Own up! Does anyone out there have a decent theory of ownership?

In this short paper, I attempt to find what theoretical grounds might support the term ownership as used in aid relations and critically to discuss these grounds. Three possible sources for thinking through the concept are: property rights, relationships made or sustained through gifts, and principal-agent theory. After setting the concept of ownership in development aid within the context of its origins, the paper explores the relevance and implications of seeing ownership as the effect of a gift, and then, in more detail, explores the way in which principal-agent theory has been applied to the analysis of ownership. Where this has been done, a particular controversy emerges around the relationship between ownership and conditionality: some regard these notions as fully compatible while others highlight the tension between them

Lifting the Blinkers: A New View of Power and Poverty in Mozambican Rural Labour Markets

This paper presents some results from the largest rural labour market survey yet conducted in Mozambique. Evidence from three provinces shows that labour markets have a significant impact on the lives of a large number of poor people and that employers exercise considerable discretion in setting wages and conditions of casual, seasonal and permanent wage employment. The evidence presented comes from a combination of a quantitative survey based on purposive sampling with other techniques, including interviews with large farmers. The findings contrast with ideas that rural labour markets are irrelevant to poverty reduction policy formulation in Africa and the paper concludes with methodological, analytical and policy recommendations

Unequal prospects: disparities in the quantity and quality of labour supply in sub-Saharan Africa

ASC – Publicaties niet-programma gebonde

Privatization and Economic Strategy in Mozambique

Sub-Saharan Africa, Mozambique, Conflict, Economic reform

The redox potential of DDT: An environmental perspective

Due to their low water solubility, the reduction potentials of DDT and dicofol are difficult to determine experimentally. Through computational methods, we calculated the one and two electron reduction potentials for DDT as 0.51 V and 0.67 V, respectively, and those for dicofol were 0.50 V and 0.74 V. This study is significant because we are able to calculate reliable redox potentials that may be utilized to predict chemical behavior and degradation pathways of environmental pollutants. To assess the accuracy of theoretical chemistry, we compared experimental and computational data and examined whether our calculated redox potentials fit with the known redox behavior of DDT