Student Number : 0204446N - MA dissertation - School of Geography, Archaeology and Environment Studies - Faculty of Humanities / This research investigates the role of small towns in local development, using the example of Alice in South Africa. Emphasis is placed upon the relationship between a small town and its rural hinterland with specific reference to agricultural and nonagricultural activities. The perceived conditions and the role of the town itself as observed by both rural and urban residents are highlighted by survey findings. The surveys involved eighty interviews with urban dwellers, eighty with rural dwellers and thirsty with local businesses. It is shown that there are unfulfilled community needs in terms of local business development and municipal efforts aimed at ensuring that the small town offers the economic services required to grow community incomes and the local economy.

Thesis (M.M. (Finance & Investment)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Wits Business School, 2016 / This study investigates the dominant determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in Namibia. The second part of the study evaluates whether FDI received in Namibia is beneficial for the Namibian economy. The study uses two different methods to test for stationarity: Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Phillips-Perron (PP). The study makes use of the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) in conjunction with the cointegration (CI) and Error Correction Models (ECM) to determine the factors that influence FDI in Namibia, using data for the period of 1990- 2014. The results show that, in the short-run, Foreign Direct Investment is significantly influenced by GDP, taxes, exchange rates and Drought occurrence. The results of the second part of the study were to test whether FDI received is beneficial for the Namibian economy. The Granger causality test was used to test this relationship. The results of the Granger causality test revealed that FDI is indeed beneficial for the economy. Hence, it is significant in explaining GDP in Namibia. The study recommends a review of the administration of the current investment system, which should highlight the role of each player in the economy. The study further recommends that a good quality of governance, reduced bureaucracy, low-interest rate and well-developed infrastructure will enhance investor’s confidence. Expansionary fiscal and monetary policies should be applied to stimulate GDP growth and to increase Foreign Direct Investment. Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment, Gross Domestic Product, Stationarity, Cointegration, Error Correction Modelling, Taxes and Exchange Rates. / GR2018

In the first chapter, I explore whether features derived from high resolution satellite images of Sri Lanka are able to predict poverty or income at local areas. I extract from satellite imagery area specific indicators of economic well-being including the number of cars, type and extent of crops, length and type of roads, roof extent and roof type, building height and number of buildings. Estimated models are able to explain between 60 to 65 percent of the village-specific variation in poverty and average level of log income. The second chapter investigates the effects of preferential trade programs such as the U.S. African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) on the direction of African countries’ exports. While these programs intend to promote African exports, textbook models of trade suggest that such asymmetric tariff reductions could divert African exports from other destinations to the tariff reducing economy. I examine the import patterns of 177 countries and estimate the diversion effect using a triple-difference estimation strategy, which exploits time variation in the product and country coverage of AGOA. I find no evidence of systematic trade diversion within Africa, but do find evidence of diversion from other industrialized destinations, particularly for apparel products. In the third chapter I apply three model selection methods – Lasso regularized regression, Bayesian Model Averaging, and Extreme Bound Analysis -- to candidate variables in a gravity models of trade. I use a panel dataset of of 198 countries covering the years 1970 to 2000, and find model selection methods suggest many fewer variables are robust that those suggested by the null hypothesis rejection methodology from ordinary least squares.

Since World War II the five historic Central American nations, Costa Rica, EI Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, underwent a period of aggregate economic growth which was followed by a collapse of dramatic proportions. All five countries experienced an economic downturn in the latter 1970s which led to several years of declining GDP and GDP per capita, together with an economic and social disarray which is typically referred to as "la crisis" in Central American literature. The intent of this study is to present an argument for the position that the economic collapse of the five Central American nations was due in considerable part to their failure to pursue economic development in a manner which would generate sustainable increase. Based on a conception of modern economic growth and the statistical studies of Simon Kuznets and others since the 1940s, a set of indicators was selected for the purpose of clarifying the structural transformation referred to as economic development. This formulation of economic development was then used to distinguish the process from the simple aggregate expansion known as economic growth. The economic development indicators were also applied to the statistical records of two east Asian economies which were comparable in many respects to the Central American nations shortly after World War II. Both Taiwan and South Korea, like the nations of Central America, emerged from the 1940s as dominantly agricultural, dualistic, importers of manufactured consumer goods. The study begins with an examination of the growth versus development issue in economic theory, proceeds to discussion of the historical record of the two sets of nations, consideration of the indicators, evaluation of the data, and conclusions based on the data. The development indicators clearly distinguish the records of the Central American nations from those of the east Asians. Whereas both Taiwan and South Korea illustrate the expectations of structural transformation in economic development as defined by Simon Kuznets, the Central American nations obviously do not. Conclusions are drawn that the policies which were followed by the two east Asian nations generated the complex structural transformation which characterizes an industrialized economy. The strictly market driven policies of Central America, on the other hand, generated simple aggregate growth for a number of years without a change in the structure of the economy. The study presents evidence that the Central American nations avoided structural change during the post-World War II period in anticipation of receiving the benefits of growth without undergoing the costs of a change in structure. Such a change in structure would have required reorganization of long-standing historic patterns of national social, economic and political interaction.

