Scientists started to study the relationship between changing weather patterns and the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other harmful gasses. They soon discovered compelling evidence that CO2 concentration and other gases have been increasing and it was causing temperatures to increase in certain areas on the earth, which disturb historic weather patterns. Climate change has become a very popular field of study in the modern science. Europe first introduced measures to reduce carbon emissions but it was the Kyoto in 1997 where global leaders were asked to participate in a joint protocol to reduce greenhouse gases. South Africa responded to climate change challenges in 2008 with the Long term Mitigation Scenarios (LTMS). The Integrated Resource Plan for electricity to 2030 was developed from the LTMS scenarios and after some major amendments it was accepted and promulgated by Government and has recently been included in the National Development Plan to 2030 (NDP). There are concerns about the achievability of some of the objectives listed in the NDP and this study explored the IRP2010 as the proposed strategy to meet energy demand and reduce emissions. The purpose for this study was to answer this question: Is there an optimum climate change mitigation strategy for South Africa and how can the effect thereof be simulated on economic growth? Through primary and secondary research during the study it was possible to define some 32 categories of energy producing assets that are commercially active or nearly market-ready. The characteristics of the various assets and the relevant fuel are defined in mathematical equations. It was found that the three portfolios that matched the 450TWh electricity requirement would perform substantially better than the NDP portfolio in terms of cost and similar on emissions with marginally fewer employment opportunities created. The proposed electricity strategy in this study was 390TWh and 33.5 Million tonnes of oil consumption by 2030. This strategy was substantially more affordable than the 450TWh strategy. Trends in the Supply and Use tables since 1993 were studied and then forecasted to 2030 to determine consumption levels on electricity and liquid fuel into the future. It was found that electricity demand is seriously overestimated and South Africa would end up with large excess capacity in electricity infrastructures if the NDP energy strategy (IRP2010) is implemented. It is concluded that the NDP energy strategy to 2030 is based on an incorrect electricity demand forecast. It would lead to excessive investment in an electricity infrastructure. Government has confirmed that part of the new infrastructure would be nuclear. It is also found that NDP has not clearly supported nuclear as part of the strategy. Nuclear is partly the reason why the capital requirement of the NDP portfolio is so much higher than the other portfolios. It is the conclusion of this study that South Africa do not need to invest in a nuclear build programme as the electricity demand would be adequately covered by adding the new Medupi and Kusile power stations, Ingula pump storage scheme, some wind and solar renewables, electricity from cogeneration, biogas, biomass, small hydro and imported hydro from neighbour countries. To invest in electricity capacity to generate 450TWh annually by 2030 would result in excessive energy cost, GDP growth could be up to 1% lower due to underperforming capital investments in the electricity infrastructure and higher energy cost would lead to a decline in global competitiveness.

Magister Artium (Child and Family Studies) - MA(CFS) / The aim of this study was to capture the intensity and incidence of catastrophic health care expenditures in order to describe the degree to which catastrophic health care payments occur among households. Simultaneously, the study set out to assess the extent to which people are made poor or poorer by health spending, i.e. the impoverishing effects of healthcare spending. / South Africa

This study develops a real options model of agbiotechnology and is applied to three genetically modified (GM) traits. Each trait is evaluated as growth options where technical or marketing milestones must be completed before management can exercise the option to invest further in trait development. The real options values are evaluated by employing a binomial tree which is simulated using distributions for random elements within stages of the growth option. Mean option values were negative for the discovery stage for fusarium-resistant wheat and for all but the regulatory submission stage for Roundup Ready wheat. The length of the regulatory submission stage had the greatest negative impact on the value of the option while the ability of the firm to maximize technology-use-fees had the greatest positive impact. Additionally, traits adapted to crops with larger potential market size are more likely to be in the money than traits developed for smaller market segments.

This study develops a framework for pricing output traits derived from agriculture biotechnology and the effects on competing technologies post-introduction of the genetically modified (GM) variety. The price impact model determines processor or consumer adoption rates and changes in processor, farmer, and tech firm surplus as a result of the release of the new GM variety. Several implications result from this research. First, adoption of the GM variety may not be as high as expected due to the lower cost of using conventional varieties for processing or consumption inputs. Second, both processors who adopt the GM variety and those who continue to use conventional varieties will have an increase in surplus as a result of the introduction of the GM variety. Lower costs of conventional varieties will also result in new entrants into the market.

In calling for the deployment of high-capacity telecommunications infrastructures, the Clinton Administration is relying on market forces to drive demand toward self-sustaining development. There is little doubt that many firms will embrace the new telecommunications services for a variety of reasons including market differentiation, vertical market integration, and other organization-specific factors. However, there is little evidence at the firm level that adopting the use of increased-capacity telecommunications technologies is associated with improvements in firm profitability. This study seeks to identify the presence of impacts on firm income that can be associated with the adoption of T1 telecommunications services.

The problem undertaken in this study is to attempt to determine the adequacy of financial support received by the small high school bands in Texas.

This dissertation consists of three chapters that examine the spatial distribution of economic activities. The first chapter examines how disasters as well as individuals’ expectations of what others will do affect the development of cities. The development of cities often involves the rejuvenation or replacement of existing structures. However, history, in the form of the sunk cost of existing durable structures, often serves as an impediment to urban development. In theory, by reducing the opportunity cost of waiting to rebuild to zero, disasters can eliminate these frictions and bring about higher quality structures. In addition, the simultaneous rebuilding after a disaster would allow property owners to experience stronger cross-building spillovers which would encourage further upgrades of nearby buildings. Nevertheless, these are not sufficient to guarantee higher quality buildings. This is because individuals’ investment decisions also depend on their expectations of what others will do. Therefore, in this chapter, we examine both of these issues using the 1666 Great Fire of London as a natural experiment. First, using a difference-in-differences (DiD) strategy, we show evidence that the Fire was able to free parishes within London from the constraints of their existing durable structures and move them to a new equilibrium involving higher quality structures. Second, using DiD and an IV strategy, we find that legal rulings arising from the Fire Court – a court specially set up by the English Parliament to hear rebuilding disputes – were able to anchor expectations and in so doing, helped to facilitate the development of London. Providing causal evidence that legal rulings can be a main driver in the formation of expectations is the main contribution of our paper. The second chapter examines how the quirks of history shape present-day economic outcomes. Building on Bazzi et al. (2020), I study how a particular episode of history – time at the frontier – helps to explain the present-day manufacturing production patterns across American counties. First, I show empirical evidence that there are fewer establishments and lower employment in counties that spent a longer time on the frontier. The same results hold for industries that are more “contractible” (i.e., easier to specify in contracts and hence less susceptible to holdup). Second, using a DiD strategy, I show that firms in high “contractibility” industries sort into producing at counties that spent a longer time on the frontier. I hypothesize that due to “rugged individualism”, individuals in counties that spent a longer time on the frontier are less likely to trust other people. Therefore, anything that is not “contractible” becomes harder and more costly to enforce. Consequently, only the more “contractible” industries locate in counties that spent a longer time on the frontier. The third chapter examines how land use regulations and NIMBY (“not in my back yard”) behavior affect housing prices in the UK. In the UK, developers have to apply to the local planning authority to seek development permission. Applicants who have their plans rejected can appeal to the Secretary of State, via the Planning Inspectorate. The Planning Inspectorate then assigns an inspector to decide whether to overturn the local authority’s decision. We propose a theoretical model which shows that in locations with high levels of NIMBY-ism, developers are better off getting their plans rejected by the local authority and gambling on drawing an inspector who is less sympathetic towards locals’ NIMBY behavior. Our empirical strategy exploits the fact that inspectors are quasi-randomly assigned to the appeals. This allows us to use inspector leniency as an instrument for whether an appeal is successful. We find that overturning the local authority’s decision does not lead to a large fall in housing prices. For some projects, the impact may in fact be positive because they also add to local amenities such as retail shops. This suggests a prevalence of NIMBY-ism, as locals pressure authorities to reject even relatively benign projects.

The focus of this research is the relationship between the supply of registered nurses and the rate of return on the educational investment to become a registered nurse. Is this rate of return a determining factor in the supply, past, present, and future? Since 98. 8 percent of all registered nurses are women, an integral part of this study is a survey of the data on women in the labor force. The empirical data, statistical, was obtained from government sources and non-government associations, The American Nurses Association, The American Hospital Association, and the educational institutions. The data indicates the following: the yearly average supply of active registered nurses has increased by 3.15 percent from 1966 through 1970; the demand for registered nurses has decreased from 41.1 percent of nursing personnel in 1966 to 36.8 percent in 1970; the average weekly wage of general duty nurses has increased $100.50 in 1966 to $141.00 in 1969; the number of graduates from registered nurse schools has been increasing in recent years. Of the three programs, the Associate Degree shows the largest increase in number of students and it is the one in which the present value of benefits from the investment, $10,414.00, exceeded the present value of the investment costs (education), $6,923.00, which yielded a private rate of return of five percent. In summary, the rate of return on the three registered nurse educational programs, Associate Degree, Diploma Degree, and Baccalaureate Degree, based on employment as a general duty nurse and calculated by both the present value of cost and benefit method and internal rate of return method indicated that only the Associate Degree program produced a positive rate of return. In addition, this is the program that has had the large increase in students and graduates in recent years. If this trend continues, the future supply of registered nurses will be adequate and may overshoot the demand. However, many questions remain unanswered which call for more research, particularly relating to the labor force participation of women.

This dissertation contains three essays in financial economics. The focus of the dissertation is to study how retail investors and the financial market react to the arrival or the possibility of disastrous events. In the first chapter, I explore the portfolio reaction to evidence of climate change by looking at how retail investors trade when they locally experience abnormal temperature. I test the hypothesis that retail investors will trade out of high emission stocks and trade into low emission stocks when experiencing abnormally high temperature through a channel of climate belief updating. Using detailed administrative records of retail investors’ positions and trading activities from a large financial institution, I construct measures of trading imbalances at the zip code level for various types of stocks and study the impact from abnormal temperature. I do not find evidence that investors trade out of high emission stocks or trade into low emission stocks when experiencing abnormally high temperature. The estimated effects are neither economically nor statistically significant. Moreover, investors are not dynamically adjusting their portfolios in response to abnormal temperature. The nonresults are robust if I implement the estimations in quarterly or annual frequency. Focusing on only trading activities in the energy sector does not change the results. Analyzing subsamples of investors with different levels of beliefs in climate change also produces nonresults. Although past literature has shown that local extreme temperature can induce changes in beliefs about climate change and related behavior, this paper shows that such belief updating does not translate into response in portfolio choice.In the second chapter, we model the contribution of a vaccine to the rebound in corporate earnings the year following the onset of COVID-19 while accounting for the role of fiscal and monetary measures. A vaccine that reopens the economy leads to a jump in earnings, while temporary fis- cal and monetary support for households and businesses leads to higher short-run earnings growth before a vaccine arrives. We show that our model can be consistently estimated using revisions of value-weighted industry-level consensus earnings forecasts. We first present reduced-form evidence that security analysts account for both effects. Our model estimates then suggest that the reopening effect is as important as the short-run growth effect in explaining the rebound in corpo- rate earnings. The third chapter studies the partisan difference in trading behavior at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Partisanship drives disagreement on the severity and persistence of the COVID-19 shock when it hit the US. Republicans were more optimistic than the Democrats when evaluat- ing the potential damage of COVID-19 to the economy. Using detailed administrative records of retail investors’ positions and trading activities from a large financial institution, I find that the partisan disagreement on COVID-19 is reflected in stock trading behavior: Republicans had more net flow into equity than the Democrats from March to May of 2020. Moreover, the difference is concentrated on industries with high face-to-face interactions and highly levered firms, which are expected to be more severely damaged by COVID-19. The results suggest that disagreement rooted in partisanship can have a real impact on household financial decisions and potentially on the overall financial market.

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