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61. Expanding Credit Access: Using Randomized Supply Decisions to Estimate the Impacts

Author:
Dean Karlan and Jonathan Zinman
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Expanding credit access is a key ingredient of development strategies worldwide. Microfinance practitioners, policymakers, and donors have ambitious goals for expanding access, and seek efficient methods for implementing and evaluating expansion. There is less consensus on the role of consumer credit in expansion initiatives. Some microfinance institutions are moving beyond entrepreneurial credit and offering consumer loans. But many practitioners and policymakers are skeptical about “unproductive” lending. These concerns are fueled by academic work highlighting behavioral biases that may induce consumers to overborrow. We estimate the impacts of a consumer credit supply expansion using a field experiment and follow-up data collection. A South African lender relaxed its risk assessment criteria by encouraging its loan officers to approve randomly selected marginal rejected applications. We estimate the resulting impacts using new survey data on borrower behavior and well-being, and administrative data on loan repayment. We find that the marginal loans increased credit access and produced measurable benefits in the form of increased employment, reduced hunger, and reduced poverty. The marginal loans also appear to have been profitable for the lender. The results must be interpreted with caution but suggest that consumer credit expansions can be welfare-improving.
Topic:
Development, Markets, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

62. Olimpiadas y Copa Mundial de Fútbol: ¿Competencias deportivas o instrumentos políticos?

Author:
Karina Garcia
Publication Date:
10-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
CONfines de Relaciones Internacionales y Ciencia Política
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the setting of the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup employing a geopolitical approach. To identify in which way these international sports events are geopolitical instruments of the International System, I present a revision of different elements involved in the selection of China and South Africa as respective hosts of the Olympic Games of 2008 and the World Cup of 2010, such as the motives, goals and possible benefits of these two countries. In this way, I sustain the thesis that the Olympic Games and the World Cup are political instruments used by the States to pursue their geopolitical interests.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Politics
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and South Africa

63. Small Arms and Light Weapons: Towards Global Public Policy

Author:
Keith Krause
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute (IPI)
Abstract:
Small arms and light weapons kill at least 300,000 people a year, in both conflict and non-conflict situations, and injure or disable thousands more. Small arms are the weapons of choice of warring parties— government armies, paramilitaries, rebel forces, or even terrorists—and in recent wars they account for between 60 and 90 percent of direct conflict deaths, depending on the nature and intensity of the fighting. In non-war settings small arms represent one of the leading causes of preventable death, and a major cause of mortality for young men—through, for example, armed violence, suicides, murders, and accidents. 1 In Rio de Janeiro the gun violence death rate is comparable to that of some war zones. El Salvador has a firearm death rate of thirty per 100,000, and Colombia suffers a rate of fifty-five per 100,000 people killed by gun violence. 2 The life expectancy of males born in Colombia in 2002 is reduced by more than three years as a result of the risk of armed violence. And in South Africa, homicides are the leading cause of death for males between fifteen and twenty-one years of age. Overall, the global burden of violence and violent conflict is one of the most important external causes of death and injury.
Topic:
International Relations, Arms Control and Proliferation, Development, and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
South Africa and Colombia

64. Understanding South Africa's Economic Puzzles

Author:
Dani Rodrik
Publication Date:
09-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
South Africa has undergone a remarkable transformation since its democratic transition in 1994, but economic growth and employment generation have been disappointing. Most worryingly, unemployment is currently among the highest in the world. While the proximate cause of high unemployment is that prevailing wages levels are too high, the deeper cause lies elsewhere, and is intimately connected to the inability of the South African to generate much growth momentum in the past decade. High unemployment and low growth are both ultimately the result of the shrinkage of the non-mineral tradable sector since the early 1990s. The weakness in particular of export-oriented manufacturing has deprived South Africa from growth opportunities as well as from job creation at the relatively low end of the skill distribution. Econometric analysis identifies the decline in the relative profitability of manufacturing in the 1990s as the most important contributor to the lack of vitality in that sector.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

65. South Africa's Export Predicament

Author:
Bailey Klinger and Ricardo Hausmann
Publication Date:
09-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
This paper explores export performance in South Africa over the past 50 years, and concludes that a lagging process of structural transformation is part of the explanation for stagnant exports per capita. Slow structural transformation in South Africa is found to be a consequence of the peripheral nature of South Africa's productive capabilities. We apply new tools to evaluate South Africa's future prospects for structural transformation, as well as to explore the sector al priorities of the DTI's draft industrial strategy. We then discuss policy conclusions, advocating an 'open-architecture' industrial policy where the methods applied herein are but one tool to screen private sector requests for sector-specific coordination and public goods.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

66. Agricultural Policy Reform in South Africa

Publication Date:
03-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Abstract:
With a surface area of 1.22 million km2 and a population of 46.9 million, South Africa is one of the largest countries on the African continent. It is also the largest African economy, with a per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of USD 3 530, more than four times the African average.
Topic:
Development, Economics, International Organization, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
South Africa

