Changes in Well-being in Zimbabwe, 1990-6: Evidence Using Semi-parametric Density Estimates

Semi-parametric density reweighting techniques are used to examinesources of change in well-being in Zimbabwe during the first-halfof the 1990s. Changes in urban well-being are decomposed intochanges in employment propensities, changes in human capitalattainment and changes in the structure of urban employmentchoice. Declines in national well-being are decomposed intochanges resulting from urban–rural residence choice andchanges in the structure of residential location. Finally, worseningrural conditions are decomposed into that part due to droughtand that due to improved educational attainment. Results showthat despite improvements in human capital attainment duringthe 1990s, well-being has worsened in all employment states.Investments in human capital only partially offset the generalworsening of the economy. Likewise, decisions to migrate tourban areas from rural Zimbabwe helped offset worsening ruralconditions. Drought explains a small amount of the general ruraldecline, but the bigger part of the worsening was due to generalequilibrium effects associated with a deteriorating economy.     

Foreign aid versus support to social entrepreneurs: Reviewing the way of fighting poverty in Zimbabwe

Despite the development interventions that have been adopted to help the countries caught in a downward spiral of impoverishment, their problems still persist. This paper focuses on the role that traditional foreign aid and the more recent bottom–up approach of supporting social entrepreneurs are playing to tackle the situation of extreme poverty in Zimbabwe. Drawing upon a narrative inquiry, 35 stories were collected to bring fresh insights regarding the realities of such interventions as they are experienced by the local people. The evidence shows the main shortcomings of the current development models and suggests that the improvement of a declining economy such as Zimbabwe would need the interaction of various factors, so that some interventions will appear significant only when the conditions of primary importance exist in the environment. Additionally, the engagement of local people seems to be a key aspect to the success of some of the support measures.     

Housing inequality and housing poverty in urban China in the late 1990s

This paper discusses housing inequality and housing poverty in urban China in the late 1990s, using original household surveys. Focuses are on the distributive implications of the privatization of public-owned housing and the wave of rural–urban migration. Estimates of the imputed rent function for owned housing purchased at discount prices indicates that meritocracy and political credentialism work differently as determinants of housing inequality. The paper confirms that there has been a large disparity in housing conditions between urban and migrant households, and that a new type of housing poverty has been emerging among migrant households.     

Distribution policy under trade liberalisation in Zimbabwe: a CGE analysis

A computable general equilibrium model is used to simulate theeconomy-wide and income distribution effects of transfer policiesto the poor. The model consists of seven income distributiongroups - communal farmers, resettlement farmers, unskilled workers,agricultural wage workers, skilled workers, industrial capitalistsand agricultural profit earners. The first four groups are treatedas a low income group and the last three as a high income group.Experiments to increase each of the low income groups' incomesby 5% using different sources of finance are simulated usingthe model. These are: an increase in government expenditurewithout budget balancing measures; an increase in governmenttransfers offset by a decrease in government spending elsewhere;and an increase in direct or indirect taxes. The results ofsuch experiments indicate that a policy of increasing directtaxes and increasing the government deficit in order to supportthe transfers are favourable in terms of increased incomes inthe short run. A policy of increasing indirect taxes and transferringthe revenue raised to the poor ranks last in terms of reducingincome inequalities. Finally, targeted transfers are generallybetter than universal transfers in terms of their benefits tolow income groups and in reducing income inequalities betweenthe low income and the high income groups.     

Repositioning the urban environment question in Zimbabwe: a review of the context,conditions and processes

This analysis is a reappraisal of two perspectives in urban development in Zimbabwe: environmental sustainability and human sustenance. The discussion seeks to reposition the conservation–survival debate by broadening it to the wider urban and national macroeconomic and sociopolitical context. It re‐examines Zimbabwe's environmental problems by examining the challenges posed by urbanisation, industrialisation and informalisation. To these ‘permanent’ strands are added the ‘transient’ phenomena of structural adjustment and indigenisation. The analysis is done within the overall national macroeconomic and sociopolitical environment. The article examines environmental sustainability and human sustenance as the two policy challenges that have to be reconciled in the quest for sustainable urban settlements in Zimbabwe. The analysis stresses that the exercise of striking a balance between the needs of humankind and those of nature has to take cognisance of the complexity of issues and the processes going on elsewhere in the urban and national context.     

