A Game Theoretic Framework for Cooperative Benefits in South Africa’s Land Redistribution Process: A Case of Northern Kwa-Zulu Natal Sugarcane Farmland Transfers

A good indicator of successful farm redistribution cases has to be the continuation of viable productivity rates in their post transfer periods. Continued productivity benefits all the stakeholders that are involved in the process. Unfortunately negative productivity levels have been reported in numerous South African land redistribution transfers in recent years. A game theoretic perspective is adopted to argue that cooperation among key stakeholders, which could be enforced through long term contracts between a land buyer, sellers and new owners, would lead to higher productivity levels and other benefits. Additional benefits would, for example, include market related prices paid by a buyer. Sugarcane farm transfer cases from two municipality districts in KwaZulu Natal province are used to show that the productivity rates in post transfer periods of cooperative land sales were more than 10% higher than the rates observed before such transfers. At the opposite end of the scale, the productivity rates in noncooperative land sales dropped by 16% after land takeovers. Furthermore, the prices paid for farms that became less productive after transfers were higher by more than 40% compared to those paid for productive farms. The cases illustrate the values of cooperative strategies in economic transactions.Sugarcane, farms, redistribution, productivity, cooperation, games, Land Economics/Use, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Institutions and economic research: a case of location externalities on agricultural resource allocation in the Kat River basin, South Africa

The Physical Externality Model is used to illustrate the potential limitations of blindly adopting formal models for economic investigation and explanation in varied geographical contexts. As argued by institutional economists for the last hundred years the practice limits the value and relevance of most general economic inquiry. This model postulates that the geographical location of farmers along a given watercourse, in which water is diverted individually, leads to structural inefficiencies that negatively affect the whole farming community. These effects are felt more severely at downstream sites and lead to a status quo where upstream farmers possess relative economic and political advantages over their counterparts elsewhere. In the study of the Kat River basin these predictions appear to be true only in as far as they relate to legal and political allocations and use of water resources. In terms of lawful uses of land resources aimed at expanding citrus production, the model’s predictions are not met. The status quo is however fully explained by the implications of having adopted formal water scheduling rights by upstream farmers as well as other geographical factors. Hence, the case for investigating the effects of important institutions within general economic research is strengthened.institutions, water allocation, physical externality, Kat River Valley,

Good grief! Are there any benefits of depressive mood?

What is the nature of depression? What is the role of symptoms? How people acquire and process knowledge? What makes perception more accurate

The effects of economic incentives in controlling pollution in the South African Leather Industry

Pollution of the environment is becoming an increasingly serious problem. A large contributor to this is industry which generates effluent as a by-product of its production process. Two methods of controlling the pollution generated by industry are the so-called “command and control†techniques and economic incentives. In theory, economic incentives promise a more economically efficient and equitable means of pollution control. This paper sets out to ascertain whether this would hold in practice by applying environmental economic theory to the practical problem of controlling the effluent generated by one particular industry, viz the South African leather industry.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Scheduling Labor and Equipment in a Cook Chill Food Production System

Hospital foodservice productivity is an area where improvement is important, particularly in light of the current emphasis on cost containment in the health care field. In a foodservice system productivity is measured by input/output ratio. Resources are the system\u27s inputs. There is little information on the effect on productivity of variation in quantity of resources and sequencing of operations, the basic aspects of scheduling. The COST ARREST model was recommended as a tool for management decision-making and productivity monitoring in a foodservice system. The program was used to study the effect of varying labor time and activity sequencing on entree production in a cook chill foodservice system. Results were compared with conventional scheduling. Data from an existing foodservice operation were used to determine available labor and equipment and to analyze entree production formulas. Formulas were broken down into activities having definite time and resource requirements. Patient entree production for six days was evaluated on the basis of labor cost and labor and equipment time requirements including delays using two levels of labor and different criteria for scheduling priority. The results were compared with conventional scheduling, that which was done intuitively by production personnel. The production plan, Plan I, using most labor resulted in greatest labor cost and delay. In the plan, scheduling priority was given to items requiring long production time. Two plans using less labor, plan II giving priority to long preparation time and plan III to short labor requirement, were similar in results as to labor utilization and appeared to be more labor efficient than plan I. Different sequencing did not demonstrate major differences in production duration. Conventional scheduling was similar to plans II and III in results. It was not compared with plan I because of dissimilarity in labor level. Plan I resulted in shorter duration of oven use and was believed to be more energy efficient than plans II and III. Conventional scheduling resulted in more efficient use of the slicer than COST ARREST plans. The COST ARREST scheduling algorithm provided a useful tool for management decision-making and productivity monitoring in a cook chill food production system

The State of Lexicodes and Ferrers Diagram Rank-Metric Codes

In coding theory we wish to find as many codewords as possible, while simultaneously maintaining high distance between codewords to ease the detection and correction of errors. For linear codes, this translates to finding high-dimensional subspaces of a given metric space, where the induced distance between vectors stays above a specified minimum. In this work I describe the recent advances of this problem in the contexts of lexicodes and Ferrers diagram rank-metric codes. In the first chapter, we study lexicodes. For a ring R, we describe a lexicographic ordering of the left R-module Rn. With this ordering we set up a greedy algorithm which sequentially selects vectors for which all linear combinations satisfy a given property. The resulting output is called a lexicode. This process was discussed earlier in the literature for fields and chain rings. We describe a generalization of the algorithm to finite principal ideal rings. In the second chapter, we investigate Ferrers diagram rank-metric codes, which play a role in the construction of subspace codes. A well-known upper bound for dimension of these codes is conjectured to be sharp. We describe several solved cases of the conjecture, and further contribute new ones. In addition, probabilities for maximal Ferrers diagram codes and MRD codes are investigated in a new light. It is shown that for growing field size, the limiting probability depends highly on the Ferrers diagram

Treatment of acute pneumonia

I have chosen this subject because pneumonia is an acute dangerous disease, often attacking i vigorous and healthy people, a constant source of anxiety to the physician, and one that I believe to be benefited by treatment. Judicious management will) save many lives, which if left to nature's rough methods would be lost

Urbanisation and the urban landscape: building medieval Bury St Edmunds

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Costs and Benefits of Realism and Optimism

Purpose of review: What is the relationship between rationality and mental health? By considering the psychological literature on depressive realism and unrealistic optimism it was hypothesized that, in the context of judgments about the self, accurate cognitions are psychologically maladaptive and inaccurate cognitions are psychologically adaptive. Recent studies recommend being cautious in drawing any general conclusion about style of thinking and mental health. Recent findings: Recent investigations suggest that people with depressive symptoms are more accurate than controls in tasks involving time perception and estimates of personal circumstances, but not in other tasks. Unrealistic optimism remains a robust phenomenon across a variety of tasks and domains, and researchers are starting to explore its neural bases. However, the challenge is to determine to what extent and in what way unrealistic optimism is beneficial. Summary: We should revisit the hypothesis that optimistic cognitions are psychologically adaptive, whereas realistic thinking is not. Realistic beliefs and expectations can be conducive to wellbeing and good functioning, and wildly optimistic cognitions have considerable psychological costs