This dissertation consists of a model of the monetary policy process, and an application of the model to the post-World War I financial and macroeconomic policy system. Orthodox money multiplier models mis-specify the transmission mechanism of the monetary policy. An alternative model is constructed from the micro-foundations of the credit supply process. The model locates the transmission channel of monetary policy in the impact of policy initiatives on the expectations of portfolio holders in the financial markets. If monetary policy initiatives have a negligible impact on expectations, they will not have a significant impact on the course of real economic activity in a capitalist economy with sophisticated financial markets and more than nominal business cycles. The expectations formation process is analyzed to derive the institutional configuration and policy stance that contribute to a tight connection between monetary policy initiatives and the expected profitability of credit creation. The analysis concludes that monetary policy, while potentially powerful, is an inherently unstable platform for macroeconomic control. The monetary authority's control of expectations can fluctuate dramatically in a short space of time. If the monetary authority is viewed as technically weak vis a vis market forces or politically vulnerable to competing macroeconomic policy centers, it will face rapid and severe declines in monetary policy effectiveness. The motivation for the construction of the postwar financial order was a great fear by the elites of the social and political consequences of modest amounts of inflation. The central bank was elevated to the status of a macroecomonic planner, and given the task of keeping the economy inflation free, and provided with a monopoly on macroeconomic policy. An asymmetrical, pro-cyclical policy stance promised to cap booms and promote "liquidations," that is, to enforce a severe recession following an expansion. Robust central bank independence protected unpopular policies. The system was effective, but chronically inflexible, being deliberately designed to be inhospitable to expansionary policy, and incapable of conforming to policy pressures from the electorate. During 1929 - 1933 the system worked as design, and paralyzed expansionary macroeconomic policy initiatives. The disastrous results discredited the system and its supporters.

This dissertation develops a theory of the functioning of a welfare, or income-maintenance, system in the United States economy; it tests this theory with evidence from the 1930's. Our current welfare system grows out of the 1935 Social Security Act, passed during the Great Depression of the 1930's and after two years of the New Deal. The original Act contained many welfare provisions, but conspicuously absent from it was any form of work relief. Yet work relief had been the primary thrust of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the New Deal relief program that preceded the Social Security Act. This dissertation explains why work relief was dropped from the Social Security Act. It first develops a theory of welfare and welfare reform which specifically addresses the nature of work relief. This theory seeks to explain the evolution of a system of relief as a function of two influences: the constraints imposed by a capitalist economic system; and the strength of political actors who attempt to make the system conform as much as possible to their demands. It posits three consequent reproductive relations, or constraints, placed on a welfare system: (1) maintaining a stigma attached to relief so that people will be encouraged to hold low-paying jobs; (2) maintaining welfare payments at levels that do not interfere with the functioning of labor markets; and (3) basing work relief on principles that are congruent with the logic of the market, i.e. profit criteria. It then shows that some programs of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration violated these constraints to such a great degree that the subsequent protests from capitalists resulted in the exclusion of all work relief from the permanent Social Security Act, and its legislation instead through the temporary Works Progress Administration. The lack of provision for permanent federal work relief then left space in local work relief programs for the resumption of the worktest. This study can inform current debates on the welfare system through its analysis of the complex relationship between work and welfare. It also evaluates various past and currently-proposed welfare programs, and examines the limits of welfare reform.

