No abstract available. / Dissertation (M Com (Economics))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Economics / unrestricted

No description available.

M.Comm. / The subject of the growth effects of remittances is characterised by different and conflicting perspectives. While migration optimists believe in positive growth effects of remittances, migration pessimists, on the other hand, challenge this position and claim that remittances have either a negative or statistically insignificant effect on economic growth. Those for remittances argue that remittances have a positive effect on economic growth mainly through subsequent increases in investment capital and human capital. Migration pessimists, however, stress that remittances negatively impact economic growth, mainly, because of inflationary pressures and moral hazards that result in reduced labour supply. Given such contrasting literature, this study makes an attempt to contribute to the existing literature by assessing the growth-effects of remittances in twenty-nine Sub-Saharan Africa countries over the period 1980-2008. The Arellano-Bover/Blundell-Bond GMM one-step estimator is used in the assessment. Empirical results from the study reveal evidence supporting for statistically significant positive growth effects of remittances in Sub-Saharan Africa. The study further reveals that these positive growth effects of remittances in Sub-Saharan Africa happen through the human capital channel. Even when heterogeneity of sub-regions is taken into account, there is still evidence showing positive growth effects of remittances in Sub-Saharan Africa. Results, however, reveal that in West Africa, remittances have a low positive effect on economic growth.

No description available.

M.Com. (Economics) / This study attempts to critically evaluate some of the aspects of policy recommendations presently being made for economic development as a contribution to the debate on an optimal approach for the reconstruction and development of the South African economy. The new and, for South Africa, unknown democratic era, in which widely differing ideological approaches towards economic development converge, offers an unique opportunity for reconciliation within the democratic structures. With this in mind, the ideological framework in terms of economic theory provides an explanation as to the divergent views on economic development and the relief of poverty. The White Paper, on Reconstruction and Development, to some extent seem to reconcile the ideological differences found within the Government of National Unity. There do, nevertheless, remain differences that need to be highlighted, especially when considering the evolution of the ideological base of the African National Congress Alliance as the main partner in the Government of National Unity. The impact of changing circumstances since the Freedom Charter, the ANC's first major economic policy statement, seem to explain the shift in the Alliance's socialistic and labour related affinity in subsequent publications as well as the White Paper on Reconstruction and Development. With the ANC evolving into a government in waiting and with external V11l influences, especially the lessons from the international development experience and the policy fundamentals inherent to the Normative Economic Model, becoming stark realities, the shift towards a more pragmatic and market acknowledging approach, as expressed in the White Paper on Reconstruction and development, became more pronounced. When considering the White Paper as a management program for the development of the South African economy, a wide array of sometimes contradictory goals are found which further highlights the ideological base in favour of labour. This may be the result of a program that tends to be populist and attempting to satisfy needs over the full spectrum of society. However, the lessons from the international development experience were fully taken into account and the White Paper on Reconstruction and Development cannot be faulted for not incorporating all the ingredients of present day state-of-the-art development policy. Resources for, and management ofthe program poses the more serious problems. According to the Reconstruction and Development Program ofthe African National Congress, the government submits to a people driven development approach. Following the evaluation of the goals set to meet basic needs, two major problems arise, namely that the stated goals will probably be insufficient to satisfy the social backlog and will probably be unrealistic to achieve over as short a period as five years. The populist democracy that flows from the people driven process propagated by the Reconstruction and Development Program places certain constraints on the effective management of the reform process and as such may result in South Africa not achieving its potential rate of development. The inclusion of local an provincial government structures, civic organisations and others in the decision making process will enhance the credibility of policies but is slow in the development of policies and their implementation. The uncertainty surrounding the jurisdiction and competency of these new and democratised structures leads to the questioning of this process as far as the effective management of the development program is concerned. International experience has shown that a decisive and coherent economic team, visionary economic leadership and a strong political and judicial base to drive policy implementation are necessary ingredients for a development and reform program to succeed.

Research presented for the degree of Masters of Management in Public Policy to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management of the University of the Witwatersrand, School of Public and Development Management. March 2016 / The purpose of this study is to analyse the changing nature of South Africa’s Macroeconomic policy in the post-apartheid era for the period 1994-2010. The key focus of the study is to uncover the factors that are a direct cause or have contributed to the paradigm shifts in policy during the specified period; supplementary to this, the study will look at how the changing paradigms have contributed in ridding the South African economy of its apartheid legacy, characterised by the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality. This study has a strong qualitative approach, comprising a comprehensive document review process, as well as 8 in-depth interviews with relevant experts in the field. This is further complemented by a supplementary quantitative analysis of key socio-economic data and statistics. The findings are that the observed paradigm shifts in macroeconomic policy during the period under review are a result of a number of key factors, namely: the changing domestic political discourse; the global and domestic economic climate; and the influence of domestic institutional arrangements, all of which have a direct impact on the policy discourse. Despite these paradigm shifts, South Africa continues to be faced with the triple challenge of poverty, unemployment and inequality; macroeconomic policy in the democratic dispensation has failed to deliver the core aims of South Africa’s economic development strategy. With the failures of orthodox neo-liberal macroeconomic policy, and the apparent shortcomings of Keynesian influenced redistributive macroeconomic policy, the key question facing policy makers is what direction South Africa’s Macroeconomic paradigm should follow. The idea of the developmental state, and its success in building emerging economies in South East Asia, is considered a viable option for South Africa to achieve an inclusive growth path. / MT 2018

