This dissertation includes three distinct chapters looking at different challenges faced by developing countries. The first chapter examines the situation of farmers under climate change by mapping future climatic conditions onto the distribution of agricultural revenue in India. The second chapter uses the Mexican conditional cash transfer (CCT) program Progresa to investigate the relationship between income, education and fertility. Finally, the third chapter studies the extent to which preferential tariffs extended by OECD countries have helped least developing countries (LDC) diversify their exports. Given the issues explored by these essays, I contribute to several distinct strands of the economic literature, yet each paper is motivated by its policy relevance and is embedded in the issues faced by developing economies.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / Growing consumer awareness of animal welfare has co-evolved with increases in intensive farming, particularly of battery chickens. This rise in consumer awareness recently saw bans on battery farming in parts of Europe. This thesis addresses the difficulties that would follow any similar attempt to curtail battery farming in South Africa. It examines the literature on animal rights and the welfare issues generated by intensive animal farming, particularly of battery chickens. Thereafter it summarises the findings of surveys into local consumer preferences and retail strategies regarding chicken products.

In South African cities institutional practices and market forces are seen to reinforce spatial divisions. This dissertation reflects on the relationship between location fixed resources, market forces and state intervention and how the interaction of these factors influence urban spatial outcomes. It first develops the underlying economic theory that could inform good planning practice and then illustrates how state-market relations have had an impact on urban spatial outcomes in South Africa's recent history. These insights are then used to describe the spatial development of Cape Town and identifies ineffective and counterproductive interventions and illustrate how economic theories and concepts can be used to inform good planning practice. It concludes with the direction for further research and collaboration between economists and planners to improve planning and policy making in South Africa's cities.

This research paper presents an overview and analysis of skills development in the Western Cape clothing sector in the context of production upgrading. The analysis touches on the broader South African skills development framework and industrial policy towards the clothing sector, notably the shift from mass production towards the adoption of Lean Production and the Quick Response retail model. As clothing firms based in the Western Cape evolved their production strategies and moved up the value-chain and towards Lean Production methods and Quick Response capabilities, skills requirements also evolved. As such, suitable skills development initiatives are required to support this evolution and industry innovation. Skills development institutions such as SETAs are unable to provide the necessary training required by these firms to successfully transition to the new production methods and retail supply model, with skills gaps and shortages occurring both at a technical and managerial level. Due to publicly funded institutions not providing the required associated training, a number of manufacturing firms are privately funding training programmes for their workers in an attempt to resolve this problem, but many cannot afford this intervention. While privately provided skills training may be a short-term transitional solution, it is not sustainable to ensure overall industry development, growth and success as firms undertake the implementation of evolved production methodologies and implement the Quick Response retail model.

Very limited empirical studies exist on the impact of remittances on poverty in Africa. To fill this gap in the literature, this study analyses the impact of remittances on poverty in a panel of 32 African countries. The study expands upon earlier work by including two additional foreign currency inflows, exports and Official Development Assistance (ODA). Accounting for possible heteroscedasticity and endogeneity, the results consistently show that remittances significantly reduce poverty. Exports and ODA are found to have a statistically insignificant effect on poverty. The absence of a significant relationship between exports, ODA and poverty suggest that the growth gains from exports and ODA fail to trickle down to the poor. These results highlight the significance of remittances as a source of finance for development.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 71-77). / The South African Government's anti-poverty strategy has been largely dominated by unconditional cash transfers. A growing body of literature examines the impacts of these transfers on a range of socio-economic outcomes; however there is little discussion of why such impacts are important. Without an explicit conceptual framework within which to examine these effects, evaluating their likely long term poverty impacts remains problematic. The focus of this research is to distil the current thinking on poverty and social protection to establish an appropriate theoretical framework within which to appraise anti-poverty measures. 'An Assets-Augmented' Capabilities Framework is proposed with a focus on asset-building as the primary means of poverty reduction. Focusing on the Child Support Grant (CSG), empirical analysis is then applied to examine whether the underlying causes of poverty are being addressed. Using the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) Wave 1 Dataset, the effects of the CSG on households' expenditure patterns are examined to assess the extent to which CSG-recipients invest in asset-building. A propensity score matching method is employed to construct an appropriate counterfactual. Households receiving the CSG are not found to exhibit significantly different expenditure patterns compared to a control group and cannot therefore be argued to invest differently in assets. This key finding provides evidence that the CSG primarily addresses the symptoms of poverty and cannot be expected to generate sustainable poverty reduction. A linking approach is thus proposed to combine the cash transfer element of the grant with more explicitly promotional measures in order to seek greater asset effects. A key recommendation is to ensure that the CSG acts as a gateway to other complementary services and benefits in order to increase the value of the grant with relatively little additional effort or cost.

