Property development, by its very nature is an element of the economy and can be regarded as a multifaceted business, encompassing activities that include the development of undeveloped land by constructing residential, commercial and industrial buildings, either for leasing or selling. Based on the aforesaid, property development therefore has direct, indirect and induced impacts on the economy. Economic impact refers to the effects, positive or negative, on the level of economic activity in a given area. Measuring economic impact requires a baseline assessment conducted before the activity (property development) occurs and a second, comparable assessment conducted after the activity (property development) occurs. By using the Input- Output Model methodology, various anticipated direct and indirect economic impacts can be quantified. These economic impacts are derived using an understanding of economic cause-effect relationships. The principle of cause-effect is that for any economic action, there can be a multitude of different economic reactions (effects). For the purposes of this treatise, the main cause/action is the implementation of the proposed Alphen Aan Den Rijn Retirement and Lifestyle Village development in Oudtshoorn. The result is a number of direct potential/probable effects, which also have a range of indirect potential/probable effects. Based on the findings of the Input-Output Model, it is clear that the implementation of Alphen will have significant positive socio-economic benefits, e.g. additional business sales, additional GGP and additional employment for the local and regional environment. To ensure that these positive impacts are maximised for the benefit of the overall economy of Oudtshoorn as well as the population of Oudtshoorn, management strategies and mechanisms pertaining to the following are suggested for incorporation into the development proposal: • Workplace Skills Plan; • Labour Contracts; • Service Carrying Capacity Management Plan; • Economic Sustainability; and • Social Sustainability.

In current valuation and economics disciplines, it is a commonly held belief that financial crisis is over and a big threat to world economic system is inflation. While many assumptions of these claims are of certain significance indeed, this thesis proves a non-trivial chance of outright deflation. Author of this work also shows that attempts of governments and central banks aimed at avoiding deflationary scenarios ultimately cause slower growth and elevated variance in economic activity. Due to existence of such causality, a new variable "tau" entering into CAPM model's risk premium was developed as the original model had previously not captured for impacts of monetary and government policies. In order to quantify a probability and strength of deflationary forces in developed world, three distinct approaches were utilized -- quantitative assessment, historical comparisons, and a pure economic theory based reasoning. Value of variable tau was determined by regressing relationship between implied risk premium and changes in monetary policy while testing for different time lags. Results of the work point to a 10-20% chance of deflation in developed world. Extremely loose monetary policy worldwide than warrants augmenting additional 1-2% risk premium to current implied risk premium of US stock market. Although newly defined models would certainly need more work and refining, author believes that the augmented CAPM version does a good job capturing the "irrational exuberance" mentality attached to policies of major central banks around the world. The three year lead of model-based risk premium compared to the implied one is perceived as one more contribution to current valuation process and understanding of risk.

The thesis contains three main Chapters in which the relationship between organised crime and corruption is studied from different perspectives. Chapter 2 presents a theoretical framework for analyzing the interactions between corruption and organized crime, together with the individual and combined effect of these phenomena on economic performance. We show how organized crime on its own reduces entrepreneurial activity, and how organized crime in conjunction with corruption may reduce such activity to a lesser or greater extent. Chapter 3 presents an empirical investigation into the impact of corruption on economic growth in the presence of organized criminal activities. Using a panel of 19 Italian regions for the period 1983-2009, the analysis reveals that corruption and organized crime have independent negative effects on growth, and that the effect of either is less severe when the other is also present. Chapter 4 presents a further empirical investigation which examines the determinants of organized crime and of common crime in a panel of Italian regions over the period 1983-2003. The analysis shows that both organized and common crimes respond symmetrically to certain drivers, but asymmetrically to others.

