Ph.D. (Economics) / The purpose of this study is to analyse the impact of monetary impulses on the South African economy. In analogy with the exact sciences, which use a laboratory to test hypotheses, this work will rely on a economic laboratory in the form of an econometric model. With the aid of this model, we will attempt to explore the dynamics of the various monetary impulses. In other words, this study will attempt to trace the flow over time of these monetary impulses through various channels toward the real economy. We will try to identify the main channels through which the monetary impulses flow and which convey their impact on the real economy. The system transmitting these impulses to the economy will be called the monetary transmission mechanism. This has always been viewed as a mysterious phenomenon as it is not yet clear how the money stock affects the economy, whether it affects the economic system directly or does so indirectly, via other channels. Nor is it clear whether money should be seen as a unique asset which affects the economic system, or whether it should be treated like any other asset. The importance attached to the money stock by the monetarists, for example, is defended by them on the grounds that the supply of money, which is controlled by the central authorities, affects the economy, because the authorities abuse their monopoly over the money supply. In our research we will evaluate this hypothesis concerning the exogeneity of the money stock. We will show that money should be classified like any other asset, as it is endogenous in nature. This endogeneity of the money stock is determined through the interaction of the money multiplier and the liquidity base, both of which contain endogenous elements.

Thesis (MTech (Construction Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2005 / There is a realisation that new emphasis and added responsibilities are heing placed on professional consultants to involve local communities in the development process. The traditional hierarchical 'top-down" approach which characterised the way projects were initiated and managed by construction professionals in the past has lost favour with the Department of Public Works (DPW). It is therefore necessary for professionals to change their thinking, react and adapt to change. This will require a major paradigm shift on the part of the construction professional consultants. The World Bank advocates three measures to reform the provision of infrastructure services, namely wider application of commercial principles to service providers, broader use of competition, and increased involvement of users where commercial and competitive behaviour is constrained. The need for people involved in development to be placed in the centre also suggests the implementation of specific and intruding shifts in emphasis. Policies and strategies directed mainly at the control of natural settings, technological considerations, economic structures and demographic conditions have to be replaced by policies that take full cognisance of concomitant values, customs, social structures and political participation. The study examined the lack of community participation in current community development projects in South Africa which resulted in their diminished usefulness to beneficiary communities. The study had five main objectives namely (a) To highlight the importance of community participation in development projects through a theoretical study; (b) With the use of surveys establish whether community development projects involve the participation of the beneficiary community in all the stages of a project; (c) To show the Current project delivery systems enhance community participation; (d) To highlight the effect that community dynamics has on the process of delivering development projects and (e) Show through a survey that beneficiary communities do not accept ownership of projects unless they participate in these projects.

M.A. (Industrial Psychology) / South Africa is currently experiencing a period typified by daily changes in the labour economy and in its political structures. As a result of the critical shortage of skilled human resources, a decreasing white population and political pressure to reform, the country is under constant pressure to develop its human resources, race groups that are underdeveloped in the middle and top structures of the labour force. In this regard strategies to advance the occupational mobility of blacks are progressively being undertaken by South African companies. Given the pressing demands for human resource development the results of strategies to advance the occupational mobility of blacks are still perceived as unsatisfactory. Various contrasting views exist regarding the specific factors that inhibit black advancement as well as that which ought to be addressed in order to solve the problems underlying such advancement. In the absence of a coherent theoretical basis through which factors that inhibit the advancement of black occupational mobility can be explained and studied, the need for a suitable approach or framework to develop such a theoretical model, was identified. It was decided to study the problems underlying black advancement in South Africa by utilising a strategic-cultural approach. Before a strategic-cultural approach could be developed the nature and extent of the factors that inhibit the advancement of black occupational mobility was systematically examined. Inhibiting factors were analysed from literature through an integrated approach and it was found that the marginal position of the black labourer is fundamental to all of the contrasting views in this regard. In order to optimize the person-environment match relevant to the so-called marginal position of the black labourer it is emphasized in this study that the organisation's discemable and undiscemable structures should be changed...