Post independence land tenurial reform

In the context of established international economic theory, it is well known that international trade of commodities is effectively trading factors of production such as labour and capital. It follows that if factors of production can be moved internationally, then the need for commodity trade is eased, and trade of commodities and movements of factors of production can be substituted for each other. From this, the conclusion can be reached that factor movement is a substitute for commodity trade. Allowing people to migrate from one country to another country involves migration of labour – the movement of a factor of production. The conclusion that factor flows are a substitute for commodity-trade can be re-stated as international immigration is a substitute for international trade. However, this conclusion does not explain the real world in which both international trade and international immigration have increased over time. Thus, established theory of immigration and trade may not be a reliable policy guide for formulating immigration and/or trade policy. It is the purpose of this thesis to formulate an alternative theory, which more effectively explains the relationship between immigration and trade. For the purpose of distinguishing the impact of immigrants on trade from the impact of other factors on trade, this thesis employs a two-step approach. The first step lays down the theoretical foundations by arguing that immigrants contribute to the economy of the immigrant receiving country in two areas: Firstly, immigrants supply labour to the immigrant receiving country and increase demand for goods and services, hence increase the size of the economy in the immigrant receiving country. Secondly, immigrants bring in intangible social capital and human capital with them (in addition to any tangible capital they bring with them). Both contributions have impacts on international trade. The increasing labour supply could reduce trade, but increasing the market size, and bringing in social capital, in the form of foreign market information, could facilitate trade. The second step employs the latest econometric techniques to test empirically the theory that is developed in the first step, using real world data. The main empirical technique employed in this thesis to analyse the effect of immigration on trade is the gravity model that is estimated using cross-section and time series (panel) data. The case of Australia’s immigration and trade with ten major Asian trade partner countries is selected for the study. The panel cointegration test is conducted to investigate the possible long run equilibrium relation between immigration and trade. The short-run relation between immigration and trade is also examined. This thesis successfully distinguishes between the impact of immigrants on trade and the impact of other influential factors on trade. A strong long run relation between immigration and exports is established. Within a certain range of immigrant intakes, immigrants have positive and significant impact on Australia’s exports to the immigrant home countries. The long run impact is found to be double the strength of the short run impact. However, a long run relation between immigration and imports cannot be clearly established by the panel cointegration test, and the impact of immigrant intake on imports is not strong. Since the long run relation between migrant intake and exports can be established, it is possible that an underlining causation exists. Therefore, a panel causality test on immigration and exports is conducted. The results show that migrant intake “Granger causes” exports, but exports do not Granger cause immigration. This thesis demonstrates that international labour immigration, unlike the movement of other factors of production, is not necessarily a substitute for international trade in the manner described by established international economic theory. In the case of Australia’s immigration and trade with Asian immigrant home countries, immigrants have long run and short run positive impacts on exports, although immigrants do not have a strong impact on Australia’s imports from Asian migrant home countries. Moreover, migrant intake 'causes' exports. The main policy implication of these findings is that Australia can use immigration as a long-term strategy to promote exports to Asian countries.

