Health and development: The Venda care group organisation

Health is one of the crucial problems confronting the development of Third World countries. Community‐based primary health care is the best instrument for mobilising community development.Development through health, however, can only be achieved if primary health care is implemented in a comprehensive approach in which a supportive environment and living conditions are as important as the provision of health care services. The Venda care group organisation, like other village health workers, is involved in primary health care and community development in the communities of the care groups. Such supportive community‐based organisations are able to alleviate health and development problems at the grass roots provided that programmes and activities are based on community participation, self‐reliance and the development of local decision‐making and leadership skills. The degree of success of the Venda care group organisation in achieving these objectives was investigated.     

Wage rigidity and capital mobility in an optimizing model of a small open economy

Summary This paper formulates an optimizing model of a small open economy with a representative (immortal) household, a firm and a government. The asset menu consists of domestic currency, non-traded bonds and traded bonds. There is a risk premium on traded bonds, which leads to deviations from perfect capital mobility and uncovered interest parity. Taxes are lump-sum, so that finance by bonds and by taxation are equivalent. The model allows for current-account and wealth dynamics. The model assumes either purchasing power parity or imperfect substitution between home and foreign goods and either labour market equilibrium, nominal wage rigidity or real wage rigidity. The steady-state effects of a fiscal contraction, a monetary disinflation and an increase in the world interest rate are discussed. The transient effects of these policies are analysed with the aid of a multiple shooting algorithm.We thank Gerard Staarink for implementing the multiple shooting algorithm used in section 4 and we thank Professors M. Fase and J. Pen for their constructive comments on a previous version of this paper. The paper is a shortened version of discussion paper No. 168 of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, London.     

A theoretical foundation for Constant Market Share analysis

Constant Market Share (CMS) analysis is a popular tool for analyzing changes in exports of a country. Nevertheless, its theoretical foundations (and policy relevance) have been questioned. In this paper, we provide such a foundation by relating CMS analysis to a two-stage homothetic demand model. An indication of the empirical relevance of this relationship is given by comparing the CMS analysis with a two-stage Constant Elasticity of Substitution demand model applied to 1972–1976 data of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).Paper presented at the XX-th world conference of the Applied Econometric Association in Istanbul, December 1986. The research reported in this paper was carried out as part of the project Disequi-librium and Equilibrium in Demand and Supply, which is approved by the Dutch Office of Education and Sciences. Ivo J. Steyn and Philip A. ten Cate provided excellent research assistance. We thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments.     

On estimating the mean of the selected normal population under the LINEX loss function

Following Parsian and Farsipour (1999), we consider the problem of estimating the mean of the selected normal population, from two normal populations with unknown means and common known variance, under the LINEX loss function. Some admissibility results for a subclass of equivariant estimators are derived and a sufficient condition for the inadmissibility of an arbitrary equivariant estimator is provided. As a consequence, several of the estimators proposed by Parsian and Farsipour (1999) are shown to be inadmissible and better estimators are obtained. Received January 2001/Revised May 2002     

Measuring volatility with the realized range

Realized variance, being the summation of squared intra-day returns, has quickly gained popularity as a measure of daily volatility. Following Parkinson [1980. The extreme value method for estimating the variance of the rate of return. Journal of Business 53, 61–65] we replace each squared intra-day return by the high–low range for that period to create a novel and more efficient estimator called the realized range. In addition, we suggest a bias-correction procedure to account for the effects of microstructure frictions based upon scaling the realized range with the average level of the daily range. Simulation experiments demonstrate that for plausible levels of non-trading and bid–ask bounce the realized range has a lower mean-squared error than the realized variance, including variants thereof that are robust to microstructure noise. Empirical analysis of the S&P500 index-futures and the S&P100 constituents confirms the potential of the realized range.     

Rationing in open economy and dynamic macroeconomics: A survey

Summary A survey of rationing in micro theories of macroeconomics is presented. The survey starts with a closed economy with money and inventories, which consists of a representative household, a firm and government. After a discussion of the notional demands and supplies and the properties of the Walrasian equilibrium, a discussion of the effective demands and supplies leads to an analysis of the four regimes (Keynesian unemployment, classical unemployment, repressed inflation and underconsumption). A fiscal and monetary contraction decreases sales and employment when there is Keynesian unemployment, but is expansionary (neutral) when there is repressed inflation (classical unemployment). The survey continues with an analysis of the effects of rationing in a small open economy. It considers the one-sector model and a model with a traded and a nontraded sector. The latter model is used to discuss the effects of an oil discovery on the Gulf countries and on Latin American countries. The survey ends with a discussion of rationing in dynamic economies, which leads to an analysis of the effects of expectations about future constraints on current regimes and to a discussion of boot-strap equilibria.The author is Director of the Network for Quantitative Economics. This paper is a brief and eclectic survey of rationing models of closed one-period and two-period economies and of small open economies. It contains no significant new material. The author is grateful to Professor Theo van de Klundert for his constructive comments on an earlier version of this survey.     

Income distribution,economic structure and employment in South Africa

This paper discusses the impact of a redistribution of current income from the White to the Black population on the distribution of sectoral output, and total employment by means of a semi‐closed input‐output model.

The results show that a redistribution of current income towards Black households — which no doubt will have positive social and political repercussions — has a non‐negative effect on GDP and a definite positive effect on the performance of sectors with a high private consumption expenditure component, as well as on total employment.     

Debt Relief and Economic Growth in Mexico

Could external restraint and internal balance in Mexico havebeen reconciled at levels of savings and investment that allowedsatisfactory growth in output without the 1989–90 restructuringof debt? What are the likely implications of Mexico's "Bradydeal" on economic growth? What are the macroeconomic effectsof debt-equity swaps? This article develops and estimates amodel to address these issues. The analysis concludes that the1989–90 agreement in Mexico will contribute materiallyto macroeconomic stability and the restoration of economic growth.