The Efficiency of States and Cities: Is There a Case for Public Land Leasing and Sales to Finance India.s Cities?

In this study an attempt has been made to assess the potential of land as a municipal financing tool in four Indian cities, to enable better public service delivery and attainment of the MDGs. The institutional arrangements for land use are fragmented in India.s cities between the urban development authorities, which are state agencies, and the cities. To determine whether or not transfer of revenues from land to cities from the para-statal entities is justified, stochastic frontier analysis is used to determine the efficiency of Indian cities and the Indian states. The efficiency of service provision is examined taking the case of roads.land lease, efficiency of cities, India, urban infrastructure finance, stochastic frontier analysis

Cities with suburbs: Evidence from India.

For a country like India that contains a large number of Urban Agglomerations (UAs), suburbanisation has drawn little attention of the literature. I focus on this sparsely studied issue in this work. I calculate population, household and employment density gradients for India's UAs, using Mills' two-point technique. Next, I estimate population, household and employment gradient regressions. I find that the size of UA and lagged value of the population gradient explain population suburbanisation, as we would expect. I find evidence from the employment suburbanisation equation that it is the jobs that follow people, and not vice-versa, consistent with what has been found in the literature. In the employment sub-sector regressions, I find that the skills of the labor force are the most important factor explaining suburbanisation of manufacturing, transport, communications and trade/commerce jobs in India's urban areas. I conclude with policy implications.India ; Suburbanisation ; Density gradient ; Population gradient ; Employment gradient ; Household gradient ; Gradient regressions ; Exponential density function

Impact of the enterprise zone.

Enterprise zones are place-oriented policies that are a tool of regional development, and refer to geographically targeted areas chosen for development that are designated on the basis of unemployment, poverty, population, age of housing stock, and other criteria. Firms that locate in the area and create jobs are given tax credits, abatements and exemptions. The underlying assumption is that firms and employees in the zone area benefit because of a reduction in the price of capital and/or labour, and there is expanded investment and employment generation through deregulation. The objective of this work is to answer what is the impact of the enterprise zone (EZ) on the rest of the economy and labour. I develop a theoretical model. In the model I point to the cause of unemployment in the EZ. I show the relationship between the reservation wage and unemployment rate, following Jones (1989). I then show the general equilibrium response to the tax abatement provided in EZs, in a generalised framework incorporating capital mobility, following Harberger (1962). The analytical framework developed indicates that the capital and employment impact of the tax cut on capital in the EZ depends on three sets of parameters: · Relative factor intensities of firms in the two areas. · The elasticity of substitution between capital and labour in firms in the areas. · The price elasticities of demand for goods Z and Y produced by EZ firms and non-EZ firms respectively The analysis also indicates that it is impossible to isolate the incidence of the tax cut given in the EZ just to the EZ alone.Enterprise zones ; Regional development ; Tax incentives

Firm Location Choice in Cities: Evidence from China, India, and Brazil

We use large survey data sets of firms provided by the World Bank for China, India, and Brazil?Investment Climate Surveys?to address the important question: what determines the locational choice of firms among cities in these countries. We find that capital cities in all countries are attractive for firms to locate. In India and China, labour-intensive firms tend not to locate in mid-sized or large cities, when compared with smaller ones, perhaps due to higher wage, training and attrition costs. Labour regulations both in India and China deter firms from locating in the larger cities, but not in Brazil. Exporter firms prefer to locate in large cities in these two countries, but not so in the largest cities of Brazil. Finally, while the size of a firm has no impact on its location decision in China, large firms in India prefer to locate in the largest cities, but not in mid-sized cities. Proximity to inputs within the city has a positive impact on firm location. The post-reform firms in China tend to locate in the large cities whereas in the case of India, post-1991 firms refrain from locating in the mid-sized or large cities. These findings have important policy implications for urban governance in these countries, which are summarized in the paper.India, China, Brazil, location choice, industry location, firm location

Telecommunications infrastructure and economic growth: Evidence from developing countries.

