Socio‐economic factors determining the success achieved among cotton‐adopting households in two magisterial districts of KwaZulu

The aim of the paper is to investigate certain aspects of the post‐adoption behaviour of dryland cotton farmers in the Ubombo and Hlabisa magisterial districts of KwaZulu. Particular attention is paid to the socio‐economic determinants of the success (returns per hectare) of the household cotton enterprise.

Multi‐stage sampling methods were used to draw a random sample of fifty cotton‐farming households from each of the two study districts. The data were collected by interview survey and analysed using principal components and regression techniques.

Results suggest that the success of the household enterprise in both areas is largely determined by the socio‐economic environment under which the producer operates. The most important success‐determining factors are those relating to the human capital endowments and economic status of the household.     

Multi-Dimensional Procurement Auctions for Power Reserves: Robust Incentive-Compatible Scoring and Settlement Rules

System operators in the electricity industry purchase reserve capacity in a procurement auction in which suppliers offer two-part bids, one part for making capacity available and another part for supplying incremental energy when called. Key ingredients of an efficient auction design are the scoring rule for comparing bids, and the settlement rule for paying accepted bids. We use the principle of incentive compatibility to establish that very simple rules suffice. In particular, the scoring rule uses only the capacity part of the bid, and energy supplies are paid the spot price. This is the design adopted in California.     

Delaying integration of immigrant labor for the purpose of taxation

Delayed integration (DI) is a rule for taxing migrants. It requires that immigrants be taxed in the host country only after some period of transition. Conversely, emigrants are released from the obligation to pay taxes only after a certain period. DI is an alternative to the Employment Principle and the Home-Country Principle. The former governs the international taxation of labor. The latter is a close substitute for the Nationality Principle, on which US tax law is based. The paper studies DI in a setting which allows one to trade off the efficiency costs of distortionary taxation and of wasteful government.     

Reduced Form Auctions Revisited

This note uses the Theorem of the Alternative to prove new results on the implementability of general, asymmetric auctions, and to provide simpler proofs of known results for symmetric auctions. The tradeoff is that type spaces are taken to be finite.     

EFFECT OF GROUPING OF DATA ON THE DIVERGENCE BETWEEN LASPEYRES AND PAASCHE FORMS OF QUANTUM INDEXES*

Historical data for the manufacturing industry in the United States and United Kingdom are quoted, showing in most cases divergences between Laspeyres and Paasche forms of the quantum index that are by no means negligible. When the Paasche index for two of the series is recalculated with quantity indicators for industries instead of for products, the divergence is greatly reduced, and when quantity indicators for industry groups are substituted it almost disappears. This raises some questions about the practices of econometricians and statisticians, which are discussed. In a mathematical appendix by E. R. Coleman it is suggested that the grouping effect referred to does not depend on the particular way in which the data are grouped in most quantum indexes.     

Managed competition

People don't like change. That includes materiel managers, administrators, and clinical providers. Managed competition or managed care will work if, and only if, the American professions and the American public recognize the value of highly educated and qualified clinical and nonclinical providers and if the health care industry responds in kind.     

An appropriate development strategy for Southern Africa∗

The limited successes achieved with development in the Third World and the national states in Southern Africa have necessitated a considerable change in development thinking and practice. The conventional developmental approach, which is based on growth models, is inappropriate for the conditions in the LDCs. A new development approach, coupled with an appropriate development strategy, has culminated in the development literature.

In this article the poverty problem in Southern Africa is outlined as a general background, whereafter the new development approach and a few guidelines for an appropriate development strategy is discussed. The application of the new strategy in the circumstances of Southern Africa is highlighted.     

Black americans and Ghanaians: Comparative patterns of internal migration

Conclusions For our purposes here, the analysis has been fruitful in that it has served to indicate and underscore in both general and specific terms the sources and determinants of migration movement and the destination of migrants. The qualitative analysis and the statistical test have led to several research conclusions. Both United States and Ghanaian migrants behave in accordance with the migration concepts examined. Common relationships between migration and economic opportunity are apparent. While push factors have generally initiated migratory movement among black Americans, particularly in respect to the South, both groups tend to move to regions with better economic opportunities. In both cases, migration is a negative function of distance, and a large labor force at the origin is a stimulus to out-migration at the origin.