For many social theorists, the word 'class' has and continues to play a privileged role in the analyses of human societies. There is no consensus as to what the word should mean--and the debates rage on. However, on one score there is an extraordinary implicit consensus. Whatever the word actually means, almost all analysts claim that the determinants they have choosen stand in a special causal relationship to the non-class aspects of society. This dissertation is conceived as a critical examination of these two basic unsettled areas within social theories. One additional issue is of great concern to this dissertation. We will argue that the different meanings of the word 'class' and the causal privilege assigned to it are not mere semantic disputes. They are also disputes about the desirability of existing social structures and the possibility of new ones. We define and identify three broad traditions within theoretical approaches to analysing human societies: a class tradition, a non-class tradition, and a composite tradition that combines elements from the first two. This thesis uses a particular reading of Marx's work to analyse some representative contemporary efforts that attempt to settle the arguments over what class should mean and how its privileged status should be understood. We have choosen major texts that have appeared in the last thirty years by four important social theorists who have devoted significant analytical attention to the problems of class and causation. Key texts by Ralf Dahrendorf, Anthony Giddens, Nicos Poulantzas, and Eric Olin Wright are critically examined. The first two authors are influential representatives from the non-class tradition, and the latter two are from the composite tradition. Based on a particular non-essentialist Marxist class theoretic perspective this dissertation demonstrates the superiority of our approach vis-a-vis the alternative texts. We spell out the advantages both for analyses of contemporary societies and the strategic political advantages of employing our approach. It is in these senses that the alternative texts are considered to be seriously flawed in their respective attempts to solve these two basic problem areas in social theory today.

Attempting to square the concrete realities of post-revolutionary Soviet Union and China with their various notions of communism, participants in the Marxist theoretical tradition have found themselves engaged in polemics contending the definitions of socialism and communism, as well as the basis for their development. The absence of consensus within the Marxian tradition has resolved into a confusing disarray of dogmatic confrontations wherein the proponents of the various schools of thought claim that their respective theories, in comparison to others, have captured (epistemological essentialism) the true essence of social development (ontological essentialism). Rejecting the empiricist and rationalist epistemological bases of these confrontations, this dissertation posits an 'Althussarian' notion of overdetermination as an alternative basis with which to critically evaluate the constitutive logic of the contending discourses utilized in attempting to analyze social formations which have experienced 'socialist' revolutions. We define three broad traditional theoretical approaches to these issues: economism, humanism, and overdetermination. Rejecting an apodictic posture toward these contending approaches, this dissertation presents a thorough reading of the works of Marx and Engels in demonstration of the exegetical basis of contending discourses. A discussion of J. V. Stalin's writings is presented as an example of one of the predominant forms of essentialist logic. Charles Bettelheim's works are analyzed and compared to Stalin's. Both Stalin's and Bettelheim's approaches to questions of socialism and communism are found to reduce social development to ahistorical essential characteristics. Their respective strategies for communist development are thereby reduced to propounding those characteristics proclaimed as essences. Rejecting such reductionist analyses, this dissertation concludes in presentation of the type of analytical fruits that might obtain when approaching these issues within the framework of the tradition demarcated by the notion of a conjuncturally overdetermined communist fundamental class process and its conditions of existence.

In a decentralised system of governance, checks and balances are important to prevent corruption and ensure the optimal performance of public service organisations. However, such regulations need to strike a careful balance between not being too simple and avoiding onerous, unnecessary complexity. Furthermore, the devolution of responsibility cannot occur in isolation – it must be accompanied by financial and operational support. Although South Africa has always had some form of a decentralised governing system, the Constitution of 1996 has formally entrenched this into the country's current public administration. Local government, now a sphere within itself, is thus responsible for bringing the Bill of Human Rights to life, acting increasingly as the implementation arm for national government's policies and initiatives. Following the passing of the Local Government Municipal Financial Management Act of 2003 (MFMA), South African municipalities are also required to comply with rigorous, annual auditing regulations. Intended to enforce sound financial governance and prevent abuse of devolved power, the influence of the audits is widely expected to positively impact other areas of municipal operations, ensuring well-run public organisations able to fulfil their service delivery mandate. Indeed, the general public uphold clean audit outcomes – a standard unique to South African municipal audits – as the only acceptable result and indication of effective local governance. However, this is not always the case. By examining the extent to which financial compliance, as represented by municipal audit outcomes, relates to local government service delivery performance, this thesis investigates whether the auditing regulations are appropriately designed to achieve their intended outcomes and asks how much of an impact sound financial management has upon municipal operations. The results suggest that, whilst there does appear to be a weak, positive relationship between clean audits and service delivery in some instances, on the whole the audit outcomes are not strongly related to municipal operational performance. The capacity of local governments to deliver services appears to be far more a function of their operational context - particularly the regional wealth levels, population density, political influence and available infrastructure - than financial compliance and audit outcomes. Given the costs of the current auditing system and difficulties faced by municipal employees in relation to the regulations, this thesis concludes with recommendations for its adaptation. These include amending its current one-size-fits-all design and moving away from a compliance focus towards performance, value-based auditing. In addition, local municipalities should be provided with greater amounts of operational support, as financial regulations alone – even when optimally designed – cannot be relied upon to keep the performance of South Africa's decentralised system of governance in check.

