Street Children and Street Life in Urban Tanzania: The Culture of Surviving and its Implications for Children’s Health

This paper presents data from an in-depth study conducted among street children in an urban setting in Tanzania. It examines the reasons ‘children of the street’ leave their homes, how they survive and meet their daily needs, what problems they encounter whilst on the streets and how they surmount them. The paper also examines the implications of street life for children’s health. The findings show that general poverty lies at the center of the increasing number of street children in Tanzania. Street life makes the children vulnerable to a variety of problems including ill health. Policies in Tanzania have so far failed to solve this problem, particularly because social policies have been dealing with symptoms rather than essential causes. The paper ends by outlining short- and long-term policy solutions and also suggests directions for future research and early intervention. — Cet article présente les données d’une étude en profondeur conduite parmi les enfants des rues dans un cadre urbain en Tanzanie. Il explore les raisons pour lesquelles ‘les enfants des rues’ partent de chez eux, comment ils survivent et surviennent à leurs besoins quotidiens, les problèmes qu’ils rencontrent dans les rues et comment ils les surmontent. Cet article examine aussi les implications de la vie dans la rue pour la santé des enfants. Les résultats montrent que la pauvreté générale est la raison centrale du nombre croissant d’enfants dans les rues en Tanzanie. La vie dans les rues rend les enfants susceptibles à de nombreux problèmes, y compris la mauvaise santé. La politique de la Tanzanie n’a pas encore réussi à résoudre ce problème, en particulier parce que la politique sociale a adressé les symptômes plutôt que les causes essentielles. Cet article propose des solutions politiques à court et à long terme et suggère également des options pour les recherches futures et pour des interventions précoces.     

The capital structure puzzle revisited

Corporate finance researchers have long been puzzled by lowcorporate debt ratios given debt's corporate tax advantage.This article recognizes that firm value typically reflects agrowing stream of earnings, while current debt reflects a nongrowingstream of interest payments. Debt to value is therefore a distortedmeasure of corporate tax shielding. Even with very small debt-relatedcosts, this may explain the observed magnitude and cross-sectionalvariation of debt ratios. Since this variation may be independentof tax shielding, debt ratios provide an inappropriate frameworkfor empirically examining the trade-off theory of capital structure.     

The impact of structural adjustment policies on women's and children's health in Tanzania

Since 1981, the government of Tanzania has adopted a variety of policy measures including the National Economic Survival Plan (NESP), Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), Economic Recovery Program (ERP) I, ERP II, Economic and Social Action Plan (ESAP), and Priority Social Action Plan (PSAP) to deal with the country's present social and economic crisis dating back to the late 1970s. The main objective of the these adjustment measures has been to attain macroeconomic balance by bringing national expenditure into line with national income to reduce inflation and to increase exports. Other objectives have been to maintain egalitarian income distribution and the provision of basic social services to the majority of the population. To realize these objectives, the government has been controlling credit and removed subsidies on certain food items and agricultural inputs, introduced a system of progressive devaluation, liberalized trade, and has been trying to reduce government expenditure by introducing cost sharing measures in the education and health sector. The author concludes that the erosion of real incomes and increased poverty have had a devastating effect upon women and children. Rural women have heavier workloads as males migrate to urban areas in search of work, there is increased maternal mortality, and chronic malnutrition and poverty make it difficult to implement HIV/AIDS intervention strategies.     

Trading volume with private valuation: evidence from the ex-dividend day

We test a theory of the interaction between investors' heterogeneity,risk, transaction costs, and trading volume. We take advantageof the specific nature of trading motives around the distributionof cash dividends, namely the costly trading of tax shields.Consistent with the theory, we show that when trades occur becauseof differential valuation of cash flows, an increase in riskor transaction costs reduces volume. We also show that the nonsystematicrisk plays a significant role in determining the volume of trade.Finally, we demonstrate that trading volume is positively relatedto the degree of heterogeneity and the incentives of the variousgroups to engage in trading.     

The self-enforcing provisions of oil and gas unit operating agreements: theory and evidence

This article extends the existing theory and empirical investigationof unitization contracts. It highlights the importance of incentive-compatibilityand self-enforcement and the bargaining problems faced in achievingviable, long-term contracts. We argue that only if the partiesto a unitization contract have unit production shares that arethe same as their cost shares will the contract be incentivecompatible. Using a database of 60 unit operating agreements,we measure the industry's actual behavior against the principlesof production from a common pool. Our survey of units that haveonly one production phase and that are relatively homogeneousreveals that such equal sharing rules are always found and theyappear to encourage the parties to behave optimally. In morecomplex units with multiple production phases and/or separateconcentrations of oil and gas (gas caps) we find deviationsfrom the theoretical ideal. In the case of multiphase units,we find equal cost and production shares within phases, butnot across phases. A preset trigger for shifting from one productionphase to the next helps to maintain optimal behavior. For gascap units, however, we generally do not find the equal sharingrule. Conflicts and rent dissipation follow as illustrated bythe case of the Prudhoe Bay Unit. The article describes thedesirable contract rules for avoiding moral hazard. It alsoshows how the effects of those rules can be replicated in difficultsituations.     

Prices, liquidity, and the information content of trades

We investigate the effect of asymmetric information on pricesand liquidity by analyzing trades, quotes, spreads, and depths.Information content should increase with trade size and theinformation asymmetry of the trading period. Results show thatprice and liquidity effects are significantly associated withinformation content as measured by both trade size and timingrelative to information events. Results are stronger for purchasesthan sales. Quoted prices are better measures of informationeffects than transaction prices, because they control for bid-askbounce. Finally, trades that a priori contain no informationhave no impact on prices and liquidity, despite their largesize.     

HAYEKIAN ECONOMIC INFRASTRUCTURE AS A FOUNDATION FOR SUSTAINED PROSPERITY

Rather than debate whether technical advances have created a ‘new economy’, economists should focus on the more interesting and useful question: How do we create the sort of environment in which innovation and the productive use of new technology thrive, thereby creating economic prosperity? Such an environment is the product of government laying the appropriate infrastructure, manifested in the culture of the institutions it supports. This article discusses the features governments must incorporate into their institutions in order to build an economic infrastructure that promotes prosperity.     

Measurement effects and the variance of returns after stock splits and stock dividends

This article examines the relation between two factors affectingstock returns, the bid-ask spread and price discreteness, andthe increase in return variance after ex-dates of stock splitsand stock dividends. Controlling for these effects, the varianceof daily returns still increases significantly. The varianceof weekly returns also increases significantly, and the varianceof returns for a control sample of nonsplitting firms showsno significant increase. Variance ratio tests show that bid-askerrors are small for these stocks and therefore cannot explainthe large increase in variance. Spreads and price discretenessdo not explain increased variance after stock distributions.