Racial and Gender Wage Differentials in South Africa: What can Cohort Data tell?

Three subsequent years of the October Household Survey data are used to construct a synthetic panel. Preparing cross sectional data that way allows to better utilise individual information and to address temporal developments also in the absence of genuine panel data. This paper focuses on gender and race specific cohort wages. Average earnings of birth cohorts of African and White workers employed full-time in formal sector jobs are followed over time and wage differentials as well as the mobility of cohort wages are studied in detail. A decomposition of African cohort wages into age, cohort, and year effects gives information about the existence of cohort effects. Results suggest that especially for African women such generational trends may differ from the theoretical expectation. However, to arrive at assured results a greater number of periods is needed

"This is Ghanaian territory!" Land conflicts in transnational localities on the Burkina Faso-Ghana border

Traditional land rights in Dagara and Sisala societies in Burkina Faso and Ghana which were stateless in pre-colonial times are closely connected with the concept of earth-shrine parishes under the protection of a local land god and ideally under the control of the “first-comers” to the area. The earth priests perform regular sacrifices at the shrine and allocate land to later immigrants as well as the right to build houses and to bury their dead, often in exchange for gifts. The international border between Ghana and Burkina Faso, which was drawn up in 1898 and runs along the 11th parallel, often cuts across earth-shrine parishes. Particularly since the border demarcation exercise in the 1970s, the spatial separation of the Sisala earth priests on one side of the border from the Dagara immigrants on the other side has given rise to intricate conflicts over land rights. The paper will present the history of one such conflict and look at the various landrelated discourses – traditionalist, nationalist, and Christian – which the adversaries put forward in order to substantiate their claims

Settlement histories and ethnic frontiers

One of the powerful conventional images of pre-colonial Africa is that of a continent of more or less immobile ethnic groups, living since time immemorial on their ancestral lands, steeped in their traditional cultures. In this image, Africa appears like a mosaic, with clearcut ethnic boundaries, each sherd representing a different people cum language cum culture cum territory. Since a number of years, however, historians and anthropologists of Africa have insisted that this image is misleading. Most pre-colonial societies were characterised by mobility, overlapping networks, multiple group membership and the contextdependent drawing of boundaries. Communities could be based on neighbourhood, kinship and common loyalties to a king, but this did not absolutely have to include notions of a common origin, a common language or a common culture. Our own research on the West African savannah has also shown the enormous importance of mobility. Among the societies of southern and southwestern Burkina Faso, for instance, which several projects have studied, there is hardly a single village whose history has not been characterised repeatedly by the arrival and settlement of new groups and the departure of others. In some cases, we can even speak of systematic practices of multilocality

Certifying Out of Home Operators in Europe. European Forum for Certification. Summary of a Forum held at the BioFach Congress 2009

As in previous years the annual meeting on organic certification in the out-of-home sector took place at the congress of the BioFach Trade Fair, on the 22nd of February 2009. As a conclusion to this meeting this report now summarizes the main topics of the “European Forum for Certification” with the focus on the presentations in Nuremberg. The presenters delivered insight into the various situations in their countries and indicated the challenges that they currently are dealing with. Depictions included developments in Belgium, Finland, Italy, Germany, Norway, Switzerland and The Netherlands. After describing and discussing the issues the country presenters agreed to have this paper developed by the organisers, which gives a short overview of the proceedings to all participants and to all interested in this topic. The Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007 on organic production and labelling of organic products came into force on January 1, 2009. It repeals the former Regulation (EEC) No 2092/91 and for the first time explicitly refers to mass catering (out of home). The Regulation excludes catering and eating enterprises from mandatory certification whilst at the same time giving each country the option how best to proceed. How do member countries deal with this new situation? The presenters go into detail and this summary characterizes some detailed situations in the following pages

The School We Want: evolution or change? A consideration about italian school

Un'analisi dei programmi di letteratura italiana svolti nei licei di Pis

Racial and gender wage differentials in South Africa: What can cohort data tell?

