A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics, October, 2017 / This thesis contains three core chapters that assess the performance of alternative monetary policy frameworks and instruments in stabilizing 10 selected African economies. Literature and practice show that Advanced Economies (AEs) and Emerging Market Economies (EMEs) are mostly adopting the ination targeting (IT) framework. This framework relies on active use of the interest rate as a policy instrument for macroeconomic stabilisation. Di⁄erent from AEs and EMEs, the majority of African countries are characterized by low nancial market development, frequent supply shocks and volatile terms of trade. These features impede the e¢ ciency of the IT framework and the interest rate instrument. Supply shocks imply that ination is not only demand driven. Volatile terms of trade translate into excessive exchange rate uctuations. Due to these factors, policy practice in Africa remains largely divergent from the global trend. Authorities still rely on monetary aggregate targeting (MAT) with de facto managed exchange rates. However, the MAT framework is also failing to stabilize economies. This follows instability of the key factors, such as the money demand, upon which the framework is anchored. Furthermore, controlling exchange rate movements is a challenge due to weak balance of payments positions. It is not surprising, therefore, that the majority of African economies still remain in the grip of macroeconomic instability. Ination and GDP targets are rarely met and they also remain volatile. The perverse macroeconomic features and the perceived failure of the MAT regime have necessitated the search for alternative monetary frameworks and instruments. In this study, we join the search by specically focussing on three questions. First, given the macroeconomic landscape in Africa, what is the relative performance of the interest rate vis--vis the monetary aggregate as instru iv ments for macroeconomic stabilization? Secondly, how do these instruments perform when apart from ination and output stabilization, monetary policy also engages in smoothing exchange rate uctuations? Thirdly, what is the relative performance of ination targeting vis--vis nominal GDP targeting as alternative monetary policy regimes for macroeconomic stabilization in African economies? Although the success of monetary policy largely relies on appropriate conguration of monetary policy frameworks and instruments, answers to these questions remain controversial and scanty for African economies. In order to address these questions, we formulate a New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model. In this model, money is non-separable from consumption in the utility function. We estimate the model using the Maximum Likelihood method with quarterly data mostly from 1990 to 2014. The data is obtained from the International Financial Statistics (IFS). The thesis has ve chapters. Chapter 1 is the general background to the research problem. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are distinct but related core chapters addressing three specic research questions. Chapter 5 is the conclusion. In Chapter 2, we compare the performance of the monetary aggregate and the interest rate as alternative instruments for stabilizing ination and output in 10 selected countries. Results show that the monetary aggregate is superior in stabilizing 5 economies. In the other 5 countries, it is the interest rate instrument which performs better. In the former group of countries, the monetary aggregate plays a relatively large role in macroeconomic dynamics while in the latter the interest rate is more signicant. These results partly reect di⁄erences in nancial market development between the two groups of countries. Overall, we nd a weak role of the interest rate compared to the monetary aggregate in driving aggregate demand dynamics. The exchange rate is also found to be a key driver of macroeconomic dynamics. Our re v sults suggest three things: First, authorities in Africa need to be cautious of a blanket adoption of the interest rate as a sole monetary policy instrument. Second, authorities will nd it di¢ cult