Constraints facing tourism entrepreneurs in South Africa: a study in the Gauteng and Mpumalanga provinces,South Africa

The current study is an investigation into tourism entrepreneurship of small, medium and micro enterprises in Gauteng and Mpumalanga. Through Principal Factor Analysis, the paper identifies a three-factor instrument that could be used as a diagnostic tool to investigate how government policies and support, the tourism industry's products and services, and perceptions about South Africa could advance or constrain the development of small, medium and micro tourism in South Africa. Such a tool can be used to identify problematic areas in order to take remedial action to manage sustainable tourism in South Africa and prevent the leakage of profits.     

The 2008 Food Summit: A political response to the food price crisis in Gauteng province,South Africa

In responding to food price riots and other unrest in 2008, Gauteng province in South Africa hosted a two-day Food Summit attended by 4000 delegates. Summit invitees expected to be consulted on issues of concern about food prices, but the government instead responded with the message that the poor must be self-sufficient and grow their own food (via the Ilima/Letsema campaign launch), an impractical suggestion in a crisis. The timing of the 2008 Summit in relation to major changes within the African National Congress and the looming 2009 national election in South Africa leads to a conclusion that the Summit was a political event designed to build political capital ahead of the elections, rather than a genuine stakeholder consultation event linked to food security. Findings of this study indicated that food security planning in Gauteng is exclusionary through its rural bias and excludes, for example, urban dwellers and foreign migrants. Also, at that time, Gauteng would have been underprepared for a genuine food emergency as there was no working provincial strategy to deal with urban food security or a severe food crisis.     

DEA APPLIED TO A GAUTENG SAMPLE OF PUBLIC HOSPITALS1

The research presented in this paper provides an analysis of the delivery of a few health care services by the public sector in Gauteng, South Africa. The data for the study was especially difficult to collect, suggesting the need for hospital level data information systems, as well as staff who are trained to analyze the information collected. The empirical results from the analysis suggest that services provided by small‐scale medical facilities waste fewer resources, while medical centres offering more technical services, such as surgeries, also appear to deliver medical services more efficiently.     

Heidegger’s ‘potentiality-for-being’: Towards adequate economic development in Nigeria†

Even though Nigeria no longer remains so, in 2014 the country was declared ‘Africa’s biggest economy’ on the basis of its gross domestic product (GDP). It is a reality that many Nigerians still suffer deprivation and abject poverty. I argue that, as opposed to using GDP as a sole measure, multiple determinants need to be considered in order to convincingly validate the claim that Nigeria is Africa’s biggest economy because it was largely based on measurable economic output rather than the well-being of the populace. Using Martin Heidegger’s philosophy to question the structures in Nigeria which undermine ‘potentiality-for-being’, I show how Heidegger’s philosophy proffers possible solutions on how best to actualise proper potentiality-for-being. I also illustrate how the GDP of Nigeria is largely based on population and not on economic well-being. Lastly, refuting the use of GDP as the only determinant for economic progress, I propose the Heideggerian potentiality-for-being as a complementary determinant.     

High‐technology clusters and infrastructure development: international and South African experiences

The factors that have encouraged the emergence and clustering of high‐technology activities are investigated in the international and South African experience. This article focuses specifically on the significance of improved transport and telecommunication facilities for the development of high‐technology manufacturing. In line with international patterns, high‐technology manufacturing in South Africa is strongly agglomerated in the Pretoria‐Witwatersrand region. Central to the historical establishment of this cluster were the infrastructural advantages of Gauteng. Strengthening of the Gauteng cluster is linked to agglomeration economies deriving from the spatial concentration of both high‐technology production and non‐producer enterprises. Two distinct subclusters are identified: in Midrand and in the East Rand     

SHOULD SOUTH AFRICA HAVE A FISCAL RULE?