High poverty rates as well as a very unequal distribution of income and wealth are distinctive features of post Apartheid South Africa. Studies analysing the extent of income inequality show that since the end of Apartheid the distribution of income has at best not changed at all, but depending on the measure, might also have worsened in the last decade. The data used in most of these studies are repeated cross sections, allowing a snapshot of the extent of income inequality at several points in time. Analysing temporal changes at an individual level is not possible. This paper proceeds differently. By using subsequent waves of the October Household Surveys and Labour Force Surveys a synthetic panel will be constructed. Preparing cross sectional data that way allows us to better utilise individual information and to address temporal developments also in the absence of genuine panel data. The paper focuses on gender and population group specific cohort wages to get a more detailed description of wage inequality. Average earnings of birth cohorts of African and White workers employed full-time in formal sector jobs are followed over time and wage differentials as well as the mobility of cohort wages are studied in detail. A decomposition of African cohort wages into age, cohort, and year effects gives information about the existence of cohort effects. Results suggest that especially for young African women such generational trends may differ from the theoretical expectation. --cohort data,wage differentials,generational trends

Learning from the Past: Trends in Executive Compensation over the Twentieth Century

In recent years, a large academic debate has tried to explain the rapid rise in CEO pay experienced over the past three decades. In this article, I review the main proposed theories, which span views of compensation as the result of a competitive labor market for executivesto theories based on excess of managerial power. Some of these hypotheses have foundsupport in cross-sectional evidence, but it has proven more difficult to determine which factors have caused the observed changes in pay over time. An alternative strategy is to evaluate the fit of plausible explanations out of sample by contrasting them with the evolution in executive pay and the market for managers during earlier time periods. A case study of General Electric suggests that evidence for earlier decades can speak to the recent trends and reveals the limitations of current explanations to address the long-run data.executive compensation, managerial incentives, corporate governance, market for managers

School food supply in Lower Saxony - Analysis of the current situation

For some years now the number of all-day schools providing school meals in the federal state of Lower Saxony, Germany, has increased continuously. This paper aims at analysing the political determinants and the organization of the provision of school meals in Lower Saxony with a special focus on the provision of organic food and sustainability. As to methods, literature was researched and internet sources were evaluated. In addition, interviews with experts in the field contributed to the findings. The results show heterogeneous approaches to and different forms of the organization of school meal supply. School boards, as the chief agents of provision, seem to enjoy a high degree of organizational freedom. Due to small budgets, time constraints and lack of experience, the quality of the meals provided may suffer and the range of organic products may be affected. It often results in pragmatic solutions dictated by cost saving. With respect to the invitation to tenders, existing quality standards have not been made legally binding for commercial food suppliers to date. Neither is the quality of school meals of particular significance for school inspections. Stakeholders of school meal provision receive support from the Consumer Council of Lower Saxony (Verbraucherzentrale Niedersachsen) and the Coordination Centre for School Food of Lower Saxony (Vernetzungsstelle Schulverpflegung Niedersachsen). The latter opened in spring 2009. A series of workshops within the public campaign "Anyone can go organic" (Bio kann jeder) run by the Hanover Centre of Environment (Umweltzentrum Hannover) provides advice and/or initial training to schools and school boards concerning the use of organic food

Growth, Income Distribution, And well-Being In Transition Countries

In this paper we use several well-being measures that combine average income with a measure of inequality to undertake international and intertemporal well-being comparisons in transition countries. Our well-being measures drastically change the impression of levels and changes in well-being from a traditional reliance on income measures. They also significantly affect the ranking of countries, when compared to rankings based on real incomes. Due to low inequality and moderate income levels, socialist countries enjoyed relatively high levels of economic well-being. In the transition process, rising inequality and falling incomes have led to a dramatic decline in well-being in many transition countries, and a corresponding worsening in rank when compared to other countries. There is great variance in the income and inequality performance of transition countries. We find a close correlation between income losses and inequality increases suggesting the ability of appropriate policies to reduce the income losses and reduce rising inequality. While the political dimension of transformation remains largely successful, our indicators suggest that most transition countries have yet to reach the level of economic well-being enjoyed in the late 1980s