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published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences

This dissertation consists of three separate essays. The first two essays focus on real estate brokerage; one studies the conditions for efficient employment in the real estate brokerage industry under fixed commission rates and the other examines the role of real estate agents in buyer-seller bargaining. The third essay presents an integrated analysis of housing investment and consumption choices that takes into account both the uncertainty in investment returns and liquidity constraints. Essay one presents a model of real estate trading with brokerage that integrates sequential search, two-sided matching, and the competitive entry and effort choice of real estate agents. The equilibrium employment pattern of the model helps to explain the observation that the number of agents is more sensitive to the expected transaction price than to the transaction volume. The condition for efficient employment requires the commission to be proportional to the opportunity cost of search time and the expected trading gain, with the proportion determined by the productivity of brokerage employment. Efficient employment also requires regulating the entry so as to achieve the productivity balance between the number of agents and individual effort. Essay two examines asymmetric information and bargaining within the model of real estate trading developed in essay one. The equilibrium outcomes of bargaining with and without information asymmetry are characterized with the help of mechanism design methodology, and the associated welfare levels are compared. The analysis is applied to evaluating the role of real estate agents in the bargaining. Agents seek compromises between the buyer and seller by providing credible information to both parties. Such a role is welfare improving when the scale economy of brokerage with respect to the stock of buyers and sellers is not strong and brokerage employment is sufficient. In essay three, Pratt's certainty-equivalent approximation is applied to the Henderson-Ioannides (1983) housing tenure choice model. The key trade-offs for housing investment and consumption choices induced by the uncertainty and liquidity constraints are clearly illustrated and the implications for tenure choice examined against the existing empirical evidence.

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For almost fifteen years, South Africa has been a target for developed countries' active recruitment of nurses and other healthcare professionals to their healthcare systems. South Africa is now a leading source of nurses for the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. This study investigates the underlying factors behind nurse emigration from South Africa by examining the differences in the economic job factors between South Africa and the UK, the US, and Australia, the three countries where the highest percentage of South African nurses are emigrating to. The economic factors investigated include wages, salary advancement for experience and length of service, hours worked, and employment-based benefits such as pension benefits, medical aid/health insurance benefits, and paid leave. Although not a focus of the empirical work, other job factors, such as poor working conditions in South African hospitals, as well as broader societal factors influencing nurse emigration, are discussed. The study was motivated by the fact that although the underlying factors that are causing South African nurses to leave for greener pastures have been identified, there exists limited empirical literature on the shortcomings of working conditions. As emigration of nurses are driven by forces present in both sending and receiving countries, a cross-country comparison of these factors leads to a greater understanding of nurse emigration from South Africa. In turn, a greater understanding can lead to effective policies improving the working conditions for South African nurses and thus improving retention. By using comparative secondary data from 2006, the findings reveal that the main difference in economic job factors lie in wages, both average wages and the possibility for salary advancement over the lifetime, and working hours. The differences in access to employment-based benefits were less significant, as benefits in South Africa tend to be high among nurses as in the comparison countries. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

Skills shortages in South Africa occur when demand for certain skills exceeds supply, South Africa has a high demand for mathematical, sciences and information technology (IT) related skills (Daniels, 2007:1). Factors such as HIV/AIDS, legislation (for example affirmative action), and rapid growth of the IT sector and the education system are contributing to the continuous increase in the skills shortages rate in South Africa (Daniels, 2007:1). As a result of the skills shortages, South African organisations find themselves competing with international organisations for managerial-level employees, resulting in a ‘war for talent’. This study specifically focussed on the incidence and reasons associated with managerial-level employees’ intentions to leave their KwaZulu-Natal (KZN)-based organisations. In particular, the perceptions of MBA students studying at UKZN formed the focus of this study. The study, both primary and secondary data were collected and analysed. In the study the targeted population were managerial-level employees who were currently working in KwaZulu-Natal-based organisations and who had met the entry requirements of UKZN’s Graduate School of Business (GSB). The purposive sampling technique was used and all the registered MBA students at the GSB of UKZN formed the target population that is, the target population comprised of all 1st year, 2nd year and 3rd year MBA students and there were approached following that same order. In the study it was found that the three CFST sub-components that had the most influence on the managerial-level employees’ decision to leave were aspects of the CFST related to careerpath strategies, management/leadership style and rewards. These results were more clearly supported and given stronger evidence by the rankings of the high scoring samples of the intention to leave (ITL) scale and propensity to leave (PTL) scale which depicted the same three CFST sub-components. Recommendations were made based on the findings of the study that South African organisations have a strong influence on the respondent’s decisions to leave their organisations. It was also recommended that South African organisations should implement effective leadership/management style and should also offer their managerial-level employees competitive remuneration packages. / Thesis (M.Comm.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.

I use data from the National Football League (NFL) to analyze the impact of minimum salaries on an employee’s firm tenure, an employee’s career length, and an employer’s distribution of employee experience. The NFL has a salary structure in which the minimum salary a player can receive increases with the player’s years of experience. Salary schedules similar to the NFL’s exist in public education, Secret Service, Internal Revenue Service, other federal government agencies, the Episcopalian church, and unionized industries. Even though the magnitude of the salaries in the NFL differs from other industries, this study provides insight to the impact of this type of salary structure firm tenure, career length, and the experience distribution. In the first essay, I analyze the impact of minimum salaries on firm tenure and career length for six positional groups in the NFL, defensive backs, defensive linemen, linebackers, running backs, tight ends, and wide receivers. A major advantage of using NFL data is that I am able to control for a player’s productivity. I find statistically significant evidence that minimum salaries shorten firm tenure and career length when they require teams to increase a player’s base salary from year t to year t+1 or a player’s total compensation from year t to year t+1. In the second essay, I analyze the impact of minimum salaries on the experience distribution. I exploit the fact that the NFL’s minimum salary schedule causes the relative minimum price between two experience levels to change over time. This provides teams with an incentive to substitute away from the experience level whose relative minimum price becomes more expensive. I find evidence that when relative minimum prices change, the experience distribution changes.

The purpose of this project was to determine if there was a relationship between the amount of revenue a minor league team makes and the size of the target market in which the team is located. A secondary purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of the inQsit program, an Internet-based testing program developed at Ball State University, as a means of gathering and analyzing data. Only minor league baseball teams that could be reached via e-mail addresses were involved in this study. Subjects (n=149) were e-mailed a cover letter with an embedded URL which took them to the inQsit web site. While a higher return rate was anticipated using this electronic media, the 11% participation rate should give an accurate picture of minor league baseball teams, the amount of revenue they earned in a year, the types of revenue they earned in a year, and the size of the market in which they are located. However, based on the information collected from the minor league teams, the sample size was not large enough to produce statistically significant results, although some trends were identified, suggesting that target market size may have a positive affect on minor league baseball revenue. / School of Physical Education