This dissertation examines the impact of state-subsidised housing on the realisation of the right to adequate housing in South Africa. The incremental housing policy adopted in 1994 has its roots in the work of the Urban Foundation and others, who significantly shaped the discussions in the National Housing Forum, where South Africa's first post-apartheid housing policy was formulated. As a result low-income housing policy is centred on the use of capital subsidies allocated towards homeownership. In 1996 the state promulgated the Constitution obligating government to ensure that, inter alia, 'everyone has the right of access to adequate housing'. 'Adequate housing', as per the United Nations Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, comprises of six core elements: accessibility, affordability, location, availability of services, habitability and security of tenure; which have all been affected in various ways by government's legislative and policy interventions. The delivery of state-subsidised housing has been impressive - with nearly three million completed since 1994. However, there have been significant problems. This paper emphasises four main issues: the poor quality houses that have required rectification and/or rebuilding; an overemphasis on homeownership, above rental tenure; a lack of effective transfer of title deeds; and the informal sale of state-subsidised houses. All of which have negatively impacted on progress towards full realisation of the right of access to adequate housing.

Handwashing with soap at critical times is a simple and effective way to prevent the spread of communicable diseases, such as diarrhea and acute respiratory infection, which are major causes of morbidity and mortality in developing countries. However, rates of handwashing remain low throughout the world, and interventions which attempt to improve handwashing behaviors have largely been unsuccessful in practice. This may be because behavior change programs often fail to recognize the habitual drivers of handwashing behavior. In contrast, this paper examines the effectiveness of a novel soap technology, HOPE SOAP©, a child-size and colorful bar of soap with a toy embedded in its center, which aims to increase handwashing in children by specifically targeting its habitual nature. To rigorously evaluate HOPE SOAP©, this paper exploits data from a pilot randomized controlled trial whereby 229 households from a poor urban community in South Africa were randomly assigned to receive HOPE SOAP© for a period of 12-weeks. In an initial analysis of the effects of the intervention on children’s health and behavior, Burns, Maughan-Brown, and Mouzinho (2017) found that that HOPE SOAP© had positive impacts on children’s handwashing behaviors and health outcomes. Children who received HOPE SOAP© children were more likely to wash their hands, and had better overall health outcomes than control children (Burns, Maughan-Brown, and Mouzinho 2017). Although HOPE SOAP© aims to induce behavior change in children, this paper explores the spillover effects that it has on other members of children’s households. Specifically, this work uses regression analysis to investigate the impacts of HOPE SOAP© on the handwashing behaviors of children’s primary caregivers, and on the health outcomes of all non-treated household members. This paper finds compelling evidence illustrating that a child’s assignment to HOPE SOAP© has a positive impact on the handwashing behavior of their caregiver. Specifically, HOPE SOAP© increases the probability that a caregiver will wash their hands before eating a snack by 13 percentage points on average (p-value 0.17). A further investigation of the causal mechanisms for this improvement suggests that HOPE SOAP© affects caregiver behavior both by disrupting existing poor-hygiene habits, and by strengthening handwashing norms within households. Despite its positive effects on household handwashing behavior, this paper finds that a child’s assignment to HOPE SOAP© has no discernable shortterm impacts on the health of individual household members. Nevertheless, the positive influence of HOPE SOAP© on caregiver handwashing behavior is promising and, in conjunction with the finding that HOPE SOAP© improves children’s behaviors, provides reason to believe the intervention may be successful in inducing habitual handwashing behaviors which can persist in the long run.

