The Masakhane campaign: Alice and King William's Town case studies

The high‐profile media launch of the Masakhane campaign heightened awareness of issues associated with local government and service provision, However, delivery and improvement of services at local level have been slow or even non‐existent, resulting in a general feeling of despondency. Fortunately, this situation is being challenged as some towns implement their own campaigns with increasingly promising results, as this article will show by tracing developments in Alice and King William's Town. Their experiences, together with those of a number of other towns, point to some exciting possibilities in achieving the ideals of the Masakhane campaign at local level.     

Understanding Society: the income data

We introduce the income data of Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study. First, we show that the data are widely used in academic and policy research. We then discuss the pros and cons of different types of data on household incomes. We go on to describe the income content of Understanding Society, emphasising key details of data collection and data processing – specifically the derivation of net household income totals. We perform a quality assessment that compares Understanding Society estimates of net household incomes to those from a reliable cross-sectional source – the Households Below Average Income series. We conclude that the Understanding Society income data are of high quality, and so are an excellent source for research on the income distribution or incomes more generally. We finish with a discussion of future directions for income data collection in the study.     

Vintage Human Capital, Demographic Trends, and Endogenous Growth

We study how economic growth is affected by demographics in an OLG model with a realistic survival law. Individuals optimally chose the dates at which they leave school to work and at which they retire. Endogenous growth arises thanks to the accumulation of generation-specific human capital. Favorable shifts in the survival probabilities induce longer schooling and later retirement but have an ambiguous effect on per-capita growth. The long-term relationship between fertility and per-capita growth is hump-shaped. Increases in longevity can be responsible for a switch from a no-growth regime to a sustained growth regime and for a positive relationship between fertility and growth to vanish. Solving numerically the equilibrium, demographic changes can have important medium-term effects even if long-term changes are very small. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: 041, I20, J10.     

The Trickle‐down Effect of the Mining Boom in Australia: Fact or Myth?

This paper examines the relationship between the output levels in the mining sector and various non‐mining sectors in an attempt to understand the role of the mining sector in Australia. The unobserved components time series model is used to estimate the effects of the output gap and the growth regime in the mining sector on the output level of each of several non‐mining sectors. Overall, the estimates obtained do not suggest an overwhelmingly positive effect running from the mining sector to other production and services sectors, implying that the trickle‐down effect of the mining boom may be a myth.     

THE ROLE OF SECURITY IN THE FOOD SUPPLIER SELECTION DECISION

This research assesses whether, and under what conditions, firms are willing to trade off price and delivery reliability for greater supplier security. Specifically, international sourcing and concern over security incidents occurring at the respondent's firm are proposed as conditions that may increase demand for supplier security. This research suggests to managers the trade offs their customers may be willing to accept for increased security. The results are useful for firms evaluating whether they should invest in supply chain security measures. Results provide academic insight into the relative importance of security as a supplier selection criterion.     

Capital Structure and Value of Advertising Expenditures: Evidence from an Emerging Market

International Advances in Economic Research - This paper documents a non-linear impact of capital structure on the value of advertising expenditures in India during the period between 2004 and...     

Currency depreciation effects on ADR returns: evidence from Latin America

We use seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR) and multivariate regression models (MVRM) in a panel sample of 74 American depository receipts (ADR) programs from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico during the period May 1994 to May 2009 to analyze the behavior of ADR returns during the 300-day period surrounding the currency crises breakdown in the originator??s country. Controlling for the underlying stock and local and host country equity indices, we find that ADRs generate significant negative abnormal returns during currency crises, due to translation exposure. Abnormal returns remain statistically significant even in crises triggered by currency depreciations as small as 3.6%. The results persist after including exchange rate returns as a control variable and after an orthogonalization procedure of exchange rate against local country indices. In agreement with ADR literature, our results show that ADR prices are determined primarily by the underlying stock, exchange rates, and host country index, in that order. Moreover, we observe how market integration has become evident in more recent times as the coefficients for the U.S. stock market have increased its contribution to ADR price discovery.     

Credit programs for the poor and the health status of children in rural bangladesh*

The impact of participation in group‐based credit programs, by gender of participant, on the health status of children by gender in rural Bangladesh is investigated. These credit programs are well suited to studies of how gender‐specific resources alter intra‐household allocations because they induce differential participation by gender. Women's credit is found to have a large and statistically significant impact on two of three measures of the healthiness of both boy and girl children. Credit provided to men has no statistically significant impact and the null hypothesis of equal credit effects by gender of participant is rejected.     

On the permanent effect of an aggregate demand shock: Evidence from the G-7 countries

This paper extends the work of Cover, Enders and Hueng (2006) to examine the idea that an aggregate demand shock may have permanent effect on the output level by indirectly shifting the aggregate supply curve. We utilize the bivariate SVAR modeling and adopt an identification scheme, which allows for the possibility that a shift in the aggregate demand curve may induce the long-run aggregate supply curve to shift. We have shown that aggregate supply shocks are positively affected by the demand shocks in each of the G-7 countries. It is found that a one-time positive aggregate demand shock increases the output level permanently in these industrialized economies. We have also shown that our decomposition strategy can help resolve anomalies in the responses of inflation to a positive aggregate supply shock observed in a simple Blanchard-Quah decomposition.