The thesis investigates the impact of a very specific state-led legislative institution of colonial lineage – the Agricultural Produce Markets Commission (APMC) Act & Rules – on uneven agricultural growth productivity and poverty outcomes across select fourteen Indian states over the post-independence period. It also studies political economy determinants of the APMC Act. This research offers the first most comprehensive empirical characterisation of agricultural marketing laws for the agriculture produce sector of the Indian economy. The thesis presents three substantive research outcomes. The first empirical chapter provides the construction of a composite multidimensional de jure time-varying index of the APMC Act & Rules for each state. The quantitative measure reveals the extent of variation in the form & trends of statutory clauses in the selected 14 Indian states from 1970-2008. Based on empirical analysis of nearly forty years of the regulatory framework of agricultural markets, the second empirical chapter demonstrates that variation in institutional market arrangements explain the marked differences in the use of modern farm inputs and growth patterns in agricultural productivity as well as rural poverty outcomes in the states of India. The results from 14 states show that states with improved regulatory arrangements in the agricultural markets have higher agricultural investment, productivity and fall in poverty. A difference of each one unit improvement in market regulations in a state is found to be associated with about 0.24 units average increase in the mean of agricultural yield productivity and an about 6.2 units average direct reduction in the mean of poverty incidence. Finally, the third chapter demonstrates presence of political economy activity in shaping of the differing APMC Act & Rules in Indian states. It suggests that ignoring potential influence of political economy factors in determining APMC Act can undermine the prospects of achieving desired policy objectives and may lead to miscalculated policy judgments. What the evidence in this thesis illustrates is that regulations matter in channelizing markets for efficiency effect on agricultural productivity and poverty reduction. It reveals that the APMC measure needs to be understood as a part of a wider political economy regulatory system and it cannot be viewed as a neutral tool which can be applied to produce predictable and consistent economic results. Agriculture growth and poverty reduction efforts would get a serious setback in states where effective institutional regulatory support was not provided as this assures vibrant market and remunerative price to farmers. The thesis’s fundamental finding is that efficient regulations encourage agricultural development which implies that any solution that looks to optimise the mechanisms around agricultural markets demands efficient and progressive evolution of the existing regulatory framework of the APMC Act. This challenges recent calls for complete dismantling of regulated markets, expressed by critics who view the current APMC Act as one of the main bottlenecks to managing food inflation and the national food security challenges in India. Given the heterogeneity of agrarian contexts, food systems and marketing dynamics being faced by the Indian farming community, well-regulated agricultural markets cannot be undermined for effective functioning of the domestic agricultural trade and development of farming community.

This thesis explores three important factors that have been central to the pursuit of economic development especially in case of developing countries. These are human capital, corruption and institutions. The first chapter presents an analysis of the role of corruption in determining the distribution of income and, with this, the degree of poverty and inequality. The analysis is based on an overlapping generations model in which individuals may seek to improve their productive efficiency (and hence earnings) by supplementing or substituting publicly provided services (such as education and health) with personal expenditures on human capital investment. Because of capital market imperfections, their ability to do this depends on their inherited wealth which serves as collateral for loans. Corruption is reflected in the pilfering of public funds and a reduction in public service provision, the effect of which is to reduce the earnings of those who rely on such services and to exacerbate the extent of credit rationing for these agents. The dynamic general equilibrium of the model is characterised by multiple steady states to which different income classes converge. Higher levels of corruption lead to higher levels of poverty and may result in complete polarisation between the rich and poor by eliminating the middle class. The second chapter presents an analysis of the threshold effects of human capital on economic growth. Using a sample of 126 countries (1970-2012), we estimate a dynamic threshold panel model following Hansen (1999) and Caner & Hansen (2004). Our results are twofold: first, there exists a significant threshold level of development (proxied by capital stock per capita) below which the effect of human capital on economic growth is insignificant, whereas it is positive significant above it; second, while looking into the impact of institutional quality, we find significant thresholds of interaction between institutional quality and development.

This thesis represents a contribution to the literature on the relationship between decentralisation, corruption, and economic growth. This relationship is analysed both theoretically and empirically. The first chapter investigates one of the channels through which decentralisation can potentially affect corruption and economic growth. The analysis uses a dynamic general equilibrium model to gain further insights into the effects of decentralisation on the structure of corruption. The results suggest that decentralisation, by bringing the people closer to government, can enable corrupt local government officials to internalise the effects of their behaviour. It thereby generates an incentive for officials to moderate their bribe demands. This has positive effects for investment and economic growth. The second chapter examines a potential trade-off that may occur when countries embark on a program of decentralisation. On the one hand decentralisation may improve the information problems that plague overly centralised governments, but at the same time it can potentially lead to a loss of control as discretionary power is granted to local officials without implementing the required accountability mechanisms. The results of the analysis suggest that while decentralisation can potentially reduce corruption an aid economic performance in the long run, it may inevitable lead to increased corruption in the short-run. A key idea is that extra care must be taken to introducing accountability structures at the local level, but that these will likely take time before becoming effective, so that in the near term corruption may increase. In the third chapter the relationship between decentralisation, corruption and economic growth is analysed empirically, using panel data techniques. While previous studies have looked at the relationship between decentralisation and corruption, or between decentralisation and growth, or between corruption and growth, few have looked at the joint relationship between the three. Moreover, previous studies often suffer from endogeneity problems. To overcome this, the Generalised Method of Moments technique is employed; an approach that has not been used on this topic before. It is shown that, while there is evidence that corruption hampers economic growth, the effects of decentralisation are ambiguous. The chapter highlights the inherent difficulties in analysing the effects of decentralisation, which is a complex and multifaceted concept that is impossible to fully capture in the data. This suggests that empirical studies will inevitably be limited in their ability to fully assess a relationship as nuanced as this. The implication is that further investigation at the theoretical level is required. Overall, the thesis provides support for the idea that decentralisation can potentially lead to beneficial outcomes, both in terms so of combating corruption and in wider economic terms. However, it also suggest that care must be taken when implementing reforms as these beneficial outcomes a far from certain.

