Conceptual Note on Financial and Trade Sanctions against South Africa

The longevity, range and well-documented nature of economic sanctions against South Africa render it especially useful for developing a generic analytical framework aimed at evaluating economic sanctions as an instrument of foreign policy. Using conventional general equilibrium analysis, it is possible to derive comparative static conclusions about the relative effects of financial and trade sanctions. In broad terms, under the small country assumption, the burden of financial sanctions resides in a decrease in national income through an income effect, whereas trade sanctions reduce national income through a mechanism involving both income and substitution effects. Moreover, for small developing economies, while the sectoral burden of financial sanctions is borne exclusively in the capital-intensive importables sector, trade sanctions place a greater proportion of the sectoral burden on the labour-intensive exportable sector.

The Microeconomics of the Pass-Through Effect: An Analysis of the Australian Motor Industry

The present paper investigates the pass-through effect in the Australian motor vehicle industry using data on two groups of selected imported motor vehicles facing different degrees of domestic product substitutability for the period January 1984 to November 1988. By examining the extent of “induced” pass-through from local importers to domestic customers in a differentiated market, it is possible to infer the degree of mark-up. The evidence suggests that the extent of pass-through depends on the price elasticity of demand. Pass-through appears to be lower where imported vehicles face close domestic substitutes, and vice versa

Addressing loneliness and social isolation amongst elderly people through local co‐production in Japan

In common with many other societies with ageing populations, loneliness and social isolation have become a significant problem in contemporary Japan. The financial burden associated with an ageing population, together with ongoing fiscal austerity, has severely constrained the ability of local authorities to address the problem. As a result, policymakers have sought cost‐effective methods of tackling the problem, including local co‐production with community groups. In this article, we consider the impact of loneliness and social isolation on wellbeing and then examine two illustrative case studies of local co‐production programs aimed at tackling social isolation amongst older adults in Japan.The politics and administration of institutional chang

Government failure and state incapacity: the South African public sector in the 1990s

In their editorial introduction to the 1994 Special Issue of the South African Journal of Economic History devoted to a sectoral analysis of the South African economy during the 1980s, Stuart Jones and Jon Inggs described this period as a "lost decade", with per capita incomes even lower in 1990 than they had been in 1980. Moreover, "no other Western country experienced a comparable decline in the 1980s and South Africa herself had never experienced anything like it since the formation of Union in 1910". Thus, from the perspective of economic growth, the decade of the 1990s could not have had a less auspicious beginning