The importance of being earners: why women in South Africa need well-paid jobs

The ‘children fare better’ viewpoint claims that children tend to be better fed if their mother (as opposed to father) has sufficient income of her own for food. This paper assesses this claim for South Africa, using data from household surveys. It considers the possibility that this issue is related to domestic violence between husband and wife, and finds an apparent link between wife's earnings, child nutrition and domestic violence. Children's well-being seems more assured if mothers have an adequate income; but there is more risk of inadequate nutrition in households where there is domestic violence against wives.     

The development of socially responsible investment in South Africa: experience and evolution of SRI in global markets

Sustainability practices, particularly those relating to Socially Responsible Investment (SRI), have still to be fully evolved in a developing country context. This article considers international trends in SRI and how these may relate to South Africa. It considers how, internationally, SRI has become increasingly motivated by the business case for risk-management and therefore how it may have the potential to offer superior returns (as demonstrated by recent experience in the United States). It examines the relevance of SRI trends to South Africa, where the concept of SRI still faces further structural development, and reviews the performance of funds operating in the South African SRI arena.     

A historical irony in the making? State,private sector and land reform in the South African wine industry

This article traces the development of the land distribution policy of the Department of Land Affairs (DLA) of South Africa. Despite the DLA ‘s political commitment to land reform by way of restitution, redistribution and tenure reform, to date no small‐scale wine farmers have been settled in South Africa by virtue of this policy. Three case studies describe how agricultural labourers have successfully gained access to this lucrative sector through private sector intervention. It is also argued that the small farm versus large farm debate masks the real opportunities for land reform in the wine industry.     

The South African city in relation to international city form

South Africa's apartheid‐induced cities are on the threshold of a critical restructuring in the changing South Africa of the 1990s. The reform and planning of an effective post‐apartheid city require careful consideration of possible international similarities and links. This article seeks to provide answers to the following questions: What are the form and structure of international cities; what are the general characteristics of the South African city; and where do our cities fit in this international framework? Research has shown that the South African city corresponds to a multi‐faceted international profile of First World prosperity. Second World central intervention and Third World deprivation. While the South African city displays numerous similarities to international city form, it has obtained a unique character as a result of the legal enforcement of apartheid. Restructuring the post‐apartheid city will have to take account of the reality that the present South African city is intrinsically a deviant version of the colonial Third World city and that it is likely to revert increasingly to that city form as legal apartheid disappears.     

The role of politics in the migration of Zimbabwean teachers to South Africa

This paper contributes to the debate on the role played by the political crisis in Zimbabwe in causing teacher migration to South Africa in the presence of other social and economic drivers. The paper uses data collected through a questionnaire self-administered by 100 Zimbabwean teachers in South Africa (migrants) and another 100 in Zimbabwe (non-migrants). In-depth interviews with a few migrant teachers were used to supplement these data. Although it was the second most mentioned reason for the teachers' migration to South Africa, the role played by political violence or repression in Zimbabwe in causing this migration should not be downplayed. Most migrant teachers came from Zimbabwean schools affected by political violence to a large extent before or after the 2008 presidential elections, especially rural areas. Teachers that held positions or distributed opposition party regalia were mostly displaced by violence. There is an urgent need for political transformation to more democratic rule in Zimbabwe.     

Sex ratios in South African census data, 1970-96

Attention has been drawn to the low sex ratios for those aged 20-34 in the 1996 census of South Africa. Concern has been expressed that these low sex ratios are implausible and differ from what was found in earlier censuses. Some have suspected that they are an indication of the poor quality of the 1996 census overall. In virtually every country in the world, implausibly low sex ratios are found in the younger working ages, because geographically mobile young men of those ages are undercounted relative to women of the same age. When sex ratios by age are calculated based on those people born in South Africa and for which, as much as possible, similar geographic regions are included, a pattern similar to that seen in 1996 is found in all censuses since 1970. Like all national census offices, South Africa needs to seek ways to reduce the undercount of mobile young adults, especially mobile young men.     

Social Transfer Benefits and Retirement Decisions: Evidence from South Africa

Population aging poses a new challenge to the fiscal sustainability of social security programs around the globe. As life expectancy increases, among other reasons, many governments in developed countries have begun to reform key features of their programs, such as increasing the eligibility age for access to social benefits. However, as in the case of South Africa, some opt to decrease the eligibility age for access to such pension benefits. The South African old age pension, which is one of the most expansive cash transfers in developing countries, puts a significant monthly cash transfer in the hands of its recipients. This cash transfer is conditioned on age and a means test that is very generous to most South Africans. In this paper, we seek to understand the impact of such an increase in non‐labour income on the labour force participation of older men by exploiting a phased‐in reduction in pension eligibility age. We estimate that, at the median predicted market wage, pension age‐eligibility reduces the probability of labour force participation by approximately 9.85% points for single males and 15.45% points for married males.     

