Typescript. / Digitized by Kansas State University Libraries

Typescript, etc. / Digitized by Kansas State University Libraries

Typescript, etc. / Digitized by Kansas State University Libraries

Over the years the coming together of Brazil, Russia, India and China into the BRIG forum has been treated as a moment in time when emerging economies started making their mark in the global arena. Similar patterns of extraordinary productivity and growth as well as tangible development have been the driving force that predicts these countries as being the world economic leaders of the future. South Africa has now come into BRIG, which necessitated the changes in the acronym to BRIGS, an alleged hegemon of Southern Africa and the continent's economic power house. This country joined BRIG group, adding to the world's emerging economies and as a representative of the African continent. When South Africa became a member, its main aim was to develop its economy and align itself socio-politically with the emerging economies of the world. These emerging economies have shown some positive growth. The emergence of BRICS has recently captured the commanding heights across all borders in the 'South' and the 'North'. It is evident that South Africa has striven to be recognised worldwide, by its foreign policy, stable politics and its sophisticated economic policy. South-South multilateral agreements have been widely discussed in International Political Economy, but little has been said about the impact they make in the socio-economic development of the emerging countries. The issue of multilateral agreements concerning BRIGS is still relatively unexplored in comparison to other multilateral agreements that South Africa has ventured into. Globally the BRIGS multilateral agreement has generated different views concerning its future expectations of promoting growth for its member states, particularly South Africa. The dissertation has discovered and highlighted the importance of South Africa as a member of BRIGS, and how its engagement in the multilateral agreement will benefit the country with opportunities that lie ahead. This paper also looked at the insinuation that South Africa may be used by its powerful BRIGS partners and thereby lose its continental dominance. The study scrutinises and allows open space for further investigation to be made about the BRIGS multilateral agreement and its impact on socio-economic development in the Republic of South Africa. Many argue that South Africa's entry in BRIGS is a dangerous and risky move while others prefer to say it is a wise decision taken by the country. However the action taken by South Africa is a fait accompli and the country should plan ahead and understand the needs of its national interests and foreign policy to achieve its goals. / Thesis (M. Soc Sc (International Relations) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2013

The study was designed to identify rural women's constraints in economic empowerment, regarding their participation in LED activities and mainly how the rural women can be empowered for sustainable agricultural development in the district of Dr Ruth S Mompati, North West Province, South Africa. A large proportion of the respondents reported that they have problems and constraints in accessing information regarding Local Economic Development Activities and they don't even know the organisations that are providing LED Services in their respective municipal areas. However, by addressing these constraints effectively the situation of women empowerment can be improved in rural areas. / Thesis (MBA) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2010

The Cotonou Agreement introduces new fundamental principles with respect to trade between the European Union and African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries relative to the Lome Convention: in particular non-reciprocal preferential market access for ACP economies will only last until 1 January 2008. After that date, it will be replaced by a string of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) meant to progressively liberalise trade in a reciprocal way. The progressive removal of barriers to trade is expected to result in the establishment of Free Trade Agreements between the EU and ACP regional groups in accordance with the relevant WTO rules and help further existing regional integration efforts among the ACP. Most discussions of economic development in Africa focus on regional integration as an important element. From the first post-colonial meetings, African leaders emphasised regional integration as a key element of their strategies. In the most recent African plan for economic development, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), regional and sub regional approaches to development are again a key element. The plan sees the small size of countries, low incomes, and consequently limited markets as a limit to economies of scale, thus denying attractive returns to investors and in so doing constraining the diversification of production and exports. This is the key reason for pooling resources in order to enhance regional economic integration. The decision by Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland to sign the interim EPA came in the result of SACU's failure to negotiate as a bloc with a view to sign the EPA. In this research, the following statistical techniques were applied: t-test, f-test, regression analysis and its forecasts model for seven Southern African Development Community- Economic Partnership Agreement (SADC EPA) group trading with the European Union, is used to simulate the opportunities and benefits of EPAs for countries of the SADC region. Simulation results show that EPAs with the EU are welfare-enhancing for SADC overall, leading also to substantive increases in real GDP. For most countries further gains may arise from intra-SADC liberalization. / Thesis (M.Com.(Economics) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2011

Poster exhibited at GPSC Student Showcase, February 24th, 2016, University of Arizona.

