The basic objective of this thesis is to identify some of the basic trends tending to shape the Canadian economy. The procedure followed was to examine economic theory and previous forecasting studies to determine methodological principles and apply these principles to estimate the possible future course of the Canadian economy between 1965 and 1980. No comprehensive economic theory appears to be presently developed to explain and therefore to form a complete basis for predicting the economic growth of a nation. In an effort to make economic theory manageable, many variables affecting economic growth and development such as those of sociology tend to be ignored in quantitative terms. Together with these unquantifiable variables, it is not known how many non-economic factors affect economic growth. It would seem to be these many unknown factors that tend to cause errors in the results of long range economic forecasts. Economic growth, defined as the expansion of a nation's capacity to produce, in an already advanced industrial economy, is heavily dependent on the quantity and quality of the nation's labour force, natural resources, real capital, and the technological level in the society. These basic determinants are tempered by the sociological, institutional, and consumption trends or factors within the economy. Although many articles have been written on various aspects of economic growth, the present state of knowledge does not appear to be appreciably past the theorizing stage. As no complete theory of economic growth and development appears to exist, the long range economic forecaster may gain some insights from economic theory but depend very much on his own resources to make various forecasts. The most common method to determine output appears to necessitate a population forecast from which a labour force estimate is made and then with assumptions regarding per-man productivity, an estimate for total output can be made. Sophisticated population and labour force forecasts tend to divide the population into age and sex specific cohorts and then analyze the trends within each of these cohorts. The methodology used in this thesis was based on broad estimates for various trends per thousand population. Due mainly to an expected high birth rate in Canada, the population is anticipated to increase at about 3.8 percent per year to about 25,800,000 by 1980. Of this figure, about 10,000,000 are expected to make up the labour force. The two significant trends expected in the labour force are a large influx of young people and a greater participation of women in the labour force. In this thesis, the total output was separated into agriculture, government and public administration, and commercial non-agricultural sectors. This enabled the analysis of the trends in the work force, productivity, and output in each sector to be examined. The significant trends in output expected are an increase in per-man productivity, but a declining labour force in agriculture, a rather constant productivity per man, but an increase in the total labour force in the government and public administration sector, and an increase in both the labour force and productivity per-man in the commercial non-agricultural sector. The real increase in output of the combined sectors is estimated to approximate 4.6 percent per year between 1965 and 1980 for the Canadian economy. With the total output estimated, an estimate was made as to the division of the output between capital accumulation, government expenditures, consumer expenditures, imports and exports. It was found that the division of the output between these broad sectors tended to be rather stable in relation to the gross national product. Because of this stability, future estimates for the broad categorical spending were based mainly on simple trend projections. From the historical spending patterns, it would appear difficult to justify any drastic changes in the basic spending patterns. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

This thesis reveals some major weaknesses in development strategies based primarily on economic growth and suggests the development record can only be improved significantly by adopting a process of experimental evolution. The obvious starting point is defining and describing development. Development is defined as neither more nor less than the improvement of individual and social welfare, and the first chapter draws on some of the social sciences' literature in an attempt to describe individual and social development. While this description is far from definitive, several tentative conclusions may be drawn. Individuals have a wide variety of needs, from the basic physiological and psychological to those higher needs for fulfillment. These needs are satisfied in varying degrees by the social system (or the social delivery systems). There is no evidence that one type of social system performs better over all than any other. The components of the social system, the subsystems have a complex (and as yet poorly understood) interdependence and interaction, such that disruption of one subsystem is likely to produce (largely unforeseen) ramifications throughout the rest of the social system. Beyond the few basic physiological needs, economic activity satisfies few of the needs and many economic activities inhibit or even preclude many needs' satisfaction. And finally, any intervention which significantly disrupts the social system is likely to be counter-productive, as the reduced systemic performance generally negates the benefits derived from the intervention. For these reasons it is suggested there is little justification for social evangelism or mimicry and that disruptive strategies necessarily have anti-developmental consequences. Economic growth is neither costless nor priceless. The economic evaluations of the last two decades of 'development' efforts bear out this conclusion, that the development record for the Third World has been disappointing and less than adequate, and that the major cause was unanticipated societal repercussions. This appears to have been the case whether the strategies were explicitly disruptive or (as was more generally the case) inadvertently so. There are, however, other reasons for the poor record as well. The traditional 'barriers to development1, and numerous external or unalterable factors (comparative advantages, established markets, demand and supply limits, the 'development of underdevelopment') each contribute in varying degrees to circumscribe the economic growth potential of each country. These constraints further weaken the case for economic growth strategies that require easy access to open markets and to limited resources. It is recognized that a concerted effort is necessary to reduce these external barriers to economic growth, to more equitably distribute the world's resources and income. It is also necessary to develop, at this time, a developmental process that may be applied in any country, within these constraints. The process must seek to determine the level of social performance within the society, because every society has both strengths and weaknesses— and most have more strengths than weaknesses. It must involve the people in determining the level of performance and in defining their own social goals, because only they can legitimately do it and because the involvement is in itself developmental. The intervention must be designed to maintain the level of performance in non-target subsystems (minimize disruption) and it must be flexible, suitable for modification as problems arise. These objectives are facilitated by experiments small in scale and scope. Finally the process must include monitoring and evaluation, not only of the target subsystem, but of the whole social performance. This is necessary to permit adjustments to the strategy, to ensure there are no negative impacts in other institutions, and to improve our understanding of social system behavior, a prerequisite for more efficient development strategies. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