Changes in gender wage discrimination in the 1990s: A tale of three very different economies

In this paper gender wage decompositions are performed for three very different countries, that is, Japan, Russia and the USA for the years of 1993 and 2000, using the ISSP data set. From the research of this paper, it is shown that the gender wage differential in Japan has narrowed between 1993 and 2000, and the results reveal price and characteristics effects for this country that differ markedly from those observed elsewhere, with female disadvantage being particularly marked. Also, this paper finds that gender wage differentials in Russia and the USA have increased during the years considered here.     

Conflict and compromise: Changes in U.S. strike outcomes, 1880 to 1945

Before about 1900, most strikes in the United States were either won or lost by the workers who called them. Relatively few strikes ended in any sort of compromise. Sometime during the last decade of the 19th century, however, the pattern begins to change, with the fraction of strikes ending in compromise peaking at nearly half during World Wars I and II. What explains these changes in strike outcomes between the late 19th century and 1945? We explore the effects of macroeconomic conditions, industrial organization and product markets, labor organization, law and public policy, and immigration and trade on the costs and benefits of achieving strike compromises. We find that temporary government intervention in settling strikes during World War I helped move labor and management away from an adversarial equilibrium, and thus allowed growing acceptance of organized labor to be reflected in a permanent increase in the rate of compromise. We conclude that changes in the nature of strike outcomes represent an important and neglected aspect of broader changes in the place of organized labor in the American political economy.     

Migration and development in Mozambique: poverty,inequality and survival

Migration is many Mozambicans' preferred employment option (and sometimes last resort). Rural southern Mozambique, short of resources and traditionally less productive agriculturally than other regions of Mozambique, is now more developed and better off than other rural areas. An inter-regional analysis of the South, Centre and North of Mozambique demonstrates developmental differences largely attributable to labour migration (mainly to South Africa) and remittances. However, although migrant worker households, usually deficit agricultural producers largely dependent on migrant remittances, are often better off than non-migrant ones, many are still vulnerable to poverty. Migration has changed significantly over the last 15 years, with the eclipsing of mine migration and the increasing scarcity of jobs available to young Mozambicans. Despite the overall positive economic impact of migrant labour in southern Mozambique, as remittances decrease because earnings are lower and mechanisms for transfer are limited, its benefit may diminish.     

School effectiveness in Zambia: The origins of differences between rural and urban outcomes

Surveys have shown that Zambian urban residents have significantly higher schooling attainment rates than rural residents and are more likely to be literate. To address this inequality in education outcomes it is important to understand to what extent this is a result of a resource gap (for example, differences in teachers or textbooks) or different returns on resources (for example, an additional teacher makes more of a difference in urban areas). To explore this idea this study performed an Oaxaca decomposition on the SACMEQ II data set for Zambia. The results showed that the rural–urban gap was attributable both to differences in the presence of resources (55% of the gap) and differences in the returns on resources (45% of the gap). Since returns on resources are considerably lower in rural areas, additional resource investment alone is unlikely to close the gap between rural and urban schooling outcomes.     

Globalisation,poverty and corruption: Retarding progress in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Poverty and corruption can both immiserate a nation. Globalisation through open trade can potentially increase economic growth, providing employment and increased incomes to the poor. Corruption can dampen or even reduce these positive developments. Although globalisation is considered instrumental in development strategies, theoretically, the impact of globalisation on poverty reduction is ambiguous, an ambiguity that is also reflected in the empirical literature. The corruption-poverty literature clearly reveals that empirical findings on such association are at best heterogeneous. This article examines the effects of globalisation and corruption on poverty using time series data for South Africa for the period 1991–2016. Three indicators of poverty and recently developed measures of globalisation and corruption were employed in the logistic regression model used for estimation. The results confirm that globalisation reduces poverty while corruption intensifies it. The globalisation findings are robust across the different measures of poverty while unidirectional results show corruption increases poverty.     

Macroeconomic policies and their impact on health in Zimbabwe in the 1980s and 1990s: An analysis of the prevalence of diarrhoea,malnutrition, maternal mortality and access to health services

The main objective of this article is to examine how the changes in macroeconomic policies have shaped health outcomes, particularly with regard to diarrhoea, malnutrition, maternal mortality and access to health services, and how these health outcomes vary by income, geographical location and gender. Macroeconomic policies in Zimbabwe have tended to shape health outcomes and they have also had an impact on trends in household income levels and access to health facilities. During the 1980s, the government's health policy 'Equity in health' led to increased access to health facilities. The policy of free health for low-income households made it possible for poorer groups to access health facilities more easily. However, the introduction of economic reform programmes popularly known as the Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes in Zimbabwe, has witnessed a massive shift in macropolicies. These policy changes have tended to affect the health sector in a negative manner. The introduction of user fees as a cost recovery measure and the rollback on government expenditure on social sectors, health included, have led to a reduction in the population able to access health facilities. Results of studies have shown a positive relationship between the prevalence of diarrhoea, malnutrition and access to health facilities with income levels, rural/urban location and gender.     