This thesis is intended as a broad examination of the distribution of health resources in South Africa. Issues both macro and micro in nature have been covered to provide a perspective that would be Jacking in a narrower study. Although the title refers to a redistribution of resources, the intention of this thesis is to stress the importance of providing appropriate health measures rather than merely apportioning existing facilities evenly. This realization is insufficient, however, if it is not accompanied by the introduction and utilization of analytical approaches for identifying resource selection priorities. The influences on health status are many. In defining appropriate measures to improve health status it is important to be aware of the limitations of medical-care. Chapter three involves a cross-sectional regression analysis of various countries in order to examine the influences certain variables have on health status. This study suggests the need for an integrated approach to improving the health of a population. Merely focusing on medical care will only have a limited affect. However, this does not mean that medical-care is not important. It must just be provided in an appropriate manner. The rest of the thesis evaluates health-care resource distribution in South Africa. The existing distribution of health-care resources in South Africa is ill-suited to the existing health status of the population. There is a bias toward urban based curative facilities. Furthermore, the location of facilities has been based on racial criteria, whereby some areas have sufficient resources for their needs while others do not. Two methods of identifying how these issues should be dealt with are produced in this thesis. The first deals with a method for adjusting the broad distribution of funds toward those areas where need is greatest. The suggestion put forward by this thesis is that a formula be developed that would be able both to define need on a geographical basis, and to allocate resources based on that need. The formula would be used to allocate government health expenditure. This section is based on a formula that was developed in the United Kingdom. The second deals with a method for defining appropriate medical interventions on the micro level. It is called cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). CEA is used for micro-economic decision-making where a choice has to be made between at least two alternatives for attaining a particular objective. Furthermore, CEA evaluates projects or programmes that are on-going in nature. It should be noted that CEA can also evaluate non-medical interventions to solve a particular health problem. In order to indicate the type of information that a CEA can provide, an investigation into cervical cancer procedures used on black females was produced. The entire black female population of South Africa was examined. A computer simulation of incidence and mortality rates of the disease was used to evaluate various scenarios. The results indicate that significant gains can be made by introducing cervical cancer screening on a large scale in South Africa. A major priority of this thesis was to stress the importance of using economic criteria to assist in making decisions concerning health-care resource allocations. Very little work of this nature is produced in South Africa. Hopefully this will not always be the case.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Health Sciences, 2015.

At a glance, this study is a critique of local development policies with specific reference to the Buffalo City and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipalities in the Eastern Cape. The researcher enters the debate by posing a primary research question: Do the Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) and Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) ventures that constitute anti-poverty strategies succeed in addressing the issues of poverty, and achieving more equitable development at the municipal level in the Eastern Cape? This research proposes a problem statement: The local development policies of PPP and BBBEE that are being applied through Local Economic Development strategies are not in the interests of the majority of people living in the Eastern Cape. At a methodological level this research employs both quantitative and qualitative approaches to answer the central question and to verify the problem statement of this study. This triangulation approach is employed to utilize the strengths of both quantitative and qualitative methods. More specifically, the researcher uses a number of different research instruments to collect the data including four hundred questionnaires, four focus groups and elite interviews in both municipalities. The findings of this study indicate that local development policies in both municipalities do not improve the lives of the people. This line of thinking is indicated by both the empirical study conducted by the researcher and is supported by a number of scholarly materials. This study contributes to the body of knowledge in Political Economy and Development Studies including other disciplines in Social and Economic Sciences. The central argument of this thesis is that both BBBEE and PPPs are inspired by neo-liberalism (BBBEE is not neo-liberal per se though it may be heavily influenced by it) and neo-liberalism in practice is contradictory in nature as it involves the allocation of state resources to politically influential individuals, rather than promoting economic development for the majority. The evidence of this research further shows that the local business and political elites through the BBBEE, PPPs and outsourcing of services are using their strong networks (associated political, social and capital resources) in their efforts for personal accumulation. The researcher in this study examines the local development policies from a particular standpoint which is a political economy approach. The business and political elites according to political economic perspective use state resources to enrich themselves.

