The Masakhane campaign: Alice and King William's Town case studies

The high‐profile media launch of the Masakhane campaign heightened awareness of issues associated with local government and service provision, However, delivery and improvement of services at local level have been slow or even non‐existent, resulting in a general feeling of despondency. Fortunately, this situation is being challenged as some towns implement their own campaigns with increasingly promising results, as this article will show by tracing developments in Alice and King William's Town. Their experiences, together with those of a number of other towns, point to some exciting possibilities in achieving the ideals of the Masakhane campaign at local level.     

A Global Analysis of Orientation,Coordination, and Flexibility in Supply Chains

Global supply chains are growing rapidly, and the ability to manage cross border logistics operations has become a necessity to maintain a competitive advantage in a dynamic environment. This research addresses current gaps in the literature by investigating the buyer–supplier integration dynamics in a global context with a focus on the antecedents and outcomes involved in the process. Empirical data from 320 U.S. based manufacturing companies that source from overseas was collected and used to test the framework. In addition to providing empirical evidence for the importance of orientation on collaboration, operational coordination, and integration this research explains how manufacturing companies can enhance the flexibility of their global suppliers and how that impact their logistics as well as overall firm performance. Managerial and research implications are provided as well as areas for future research.     

Anticipated and unanticipated money: a case study of Malaysia

The paper tests the LSW proposition that unanticipated policy changes affect real economic variables by using Malaysian data over the period 1970:1–1990:4. The empirical evidence changes in fiscal policy and balance of payments do not affect real output, thus lending support to the proposition. On the other hand, anticipated monetary policy and inflation influence output in the short-run, lending support to Mishkin's views of the economy and rejecting the LSW proposition. In addition, the long-run neutrality proposition is not supported by the data. Moreover, unanticipated changes in inflation do influence real output in the short-run lending support to the LSW proposition. However, unanticipated changes in monetary policy, balance of payments and fiscal policy do not influence real output, lending support to the classical view of the economy and rejecting the LSW proposition. Furthermore, the Monetarist's view that inflation is a monetary phenomenon is rejected. The findings also show that unanticipated movements of money supply contribute significantly to the inflation rate. The Chow test shows that the coefficients remain stable over the period of study.     

Financial Development,International Trade,and Economic Growth in Australia: New Evidence From Multivariate Framework Analysis

This study investigates the relationship between financial development, international trade and economic growth for Australia over the period of 1965 to 2010. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration is applied to examine the long-run relationship among the series, whereas stationarity properties of the variables are tested by applying two structural break tests. Results confirm the long-run relationship among the variables. Financial development, international trade, and capital appear as the drivers of economic growth in short and long runs. The feedback effect exists between international trade and economic growth. Financial development Granger causes economic growth validating supply-side hypothesis.     

Banking sector development and interest rate volatility in emerging economies

Over the last decades, macroeconomic stability is said to be one of the major concerns of emerging economies. Financial sector as a core of macroeconomic stability has been under close consideration of policy makers. The relationship between interest rate uncertainty and banking sector development as one of the most important indicators of financial sector development, especially for emerging economies, has not received enough attention in the literature. Perhaps this article is the most comprehensive study that investigates the relationship between interest rate uncertainty and banking sector development for a large group of emerging economies. To do this, the short-run and long-run models using a bounds testing approach to cointegration for 12 emerging economies over the period 1980–2011 have been developed. Estimated results from all models indicate that interest rate uncertainty has significant effect on banking sector development in both short-run and long-run phenomena in the majority of countries. The findings indicate that the link between interest rate uncertainty and banking sector development in each country depends on each country’s specific structure.     

Forecasting annual water demands dominated by seasonal variations: the case of water demands in Mecca

Water usage in Mecca is dominated by trends and cyclical variations in the number of foreign pilgrims visiting for the annual Hajj Pilgrimage. Time series regressions show that the mean temperature in Mecca at the time of the Hajj affects the number of pilgrims, inducing a long-term cyclical pattern for this variable and therefore water usage. The cointegrating relation between water usage, number of external pilgrims and temperature produces long-run forecasts of Mecca water demand.     

THE ROLE OF SECURITY IN THE FOOD SUPPLIER SELECTION DECISION

This research assesses whether, and under what conditions, firms are willing to trade off price and delivery reliability for greater supplier security. Specifically, international sourcing and concern over security incidents occurring at the respondent's firm are proposed as conditions that may increase demand for supplier security. This research suggests to managers the trade offs their customers may be willing to accept for increased security. The results are useful for firms evaluating whether they should invest in supply chain security measures. Results provide academic insight into the relative importance of security as a supplier selection criterion.     

On the permanent effect of an aggregate demand shock: Evidence from the G-7 countries

This paper extends the work of Cover, Enders and Hueng (2006) to examine the idea that an aggregate demand shock may have permanent effect on the output level by indirectly shifting the aggregate supply curve. We utilize the bivariate SVAR modeling and adopt an identification scheme, which allows for the possibility that a shift in the aggregate demand curve may induce the long-run aggregate supply curve to shift. We have shown that aggregate supply shocks are positively affected by the demand shocks in each of the G-7 countries. It is found that a one-time positive aggregate demand shock increases the output level permanently in these industrialized economies. We have also shown that our decomposition strategy can help resolve anomalies in the responses of inflation to a positive aggregate supply shock observed in a simple Blanchard-Quah decomposition.