Thesis (M.Com. (Economics)) --University of Limpopo, 2010 / Economic growth remains one of the key macroeconomic objectives of most governments. South Africa witnessed moderate economic growth rates between 1994 and 2006, except for 1998 when the country recorded a sharp decline in economic growth as a result of worldwide financial crisis. The key challenge facing the country is to sustain and improve on the growth performance. South Africa’s economic growth has largely been demand –driven as indicated by the dominance of consumption over investment. Growth theorists identify investment, savings, human capital, productivity and R & D as some of the principal drivers of economic growth on the supply side. Investment and savings within the economy remain largely below those of the world’s most successful East - Asian countries. Other indicators further reveal that there is still room for improvements on the supply-side of the economy. The growing current account deficits point to the fact that domestic demand is too high for the country’s productive capacity. Similarly, the declining enrolment in tertiary institutions and a shift in the structure of production towards high skill services industry call for a policy shift in line with the unfolding trend. Thus, this study proposes some policy options that could be considered to sustain South Africa’s economic growth performance. Key words: Economic Growth, Investments, Human Capital and Productivity

Thesis (M.Dev.) --University of Limpopo, 2010 / The purpose of this study was to determine the socio-economic impact of tourism on communities around the tourist destinations and tourist attractions, with specific reference to the Pilanesberg National Park and the specific impact it has on the communities around it. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used and 252 respondents responded positively by filling in questionnaires. Interviews were conducted with the Pilanesberg National Park management. The research findings reveal that the communities around the Pilanesberg National Park, specifically Mogwase, Moruleng, Ledig and Mabele-a-pudi are benefiting from the National Park through employment. Findings also indicate that the National Park is contributing positively towards the local economy of the area and the development of the communities. At the same time, however, the research findings indicate that the national park is impacting negatively on the local communities by contributing to the increasing cost of services.

The primary objective of this study was to set development policies applicable for the high Andean valleys of Tuname and Burbusay (Venezuela) ; and secondly to develop a quick and inexpensive way to assess development prospects of high Andean valleys similar to the ones studied here. The methodology employed was to classify various agricultural regions with specific development phases using the Thorbecke's classification and policy scheme. Production functions were estimated, fitted and analyzed to determine the parameters pertinent to such a classification for the two valleys where data was available. The analyses and classifications permitted a limited enumeration of policies for the valleys that could logically be expected to bring economic development. However, the study fell short of devising a quick and inexpensive method to assess developmental prospects of similar areas, which would not require some additional data collection and further refinement of the evaluation methodology.

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Presently, the more or less global political consensus is that the primary task of government is to perpetually maximise a quantity called 'economic growth'. Given the decline of 'socialist' models of industrialisation, the economic consensus is that economic growth is best achieved through the deregulation of markets, industry and trade, as free markets are self-regulating institutions that automatically and efficiently optimise growth through their tendency to reach 'equilibrium.' Another word for this consensus might be 'neoliberalism'. This cosy situation, however, is increasingly under challenge from the recent transformation of global warming from a deniable proposition to a clear and present danger. As ecologists and earth scientists have long argued, global warming (an unforeseen side effect of what was called the 'energy crisis' in the 1970s) is just one of many aspects of a generalised global ecological crisis. The biosphere, environmentalists tell us, is radically 'out of balance'. Given this impasse, it appears that the science of social systems (economics) and the science of living systems (ecology) are incommensurable. This incommensurability is the starting point of the thesis, which seeks to provide a genealogy of the concepts of equilibrium and growth as they appear in the claims of both disciplines to represent 'hard' science. Drawing from debates in the philosophy of science, studies in the history of ideas, the anthropology of technology, and political economy, the thesis charts the mutual exchange of metaphors and analogies between the natural and the social sciences, and traces a surprisingly parallel trajectory in the separate histories of economics and ecology. Beginning with early historicist and organicist conceptual frameworks, both sciences embraced 'mechanism' in their bid to attain the mantle of Science. For both sciences, the attainment of this status was associated with the incorporation of the language of energetics and an insistent identification of 'equilibrium' with the central scientific object of inquiry, 'the market' and 'the ecosystem' respectively. What is ironic in these claims is that the acceptance of the machine metaphor effecti vely screened out the study of actual machinery from the pure states of nature called 'the market' or 'the economy.' This history is taken up to the climactic moment of the early 1970s, when, it is argued, the ontological foundations of ecology and economics collided. This is the moment from which the political discourses of neoliberal globalisation and global environmental crisis both date, and since then we see the rise of hybrid discourses that attempt to address and overcome the deep contradictions of disciplinary specialisation. The thesis concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of this conceptual legacy, and in analysing the interactions of the 'new ecology' and the 'new economy', offers suggestions as to why what appeared in 1971 as a fundamental and obvious contradiction between 'growth' and 'equilibrium', no longer attracts debate.