China, South Africa and the Lewis Model

The paper uses the Lewis model as a framework for examining the labour market progress of two labour-abundant countries, China and South Africa, towards labour shortage and generally rising labour real incomes. In the acuteness of their rural-urban divides, forms of migrant labour, rapid rural-urban migration, and high and rising real wages in the formal sector, the two economies are surprisingly similar. They differ, however, in the dynamism of their formal sector growth of output and employment, and in the growth of their labour forces. Whereas China - a labour-surplus economy par excellence despite unemployment until recently taking only a disguised form - is moving rapidly in the direction of labour scarcity, South Africa which historically has been short of labour - is moving towards increased labour surplus in the form of open unemployment. The paper draws on research previously conducted by the author in separate research projects on the two countries.China; South Africa; Lewis model; wages; labour supply; rural-urban migration; unemployment

Development of a software safety process and a case study of its use

The goal of this research is to continue the development of a comprehensive approach to software safety and to evaluate the approach with a case study. The case study is a major part of the project, and it involves the analysis of a specific safety-critical system from the medical equipment domain. The particular application being used was selected because of the availability of a suitable candidate system. We consider the results to be generally applicable and in no way particularly limited by the domain. The research is concentrating on issues raised by the specification and verification phases of the software lifecycle since they are central to our previously-developed rigorous definitions of software safety. The theoretical research is based on our framework of definitions for software safety. In the area of specification, the main topics being investigated are the development of techniques for building system fault trees that correctly incorporate software issues and the development of rigorous techniques for the preparation of software safety specifications. The research results are documented. Another area of theoretical investigation is the development of verification methods tailored to the characteristics of safety requirements. Verification of the correct implementation of the safety specification is central to the goal of establishing safe software. The empirical component of this research is focusing on a case study in order to provide detailed characterizations of the issues as they appear in practice, and to provide a testbed for the evaluation of various existing and new theoretical results, tools, and techniques. The Magnetic Stereotaxis System is summarized

Testing for Infinite Order Stochastic Dominance with Applications to Finance, Risk and Income Inequality

The authors develop a test of infinite degree stochastic dominance based on the use of the empirical moment generating function. Two applications are considered. One uses the income data of Anderson (Econometrica, 1996) and derives results consistent with his. In the other application, the dominance between the US and UK stockmarkets is examined. Using data on the SP 500 and the FTALL-Share, it is shown that the US displays infinite degree stochastic dominance over the UK

Race and the Incidence of Unemployment in South Africa

South Africans unemployment rate is one of the highest in the world, and it has important distributional implications. The paper examines the incidence of unemployment using two national household surveys for the mid-1990s. Both entry to unemployment and the duration of unemployment are examined. A probit model of the determinants of unemployment is estimated: it shows an important role for race, education, age, gender, home-ownership, location, and numerous other variables, all of which have plausible explanations. The large race gap in unemployment is explored further by means of a decomposition analysis akin to that normally used to analyse wage discrimination. There remains a substantial residual that cannot be explained by observed characteristics, and which might represent unobserved characteristics, such as quality of education, or discrimination. Implications for policy and for research are drawn.Unemployment, South Africa, racial discrimination

Well-being poverty versus income poverty and capabilities poverty?

The conventional approach of economists to the measurement of poverty in poor countries is to use measures of income or consumption. This has been challenged by those who favour broader criteria for poverty and its avoidance. These include the fulfilment of 'basic needs', the 'capabilities' to be and to do things of intrinsic worth, and safety from insecurity and vulnerability. This paper asks: to what extent are these different concepts measurable, to what extent are they competing and to what extent complementary, and is it possible for them to be accommodated within an encompassing framework? There are two remarkable gaps in the rapidly growing literature on subjective well-being. First, reflecting the availability of data, there is little research on poor countries. Second, within any country, there is little research on the relationship between well-being and the notion of poverty. This paper attempts to fill these gaps. Any attempt to define poverty involves a value judgement as to what constitutes a good quality of life or a bad one. We argue that an approach which examines the individuals own perception of well-being is less imperfect, or more quantifiable, or both, as a guide to forming that value judgement than are the other potential approaches. We develop a methodology for using subjective well-being as the criterion for poverty, and illustrate its use by reference to a South African data set containing much socio-economic information on the individual, the household and the community, as well as information on reported well- being. We conclude that it is possible to view subjective well-being as an encompassing concept, which permits us to quantify the relevance and importance of the other approaches and of their component variables. The estimated well-being functions for South Africa contain some variables corresponding to the income approach, some to the basic needs (or physical functioning)approach, some to the relative (or social functioning) approach, and some to the security approach. Thus, our methodology effectively provides weights of the relative importance of these various components of well-being poverty.

