The scope and scale of the informal food economy of South African urban residential townships: Results of a small-area micro-enterprise census

Growing urbanisation in South Africa is reflected in burgeoning Working class and informal township settlements on the fringes of its major towns and cities. Paired with this is an increasing reliance on cash as the primary means of economic transaction, which has in turn stimulated the growth of micro-enterprise business activities within the township context. This article discusses the findings of an eight-township small-area census which occurred between 2010 and 2013 in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Durban townships representing 250 000 residents. The researchers were able to establish the scope and scale of informal food and drink retailing in these localities. Of the 10 049 micro-enterprises located in the study, some 3966 (or 39% of the total) trade in food. These include enterprises in primary production, fresh produce retailing, grocery retailing from house and spaza shops, and informal foodservice enterprises. Food is the basis for much township informal business and plays an important role in making food increasingly affordable and locally accessible, and in creating cash employment. The article builds on the knowledge base of the township informal economy role in bolstering food security needs for the marginalised.     

COVID-19 and business renewal: Lessons and insights from the global airline industry

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the fortunes of multiple companies around the globe. Accordingly, questions are increasingly being asked about how organizations can revitalize during and after a crisis. Yet, we have limited understanding of how organizations renew themselves during crises over time. We explore this question through the lens and examination of two South-Asian airlines: Pakistan International Airlines and Sri Lankan Airlines. The cases offer important insights into the reasons behind underperformance of state-controlled enterprises and renewal activities. We shed light on strategic renewal (SR) in the wake of increasing liberalization and deregulations in the global airline industry. To this end, we propose a four-stage approach towards renewing such underperforming organizations to respond effectively to black swan events and external shocks.     

Missing the Popular Vote: Pitfalls in US Democracy and Reform Proposals

Intereconomics - Only a few years ago, it was a widespread belief that globalisation would trigger processes of democratisation worldwide. However, even old and established democracies such as the...     

Exchange Rate Pass-Through to Consumer Prices: The Increasing Role of Energy Prices

Open Economies Review - A number of researchers have found that the rate of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) to domestic prices has declined substantially over the last few decades. We revisit...     

Lobbying as a potent political marketing tool for firm performance: A closer look

This study endeavors to enhance political marketing literature about the impact of lobbying on firm performance. Our sample is composed of 140 U.S. firms and spans the years 2007–2014 to encompass the 2007–2009 recession and the subsequent recovery period. Our findings indicate that lobbying expenses positively contribute to firm performance. Also, government contracts in both ways, dollar amount and number of government contracts, act as mediators between lobbying expenses and firm performance. In addition, organizational slack moderates the relationship between lobbying expenses and government contracts. The managerial implications suggest that lobbying expenses can be leveraged as a potent tool for firm performance. Firms with larger lobbying efforts acquired both, higher dollar amounts and a greater number of government contracts.     

New development: China renews reform of central–local fiscal relations and provides for basic national public services

China’s reform on central–local fiscal reform has slowed down in recent years. The appointment of a new finance minister experienced in local government affairs is expected to renew the reform affirmed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress in late 2017. China has unprecedentedly identified a comprehensive list of 81 national basic public services as entitlements. Eighteen of them are subject to national and local standards, and co-financed by central and local governments. A new cost-sharing method for 10 of these services classifies sub-national jurisdictions into five tiers, in which the central government’s share declines from 80% to 10%. These measures, effective in 2019, aim at creating a ‘harmonious and moderately prosperous society’.     

Characterization of the Row Geometric Mean Ranking with a Group Consensus Axiom

An axiomatic approach is applied to the problem of extracting a ranking of the alternatives from a pairwise comparison ratio matrix. The ordering induced by row geometric mean method is proved to be uniquely determined by three independent axioms, anonymity (independence of the labelling of alternatives), responsiveness (a kind of monotonicity property) and aggregation invariance, which requires the preservation of group consensus, that is, the pairwise ranking between two alternatives should remain unchanged if unanimous individual preferences are combined by geometric mean.     

LT码新型度分布及其在电力线通信中的应用

Luby变换(Luby Transform,LT)码作为信道编码应用于电力线通信(Power Line Communication,PLC)，可实现电信号的可靠传输。度分布对LT码编译码性能的影响至关重要。为了得到更优的度分布，首先调整二进制指数分布(Binary Exponential Distribution,BED)中的度数比例，获得一种译码性能更优的改进的二进制指数分布(Improved BED,IBED)。然后，根据IBED在冗余度较小时译码成功率高，而冗余度增大后鲁棒孤子分布(Robust Soliton Distribution,RSD)的译码性能表现更佳的特点，通过求和归一化的方式将IBED与RSD两种度分布的优势进行有机结合，提出一种新型二进制鲁棒孤子分布(Binary RSD,BRSD)。仿真结果表明，与其他方法及传统的RSD相比，采用新度分布进行LT编码，可明显降低译码开销，并节约编译码耗时。将新型度分布应用于基于LT码的PLC系统中，能有效地抑制PLC信道中各种噪声对电信号的干扰，并提高通信效率。