to stabilize economies using the interest rate based frameworks. Third, exchange rate stability is key to macroeconomic stability in Africa. In Chapter 3, we extend the authoritiesobjective function. In addition to minimizing ination and output volatility, authorities also use the interest rate or money supply rules to smooth exchange rate uctuations. The results show that macroeconomic performance is enhanced when authorities smooth exchange rate uctuations in 4 of the 10 countries. The gains from exchange rate smoothing mostly arise from a reduction in ination and exchange rate volatility but not fromoutput. In the other 6 countries, exchange rate smoothing worsens macroeconomic performance. These results reect the fact that the exchange rate exerts a relatively large inuence in macroeconomic dynamics in the rst group of countries compared to the latter. Exchange rate smoothing therefore minimizes the pass-through of the exchange uctuations to ination and output leading to better performance. Overall, the ndings suggest that exchange rate smoothing is harmful in Africa. Where exchange rate smoothing delivers gains, appropriate thresholdsofsmoothingneedtobeobservedtoavoidpolicyinducedmacroeconomic instability. Authorities should also smooth temporal rather that structural shifts in the exchange rate level. In Chapter 4, we compare the performance of ination targeting (IT) vis-vis nominal GDP targeting (NGDPT) as alternative monetary policy frameworks for macroeconomic stabilization. We examine the strict and exible versions of these policy regimes. We also include a hybrid regime which combines elements of IT and NGDPT. Results show that the hybrid regime performs better in 5 countries. In the other 4 countries, it is the strict ination targeting that performs better. In 1 country, exible ination tar vi geting is optimal. The results also reveal that demand shocks dominate but are closely trailed by supply and exchange rate shocks in explaining macroeconomic uctuations. The multiplicity of signicant shocks is key in explaining the dominance of the hybrid regime. The hybrid regime successfully handles shocks that can neither be optimally handled by the IT regime nor the NGDPT regime alone. These results have several implications. First, demand management alone is insu¢ cient to stabilize African economies. Second, identifying dominant shocks is critical for choosing robust monetary policy regimes. Third, the multiplicity of signicant shocks implies that choosing monetary policy frameworks and hence macroeconomic management process is more complex for African policy makers. Overall, the results have several policy implications which are outlined in Chapter 5. First, they suggest a cautious approach towards generalized adoption of the interest rate over the monetary aggregate as a monetary policy instrument in African economies. This contradicts the current wave of monetary policy changes sweeping across African countries. Secondly, the signicanceoftheexchangeraterenderscredencetoexchangeratesmoothing in Africa. The ndings, however, suggest that exchange rate smoothing can either enhance or worsen macroeconomic performance. Where it enhances macroeconomic performance, authorities must carefully consider the thresholds of smoothing to avoid creating macroeconomic instability. Authorities need not ght structural shifts in exchange rates levels through smoothing. This would help to preserve the shock absorbing role of the exchange rate. Finally, the prevalence of demand, supply as well as exchange rate shocks makes the hybrid monetary policy regime which combines elements of IT regime as well as NGDPT regime to perform relatively better in stabilizing the majority of the economies. Given the multiplicity of shocks, authorities inAfricaneedtocomplementdemandmanagementwithpoliciesthataddress supply side and exchange rate bottlenecks to ensure sustainable macroeco vii nomic stability. Overall, the ndings suggest that there is scope to improve monetary policy performance in Africa by adopting suitable frameworks and instruments. The results also highlight the problem of tackling monetary policy issues with a "one size ts all" approach. / GR2018