Over the past three decades many countries have struggled to find solutions to their persistent public sector deficits. For some the solution to this problem seemingly became the adoption of fiscal rules. This paper considers the applicability of one such rule, namely the output‐sensitive deficit rule of Taylor, and in particular its applicability to South Africa. The paper shows that its applicability in developing countries such as South Africa might be limited due to higher output volatility that may cause output‐sensitive deficit rules such as the Taylor rule to become more volatile. Such volatility in the deficit/GDP ratio may cause fears that government may not be able to maintain the stability of the debt/GDP ratio, thereby again introducing fiscal unsustainability. To address this problem the paper augments the Taylor rule to reduce the volatility in the public debt/GDP ratio and demonstrates how these rules would have performed in South Africa. It concludes that the augmented fiscal rule might contribute to both fiscal sustainability and economic stability in South Africa.     

Accounting for Gender Equality in Secondary School Enrollment in Africa

In addition to analyzing the characteristics of gender equality in secondary education enrollment in Africa, this paper empirically studies the key drivers of gender equality in secondary education enrollment, using cross‐sectional time series data from 1970 to 2010. Our results show that the coefficient associated with the level of real GDP per capita is positive and statistically significant in both the overall Africa sample and in the sub‐Saharan and North African samples. But the quadratic term of real GDP per capita is negative in sign and significant in the overall Africa and sub‐Saharan African estimates. These provide evidence of a hump‐shaped relationship between real GDP per capita and gender equality in secondary education enrollment in Africa. Our results also suggest that higher share of female teachers in secondary schools, increased democracy (at a decreasing rate), higher female share of the labor force, Christian dominance in a country, higher domestic investment rate, and being an oil‐exporting country increase gender equality in secondary education enrollment in the continent. However, higher population growth tends to lower it. The policy implications and lessons of these results are discussed.     

Unemployment and urban development in Gauteng

One aspect of the unemployment crisis which has not received much attention in South Africa is the spatial distribution of unemployment within cities. Concentrated unemployment within cities may be seen primarily as a product of market and non‐market housing allocation processes or of the spatial location of employment opportunities. This article examines the situation in Gauteng province using the 1991 population census and a 1995 survey of employers and using regression analysis to explain the unemployment rate in residential areas. It was found that there is no clear link between the location of employment opportunities and concentrated unemployment, suggesting that housing allocation factors play the decisive role. The findings raise some difficult questions about the appropriateness of urban development strategies which vigorously pursue the collocation of places of residence and work.     

The Short‐Term Economic Impact of Levying E‐Tolls on Industries

TERM is used to analyse the short‐term regional economic impact of an increase in industries' transport costs when paying E‐Tolls. Market‐clearing and accounting equations allow regional economies to be represented as an integrated framework, labour adjusts to accommodate increasing transportation costs, and investments change to accommodate capital that is fixed. 1 1 TERM is a bottom‐up CGE model designed for highly disaggregated regional data. The Enormous Regional Model's originate from Horridge et al. ( 2005 ) and are better explained in Horridge ( 2011 ).
We concluded that costs from levying E‐Tolls on industries are small in comparison to total transport costs, and the impact on economic aggregates and most industries are marginal: investments (?0.404%), gross domestic product (GDP) (?0.01) and consumer price inflation (?0.10%). This is true even when considering costs and benefits on industries as well as consumers. Industries that experienced the greatest decline in output were transport, construction and gold. Provinces that are closer to Gauteng and have a greater share of severely impacted industries experienced larger GDP and real income reductions. Mpumalanga's decrease in GDP was 17% greater than Gauteng's.     

Recent Political Change in Myanmar and Its Impact on her Economic Growth

The present study estimates the causal effect of a process of political change, namely, a recent constitutional referendum, on economic growth in Myanmar. To analyze the impact of this process, this study compares the trajectories of actual and counterfactual GDP per capita after the referendum using the synthetic control method. We calculate the counterfactual GDP per capita using country‐level panel data from 2002 to 2013, with Myanmar as the treated country and a set of developing countries in East and South Asia, the Pacific and sub‐Saharan Africa as the control group. The results of the synthetic analysis suggest that the recent process of political change in Myanmar had a positive and significant effect on GDP per capita but not on per capita foreign direct investment or trade.     