The overall aim of this study is to examine the optimal depletion policy for Saudi crude oil in the light of its impact on the economic process and the absorptive capacity of the country in order to judge to what extent the rate of oil depletion is optimal. This, of course, raises a question about the future of the Saudi economy after the oil has been depleted and entails some policy implications. In order to achieve the main objective, it is useful to examine the depletion theory in general and the depletion of oil in particular with its application to the Saudi economy through the estimation of the government's goal function. A non-linear regression model and a discount form of a dynamic recursive linear model will be used to estimate the future demand for Saudi crude oil. A price leadership model will be presented when discussion is to be made about the structure of the oil market. The impact of oil revenue on the Saudi economy will also be discussed to point out the importance of oil revenue on economic planning and foreign exchange earnings. Finally a macroeconomic model will be presented to measure the impact of oil depletion and its subsequent revenue on the Saudi absorptive capacity. A summary and some concluding remarks will then follow.

This thesis is motivated by the progressive expansion of electronic markets with reduced pre-trade transparency and the collateral liquidity effects. In this thesis I develop three independent theoretical models and explore the repercussions of weak market liquidity and transparency. First, I approach the issue of limited liquidity through the optimal order placement problem of a risk-averse trader in a continuous time context and introduce a random delay parameter, which defers limit order execution and characterises market liquidity. This framework demonstrates that imperfect liquidity explains order clustering in the proximity of best quotes and the existence of the bid-ask spread. The distribution of expected time-to-fill of limit orders conforms to the empirically observed distribution of trading times, and its variance decreases with liquidity. Finally, two additional stylised facts are rationalised in this model: the equilibrium bid-ask spread decreases with liquidity, but increases with agents’ risk aversion. My second framework adjoins the few theoretical attempts in the literature to challenge investors’ incentives to participate in opaque trading environments. Through a real option approach I justify how market opacity can encourage liquidity provision, which, in turn, supports the empirical evidence on the proliferation of such trading venues. I demonstrate that transparency in conjunction with liquidity determine traders’ eagerness to supply liquidity to the opaque market, and that once the trader enters the opaque market, he commits to trade relatively quickly. Furthermore, error analysis reveals that impatient traders are highly likely to pass over favourable trade execution offered in the opaque market precisely because of imperfect clarity of information signals, while a prior optimistic bias prompts the trader to submit his limit order sooner. Lastly, as a complement to static inference on individual level, I establish an artificial market with heterogeneous agents and distinct transparency regimes that replicates the long memory properties and empirical order flow patterns. The results suggest that full quote transparency incurs substantial transaction costs and dampens trading activity, while exogenous restriction of displayed depth up to several quotes does not alter significantly market performance. The core implication of this model is that the endogenous restriction of displayed quote depth by means of iceberg orders improves market quality in multiple dimensions. This thesis contributes to the microstructure domain by providing a theoretical support to the benefits of market opacity as well as its downsides. The research outcomes of this thesis are, therefore, relevant from a regulatory standpoint.