A dissertation 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 19 August 2015 / This thesis focusses on the impact of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on economic performance in selected African countries over the period 1980-2012. The thesis is divided into five chapters and three of them are empirical. Chapter 1 is the introduction. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are empirical chapters examining the impact of FDI on various indicators of economic performance. Chapter 5 concludes by giving policy recommendations. In chapter 1 we provide a background, motivation, objectives, hypothesis to be tested, gaps in the literature, contributions of the study and the main findings. Chapter 2 examines the link between FDI and domestic investment and the role of host country factors namely financial development, institutional development and trade openness. We use the ordinary least squares, random effects, fixed effects and the system GMM methodologies on a panel of 48 African countries over the period 1980 to 2012. The results show that FDI has a crowding out effect on domestic investment and that improved institutions and trade openness do mitigate the substitutionary effect of FDI on domestic investment. This implies a need to come up with policies to improve local conditions by strengthening institutional quality and enhancing trade openness. Chapter 3 investigates the impact of FDI on productivity growth and the role of relative backwardness (the technology gap) on a panel of 45 African countries over the period 1980-2012. We use two measures of relative backwardness namely: the distance from technological frontier and the income gap. We apply the fixed effects, random effects and system GMM method to account for the issues of endogeneity. The results show a general insignificant effect of FDI on TFP growth. This suggests that FDI has a limited effect on productivity growth. The analysis of the advantage of relative backwardness does not support the convergence theory of Findlay (1978) and Wang and Blomstrom (1992). The large technology gaps in African countries hinder their ability to absorb foreign technologies from advanced countries. Chapter 4 analyses the long run dynamic relationship between FDI, exports, imports and profit outflows in 47 African countries over the period 1980-2012 by means of panel cointegration techniques. The results from the panel cointegration tests show that a long run relationship exists between the variables. Our findings provide evidence on the adverse long run effects of FDI on the current account in African economies. In particular, the results show that, FDI inflows lead to a decrease in exports and an increase in both imports and profit remittances. These findings confirm that indeed profit outflows by multinational companies are one of the main factors driving current account deficits in African countries. Chapter 5 is the conclusion. We provide a key summary of the key issues covered, the main findings, the key contributions of the study and the policy recommendations. We also suggest areas for further research in the future. / MT2017

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

So much has been said and written about the Reconstruction and Development Programme by a bewildering array of development specialists, politicians, bureaucrats and commentators that it seems inconceivable that anyone familiar with policy debates would still lack an understanding of it. But amid the speeches, publications, policy documents and newspaper articles, the RDP has lost its meaning and coherence. It has come to mean anything anyone wants it to mean; with a little ingenuity, anything can be made to fit in with the goals of the RDP. It has thus become too broad and imprecise to refer only to what was originally intended. This paper offers an analysis of the RDP’s approach at national and provincial levels, and provides a conceptual framework within which the RDP’s Basic Needs approach to development is assessed. It forms part of a continuing project which seeks to examine the RDP and its implementation by the provinces, and was based on interviews with provincial and national RDP officials, development planners in the provinces, and a thorough content analysis of official policy documents, memoranda and minutes. The institutionalisation of the RDP will be examined by analysing problems faced in the course of implementing it in the provinces. Gauteng, Mpumalanga and North West were chosen as case studies; w'hile they were selected randomly, the goal was to examine three provinces with different socio-economic profiles, allowing significant lessons to be extrapolated from their short experience of implementing the RDP. Their priorities and strategic approaches will be assessed, and problems examined, to suggest lessons for policy and planning that might throw light on similar issues in other provinces. Finally, the paper will analyse indications that the government is making subtle strategic changes towards rearticulating the RDP within a new time frame, and moving towards a tightly co-ordinated set of institutional structures and intergovernmental planning systems. / Social policy series

A research report submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Master of Arts degree in the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. / This report is an exploratory discussion of the prospects for private sector investment in development initiatives. Based on a set of structured and unstructured interviews, a press review and a survey of the relevant literature, the report paints to a growth in the areas of commonality between the worlds of investment and development, in that there is increasing recogniticm of the need to direct resources to South Africa's poor at the same time as market forces are starting to play an enlarged role in development. The report argues however, that the social context in which investors are 'embedded' is very different from that of development practitioners, leading to a situation in which development projects are seen as risky investments. The difficulty experienced by private investors in understanding the world of development is identified by the report as the single largest obstacle to private sector investment in development. The report draws the conclusion that mediating institutions are required to structure relationships between development agents and investors. / Andrew Chakane 2018