In the 20th century, we were witnesses an unprecedented growth of public expenditure across all the developed countries of the world. With this phenomenon was created a hypothesis about the negative impact of public expenditure on economic growth and in response to it, economists did many studies which tried to verify this negative effect. In the 80ties the first studies which confirmed the negative linear dependence of these two macroeconomic aggregates. It means greater public sector has negative impact to economic growth of countries. In the 90ties the studies which verify the nonlinear dependence of the inverted U-shaped curve with a peak where is the optimal size of public sector. This concept is collectively called "Armey curve" or "BARS curve" and my final thesis deals by this concept and my goal is to introduce BARS concept to Czech readers. It reflects the evolution of public expenditure in the 20th century and describes the theoretical and empirical development of the whole concept until now. It means a hypothesis about the positive benefits of government activities in the economy to a certain point - "optimal point" and the negative after this point. The final thesis also offers custom research on a sample of the Visegrad Four countries in years from 1995 to 2012. The aim of the research is to verify the linear dependence of growth of GDP and the share of public expenditure in GDP and the existence BARS curve and the optimal size of public spending across countries.

This research examines the role of Private Capital Flows (PCF) and Financial Deepening in the economic growth of South Africa. Using secondary data obtained from the South African Reserve Bank and the World Bank online databases for the period 1990 to 2015, we examine the relationship between these three variables using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing procedure. The causal relationship between the variables is further investigated using the Granger Causality test. Where previous studies mainly focus on investigating the relationship between capital flows and economic growth; and that of financial deepening and economic growth in South Africa independently; this study looks at the interrelationship between these three variables. Contrary to our expectations, the findings from the research suggest that there is no significant long run relationship between these variables in South Africa; however we found significant unidirectional short run causal relationships between the variables. The study established that in the short run, economic growth granger causes private capital flows; financial deepening granger causes private capital flows and that economic growth granger causes financial deepening. These findings imply that putting in place policies that encourage economic growth will lead to improvements in both PCF and financial deepening in the short run. In turn, improvements in financial deepening will also foster improvements in PCF in the short run. The results, policy implications, and future research are discussed.

Master of Public Health - MPH / Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading causes of deaths worldwide and are shown to be responsible for approximately 71% of deaths globally. NCDs mainly affect individuals of working age, resulting in high sick leave absences and loss of productivity in the working environment. This presents a major barrier to economic growth, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where the impact is greatest. Among the interventions identified in the South African Strategic Plan for the control of NCDs, is the implementation of wellness initiatives (i.e. diet and exercise interventions) in the workplace. This has been to improve overall productivity and decrease absenteeism. This study was therefore aimed at investigating the effect that participating in workplace wellness initiatives targeted at employees, particularly those that are overweight, hypertensive and diabetic at Nestlé, had on the number of working days lost due to sick leave from NCDs.

After more than two decades of democracy, South Africa is still faced with challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality. The informal sector is one that presents opportunities for making a positive contribution towards solving social problems that South Africa is faced with. While the informal sector is large and offers flexibility in employment, it is associated with low productivity and poor governance as traders in the informal sector are not obliged to register their businesses and therefore cannot make tax contributions. The lack of formalisation of the informal sector not only impacts the government for not being able to account for the sector, but it also creates barriers for those trading in the sector. The study adopted qualitative research methods to gain insights into describing and exploring the meaning research participants use to construct and interpret their world of reality, such as formalising the informal sector to stimulate economic growth in South African Townships. A total of 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted with business owners in the retail informal sector, managers of big corporates in retail in the formal sector and government employees from various departments who were represented by those in relevant positions such as directors, heads of departments, regional and board members. Interviews were analysed by means of thematic analysis. The key findings from literature indicated that the informal sector is broad and there is no one definition of the informal sector. It was also established that there is a direct relationship that exists between the state and the informal sector, however there is an indirect relationship that exists between the formal and informal sector as further explained in institutional and stakeholder theory. The lack of development in the informal sector can be attributed to the non-existence of policies to guide and regulate the existence of the informal sector. The insights shared from the interviews pointed to the applicability of the proposed model in terms of formalising the informal sector. / Mini Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2021. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted