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In the aftermath of the 2008 economic recession, governments across the globe were forced to confront a difficult reality: growth and spending would need to be revised dramatically downward while central government systems would have to be made more efficient. In the United Kingdom specifically, the 2010 general election became a referendum on how quickly and severely to implement austerity policies the likes of which had not been seen for generations. Why did the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition choose austerity when other alternatives, such as a public sector stimulus package, were also available? To answer this question this research seeks to understand how and why political actors in the United Kingdom respond to economic and political crises through the implementation of specific efficiency reforms. This is accomplished through two specific steps: the establishment of an analytical framework to better understand the dynamics of efficiency reforms and an in-depth study of the historical development of efficiency reforms from the early twentieth century through the present. A historical institutionalist theoretical foundation is employed in order to understand the evolution of ideas throughout this time span. A thorough understanding of institutional effects, including aspects of lock-in effects and process tracing, are essential components of understanding why powerful political actors choose certain efficiency reforms over others. Ultimately, this research is meant as a first step towards a greater understanding of efficiency in government. Previous research has examined specific reforms in relative isolation without the benefit of historical context. By systematically tracing the evolution of efficiency reforms across different eras a more complete understanding of policies and political actors is established. Further research, including comparative studies across political systems and the incorporation of quantitative date, is discussed in the conclusion.

Technical report (MBA) -- University of Stellenbosch, 1987. / University of Stellenbosch Business School / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Two methods of inflation adjustments are explained and evaluated to determine which method gives better results for a company with a given capital structure. The objective was to lay down a method to predict, without detai l and difficult ca l culus , the preferred method to use for a company with a known financial structure . The resul ts of the two methods and for differen t companies notated on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange , are shown in the Appendices. / AFRIKAASE OPSOMMING: Twee metodes vir inflasie regstelling is verduidelik en geevalueer ten einde vas te stel watter metode beter resultate lewer vir 'n maatskappy met 'n gegewe kapitaalstruktuur. Die doelwit was om 'n metode daar te stel om te voorspel. sander detail berekeninge. watter metode verkieslik is vir 'n maatskappy met 'n bekende finansiele struktuur. Die resultate van die twee metodes en vir verskillende maatskappye genoteer op die Johannesburgse Effekte Beurs is getoon in bylaagvorm.

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In this paper I would like to raise the question at which extent the Union's cohesion policy can promote convergence within the Union. I will discuss major aspects of an analysis on the justification and of the design of the Union's cohesion policy. For this purpose recent empirical data and policies will be investigated. The paper will focus on the weaker Member States of the European Union. (author's abstract) / Series: EI Working Papers / Europainstitut

Extreme poverty is a reality facing over a billion people, and a striking contradiction is that huge disparities coexist with a relatively rapid economic growth. This thesis investigates whether economic growth reduces poverty. Through an empirical cross-sectional regression, it analyses what impact economic growth has on poverty, and what structures that possibly preserve these phenomena. The theories of Dual Economy and Human Capital are used to explain such structures that cause poverty to coexist with growth. Brazil is an example of a dual economy whose recent history is characterised by successful economic and public policies that have managed to reduce the level of extreme poverty. Structures of dualistic labour markets contribute to the preservation of the extreme poverty, thus they do have some explanatory power of the coexistence of poverty and growth. The main conclusion from the empirical results is that economic growth does indeed reduce poverty. Also the level of poverty is strongly related to decrease of poverty, in such a way that a high level of poverty is associated to a slow decrease of poverty. However, economic growth does not appear to be sufficient a tool when the level of extreme poverty is high, suggesting that well-designed policies and investments in education are needed to obtain an inclusive, pro-poor growth and thus reduce the level of extreme poverty.

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My dissertation studies political economy issues in the development of China. Chapter 1 lies in the intersection of urban economics and political economy. This chapter exploits plausibly exogenous variation generated by a unique national policy in China that requires all residential buildings to receive sufficient hours of sunshine to study a central question in urban economics, namely, whether urban density facilitates the diffusion of information. The policy creates higher degrees of restriction on density at higher latitudes, where longer shadows require buildings to be further apart. Data on individual housing projects across China reveal that the cross-latitude variation in regulatory residential Floor Area Ratio can be described quite well by a formula linking structure density to latitude through the solar elevation angle. These differences in building density further induce differences in population density and land prices across latitudes. Using differential topic dynamics on a national petition platform to measure information diffusion, this chapter shows that people respond to shifts in government attention with varying speeds across latitudes. Increases in local government reply rate to a topic raises the volume of subsequent posts on the same topic, exhibiting an S-shaped time trajectory consistent with local information diffusion about shifting government priorities. These responses are systematically faster in southern cities, where density is higher. Survey evidence further indicates that otherwise similar individuals are more likely to gossip about public issues in a southern city. Chapter 2, coauthored with Junyan Jiang and Tianguang Meng and forthcoming at the journal Governance, examines the flip side of the interaction between local governments and citizens studied in Chapter 1. This chapter studies the response of government policies to opinions expressed online. We address this question by studying the patterns and consequences of online participation at a major electronic petition platform in China. Content analysis of around 900,000 petitions reveals that a substantial share of them concern lower-class issues and are originated from less developed rural and suburban areas. Linking variations in petition volumes to an original dataset of government policy priorities, we further show that online participation led governments to place greater emphasis on social welfare policies and to increase the coverage of a key low-income assistance program. These results underscore the potential of online participation as an important mechanism to improve the quality of governance. Chapter 3, coauthored with Amit Khandelwal, Suresh Naidu and Heiwai Tang, turns to a systematic examination of China's reform process. We apply natural language processing methods to analyze a comprehensive corpus of 1.4 million legal documents issued by the Chinese government at central and local levels since 1949, and measure their market orientation in a data-driven fashion. We document an active introduction of market-oriented legal infrastructure from the mid-1980s to around 2000, which slowed down in the last fifteen years. These dynamics are present within fine-grained policy domains. We find that the market orientation of policies explains just an extra 2% of provincial variation in GDP per capita growth beyond province and time fixed effects. Variable selection based on richer representations of the text exhibits similarly limited predictive power for provincial growth. Taken together, these findings suggest the importance of studying the informal arrangements between market participants and government officials.