The purpose of the bulk infrastructure potential cost model is to provide a tool for planners to ensure the incorporation of bulk infrastructure cost considerations into the early, land suitability assessment phase of the integrated development planning process. In practice, infrastructure planning has generally tended to follow land use planning with infrastructure costs seeming to play no role in the generation of land use strategies. The output of the model is in the form of potential cost maps which facilitates the relative comparison of infrastructure costs for different density scenarios. Bulk engineering services infrastructure relating to water, sanitation and electricity have been included in the model. The theoretical underpinning of the model is threshold analysis. There are three essential elements of the bulk infrastructure cost model: threshold, density and cost. The manner in which the three pillars are incorporated into the model is through capacity analysis. The density levels set, convert into the number of additional person units required, which in turn translate into infrastructure capacity demand. Existing infrastructure network and facility design capacities are compared with current utilisation of infrastructure in order to quantify the capacity supply situation. The comparison of capacity demand with capacity supply determines whether or not additional infrastructure is required. If infrastructure is required, the required infrastructure investment is calculated. The resulting relative costs are mapped and incorporated into a wider land suitability assessment model to identify suitable land for low income residential development. The models are contextualised as Spatial Planning Support Systems, supporting a specific planning problem, with a strong spatial component, incorporating a multicriteria evaluation and cost model and being loosely-coupled with GIS. It is shown that although bulk infrastructure potential costs can be incorporated into the land suitability assessment process to enhance the land delivery decision making process, it is preferable to keep the cost analysis separate from the analysis of the more "softer" issues. Conclusion are made in relation to a number of key developmental issues: the sprawl/densification debate, land and housing policy issues, sustainability, integration, affordability and bulk services contribution rates. / Geography / D. (Philosophy)

D.Com. (Economics) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

In this thesis I explore three topics in labour economics, using micro data from South Africa and Tanzania. South Africa suffers from extremely high income inequality, in part as a result of comprehensive Apartheid-era racial discrimination. The first topic explores possible explanations for the extremely large earnings differences across different types of employment for black South Africans, using the KwaZulu-Natal Income Dynamics Study data. I analyse the relative importance of individual ability and institutions, including public sector wage setting and trade unions, in determining earnings. My results suggest that human capital explains much of the earnings differentials within the private sector, including union premiums, but cannot explain the large premiums for public sector workers. Self-employment is very common in urban Tanzania but, unlike South Africa, survey data show that there are large overlaps in the distribution of earnings in private wage employment and self-employment. This suggests that self-employment represents a viable alternative to wage employment in small, low productivity firms for the majority of urban Tanzanians. In chapter three I build an equilibrium search model of the urban Tanzanian labour market to explain the choice of wage and self-employment and the variation in earnings across and within these sectors. In the final topic I explore the effect of education on earnings in Tanzania. Estimating the returns to education has stimulated much recent work in applied econometrics as researchers advance their understanding of the effect of individual heterogeneity on the possibility of estimating the returns to education. In my attempt to purge estimates of the return to education of the influence of individual heterogeneity, I use an education reform in Tanzania as a natural experiment that provides exogenous variation in education. When using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) I find high and strongly convex, increasing returns to education. My best attempt at separating out the effect of individual heterogeneity suggests that returns are still high but that they may actually be concave.

M.Tech. (Architectural Technology). / The design of a transport interchange, as a catalyst for an integrated environment, economically viable, that allows people opportunities for self-realisation through a cohesive landscape of management, production and reproduction. The proposed investigation originates from the observation that public transport in Soweto is characterized by non-integrated routes amongst existing public transport role players amounting to increased travelling costs for commuters in transit. This is because of a lack of information Exchange amongst existing role players, inadequate employment opportunity and urban vitality within the township milieu. This dissertation will conceptualise a transport interchange as catalyst for an integrated environment, economically viable, to allow people opportunities for self-realisation through a cohesive landscape of management, production and reproduction (see Figure 1.39 pg 60). The project seeks to reverse conventional notions which associate transport buildings with crime, race and class differentiation. The aim of the study is to improve the efficiency of public transport infrastructure in the developing township of Jabulani, Soweto through the design of a transport interchange that contributes to the urban vitality of the Jabulani node. The study will investigate alternative means to further integrate transportation interchanges into communities by: (i) critically evaluating the traditional role of transport interchanges in the city as pragmatic spaces where people connect from one mode of public transport to another, and (ii) rethinking how transport interchanges can be used as a space for the exchange of ideas ultimately re-branding transport interchanges as social platforms that promote the exchange of information between people in transit.