Often, it has been observed that telecommunication infrastructure development and economic growth proceed together. While this relationship has been studied in the context of developed (OECD) countries, in this study, we investigate this simultaneous relationship between telecommunications and the economic growth, using data for developing countries. Using 3SLS, we estimate a system of equations that endogenize economic growth and telecom penetration (respectively production function and demand for telecom services), along with supply of telecom investment and growth in telecom penetration. We estimate this system of equations separately for main telephone lines and cell phones. We find that while traditional economic factors explain demand for main line phones, they do not explain demand for cell phones. We also find significant impacts of cellular services on national output, when we control for the effects of capital and labour. The impact of telecom penetration on total output is, however, significantly lower for developing countries than that reported for OECD countries, dispelling the convergence hypothesis.Telecommunication ; Infrastructure ; Economic growth ; Reverse causality ; Developing countries

Strong coupling Bose polarons out of equilibrium: Dynamical RG approach

When a mobile impurity interacts with a surrounding bath of bosons, it forms a polaron. Numerous methods have been developed to calculate how the energy and the effective mass of the polaron are renormalized by the medium for equilibrium situations. Here we address the much less studied non-equilibrium regime and investigate how polarons form dynamically in time. To this end, we develop a time-dependent renormalization group approach which allows calculations of all dynamical properties of the system and takes into account the effects of quantum fluctuations in the polaron cloud. We apply this method to calculate trajectories of polarons following a sudden quench of the impurity-boson interaction strength, revealing how the polaronic cloud around the impurity forms in time. Such trajectories provide additional information about the polaron's properties which are challenging to extract directly from the spectral function measured experimentally using ultracold atoms. At strong couplings, our calculations predict the appearance of trajectories where the impurity wavers back at intermediate times as a result of quantum fluctuations. Our method is applicable to a broader class of non-equilibrium problems. We also apply it to calculate the spectral function and find good agreement with experimental results. At very strong couplings, we predict that quantum fluctuations lead to the appearance of a dark continuum with strongly suppressed spectral weight at low energies. While our calculations start from an effective Fr\"ohlich Hamiltonian describing impurities in a three-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate, we also calculate the effects of additional terms in the Hamiltonian beyond the Fr\"ohlich paradigm. We demonstrate that the main effect of these additional terms on the attractive side of a Feshbach resonance is to renormalize the coupling strength of the effective Fr\"ohlich model.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, 2 appendice

The dynamics of market efficiency: testing the adaptive market hypothesis in South Africa

A thesis submitted to the School of Economic and Business Sciences, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph/D). Johannesburg, South Africa June 2016In recent years, the debate on market efficiency has shifted to providing alternate forms of the hypothesis, some of which are testable and can be proven false. This thesis examines one such alternative, the Adaptive Market Hypothesis (AMH), with a focus on providing a framework for testing the dynamic (cyclical) notion of market efficiency using South African equity data (44 shares and six indices) over the period 1997 to 2014. By application of this framework, stylised facts emerged. First, the examination of market efficiency is dependent on the frequency of data. If one were to only use a single frequency of data, one might obtain conflicting conclusions. Second, by binning data into smaller sub-samples, one can obtain a pattern of whether the equity market is efficient or not. In other words, one might get a conclusion of, say, randomess, over the entire sample period of daily data, but there may be pockets of non-randomness with the daily data. Third, by running a variety of tests, one provides robustness to the results. This is a somewhat debateable issue as one could either run a variety of tests (each being an improvement over the other) or argue the theoretical merits of each test befoe selecting the more appropriate one. Fourth, analysis according to industries also adds to the result of efficiency, if markets have high concentration sectors (such as the JSE), one might be tempted to conclude that the entire JSE exhibits, say, randomness, where it could be driven by the resources sector as opposed to any other sector. Last, the use of neural networks as approximators is of benefit when examining data with less than ideal sample sizes. Examining five frequencies of data, 86% of the shares and indices exhibited a random walk under daily data, 78% under weekly data, 56% under monthly data, 22% under quarterly data and 24% under semi-annual data. The results over the entire sample period and non-overlapping sub-samples showed that this model's accuracy varied over time. Coupled with the results of the trading strategies, one can conclude that the nature of market efficiency in South Africa can be seen as time dependent, in line with the implication of the AMH.MT201