Thesis (M.M. (Public Policy))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, School of Governance, 2016. / The study focuses on the lived experiences of indigenous and traditional community of Phokeng in the process of urbanising. It is a community affected by unclarified policies and documents to secure their tenure. Phokeng community in Rustenburg is approximately 200 km to the west of Johannesburg. The research revealed that the rural and marginalised of Phokeng is now becoming urbanised and that there is inadequacy of legislation or policy to guarantee security of tenure in an area a under traditional authority. The community has historically depended on oral information and storytelling. A total of thirty informants were surveyed in the community. The study elicited information on informant’s understanding of security of tenure, the role they played to secure tenure to their land. It also probed, their awareness of developmental policies affecting their activities and expectations. The study revealed that people did not have title to the land they occupied but were very content that they were safe from evictions because the traditional leader and his traditional authority provided the guarantee. There is need for further research on why people in traditional authority areas that are in the process of urbanising would be content to live on land on which they do not have registered tenure rights.

Merging from the Distance offers a place to display the poems I have created during my tenure as a graduate student. The four sections found within represent different personal aesthetics. My thesis is also representational of a personal chronology, for it was my intention to demonstrate my efforts of contemporary poetry. Many of the poems seek to engage symbiosis by combining different languages, forms, and levels of diction. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Thesis advisor: Sarah Beckjord / En la tradición mexicana, la figura de La Malinche ha llegado a representar un paradigma importante para explorar el legado de la conquista. A fines del siglo XX, Kimberle López señaló el surgimiento de un nuevo tipo de narrativa de la conquista, una que se esforzaba por revisar las narrativas antiguas para que éstas pudieran mejor explicar las realidades y la identidad de los latinoamericanos contemporáneos. Como tal, la desilusión y las injusticias de la opresión han surgido como temas principales en la literatura histórica de la época posmoderna. Debido a este empeño, se están recuperando las identidades que antes sufrían el efecto de ser olvidadas por una tradición histórica que se negaba a reconocer su valor en la representación del pasado. Si se encuentra uno de los primeros retratos de La Malinche en la Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España de Bernal Díaz del Castillo, los comentarios críticos de Octavio Paz y Carlos Fuentes evidencian la presencia de una dicotomía problemática con respecto a la representación de esta figura. Además, la publicación de Malinche por Laura Esquivel ha sacado a la luz el trauma de la conquista y, por consiguiente, ha cuestionado las mismísimas estructuras e ideas que sofocaban las voces de la gente, como Malinalli, que se quedaban en las márgenes de la historia. Imaginando una nueva versión de la conquista a través de los ojos de su protagonista, esta autora logra ampliar la narrativa del pasado para que la participación de todos, especialmente las mujeres, sea una realidad. Al expandir los límites de la representación del pasado mediante la libertad imaginativa de la literatura, hemos podido llevar una suerte de justicia, sea ésta poética, a las personas cuyas identidades que se perdieron en la lucha para el poder. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Romance Languages and Literatures Honors Program. / Discipline: Romance Languages and Literatures.

The following is a collection of personal essays exploring identity during the transformative period of the author's early adult life. It also examines themes of home, inheritance, grief, and loss of faith. It has elements of both humor and drama highlighted through unusual forms and elements of voice. It is about growing up and going home, mixing old traditions with new ones, bringing new insights to old problems, and about having faith, but always on one's own terms. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This thesis is concerned with developing a new approach to reading and thinking about culture (especially US culture), which I am proposing to call Luminol Theory. Luminol Theory is a textual reading strategy that draws on both psychoanalysis and depth reading. It reveals what has been occulted and it illuminates the contemporary United States as a crime scene. I argue for the singular importance of Luminol Theory as it provides a dystopian account of contemporary culture in the US. A culture that is haunted, that is characterised by injustice and brutality, and that reads bodies as disposable. I introduce luminol as an agent of forensic enquiry that excavates and illuminates narratives, particularly crime narratives, which have been erased. This interdisciplinary intersection of theory, forensic science, and literary criticism offers a specific, contemporary textual reading strategy. I situate Luminol Theory within its origins in feminism (with particular reference to Tiqqun's theory of the ‘Young-Girl'), psychoanalysis (with particular reference to Kristevan abject-analysis, queer theory, and the field of death studies), and depth reading strategies (working through Paul Ricoeur's ‘hermeneutics of suspicion' and Michel Foucault's ‘genealogy' and ‘archaeology'). Though it draws on each of these fields, Luminol Theory is a new contribution to contemporary literary criticism. The three critical chapters investigate the contemporary Unites States as a crime scene, moving through the exploratory steps that a forensic investigation might take. The first chapter opens with a reading of the crime scene itself by embedding Colorado crime fictions within the violent history of the state. The second chapter discovers artefacts at the scene, reading textual objects for hidden meanings and reading contemporary experimental fiction from the United States as apocalyptic material, through the lens of the Book of Revelation. Just as Revelation literally reveals the cultural anxieties of first millennium Christians and their fears of impending apocalypse so too Skin Horse by Olivia Cronk and Entrance to a Pageant where we all begin to Intricate by Johannes Göransson are apocalyptic texts for the third millennium. The final critical chapter approaches the body of the dead girl at the heart of the crime scene in order to discover the aesthetic coherence between death and femininity and the violence wrought interchangeably by sexual violence and capital. The fourth section of the thesis demonstrates Luminol Theory in practice. This collection of short fictions The Dead Girl Scrolls: Unearthed Apocalyptic Fictions is modelled on the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found serendipitously by shepherds in 1946 in the Qumran caves, West Bank. These scrolls contain a key to ancient languages, cultures, and narratives that were previously hidden. Later forensic analysis of the papyrus scrolls involved using UV light, a blue chemical glow that excavated layers of hidden narrative. By offering a secular version of these sacred texts, The Dead Girl Scrolls operates within a forensic imaginary; that is, it performs an empathetic and creative response to the secular aporia. It does this through offering dead women a central position that refuses to reify, objectify, or fetishise them or their bodies.