This dissertation uses 13 year panel data to explore the nature of hyperinflations which occurred in 14 countries between the years 1980 and 2008. The countries are grouped into three geopolitical regions of Latin America, former states of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Africa. The analysis principally uses the quantity theory of money (QTM) and the purchasing power parity (PPP) as theoretical frameworks. The Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality is used to examine the nature of the relationship between exchange rates, money supply and price levels during the hyperinflationary periods. Notable similarities regarding the causal relationships, particularly between money supply, and price levels were found. Exchange rate depreciation-inflation spirals are examined using the PPP hypothesis. Over the 13 year periods under investigation, the findings suggest that prices and exchange rates did not tend to move together in all the cases. The impact of hyperinflations on the velocity of money is investigated for the three regional cases, following which the long-run relationship between QTM variables is tested using Pedroni residual co-integration. Despite the substantial dissimilarities in inflation rates and velocity in the countries, there seems not to be significant differences in the impact of hyperinflations on velocity. In examining whether a long-run or equilibrium relationship existed between inflation, money growth and real output during the hyperinflationary periods, the findings suggest it was not the case in all instances. Although the econometric results accord with findings in the relevant literature, it is apparent that despite the generic systematic features which typify the phenomenon, the hyperinflationary experiences have not been uniform and have taken different paths.

This dissertation examines the deterioration and collapse of the East African Railways Corporation (EARC) during the time of the East African Community (EAC), 1967-1977. The EARC has a long history that stretched back to the beginnings of colonial settlement in the East African region. It survived two world wars and a global economic depression, but just a few years after the independence of East African nations in the early 1960s, the EARC rapidly disintegrated. This then leads to the main project question: What were the causes that contributed to the collapse of the EARC? In order to address this question, I traveled to Nairobi in June 2015 to explore two archival sources: the Kenya National Archives and the Kenya National Railway Museum Archives. Both proved to be an invaluable repository of primary source material. In particular the main documents found were the business records describing the operations of the EARC during the period in question. In addition, with the help of a librarian at the Daily Nation newspaper in Nairobi, I was able to access archived newspaper articles on the EARC dating back to the years of interest. With this data and along with secondary source material, I conducted an analysis that triangulated these sources to provide a holistic picture of the events that affected the EARC. The narrative therefore demonstrates that while many factors contributed to the failure of the EARC what ultimately determined this were the nationalistic tendencies of representatives of EAC member states that overcame any centripetal forces of regional unity. There were also several events that precipitated the downfall of the EARC but ultimately it was the financial crisis of 1974 that proved decisive. This so-called crisis stemmed from a failure of each region to remit funds toward headquarters to be able to continue rail operations. This episode could not be blamed solely on foreign exchange concerns as some scholars have claimed. Instead the crisis exposed the long simmering national divisions that had manifested during this period. Each of the EAC partner states desired equitable treatment. When some perceived that they could not receive this through the operations of regional institutions such as the EARC, they engaged in actions that paralyzed EARC operations. This culminated in the complete fracturing of the EARC by 1977. 3 Since the end of the twentieth century, the EAC has been reborn and even expanded upon to include new member states beyond the original three of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The East African Railways have also risen from the ashes and in late 2013, the initiation of the expansion on the existing rail lines to reinvigorate the railways commenced. But have the lessons of the EARC been learnt to avoid a repeat of the emergence of regional disunity that caused its collapse? It remains to be seen.

The relationship between remittances, financial development, and real growth in recent years has increasingly become a topic of interest for scholars and practitioners alike. With the ever presence of globalization, the migratory patterns have fundamentally changed. The migration of people no longer means their total isolation from their home country; but rather a new dynamic environment has emerged with the increased importance of remittances on social, economic and political transformation back in their countries of origins. In addition, the continuing development of the financial systems whether it is in the banking sector or the stock exchange has accelerated in the last few decades. It is important to point out to the accelerating trend in financial development and its impact on real growth. Equally important to highlight the extent to which the financial system influenced the remittance patterns. By looking at Egypt as the country of interest from 1977 to 2014, the thesis investigates the role and impact of financial development and remittances on GDP. Egypt is chosen as the country of interest given its status as the biggest economy in North Africa and the third largest in the continent. Additionally, it is among one of the largest recipient of remittances from its expatriate population.