STOCHASTIC FRONTIER ANALYSIS OF SPECIALIST SURGEON CLINICS

Stochastic frontier analysis was used to estimate the technical efficiency of specialist surgeon practices based in Gauteng Province, South Africa. The analysis was conducted for both single and multiple output production functions, while efficiency was allowed to depend upon surgeon and practice characteristics. Multiple output models, due to an increase in the number of observations, can be more precisely estimated and, as there are multiple observations per surgeon, can be estimated with fixed effects. The results of the analyses suggest that efficiency averages around 50% for this sample and is convex in years of surgical experience. The benefit of multiple output analysis – improved precision – obtains, while surgeon‐level fixed effects alleviate some concerns related to unobserved heterogeneity.     

Public Debt,Economic Growth and Inflation in African Economies

We analyse the relationship between public debt, economic growth and inflation in a group of 52 African economies between 1950 and 2012. The results indicate that the limits of public debt are negatively related to economic growth and exhibit, from a given level of debt, an inverted U behaviour regarding the relationship between economic growth and public debt. Briefly, the high levels of public debt are coincident with reduced rates of economic growth and rising levels of inflation. Our results for three specific geographical areas resemble those of the overall analysis, despite some differences. In North African countries, the growth rates of the gross domestic product (GDP) and inflation also show an inverted U behaviour as the ratio of public debt/GDP increases. The highest rate of economic growth is recorded when the ratio of public debt/GDP is below 30% of GDP and corresponds to an average inflation rate of 5.33%. An identical behaviour of the GDP growth rates and inflation also appears in Sub‐Saharan countries until the third interval (60–90%). However, the highest growth rate of the GDP and GDP per capita is registered when the public debt/GDP ratio is in the second interval (30–60%). For the countries of the Southern Africa Development Community, the highest average rate of economic growth (6.8%) is similar to North African countries, when the ratio public debt/GDP is below 30% of GDP, with an average inflation rate of 11%. A number of robustness analyses were performed and the great majority of them confirm the general analysis.     

Decomposition of GDP Growth in Some European Countries and the United States

Summary  The composition of economic growth can be analyzed in two different ways. In the ‘traditional method’ for the decomposition of GDP growth, total imports are deducted from exports. This approach underestimates the importance of exports for the growth in GDP, and overestimates the importance of domestic expenditure categories. In the alternative methodology proposed in this paper, imports are allocated to all expenditure categories. Although this ‘import-adjusted method’ is more complex than the ‘traditional method’, it has the considerable advantage that the contributions of the expenditure categories to GDP growth provide a better understanding of why GDP growth decelerates or accelerates. The methodology and data requirements for calculating the import content of final demand, and the implications for the decomposition of real GDP growth, are discussed. For six European countries and the United States, the paper shows that applying the alternative methodology provides rather a different economic story.      

Economic Convergence in the African Continent: Closing the Gap

The paper attempts to analyse the conditional β‐convergence and its sources for 32 African countries over the period 1960‐2008. The augmented Solow model with both gross domestic product (GDP) per worker and per capita income is estimated using the dynamic system generalized methods of moments (GMM) technique with the panel data. This is the first study on the sources of conditional β‐convergence for African countries. According to the results of the augmented Solow model, income convergence rates are lower than those of GDP per worker. Moreover, total factor productivity convergence, human capital convergence and capital labour convergence are contributing towards the convergence of GDP per worker in Africa. This means that growth in the poorest African countries is being augmented by “catch‐up factor,” which is good news for them. However, convergence in terms of GDP per worker is not being fully translated into income per capita convergence. The demographic structure in the African continent with its record of persistent population growth has played an important role in lowering the income convergence of its countries.     

Tourism and the local economy of Warmbaths,Northern Transvaal

The Warmbaths district lies on the perimeter of Gauteng (the PWV area), the largest population concentration in South Africa. This makes it part of the ‘pleasure periphery’ of the metropolitan area. The district offers a variety of unique tourism nodes: spa resorts; nature‐orientated time‐share resorts; holiday towns and farms; and private game reserves and hunting farms. Tourism is important in the district economy of Warmbaths. This article discusses the emergence of Warmbaths as a tourism region and the impact of tourism on the economy of the region.     