This thesis aims to advance our understanding of banking in the post-crisis era. It makes three distinct contributions to the literature on banking. The first chapter examines whether "too-big-to-fail" (TBTF) factors affect estimates of scale economies for large banks. Based on a standard model of bank production that does not control for any TBTF factors, we find evidence of scale economies for our sample of large banks. However, once we control for TBTF factors, we instead find evidence of constant returns to scale. These results suggest that estimates of scale economies for large banks are affected by TBTF factors. The second chapter examines the impact of forbearance lending on firm dynamics and performance in Europe since the sovereign debt crisis. We develop a quantitative model, which features endogenous forbearance lending and endogenous firm defaults, as well as information asymmetry faced by the lender. We fit the model to key Euro Area firm statistics over the period 2011 to 2014. We show that in the absence of forbearance lending, the average firm sales growth, investment and productivity are higher than in the benchmark scenario with forbearance lending. These results suggest that forbearance lending practices have contributed to the recent economic stagnation across the Euro Area. The third chapter introduces a novel way to identify the causal effect of bank capital on risk-taking. We use provisions for misconduct issues as an instrument for bank capital. We show that misconduct provisions are an appropriate instrument due to their strong and negative impact on bank capital, and are otherwise unrelated to asset risk-taking. Our main finding is subsequently that a negative shock to bank capital leads to an increase in risk-taking, as measured by detailed information on mortgage underwriting standards.

Experiences as a composer and performer in Australia involve a number of significant collaborations with musicians from diverse cultures and musical backgrounds. The musical result incorporates a number of world music elements in the form of drones, rhythms and the use of instruments such as modified guitars and the tabla. But it is distinctly different in content and approach from the generic term, World music, because it deals almost exclusively with music traditions where improvisation is central to collaborative processes. The application of the term ‘intercultural improvisation’ is a more useful descriptor of the process in which musicians from diverse backgrounds cross the boundaries of their music and step into ao zone of experimentation. This is explored through composition and improvisation that cross musical boundaries / Master of Arts (Hons.)

Music of balance is a portfolio of eight compositions, all of which bear the concealed influence of mandalas in their conception - these are made manifest musically in cycle structures with shifting drones, pedals and tonal ambiguities.The compositional process maximises minimal materials - circles and squares - symbolically. Organising thought, feeling and knowledge into a balanced acoustic music form of expression is the objective of this creative project - which is carried out under the influence of symbols. Whilst the compositional processes are intuitive, they involve a disciplinary measure which employs the circle and the square as tools. Acting symbolically these tools imbue the music with deeper meaning than the obvious listening surface, and provide a rich substance of sound. Programmatic influences have been absented; replaced instead by the language of symbols - namely the mandala symbol. A range of apparent opposites arising from circles and squares - physical/ephemeral matter, chronological/eternal time and form/expression - are investigated for musical reconciliation. The compositional exploration is guided and focused by the circle in a square image understood as a universal symbol (grounded in the ancient Indian Arts, Tibetan Buddhism, Sufism and Jungian psychology), and active in representing, and thus restoring the natural balance of the soul in the universe. / Master of Arts (Hons)

This thesis is comprised of a survey of all the varying influences behind the author's art making. All pre-occupations are included, the concepts of childhood memory; the use of imagination; the ability to comprehend and put together an old fashioned story in varying forms; as well as considering the notion of blurring historical and actual fact with personal elements of fantastical fiction. These themes have all been threaded delicately through the motif of time-travel, the author's personal favourite of literary genres. The main aim has been to make an attempt to re-create the feelings of childhood.Whilst embracing whimsy, the absurd and the time travel genre, this project hopefully shows a struggle and is an allegorical comment on the author as an artist, who having lost a little of his faith in the world and his abilities, becomes seduced by a new focus. / Master of Arts (Hons) (Creative Arts)