Development policy and water services in South Africa: an urban poverty perspective

This paper explores the impact of overall macroeconomic development policy on water service delivery policy and urban poverty in South Africa. It scrutinises ambiguous definitions of ‘urban’ in the literature, which tend to obscure the extent of urban poverty in this country. This is crucial given that a large proportion of the urban poor live in informal settlements, which are sometimes lumped with rural areas. Informal settlements are generally characterised by limited essential services such as housing, water supply, storm-water facilities and sanitation services. Water services, like other social services, retain the racial imprint of apartheid. Consequently, water policy in South Africa attempts to address water issues from an equity perspective. By analysing the effects of the tariff subpolicy within the water policy, the paper recommends that free basic water should be made available only to poor households.     

Russian companies in late 2012: Work under the conditions of significant economic uncertainty

The paper analyzes and comments on the results of a poll of enterprises in the economic sector held by the laboratory of analysis and forecasting of microeconomic processes of the Institute of Economic Forecasting.     

Effects of smuggling under african conditions: A factual,institutional and analytic discussion

Zusammenfassung Wirkungen des Schmuggels unter afrikanischen Bedingungen. Eine faktische, institutionelle und analytische Diskussion.— Die Verfasser untersuchen die faktischen und institutionellen Bedingungen des Schmuggels in Afrika und verwenden sie, um einige Modifikationen am theoretischen Modell des Schmuggels von Bhagwati und Hansen zu begründen. Aus diesen Modifikationen ergeben sich einige Gründe, die den Schmuggel für die beteiligten L?nder als vorteilhaft erscheinen lassen. Zu den Annahmen, die diese Modifikationen bewirken, geh?rt erstens, da\ illegaler Handel keine gr?\eren realen Kosten verursacht als legaler Handel, zweitens, da\ der Schmuggel das gleichzeitige Auftreten zweier verschiedener Preise für das gleiche Gut in einem Land erlaubt, drittens, da\ Handelsbeschr?nkungen Verzerrungen auf den Güterm?rkten hervorrufen, die durch den Schmuggel beseitigt werden, und viertens, da\ die Rationierung importierter Zwischenprodukte die allgemeinen Produktionsm?glichkeiten verringert.

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Résumé Les effets de la contrebande sous les conditions africaines. Une discussion des faits, des institutions et de l’analyse. — Les conditions de la contrebande en Afrique, données par des faits et des institutions, sont examinées et utilisées pour motiver quelques modifications du modèle théorique de contrebande par Bhagwati et Hansen. Ces modifications donnent quelques raisons pourquoi on peut attendre que la contrebande serait avantageuse pour les pays impliqués. Les hypothèses qui créent ces modifications incluent: (i) que le commerce illégal ne cause plus de co?ts réels que le commerce légal; (ii) que la contrebande permet la présence simultanée de deux prix différents pour la même marchandise dans un pays; (iii) que les restrictions au commerce augmentent les déformations aux marchés qui sont disparues par la contrebande; (iv) que le rationnement des importations des produits intermédiaires réduit les possibilités générales de la production.

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Resumen Los efectos del contrabando bajo condiciones africanas: una discusión institucional, analítica y de los hechos. — Se examinan los hechos relacionados con y las condiciones institucionales del contrabando en el Africa con el fin de motivar varias modificaciones del modelo teórico de contrabando de Bhagwati y Hansen. Estas modificaciones proveen varias explicaciones para la hipótesis de que el contrabando sería beneficioso para los países participantes. Los supuestos que generan estas modificaciones incluyen: (i) que el comercio ilegal no justifica costos reales más altos que el comercio legal, (ii) que el contrabando permite la aparición simultánea de dos precios diferentes para el mismo producto en un país, (iii) que restricciones al comercio dan lugar a distorsiones en los mercados de bienes que son superadas por el contrabando y (iv) que el racionamiento de bienes intermedios importados reduce las posibilidades totales de producción.