Initial Conditions and Miraculous Growth: Why is South East Asia Different From Taiwan and South Korea?

The paper argues that the economies of East and South East Asia are a very diverse group, only some of which have grown rapidly over the past three decades. The fast-growing economies of South East Asia, especially Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia are in a number of important respects different from the fast-growing economies of North East Asia, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. The different colonial legacies have had important consequences for educational progress and the distribution of income and wealth. Government intervention has tended to be less growth-promoting and more oriented to goals such as inter-ethnic redistribution of wealth. The implications of these differences for future economic growth in South East Asia are discussed.     

Labour unions and wage inequality among African men in South Africa

One Achilles' heel of post-Apartheid South Africa is the growing intra-racial income inequality, particularly among Africans. This paper examines the role of labour unions in explaining this phenomenon among African men given that labour markets are at the core of income inequality in South Africa. Using cross-sectional data drawn from Labour Force Surveys for 2001–10, we find a monotonically declining union wage premium. Further, our results indicate that unions have both compressionary and disequalising effects on wages. The disequalising effect dominates the compressionary effect, suggesting that unions have a net effect of increasing wage inequality among African men in South Africa. This finding implies that there is scope for unions to reduce inequality through initiatives that promote wage compression.     

Exchange rate volatility and agricultural trade under policy reforms in South Africa

Decades of government intervention have helped develop the South African agriculture sector to its present state. Policy reforms have included trade and exchange rate policies to increase the country's international competitiveness, reduce poverty and promote economic growth. These reforms are facilitating the growth in agricultural trade and South Africa's reintegration into the global economy. Annual agricultural exports and imports have increased. This paper uses annual data and a vector error-correction model to investigate the supply and demand relationships for agricultural trade flows in South Africa during the past four decades. The results show that prices, real exchange rates, domestic production capacity and real incomes have significant impacts on the country's agricultural trade. In particular, exchange rate volatility has negative impacts. This cannot be viewed solely as an exogenous source of macroeconomic instability in South Africa, as domestic policies play a crucial role in influencing the movement of exchange rates.     

HOW EXPOSED IS THE SOUTH AFRICAN ECONOMY TO INTERNATIONAL TRADE?

Following the policies implemented during the 1990s, the South African economy has become more globalised. This is particularly the case as far as international trade is concerned. The implementation of trade reforms, in some cases faster than WTO commitments, has increased the exposure of the South African economy to international trade. Trade in intermediate inputs increases the external orientation of an industry and hence increases the economy's exposure to trade. This in effect means that the economy is more open to external trade shocks than is conveyed by the traditional openness measure which considers only the trade in final products. This paper uses a measure proposed by Campa and Goldberg (1997) to estimate the exposure to trade and finds that around 79 per cent of output in 2000 was accounted for by industries that became more exposed to international trade. Further, domestic production has become more reliant on imported inputs with around 60 per cent of South Africa's GDP being accounted for by industries with a negative external orientation (i.e. industries where imported input costs exceeded export revenue). In addition, it was also found that those sectors that became more externally oriented had lower inflation rates and higher growth rates than the other sectors in the economy for the period under analysis. The extent to which the increased exposure to international trade facilitated these developments remains topical for further research.     

青岛小伙子也不好惹

其实我不是青岛人。但这个问题我总是搞混。比如最近,海边一线常被外地大巴车堵成一团。被堵在车河里我忍不住抱怨,这些外地人,把我们青岛堵得……     

会计信息的需求研究:禀赋差异后果及建议

会计信息具有一定的经济后果性,所以作为理性的经济人,企业的利益相关者都关注会计信息,利益相关者也就成为了会计信息的需求主体.文章认为需求主体因禀赋差异引发不同的需求满足方式,应该因势利导地培育使之成为真正的会计信息市场主体,进而改进会计信息的供给,提高会计信息质量,实现财务会计决策有用性的目标.     

The state of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) training and research in South African universities

Geographical Information Systems or GIS has become one of the more prominent research and training tools in South African university departments in the 1990s. GIS developed in the 1970s in North America in response to the expanding capacity of computer systems and the need to integrate spatial and attribute data (Maguire et al, 1991). It was only in the mid‐1980s that the first systems were set up in South Africa, primarily at research institutions such as the Department of Water Affairs and the Institute for Natural Resources in Pietermaritzburg. Since then the use of the technology has grown exponentially and most of the country's major municipalities (Szecsei, 1990; Van Rensburg, 1992), government departments, town and regional planners (Zietsman, 1992; Venter, 1993), engineering concerns (Poolman, 1990) and universities have become regular users. At universities GIS is used more as a research tool than as a defined analytical procedure. This article reviews the development of GIS and its use in South African universities. It also discusses the advantages and impediments to the use of the technology and its development.     

