This study carries forward the exploration of the link between the enactment of the Malawi Investment Promotion Act (1991) and the investment incentives laid out therein, and the level of foreign direct investment to Malawi. In doing so, the study aims to establish the progress that Malawi has made in nurturing an investment climate that is attractive to foreign investors. The respondents were 26 foreign companies that have invested in Malawi following the enactment Investment Promotion Act. All participants completed a self-administered questionnaire covering several attributes pertaining to Malawi's investment environment. Interviews were also conducted with government officials and employees from the Malawi Investment Promotion Agency (MIPA). The data strongly suggest that FDI has contributed to Malawi's economic growth to a certain extent, and that foreign direct investment inflows have risen during the 1990s. However, the results must be viewed within the context of the broader macroeconomic environment. If Malawi is to see any increase in its FDI inflows, an overall strategy is essential to restore macroeconomic conditions that are conducive to growth, to strengthen the legal and regulatory framework for doing business in the country, and improve the infrastructure that supports the economy. Only when the fundamental determinants are attractive enough for investment to be profitable, will investment incentives have any significant effect. / Thesis (MBA)-University of Natal, 2003.

No description available.

The focus of this thesis is the current policy situation in relation to assisted reproductive technologies (ART) in Aotearoa/New Zealand. I explore how government policies (and lack of policy) have shaped access to ART. I also explore the policy initiatives of funding agencies, the National Ethics Committee on Assisted Human Reproduction (NECAHR), managers, healthcare professionals, and interest groups. My investigation into ART policy issues critically examines the various formal mechanisms and policies used to regulate and control ART in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Drawing on my analysis of policy-focused documents and material from in-depth interviews with key actors in the policy debate, I demonstrate how the ad hoc and contingent approach to ART developments, practices, funding, and access has contributed to inconsistent and inequitable access to ART services. I argue that the lack of an ART-specific policy organisation contributes to fragmented, and possibly discriminatory, policy decisions. I examine how the use of restrictive access criteria to manage the increasing demand for publicly funded ART services disadvantages certain groups wishing to use these services. By investigating the influence of rationing strategies on the allocation of resources and regulation of access, I provide some appreciation of the 'messy reality' of policy creation, interpretation, and implementation. I argue that the criteria used to limit access to public ART services obscure the use of social judgements and provider discretion. Likewise, they succeed in limiting publicly funded ART treatments to those who conform most effectively to the normative definition of family. My analysis of the ART policy discourse identifies silences and gaps in relation to specific ART practices, particularly the use of ART by Maori. I highlight the invisibility and marginalisation of Maori within the ART policy debate. After examining the broader issues concerning Maori access to health services, I explore how these may affect Maori using ART services to overcome infertility. I argue that the gathering of information about the utilisation of ART services is crucial for the accurate identification of the needs of Maori. It is also fundamental for effective monitoring of state health policy decisions and outcomes.

The thesis provides a brief introduction to congestion pricing's theoretical roots and the history of its application. It derives the essential paradigms of the two professions that implement pricing schemes, planners and engineers, from their respective ethical codes and professional policies and applies them to three case studies. This is done to determine the professions roles and to indicate the interaction of the professions in the cases. The three cases were chosen due to their uniqueness and recent application. Lastly, the historical data, derived paradigms, and information from the case studies is assembled, compared, and contrasted to form a model for congestion pricing implementation. The model details actions that planners can take to influence congestion pricing implementation by addressing funding and public acceptability issues at both the federal and local levels. The model can be used by planners, engineers, and decision makers alike to increase the effectiveness of pricing schemes and to make better informed decisions regarding congestion pricing in their community. / Department of Urban Planning

During this period the state's interest in the film industry took several different forms. The area of films policy explored in this thesis is the economic protection of the commercial film industry against the high percentage of American films screened in Britain and the Empire. I begin in 1925 because it was not until then that active steps were taken by the government, in response to agitation from producers and those who saw film as a bond of Empire and advertisement for British goods and 'way of life', leading to the Cinematograph Films Act, 1927. This proposed, for political, cultural, moral and economic reasons, that renters and exhibitors should acquire and show a percentage of British films. There was no subsidy for producers or a heavy duty levied on American film imports. The origins, impact and character of official film policy are explored in the thesis with particular attention to financial and political aspects. An attempt is made to explain why policy was limited to film quotas together with an assessment of their impact on the industry's economic development. Details are also given on how the film industry's affairs became caught up in wider debates on tariff policy in the 1920s and in Anglo-American relations ten years later. The first three chapters deal with the evolution, promulgation and initial impact of the Cinematograph Films Act, 1927. Chapter 4 examines the deliberations of the Moyne Committee, established in 1936 to review the film industry's progress. The last three chapters analyse the three major influences on policy during the making of the 1938 Films Act: the campaigns of British film trade interests; the state of Anglo-American relations and film finance. In the final assessment the major influences that shaped policy are outlined together with conclusions on the industry's position and problems on the eve of the Second World War.

The immediate objectives of exchange-rate policy should be stability of output, stability of the rate of inflation and stability of the exchange rate itself. Moreover, exchange-rate policy is likely to be of some use in achieving these aims, as the modifications to the rational expectations theory which make monetary policy effective do so for exchange-rate policy as well, and additional channels of effectiveness operate in an open economy. There are various explanations for the volatility of exchange rates under free floating, but a more realistic picture of the reaction to external disturbances is obtained if step changes in interest rates are allowed for by considering the term structure of interest rates and the influence of the terms of trade on the demand for money. Capital is not in fact perfectly mobile internationally, which widens the range of policy options, and some modifications of the theory are required to study the determinants of capital flows in an imperfect world. One can use the correlation between deviations of output and inflation from trend to study the origin of disturbances. This is illustrated by a study of eighteen sub-Saharan African countries. Furthermore, the type and origin of disturbances have implications for whether some sort of dual exchange-rate or dual interest-rate system is desirable. Finally, a model of an open economy is presented in which exchange-rate policy can be analyzed whether specified in terms of exchange-rate targets or the degree of intervention, and with the possibility of a restricted forward foreign-exchange market. A variant of the model is estimated for South Africa for the period 1974-1981 and various exchange-rate policies are simulated.

