Must Capitalism Yield to Socialism?

Why did a brilliant economist who favoured capitalism argue that it would be replaced by socialism because of its very success? Professor Kirzner, an authority on Austrian economics, rejects the capitalism-is-doomed hypothesis of the Austrian Joseph Schumpeter, author of Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.     

The use and management of draught animals by smallholder farmers in the former Ciskei and Transkei

A survey was undertaken on the use and management of draught animals in the Eastern Cape province. Information was elicited by means of semi‐structured interviews with 94 rural households, most of which owned livestock and were engaged in farming activities. Most farmers relied on draught animal power, which was provided by their cattle, and preferred it to tractor power for most of their agricultural tasks. Span sizes of four or six animals were used for ploughing and harrowing (the preference being six), but for the lighter tasks such as cultivation, seeding and carting, only one pair of animals was usually used. Farmers readily used cows to make up their spans when they were short of oxen. Many of the farmers used tractors occasionally when they needed to open up new land. Most animals grazed on communal land (natural pasture), receiving supplements, usually stover or lucerne, only when farmers considered their body condition to be poor. Priority was given to milk animals over working animals for supplementary feeding. The farmers’ main concerns regarding draught animals were the risks of drought, theft and disease, but they believed the use of these animals to be profitable because of the low outlay.     

Some quasi-globally stable processes of price adjustment

In this paper, the existence of some quasi-globally stable processes of price adjustment in a perfectly competitive market, is proved. These processes are relative to a special class of “excess demand” vector fields satisfying regularity hypotheses and boundary conditions of classical type. Modifications of the above processes which, under different hypotheses, are still quasi-globally stable, are studied.     

Alternative estimation methods for two-regime models: A mathematical programming approach

This paper suggests mathematical programming methods for estimating the parameters of piecewise regression models. Maximum likelihood estimation results in a non-convex optimization problem which is not continuously differentiable, and might even become discontinuous. To solve these difficulties we suggest two classes of methods. The first one consists of ‘scanning methods’, which are combinatorial in nature and therefore adequate for problems limited in size. The second class consists of ‘smoothing (or approximation) methods’, which can be used for larger problems. While scanning methods always find the global solution in a finite number of steps, smoothing methods are only guaranteed to find a local optimum. The paper ends with an application of the methods to the determination of export prices.     

Exploring goal‐setting as a tool for leadership development

Goal‐setting theory is based on the premise that conscious goals affect action and is supported by four decades of research and more than 1,000 scholarly publications. Although the theory has been widely applied in management settings, it is an underused framework in the broader field of leadership development. This study considers the effects of goal‐setting as applied in a leadership program conducted for local board members in a nonprofit membership organization, the Florida Farm Bureau Federation. A final reduced regression model explains about 25% of the variance in individual performance by considering goal specificity, goal difficulty, education level, and gender. This study has implications for professional development programming and its application of goal‐setting theory. Additional research is needed to explore further the application of goal‐setting theory in programming for volunteer leaders.