIC producers will experience a squeeze as competition increasingly centers on the race between cheap robots in the West and low-wage workers in poorer nations. The more successful producers may, of course, respond by following the OECD firms into more capital- and knowledge-intensive production. Given the relative scarcity of these factors in the NICs, however, the question of appropriate focus remains open.

In recent years the three related issues of part-time employment, unemployment and new technology have had a significant impact on the female labour market, and are likely to play an important part in determining future trends. Britain, and to a lesser extent the USA, has in the last decade experienced an increase in both part-time working by females and in the female unemployment rate. Most of the new part-time jobs have provided employment for married women, many of whom have been attracted back into the labour force by this type of work being made available. Meanwhile, a relative scarcity of full-time employment opportunities has developed, and one argument is that these new part-time workers have gained their jobs at the expense of higher unemployment, particularly among younger females who are looking for full-time work. The issue is not quite as clear-cut as this, though, and other factors influencing part-time employment and unemployment are examined here. Technical innovation, in particular the development of the microprocessor, has already had some effect on work patterns and employment levels in several industries and occupations, and research suggests that in the near future it will have an increasing impact on female employment.

In recent years there has been marked progress in the understanding of Latin American economic problems. However, the analysis of the role played by foreign investment has not advanced at the same pace. It is probably in this area of analysis that one finds the most sharply divergent points of view, reflecting partly the fact that foreign investment has profound political implications, but also partly the relative scarcity of both theoretical development and empirical research?

The preceding four chapters considered the distribution of incomes as a reflection of the relative scarcity of factors. A rise in profits indicated the economy’s reward for growth and reflected a rising scarcity of capital for growth. The national wages bill reflected the scarcity of labour for current activities. Rent reflected the unalterable past. Salaries were defined as a compound of wages and rent, so that they could be considered as a mixture of present and past, though the salary-earner’s ability to anticipate future growth also implied a profit element. Ignoring the unalterable past, it was possible to present much of the argument in terms of a two-factor model, where the two factors were labour and capital and the appropriate factor rewards were wages and profit; and where wages represented the reward for current ways of carrying on economic activities, and profits the reward for the venturesome.

From the point of view of economics the most important feature of houses is their exceptional durability in consequence of which the annual addition of new apartments or houses amounts to only a few per cent of the total stock. In most countries at most times the annual growth amounted to only some one to three per cent of the physical stock. Though these figures underestimate the economically relevant rate of growth by ignoring changes in quality, it is obvious that in periods of rapidly rising aggregate real income a housing shortage in the sense of increasing relative scarcity of house room is apt to arise.