Relationship between foreign capital flows,domestic investment and savings in the SADC region

The importance of foreign capital in the domestic economy cannot be underestimated as it bridges the gap between domestic capital demand and supply. Given this background the paper studies the relationship between the different types of foreign capital flows in the Southern Africa Development Region (SADC) region – foreign direct investment (FDI), remittances, cross border bank flows (CBF), overseas development assistance (ODA) – and domestic savings and investment, employing the panel cointegration test and the dynamic ordinary least squares method (DOLS). The empirical results reveal that there is a strong positive relationship between domestic investment and domestic savings, FDI and remittances. These findings indicate that FDI remittances help in overcoming the limits on the domestic capital formation in the SADC region through permitting a rate of investment which is in excess of that which can be generated by domestic savings. Important policy implications on attracting foreign capital flows are discussed in the paper.     

National Identity and the Challenge of Health Reform in Canada

Health reform remains the most contentious policy issue in Canada. Medicare is subject to the same political forces that demand state retrenchment in other areas, but it has escaped wholesale reorganization because of the commitment of Canadians to the principles of medicare, because the provinces and the federal government remain locked in a battle about provincial autonomy, and because the existing system serves the interests of various professional groups including organized medicine. Nevertheless, reform and, especially, expansion of coverage is essential if the existing system is to be sustained. The most encouraging aspect of current debate is the recognition that we can look beyond the U.S. for reforms more consistent with the underlying values of Canadians than is the U.S. system.     

The utilization of activity-based cost accounting in hospitals

Healthcare costs are being examined on all fronts. Healthcare accounts for 11% of the gross national product and will continue to rise as the "babyboomers" reach retirement age. While ascertaining costs is important, most research shows that costing methods have not been implemented in hospitals. This study is concerned with the use of costing methods; particularly activity-based cost accounting. A mail survey of CFOs was undertaken to determine the type of cost accounting method they use. In addition, they were asked whether they were aware of activity-based cost accounting and whether they had implemented it or were planning to implement it. Only 71.8% were aware of it and only 4.7% had implemented it. In addition, only 52% of all hospitals report using any cost accounting systems. Education needs to ensure that all healthcare executives are cognizant of activity-based accounting and its importance in determining costs. Only by determining costs can hospitals strive to contain them.     

The relationship between financial sector development and savings mobilisation in South Africa: An empirical study

This article examines the link between financial sector development and savings mobilisation in South Africa for the period 1980–2012. Taking the life-cycle hypothesis as our theoretical background and using Johansen co-integration that allows for hypothesis testing, the empirical results revealed a long-run relationship between savings, interest rates and financial sector development. We find an inverse relationship between the interest rate and savings, implying that South Africans are net borrowers because the income effect overwhelms the substitution effect. This in part explains the low level of savings in recent time. Important policy lessons for boosting the national savings rate are discussed.     

Think Global, Invest Responsible: Why the Private Equity Industry Goes Green

The growth of socially responsible investment (SRI) on public financial markets has drawn considerable academic attention over the last decade. Discarding from the previous literature, this article sets up to analyze the Private Equity channel, which is shown to have the potentiality to foster sustainable practices in unlisted companies. The fast integration of the environmental, social and governance issues by mainstream Private Equity investors is unveiled and appears to have benefited from the maturation of SRI on public financial markets and the impetus of large conventional actors. Hypotheses on the characteristics and drivers of this movement are proposed and tested on a unique database covering the French Private Equity industry in 2011. Empirical findings support that Private Equity socially responsible investing is characterized by investor engagement and strategically driven by a need for new value creation sources, increased risk management and differentiation. In particular, results show that independent funds, which need to attract investors, are more likely than captive funds to develop socially responsible practices. Evolution of the movement and future research paths are proposed.     

THE ECONOMICS OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: A FIRM‐LEVEL PERSPECTIVE SURVEY

This paper analyzes the economics of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), as a private response to market imperfections in order to satisfy social preferences. Depending on whether they affect regulation, competition or contracts, market imperfections driving CSR decisions are classified in three categories: public goods and bads and altruism; imperfect competition; and incomplete contracts. We successively present these drivers of CSR decisions and highlight the nature of incentives (external or internal) at work and the testable (and tested) hypotheses in the reviewed studies. We finally review the link between CSR and financial performance, as well as between CSR and social and environmental performance. A twofold discrepancy appears in the literature, opening future research paths: a disconnection between our understanding of CSR drivers and CSR impacts; and a knowledge gap between CSR financial and social consequences, the latter having received little attention.     

Canadian Health Reform: A Gender Analysis

We analyze the gender impact of the current Canadian system of first-dollar health insurance by examining the use of physicians' services and acute-care hospital services in the Canadian province of Manitoba from April 1, 1997, to March 31, 1999. First, we describe the use by age and sex of healthcare resources offered with universal access at no cost to individuals. Second, we argue that women have a particular interest in maintaining single-payer insurance, because women are moderately high users of healthcare resources, while men tend to be low or catastrophic users who would be shielded from the full force of market-oriented reforms. Third, we attempt to refocus the debate about the gender implications of market-oriented health reform by noting that medicare transfers resources to women of reproductive age from the rest of society, a form of social wage paid as in-kind compensation to women for nonpaid reproductive labor.     

Saint-Simonian Feminism

By 1832, followers of Saint-Simonianism, a utopian-socialist movement in France, had become preoccupied with the social and economic roles of women. Barthélemy-Prosper Enfantin, a leader in the movement, and a few disciples developed an increasingly utopian and abstract theory that justified "protecting" women from the hardening influence of the world and removing them from the public sphere, while arguing that in the new world women would play a role distinct from, yet equal to, that played by men. The theory treated both men and women as beings embedded in a social network, rather than as separate individuals with independent goals. After women were eliminated from the Saint-Simonian hierarchy in 1831, a group of female adherents founded a newspaper as the center of a separate organization, which would work for the extension to women of the same political and civil rights that men enjoyed. This separatist group focused on policy reform rather than theory, on the present rather than some indefinite future, and on the common concerns that united women across social classes. The different ways in which the two groups (the doctrinaire Saint-Simonians and the breakaway women's organization) conceived of economic agents mirror contemporary disputes in feminist economics.