This thesis examines, from the perspective of the professional buyer, value perceptions and approaches to relationship management. Research relating to the professional buying process is often hampered by issues relating to commercial confidentiality which impacts upon access to both the pre-sales interaction and also to details of the final terms of trade. Nevertheless, both researchers and practitioners continue to call for a better understanding of the purchaser/supplier interface. This thesis endeavours to penetrate the commercial sensitivity by adopting a qualitative research stance focusing on perceptions of transactional value and buyer behaviour. Support for such an approach is to be found across a range of literature and through this methodology the research aims to provide a more holistic understanding of the professional buying process and the related social interactions and relationships. The study centres on transactions in which the prevailing power balance dictates that there is significant interdependence between the parties. These transactions are characterised by buyers having the incentive to be proactive in their choice of sourcing behaviours, but also by their recognition that they do not possess the power advantage that would allow them to simply dictate the terms of trade. The transactions examined involve rebuys which are seen to include either an upgrade or are otherwise perceived as important by the buyer. In such situations not only are buyers most likely to be focussed on the presales interaction, but literature also shows that they have more flexibility in their choice of relationship management approach. Conducting an initial literature review suggested that buyer behaviour is likely to conform to broad perspectives whose objective is either to appropriate value through building cooperative relationships or to capture value by maximising transactional power. However, in order to better inform the research effort, an exploratory study was undertaken which showed that while the initially expected underpinning principles and practices are evident; they do not fully explain buyer behaviour throughout the transactional process. Through a further review of literature, including that from the emergent school of Service-Dominant Logic (S-DL), consideration of the professional buyer’s value perception appeared to offer a theoretical platform from which those wider aspects of buyer behaviour may be better understood. While S-DL is premised on the notion of value-in-use, and recognises Exchange Value, the exploratory study suggested that a further value perception may be present. Buyer Specific Perception of Value (BSPV), which is phenomenologically determined by the buyer’s wider psychological needs, may be a significant driver of buyer behaviour. In order pursue the research objectives, the adopted method of data collection involved engaging professional buyers in a contemporary interpretation of the ‘Diary - Diary Interview Method’ (after Zimmerman and Wieder, 1977). A web based diary was initially used to collect the thoughts of buyers as they progressed through the pre-sales and immediate post-sale interaction associated with an appropriate transaction. On completion of the diary, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the buyers to develop the themes raised. The interviews were transcribed and the resulting texts examined using Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA), which involved detailed examination of the textual data in an attempt to identify recurrent themes. These themes were then systematically grouped with the intention of developing a deeper and more complete understanding of the text. In order to present the QCA results in a manner that minimises the effects of decomposition and decontextulisation, a graphical format was developed to represent both the buyer’s adopted relationship management approach and also the buyer’s value perceptions. The term ‘Transaction X-Ray’ is used to describe the resulting graphic. The results are initially presented in the form of individual ‘Transaction X-Rays’ then, through the aggregation of individual results that share specific common characteristics, composite ‘X-Rays’ are formed. Analysis of these composite ‘X-Rays’ gives rise to the emergent themes from which the research contribution is derived. The dominant behaviour pattern to appear from the X-Ray analysis is that of the ‘T-Shaped’ Buyer, who characteristically adopts an Adversarial commercial approach to relationship management while simultaneously seeking, to a somewhat limited extent, the means for operational collaboration. Secondary behaviour patterns are also identified. ‘Transaction X-Rays’ also demonstrate that the dominant value perception held by buyers is that of Exchange Value, while also confirming the significance of Buyer Specific Perception of Value (BSPV). Recognising the limitations that are implicit in findings based on empirical evidence derived from a relatively small sample, it is nevertheless suggested that the dominance of the ‘T-shaped’ Buyer profile has a significance that resonates far beyond the confines study. For example, the findings appear counter to the philosophy advanced by those who suggest that by building a relationship, and openly sharing information, the buyer-seller dyad will develop in a manner that would not be possible via Arm’s Length approaches. A further significant contribution made by the thesis relates to the application of Service-Dominant Logic in respect of the Buyer Specific Perception of Value (BSPV) which is created for the buyer, during the pre-sales interaction. This point occurs much earlier in the value co-creation process than has previously been considered within the S-DL School, and identifies a source of value that has been largely ignored within S-DL. The thesis concludes with a discussion as to the significance of the wider findings of the study and suggests where further research may extend the contribution.