Temporal Causal Relationship between Resource Use and Economic Growth in East China

The present paper attempts to combine cointegration theory and the material flow analysis approach to examine the causal relationship between resource use and real GDP in Jiangsu Province in East China. The study considers the period from 1990 to 2007. We use direct material input as the proxy variable for resource use. Our estimation indicates that real GDP and resource use are cointegrated and there is only unidirectional long‐run Granger causality running from resource use to real GDP, but not vice versa. The estimation results mean that resources are a limiting factor in terms of economic growth, and, therefore, strategies should be adopted for more vigorous economic development and consistent resource use in East China. Furthermore, the novel idea and methodology involved in the present study can be readily extended to cover other regions for the analysis of the relationship between resource use and economic growth.     

Currency Misalignments in the BRIICS Countries: Fixed Vs. Floating Exchange Rates

In the present paper we attempt to investigate whether the real effective exchange rates of the BRIICS countries, namely Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa, converge or not to their equilibrium levels. Our analysis is based on the use of an external balance model as well as the implementation of recent panel cointegration techniques. Our evidence indicates the existence of a valid long-run relationship between the real effective exchange rate, the net foreign assets, the GDP differential and the real interest rate differential for each of the six countries of our sample. Furthermore, our empirical results imply that after the adoption of a free floating exchange rate regime by Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia and South Africa and the liberalisation of the Chinese exchange rate policy that took place during the last decade, currency misalignments have been gradually reduced, leading the real effective exchange rates of the respective currencies very close to their equilibrium levels.     

The Midrand area: An emerging high‐technology cluster?

This article takes a close look at art emerging high‐technology cluster in a developing country ‐ Midrand in South Africa ‐ to develop a deeper understanding of its nature, why it emerged and the problems it faces. Midrand lies within the Gauteng province, which has a disproportionately large share of South Africa's private and public demand, as well as factor inputs for high‐technology sectors. The cluster is growing rapidly and includes a large contingent of high‐tech multinationals and blue‐chip local firms. The cluster is not, however, based on research and development but rather on head office, warehousing and distribution functions, and manufacturing. Its success is built on a central location, high visibility, a positive high‐tech image, good quality of life, a visionary town council, good investment returns, low operating costs and a lack of local competition. Its weaknesses are that it has not been built on a solid foundation of high‐tech infrastructure and lacks high‐tech dynamism, rendering its locational advantage somewhat fragile.     

Risk amplification: HIV in migrant communities

The demography of both urban and rural South Africa is shaped by migration, with three unique patterns: labour-sending, labour-receiving and rural areas. This article explores the relationship between HIV risk and migration in South Africa. It identifies the urban informal settlements common in labour-receiving areas as key magnifiers of HIV risk, increasing the vulnerability of migrant workers in these townships. It examines the urban informal settlement, a unique social environment with distinctly high-risk behaviour dynamics, as a focal determinant of HIV. It proposes this framework as an extension of the migration–HIV dialectic beyond the traditionally unidimensional approach, to encompass a more contextualised discussion. This methodology, which uses the environment as an entry point to understanding behaviour and emphasises the importance of addressing the HIV–migration issue within a broader development perspective, has important implications for HIV programming in South Africa.     

Economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1885–2008: Evidence from eight countries

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been absent from recent debates about comparative long-run growth owing to the lack of data on aggregate economic performance before 1950. This paper provides estimates of GDP per capita on an annual basis for eight Anglophone African economies for the period since 1885, raising new questions about previous characterizations of the region's economic performance. The new data show that many of these economies had levels of per capita income which were above subsistence by the early twentieth century, on a par with the largest economies in Asia until the 1980s. However, overall improvements in GDP per capita were limited by episodes of negative growth or “shrinking”, the scale and scope of which can be measured through annual data.