This is a study of the politics of public policy. It provides analysis of land policy and a study of policy making and of the Tanzanian state. Rather than deducing the state's agenda from its actions and the policies it produces, this thesis seeks to examine the interactions between the significant factions and personae of the Tanzanian political and administrative elites. This approach goes beyond identifying the divisions within the state between the Party leadership, the technocrats within the Government, and the Presidency. The thesis demonstrates how the ways in which conflicts are resolved, or deferred, and compromises are reached can lead to outcomes which do not necessarily constitute the sum of identifiable interests. In particular, a 'hidden level of government' is uncovered which consists of a technocratic elite which has, to a large extent, managed to depoliticise otherwise sensitive and controversial policy decisions and thus impose their stamp on policy outcomes. This approach to the analysis of rural land policies reveals the continuities in the state's approach to land issues. Since the colonial period, the objective of Tanzania's land policies has been to transform the countryside from the presumed inefficiencies of the 'traditional' modes of land use to fit the needs of a 'modern' and monetised economy. The modernising policies have provided the rationale for an authoritarian approach to land tenure and have been implemented by a centralised land administration. This thesis' historical analysis of the policies associated with the period of ujamaa and villagisation, and of the case studies of the 1983 Agricultural Policy and the 1995 National Land Policy, show that a modernising discourse and centralising administrative practices have remained at the centre of the policy agenda, despite dramatic changes in economic strategies and political institutions, and controversies over the future direction of land policies. The resulting land tenure regime relies on discretionary decision making by politicians and land officials and fails to provide workable procedures of checks and controls against malpractice. This study's detailed examination of the formulation of the National Land Policy reveals how a small elite of senior civil servants were able to hijack the policy making process and side-step political pressure for reform. They ignored, or appropriated selectively, the evidence and recommendations produced by comprehensive policy reviews, including the 1992 Presidential Commission of Inquiry, to maintain their direction of land policy while failing to address the evident shortcomings of the existing land policy regime.

No description available.

In 1998, the French Socialist Government reduced the statutory workweek to 35 hours. This work time reduction policy was implemented in response to the country's chronic unemployment problem, which had seen unemployment average over 10% during the previous decade. The 35 hour week sought to reduce unemployment by spreading the existing stock of jobs more widely and by stimulating job creation. This policy choice was received with considerable scepticism from commentators outside of France. Critics argued that the 35 hour week diverged too greatly from the international orthodoxy of a flexible and deregulated labour market and, given the convergence pressures caused by contemporary globalisation, would reduce French competitiveness. The implication was that governments no longer had the freedom to implement employment policy that diverged from the international norm. In this thesis, I reconsider this argument. I undertake a political economy analysis of the use of work time reduction policy in France from the perspective of the regional labour market of Nord-Pas-de-Calais. In doing so, I focus on the implementation of the 35 hour week policy in this high unemployment region. In addition, I focus on the regional work time reduction policy implemented in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, which predated the national 35 hour week policy and was the source of several of its key features. Thus, I provide a regional perspective on the French 35 hour week policy, an alternative to the 'top down' perspective taken by its critics. Throughout this research, I concentrate on three key issues: (1) the logic of work time reduction policy within the local labour market in France, using Nord-Pas-de-Calais as my case study; (2) the method of policy-making and the importance of geographic scale; and (3) the viability of France's work time reduction policy in the face of globalisation. My aim is to understand the policy process that led to this policy choice, to appreciate how traditions of economic governance influenced its formation and implementation in the local labour market, and to study how these traditions influenced the ability of work time reduction policy to reduce unemployment. I show, first, that French traditions of labour market governance, on which work time reduction policy is based, continue to have meaning in the local labour market, with the public continuing to demand policy consistent with its ideals. Second, I show that scale contributes to policy outcomes and policy innovation, suggesting the importance of geographic factors in the policy, process, such as the spatial match between the policy and policy problem, the transfer of policy between scales, and issues such as proximity and homogeneity. Third, I show that the success of work time reduction policy is largely dependent upon socially determined factors including effective negotiation, preferences between work and leisure, and empathy for the unemployed. Fourth, I show that the 35 hour week policy was not incompatible with international demands for labour market flexibility because it provided significant scope for productivity gains via its design and increased flexibility in the use of work time, albeit within constraints. Therefore, by examining the making and implementation of work time reduction policy in France from a regional perspective, I show that while globalisation places genuine exogenous constraints on the policy choices of government, there nonetheless remains considerable scope within these constraints, especially when implementing policy that is compatible with traditions of governance that continue to resonate in the local labour market.

China's scientific development has gone through several phases over the past 50 years. In 1956, the first generation of leaders called on the whole country to "march towards science," drafting China's first scientific development plan. In 1978, the then Chinese leaders sponsored a national science conference and mapped out scientific development strategies for a new period of reform and opening-up policies. In 1985, the central government issued a "Decision on the Reform of Scientific and Technological Systems," with the aim of accelerating the application of technological discoveries to promote productivity. Since then, China has implemented a series of projects to spur the take-off of the rural economy. In 1995, at a national conference on science and technology, the Chinese leaders put forward the strategy of "revitalizing the country through science, technology and education." The central government listed this strategy along with the policy of sustainable development as the basic principles for China's long-term economic and social development. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)