67. Estimating the Balance Sheet of the Personal Sector in an Emerging Market Country: South Africa 1975-2003

Author:
Johan Prinsloo, John Muellbauer, and Janine Aron
Publication Date:
09-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Official balance sheet estimates for the household sector are not currently available in South Africa, yet, with the country's well developed financial sector and deep capital markets, asset market channels are likely to be important determinants of aggregate consumer spending and saving, consumer demand for credit and their broad money holdings. The current paper aims to produce comprehensive estimates of household balance sheets for South Africa. The paper draws, where feasible, on best practice from the Office of National Statistics of the UK and assesses the quality of the data sources and suggests areas where additional surveys or improvements in data collection procedures would be helpful to further improve the quality of the balance sheet estimates. Furthermore, quarterly balance sheet measures to 2003 are provided, and linked to quarterly measures. The main balance sheet categories are liquid assets, household debt and various categories of illiquid financial and tangible assets, including pension wealth, directly held shares and bonds, and housing. Revised debt estimates and new estimates of tangible assets for households and unincorporated businesses are provided. The paper describes the trends of the estimates of the household sector's balance sheets and of total net wealth. The paucity of data for developing and emerging market countries is illustrated by means of a survey, and lessons are drawn from the South African research for the compilation of household sector balance sheets.
Topic:
Development, Emerging Markets, and Third World
Political Geography:
Africa, United Kingdom, and South Africa

68. Economic Size Trumps All Else? Lessons from BRICSAM

Author:
Timothy Shaw, Andrew F. Cooper, and Agata Antkiewicz
Publication Date:
12-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
Abstract:
Continuing CIGI's BRICSAM research, this paper questions whether size (economic or population) of emerging economies alone is enough to warrant accommodation in the rules and structures of the international system. The global realignment of states following the resulting power vacuum brought on by the end of the Cold War is finally materializing, as a new triangular formation has taken shape: the 'first world' club of the OECD; the 'second world' of emerging economies; and, a heterogeneous 'third world' of the rest. The interplay between and mobility among these groups of states deserves in-depth analysis. The core of this paper observes the economic and social trends of countries in the second tier, and their upwards aspirations towards the top-tier of the global architecture. Traced through a variety of indices, the growth of the BRICSAM group of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, ASEAN-4 and Mexico) is demonstrated to be a powerful force in international economics and political economy. For the inclusion of these states, a change in the key aspects of global economic governance, the international architecture and geopolitics seems inevitable, and with it, new challenges arise for decision-makers and scholars alike.
Topic:
Cold War, Development, Economics, and Globalization
Political Geography:
Russia, China, India, South Africa, Brazil, and Mexico

69. Stadium Architecture and regional economic development: International experience and the plans of Durban

Author:
Wolfgang Maennig
Publication Date:
01-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Chair for Economic Policy, University of Hamburg
Abstract:
For the FIFA World Cup 2010, South Africa plans to invest heavily. The positive economic effects that the country is hoping for stand in contrast to almost all statistical ex-post studies. This contribution emphasises that these results, usually from research under-taken in the USA, can only be generalised to a limited degree. The density of sports venues in developed countries is so high, that the marginal effects of new stadia are necessarily limited. We also emphasise that stadium design around the world was not hitherto adequately targeted towards positive economic effects. The example of Durban and its plans for a new “iconic” stadium is used to illustrate fundamental principles of stadium design and their embedding in a re-urbanisation process that have to be undertaken in order to consciously achieve positive regional economic effects.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Sports, Architecture, World Cup, Regional Economy, and Soccer
Political Geography:
Africa, South Africa, and Global Focus

70. BRICSAM and the Non-WTO

Author:
Agata Antkiewicz and John Whalley
Publication Date:
10-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
Abstract:
We discuss recent regional trade and economic partnership agreements involving the large population, rapidly growing economies (BRICSAM: Brazil, Russia, China, India, South Africa, ASEAN, and Mexico). Perhaps 50 out of 300 agreements that exist worldwide involve BRICSAM countries; most are recently concluded and will be implemented over the next few years. Along with extensive bilateral investment treaties, mutual recognition agreements, and other country to country (or region) arrangements they are part of what we term the non-WTO. This paper aims to document and characterize the agreements and analyze their possible impacts. Agreements differ in specificity, coverage and content. In some treaties there are detailed and specific commitments, but these also co-exist with seemingly vague commitments and (at times) opaque dispute settlement and enforcement mechanisms. Whether these represent a partial replacement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) process for newly negotiated reciprocity based on global trade liberalization or largely represent diplomatic protocol alongside significant WTO disciplines is the subject of this paper.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Russia, China, India, Asia, South Africa, Brazil, and Mexico