Education externalities in rural Ethiopia: evidence from average and stochastic frontier production functions.

Education will have externality effects in agriculture if, in the course of conducting their own private economic activities, educated farmers raise the productivity of uneducated farmers with whom they come into contact. This paper seeks to determine the potential size and source of such benefits for rural areas of Ethiopia. Average and stochastic frontier production function methodologies are employed to measure productivity and efficiency of farmers. In each case, internal and external returns to schooling are compared. We find that there are substantial and significant externality benefits of education in terms of higher average farm output and a shifting outwards of the production frontier. External benefits of schooling may be several times as high as internal benefits in this regard. However, we are unable to find any evidence of externality benefits to schooling in terms of improvements in technological efficiency in the use of a given technology. This suggests that the source of externalities to schooling is in the adoption and spread of innovations, which shift out the production frontier.

Why has China Grown so Fast? The Role of Structural Change

Can others learn from China's remarkable growth rate? We explore some indirect determinants of Chinas growth success including the degree of openness, institutional change and sectoral change, based on a cross-province dataset. Our methodology is the informal growth regression, which permits the introduction of some explanatory variables that represent the underlying as well as the proximate causes of growth. We first address the problem of model uncertainty by adopting two approaches to model selection, Bayesian Model Averaging and the automated General-to-Specific approach, to consider a wide range of candidate predictors of growth. Then variables flagged as being important by these procedures are used in formulating our models, in which the contribution of factors behind the proximate determinants are examined using panel data system GMM. All three forms of structural change - relative expansion of the trade sector, of the private sector, and of the non-agricultural sector - are found to raise the growth rate. Moreover, structural change in all three dimensions was rapid over the study period. Each change primarily represents an improvement in the efficiency of the economy, moving it towards its production frontier. We conclude that such improvements in productive efficiency have been an important part of the explanation for China's fast growth. --Economic growth,Structural change,Openness,Institutional change,China

Race and the Incidence of Unemployment in South Africa

South Africa.s unemployment rate is one of the highest in the world, and it has important distributional implications. The paper examines the incidence of unemployment using two national household surveys for the mid-1990s. Both entry to unemployment and the duration of unemployment are examined. A probit model of the determinants of unemployment is estimated: it shows an important role for race, education, age, gender, home-ownership, location, and numerous other variables, all of which have plausible explanations. The large race gap in unemployment is explored further by means of a decomposition analysis akin to that normally used to analyse wage discrimination. There remains a substantial residual that cannot be explained by observed characteristics, and which might represent unobserved characteristics, such as quality of education, or discrimination. Implications for policy and for research are drawn.Unemployment, South Africa, racial discrimination

Community, Comparisons and Subjective Well-being in a Divided Society

Using a South African data set, the paper poses six questions about the determinants of subjective well-being. Much of the paper is concerned with the role of relative concepts. We find that comparator income – measured as average income of others in the local residential cluster - enters the household’s utility function positively but that income of more distant others (others in the district or province) enters negatively. The ordered probit equations indicate that, as well as comparator groups based on spatial proximity, race-based comparator groups are important in the racially divided South African society. It is also found that relative income is more important to happiness at higher levels of absolute income. Potential explanations of these results, and their implications, are considered.Subjective well-being; happiness; comparator groups; altruism; envy; relative deprivation; standard-setting; race; South Africa

The Nomenclatural Status of Saperda Inordata Say (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae)

Excerpt: Confusion as to the identity and proper name of our common Saperda on trembling aspen, Populus tremuloides Michaux, in eastern North America should be clarified. The confusion has arisen from three reasons: (1) LeConte failed to distinguish S. concolor Lec. (1852) from S. irornata Say (1824); (2) Say\u27s type material was destroyed or lost which makes verification impossible; and (3) S. inornata varies from light to dark in overall appearance. The former two points are discussed here and the latter will be covered in a separate article. Authors since LeConte\u27s time have used a variety of binominal and trinominal designations for this species. In 1924 J. 0. Martin suggested that the name inornata, which had been placed in the Genus Mecas, really belonged in the Genus Saperda and that S. inornata should be reinstated replacing LeConte\u27s concolor which Martin, followed by Breuning (1952), considered a synonym of inornata. Despite Martin\u27s suggestion, S. concolor is in common use today. However, a search of the literature produced evidence which substantiates Martin\u27s claim that inornata must stand (Nord, 1968). A summary of this search is presented here in detail and a neotype has been proposed so that the nomenclature will be stabilized (Nord and Knight, 1970)