Epidemiology and risk factors for candidaemia at Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital (2009-2010)

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfillment for the requirements for the degree of Master of Medicine in Microbiology. Johannesburg, 2017Background Invasive Candida infections (ICI) have emerged as an important cause of increased morbidity and mortality in specific patient populations in recent years. Multiple risk factors coupled with changes in epidemiology have made clinical management of these patients challenging. A laboratory-based surveillance project, Tracking Resistance to Antifungal drugs for Candida species in South Africa (TRAC-SA) was conducted at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital (CHBH) from 2009 to 2010 and allowed for collection of laboratory information related to episodes of candidaemia, delineation of the situation at the hospital and distribution of information to relevant stakeholders to help make informed clinical decisions. Objective Determine the clinical epidemiology and risk factors for bloodstream Candida infection at CHBH over an 18-month period Methods A retrospective, cross-sectional analysis was carried out on cases of blood culture-confirmed candidaemia from inpatients from 1 February 2009 until 31 August 2010. These cases were identified from the TRAC-SA database, inpatient files were traced and clinical data recorded on a standard case report form. Additional laboratory data of selected tests done within 72 hours of the initial blood culture were obtained from the National Laboratory Health Service Corporate Data Warehouse (CDW). Results A total of 167 episodes of candidaemia were identified during the study period with an incidence of 2.09 per 1000 admissions. The distribution of episodes occurred among 55 children (33%), 41 adults (25%) and 71 neonates (43%). The overall species distribution was Candida species other than C. albicans (98/167, 58.7%) and C. albicans (69/167, 41.3%). Candida species other than C. albicans comprised mainly of C. parapsilosis (73/167, 43.7%), C. glabrata (10.2 %, 17/167) and other species combined including C. tropicalis and C. krusei (8/167, 4.7%). Factors associated with C. albicans (versus Candida species other than C. albicans) infection included older age, use of 2 or more antibiotics, use of broad spectrum antibiotics specifically meropenem, aminoglycosides, vancomycin, co-trimoxazole and mechanical ventilation (p < 0.001). The overall case-fatality was 59/163 (35.3%). The highest case fatality was noted among adults with C. albicans infection, i.e. 15/22 (68.18%). Significant risk factors associated with in-hospital mortality were use of central lines, urinary catheters, total parenteral nutrition, 2 or more antibiotics, beta lactam - beta lactamase inhibitors, proton pump inhibitors, aminoglycoside and abdominal surgery (p < 0.01). Of the C. parapsilosis isolates tested, 40 (57. 9%) tested non-susceptible to fluconazole. Risk factors associated with fluconazole resistance included neonatal age, involvement of the respiratory system, mechanical ventilation, chemotherapy, use of a prior antifungal agent and use of 2 or broader spectrum antibiotics (p<0.01). Of 71 neonates, 16 (22.5%) received empiric antifungals, in comparison to children (5/55, 9.0%) and adults (4/41, 9.7%) (p = 0.272). Conclusion CHBH had a high incidence of candidaemia with a predominance of Candida species other than C. albicans especially in the neonate age group. Risk stratification of in-patients is of paramount importance in choice of empiric antifungal drug due to the differing azole resistance patterns observed.MT201

An Analysis of Herding Behaviour during Market Cycles in South Africa

Herding behaviour can be captured by the relationship between share price movements with the market, typified by beta. We examine herding behaviour for the period 1995 to 2011 and find that it is absent overall, yet present during bear market periods only. When examined alongside the market cycle, herding appears to dramatically fluctuate before a market contraction. Conceptually, herding can be seen as an explanatory factor for the existence of a nonlinear market model. Our findings infer that a negative market reaction (contraction) is preceded by an increase in herding. The evidence of herding in during a South African market contraction can thus impact financial forecasts and volatility estimates of the market. Further, it could possibly indicate the level of confidence of market participants – both experienced and inexperienced individuals tend to follow the group consensus in times of a market downturn, yet deviate from the group consensus in times of a market upturn