Controlling the incentive problems in real estate leasing

This paper develops a formal model that characterizes potential conflicts of interest between real-estate landlords and tenants. The model demonstrates a tenant's incentive to undermaintain or overuse (i.e., abuse) a leased property while highlighting the moral hazard problem as a cause of the failure of the lease irrelevance proposition. As a consequence, the lease irrelevance proposition's faiure implies that if tenant abuse incentives are left unrestricted, the market for leased real estate may cease to function.The efficacies of various lease arrangements suggested by Smith and Wakeman (1985) and other researchers in controlling the tenant abuse incentives are evaluated in this framework as a means of counteracting the inherent problems. Our analysis supports the greater use of variable lease schemes (e.g., security deposits and penalty clauses), which peg real-estate lease rates to the level of property abuse rather than more traditional fixed payment contracting arrangements.     

Why has unemployment risen in the New South Africa?1

We document the rise in unemployment in South Africa since the transition in 1994. We describe how changes in labour supply interacted with stagnant labour demand to produce unemployment rates that peaked between 2001 and 2003. Meanwhile, compositional changes in employment at the sectoral level widened the gap between the skill‐level of the employed and the unemployed. Using nationally representative panel data, we show that stable unemployment rates mask high individual‐level transition rates in labour market status. Our analysis highlights several key constraints to addressing unemployment in South Africa. We conclude that unemployment is near equilibrium levels and is unlikely to self‐correct without policy intervention.     

Kazakhstan's wheat system: priorities, constraints, and future prospects

This paper provides an overview of Kazakhstan's wheat system following independence and identifies policies and constraints currently influencing the operation and development of the system. It also looks at the factors affecting production decisions, including the current operating environment, intra-sectoral linkages, and overall macroeconomic conditions and identifies several alternative sources of productivity growth that can potentially improve the current and future competitiveness of Kazakhstan's wheat producers. The paper emphasizes that the wheat system cannot operate in isolation from the rest of the economy. Regaining lost levels of productivity can only be accomplished with some level of coordinated policy linking the priorities of the wheat system with those of the agricultural sector and the economy as a whole.     

Book reviews

Assessing the Value of Your Training: The Evaluation Process from Training Needs to the Report to the Board
Leslie Rae, 2002. Published by Gower Publishing Ltd, Aldershot, Hants, UK. ISBN 0 566 68535 6. £49.50, 240 pages.     

The college graduate and his first job

To determine MBA graduates' subjective responses to their first jobs and the areas of their greatest dissatisfactions, the authors queried a group about ten factors: advancement opportunity, challenging work, responsibility, salary, supervision, location, job prestige, training programs, fringe benefits, and security.     

Towards an ethics platform for tourism

Ethical distinctions inform all human actions and decisions. On inspection, however, dominant paradigms in tourism scholarship are imbued with the myth of objectivity and thus ignore the ethical dimension. Since the four platforms of scholarship were first published in 1990, a representation of one of the most value-based concepts of this time, sustainable development, has been embraced; a fifth platform has emerged to dominate the rhetoric of tourism praxis. However, this paper argues that a sixth platform, an ethics platform, is needed to interrogate the morality of the positions taken in policy, planning, development, and management. These platforms are proposed against a background of environmental ethics and global political economy.