Measures of progress serve as a crucial link between the economy and the nation’s policymaking establishment. Given that the idea of efficient allocation of resources is such a powerful influence in economics, a progress measure needs to account for most aspects of progress so it can serve as a basis for decisions to improve resource allocation. The use of the term progress encompasses notions of economic and social progress. However, the conceptualisation of progress is fraught with difficulties, misconceptions and contradictions. Primarily, the contested nature of the concept leads to a general lack of agreement on a number of issues, such as adopting an appropriate conceptual framework and methodological approach. Over time, the term progress has adapted to reflect needs. So has its measurement. Recently, the desirability of a narrowly defined economic growth as the panacea for achieving progress has been questioned. Despite containing conceptual limitations, GDP’s use of money and production for its evaluation and demarcation purposes has given it an ease of comparability and desirability that many economists and policymakers yearn for. These limitations however have led researchers to develop alternative progress measures, which although are more difficult to build, possess greater intuitive appeal. Hence, a review is conducted here on the current main progress measurements. The review sets out to identify aspects of income and non-income generating activity as well as to omit factors that generate income but do not contribute to the progress of a nation. Consequently, the relationship between market-based growth and progress is questioned in this thesis; a relationship, which the present research asserts, fails to consider a number of important costs. These costs incorporate social, economic and environmental aspects. However, these costs can be included in progress measures through the abandonment of a single standardised system of accounts and the adoption of a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach. Subsequently, the present research proposes a framework that integrates conceptually distinct theories comprising resources and capabilities, social and institutional arrangements, environmental systems and intellectual capital. This approach is appropriate for measuring multiple and different dimensions of progress. Additionally, the proposed progress index will incorporate the strengths while rectifying the limitations of the reviewed approaches. The progress index is designed to not only incorporate empirical applications, but to detect the meaningful underlying dimensions contributing to national progress to provide guidance in articulating policies for optimal use of resources. Furthermore, the measure is a non-monetary one. The use of market prices to capture aspects of progress tends to inaccurately reflect the real costs and benefits they provide, and ensures that the concerns in question (human, environmental, social, etc.) become part of a narrow debate where the economic bottom line is paramount, and where major impacts are omitted. Additionally, it has the capacity to ignore indirect costs that would lead to undesirable policy initiatives. Challenges such as climate change, health and wellbeing have brought to the fore the growing chasm between the concerns of public policy and those of its citizens. Hence, a need arises for a progress measure to reflect society’s core values. Consequently, the proposed non-monetary progress index employs a weighting technique based on public opinion. That is because market-based evaluations of progress components are inefficient since it is incapable of, amongst other things, accurately reflecting public concern. Hence, the use of a public opinion poll was justified. The proposed index is assessed on two levels: from a single summary point of view and from a multiple dimension view. The aggregation method used to arrive at the single summary statistic is via the Condorcet method, while the dimensional assessment is evaluated via a z-score standardisation technique. Both approaches are appropriate and justifiable. The progress index is applied to three countries that are representative of different clusters. They are Australia (mid-industrialised nation), Mexico (emerging economy), and the US (highly industrialised nation). These selected countries provide an opportunity to highlight any divergences that may exist in their perceived economic strength. The results showed Australia as consistently having the highest levels of progress, closely followed by Mexico. Interestingly, the comparative results of the US and Mexico illustrated that it is possible to achieve high levels of progress without an excessive reliance on high levels of production and income. A sensitivity analysis was then conducted which exposed the progress index to a number of “what-if” scenarios. The main variables were selected under three different approaches: dynamic changes (coefficient of variation), empirical (literature review) and policy based. The sensitivity analysis resulted in altering some of the initial rankings.

Across the extensive body of literature on the subject of developing countries in the most recent period of globalised economic activity three main arguments are evident, firstly, that globalisation has had a positive impact on these countries, secondly, that globalisation has had a negative impact on these countries, and thirdly, that these countries have been by-passed by the most recent period of globalisation. This research seeks to understand what the impact has been on two of the world’s poorest developing countries, Bangladesh and Tanzania. Within the research globalisation is measured by openness, specifically changes in trade and investment flows. Impact is measured through change in development, and in order to do this, a modified Human Development Index is created. Through analysing each of the two countries during the globalisation period and comparing and contrasting the experience with the period prior to globalisation utilising common econometric techniques, this research reaches the conclusion that neither country has been excluded from the most recent period of globalisation. Further, it is concluded that the net impact of globalisation on development in both countries has been neither positive nor negative, thereby suggesting that both positive and negative forces have counterbalanced one another