This dissertation deals with theoretical and empirical aspects of factor demand and output supply decisions of firms. In the theoretical part of the thesis, some major existing theories of investment are discussed and their formulation is extended to the case of firms which extract an exhaustible resource. Those theories are then incorporated into a model which exploits complementarities between some of them and can reflect some well-known hypotheses, such as the putty-clay hypothesis, as special cases. This model relies on a general notion of irreversibility: a decision is defined as irreversible if it introduces a new constraint to a firm. This constraint may be a non negativity constraint, but may also mean the appearance of costs of adjustments. Such an approach implies a distinction between ex ante phases and ex post phases in the life of firms, those phases being separated by the irreversible decisions. Two empirical applications are presented. The first one corresponds to the ex ante phase of the theoretical model, and deals with the capacity selection decision of some North-American open-pit metal mines. According to the evidence, this decision takes account of economic parameters, such as expected prices, as well as geological and technological parameters. The second empirical application correspond to the ex post phase of the theoretical model, and deals with the short-run production decisions of some mines. Both empirical studies provide support for the putty-clay hypothesis. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

Magister Administrationis - MAdmin / Development should not be viewed as just a project but must be understood as an overarching strategy with a thorough implementation plan and specific targets as well as review mechanisms. All different spheres of government, organs of civil society and business have a tremendous role to play in pursuit of sustainable economic growth and development. In Khayelitsha there are emerging trends of bulk infrastructure spending and community led partnership that seek to unlock the economic potential however this progress has thus far been limited to retail development with no productive industrial development. / South Africa

The emergence of the international debt crisis in the 1980s is typically explained through exogenous shocks to the global economic system, first generating excess liquidity and then creating conditions which render previously attractive lending operations unprofitable. Thus, the international debt crisis is explained as a historical accident, driven by exogenous changes in the global markets. In fact, however, this debt crisis was not a unique occurrence, but rather the last event in a sequence of debt crises. Latin America alone has now experienced a total of five severe crises since the early 19th century. The central argument of this dissertation is that all these crises are characterized by the same structural forces which drive borrowing countries to take on an excess amount of capital, while commercial lenders are driven to engage in excessive lending. On the borrowing side, populist behavior was pervasive during the borrowing binges throughout history. Political leaders made use of the availability of capital from abroad to soothe social dissatisfaction at home and to strengthen their alliances in order to improve their leadership position. In fact, during the 1970s, borrowing volumes almost invariably increased substantially during periods of political instability or at times of elections. In a formal approach, such behavior can only be captured by substituting the political leader as crucial decision-making agent for the standard planner, typically used in economic modeling. A game-theoretic sequential equilibrium model is used to reveal the incentives for the politician to borrow beyond the socially optimal level. On the lending side, commercial creditors can consistently be separated into leaders and followers, be it in the form of investment banks and bondholders or money-center banks and small regional banking houses. Invariably, the leaders derived additional benefits from the lending operations which did not accrue to the followers. It therefore paid for the leaders to expand the lending volume, and required them to convince the followers of the profitability of these loans. A formal model based on informational asymmetries resulting from the segmentation of the banking industry during the 1970s shows the tendency to lend in excess of the social optimum.

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MPM / Oliver Tambo Institute of Governance and Policy Studies

This Research Report is submitted in partial fulfillment towards the degree of Master of Arts (MA) in International Relations in University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. June 2018 / This research investigates the nature of the correlation between the level of corruption and economic growth across 211 countries over the period from 1996 to 2006. With this intention, initially it reviews the conventional argument on corruption being regarded as an inhibitor of economic growth. This research also aims to investigate whether there are countries which exhibit good economic growth despite the presence of high levels of corruption. If so, are there other factors which may explain the presence of economic growth in these outlier countries? The findings clearly highlight that there are countries that exhibit good economic growth despite the presence of high levels of corruption. The findings also revealed that there are other factors that may contribute to economic growth despite the presence of high levels of corruption in these outlier countries. These other factors include trade openness, foreign direct investment and government spending. Thus, it appears that corruption is not always necessarily a factor that reduces economic growth in all contexts / MT 2019

Nigeria, in 2007 unveiled a seven point agenda with the purpose of promoting economic growth and reducing the level of poverty by 2020. This action propelled Nigeria to intensify partnerships with some countries, notably China. This research focused on Nigerian-Chinese relationship as it relates to three key areas such as Energy, Education and Infrastructure. This research found that Nigeria’s relationship with China is a continuation of past relations and concludes with some recommendations that will help Nigeria maximize the benefits of its relationship with China. The recommendations made include the elimination of corruption; requirement that foreign investors must provide suitable working conditions for Nigerian workers, with penalties for violators; projects within Nigeria undertaken by Chinese corporations must require at least 60% of the labor force to be Nigerian nationals and finally, that a regulatory body composed of professionals should be formed to oversee infrastructural development promised by the Chinese government.

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