Shifting the growth path to achieve employment intensive growth in South Africa

‘Employment intensive growth’ has become a centrepiece of government policy and implies that at any given level of growth, the economy needs to become more labour absorbing. State intervention (or the lack of it) is examined in two areas that are important for employment – agriculture and manufacturing. In the case of agriculture, it is argued that declining and ineffective state support has accelerated the rationalisation of commercial agriculture and failed to regenerate agriculture in the former Bantustans. With regard to the manufacturing sector, we argue that since 1994 the government has set a multiplicity of objectives but, de facto, there has been a surprising level of continuity in the overly generous assistance for heavy, capital-intensive industry. This paper argues that the negative impact of previous ‘distortions’ requires much more than a levelling of the playing field via market-based reforms. Pro-employment policies have to be placed at the centre of the policy agenda.     

A Changing South: The 2008 Elections Illuminate Demographic and Economic Trends

The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States opened a window for an examination of the most recent round of demographic, social and economic change in the American South. Using the 2008 election—in which the nation’s first black president won three states of the former Confederacy—as a launching pad for analysis, this paper presents a South that has become metropolitan-driven, more prosperous and economically diverse than ever in its history. The paper also depicts a South with inter-regional differences and with distinct inequalities, especially in income and educational attainment.     

Off‐farm wage returns to education: Evidence from Lesotho

This article presents estimates of off‐farm wage returns to education in rural areas of Lesotho. Results from a sample survey conducted in the northern Lowlands and Foothills of Lesotho indicate that returns to education are relatively higher for people wage‐employed in Lesotho than those wage‐employed as migrants in South Africa. For people working within Lesotho, education appears to have a significant and positive effect on off‐farm wages. Most people working within Lesotho are employed as teachers, nurses and civil servants and these job categories require an educated labour force. For people wage‐employed in South Africa, education appears not to have a significant effect on off‐farm wages. Most men working in South Africa are employed as labourers in mines while women working in South Africa are employed as domestic servants.     

A tale of two Italies: ‘access-orders’ and the Italian regional divide

ABSTRACT

This paper uses the ‘access orders’ paradigm developed by North, Wallis, and Weingast [(2009). Violence and social order: A conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] to analyse the case of the Italian North–South economic divide. In line with their framework, we collect and discuss several social and political indicators over the long-run, at the regional level. Firstly we looked at data on the pre-conditions for the establishment of an open-access order, such as murders per capita (a proxy for control over violence), voting turnout and referendums participation (proxies for political legitimacy), and the impersonality of exchange. We then showed evidence of different access orders in the North and in the South, using the information on human capital formation, women participation in the labour market, and referendum results. On the basis of this evidence, we argue that, despite being part of the same State and subject to the same formal institutions, the North of the country progressively developed into an open-access order, while the South remained a form of limited access order.

Institutional differences are linked to specific aspects of the economic performance of the two areas, thus the ‘access order’ paradigm appears to be an effective conceptual scheme to explain the North–South economic divide.     

Tourism and local economic development: The case of the Highlands Meander

Local economic development (LED) planning is of major policy importance in post-apartheid South Africa. Although issues surrounding LED have attracted considerable policy attention, one neglected theme has been the role of tourism as a lead sector for LED. The aim of this article is to examine the planning and workings of one tourism-led LED initiative in South Africa. The case study is that of the Highlands Meander in Mpumalanga province, where five towns are collaborating in their LED initiatives in order to promote the area's tourism products. A key finding is that this growing tourism initiative is currently not benefiting local black communities. Recommendations are offered for developing a pro-poor tourism initiative.     

THE SENSITIVITY OF SOUTH AFRICAN INFLATION EXPECTATIONS TO SURPRISES

Price stability is widely recognised as the primary goal of modern monetary policy, and the management of private sector inflation expectations has become an essential channel through which this goal is achieved. This evaluation aims to improve the understanding of how the sensitivity of private sector inflation expectations to macroeconomic surprises in South Africa compares internationally, as this provides an indication of the contribution of monetary policy in South Africa to anchoring inflation expectations. If a central bank is credible, the financial markets should react less sensitively to macroeconomics surprises, because they trust the central bank to manage these incidents and achieve the objectives they communicated over the medium to long term. In this paper, the methodology of Gurkaynack et al. is adopted in order to measure the sensitivity of South African inflation expectations to surprises. A comparison of South Africa's results with those of countries in the original studies supports the contention that the SARB (South African Reserve Bank) has encouraged inflation expectations to be relatively insensitive to macroeconomic surprises, and offers support for the inflation-targeting framework as a means to help anchor inflation expectations.