John Luiz

Uneducating South Africa: The Failure to Address the 1910-1993 Legacy.

This paper analyses various data on the South African schooling system since 1910. The data collected for the study cover a wide range of education indicators, from pupil enrolments, pupil teacher ratios, real expenditure (aggregate and per capita), matriculation pass rates, to some indicators of the quality of matriculation passes. The authors provide an indication of both inputs into and outputs of the educational system. In broad terms, the data indicate that from an educational perspective South Africa followed a modernisation trajectory that, although it drew ever larger numbers of pupils into the schooling system, was partial, distorted and fundamentally dysfunctional. The educational process was strongly affected by racial factors. To the extent that education is an important determinant of long run growth performance of economies, this implies that South Africas educational policies were inimical to its long run growth.

The Political Economy of Institutions, Stability and Investment: A Simultaneous Equation Approach in an Emerging Economy. The Case of South Africa

Abstract The modern theory of investment identifies the importance of uncertainty to investment. A number of empirical studies have tested the theory on South African time series, employing political instability measures as proxies for uncertainty. This paper verifies that political instability measures are required in the formulation of the investment function for South Africa. It also establishes that there are distinct institutional factors that influence the uncertainty variable such as property rights and crime levels. We find that rising income and property rights lower political instability, and that rising crime levels are positively related to political instability. The inference is that political instability in South Africa may not represent uncertainty directly, since it is systematically related to a set of determinants. Instead, uncertainty would have to be understood as being related to a broader institutional nexus that in concert may generate uncertainty for investors. The paper highlights the significance of getting institutions right to ensure that uncertainty is kept to a minimum by providing a predictable long-term environment. Stability at a systemic level appears crucial if investment rates are to rise in South Africa and this paper demonstrates that stability in turn is driven by a sound institutional environment that has multiple dimensions.

Information technology systems in public sector health facilities in developing countries: the case of South Africa.

BackgroundThe public healthcare sector in developing countries faces many challenges including weak healthcare systems and under-resourced facilities that deliver poor outcomes relative to total healthcare expenditure. Global references demonstrate that information technology has the ability to assist in this regard through the automation of processes, thus reducing the inefficiencies of manually driven processes and lowering transaction costs. This study examines the impact of hospital information systems implementation on service delivery, user adoption and organisational culture within two hospital settings in South Africa.MethodsNinety-four interviews with doctors, nurses and hospital administrators were conducted in two public sector tertiary healthcare facilities (in two provinces) to record end-user perceptions. Structured questionnaires were used to conduct the interviews with both qualitative and quantitative information.ResultsNoteworthy differences were observed among the three sample groups of doctors, nurses and administrators as well as between our two hospital groups. The impact of automation in terms of cost and strategic value in public sector hospitals is shown to have yielded positive outcomes with regard to patient experience, hospital staff workflow enhancements, and overall morale in the workplace.ConclusionThe research provides insight into the reasons for investing in system automation, the associated outcomes, and organisational factors that impact the successful adoption of IT systems. In addition, it finds that sustainable success in these initiatives is as much a function of the technology as it is of the change management function that must accompany the system implementation.

Production of Educational Output: Time‐Series Evidence from Socioeconomically Heterogeneous Populations—the Case of South Africa, 1927–1993*

A number of competing reasons have been advanced for this divergence of findings. Since standardized test scores and earnings are two distinct outcomes, school quality may simply have different impacts on the two outcome measures; earnings studies are frequently argued to have insufficient controls for family background variables, the effects of local labor market conditions, and self-selection effects present in samples; and earnings studies and school achievement studies tend to employ different types of data, with earnings studies tending to rely on historical information and school achievement studies on contemporaneous data. The last of these reasons for divergent results between earnings and standardized test score studies is potentially important in pointing to the significance of lags in the impact of schooling inputs on outputs. 2 This article furthers understanding of the link between inputs and outputs of the educational production process. In contrast to earlier studies, our article employs time-series data in order to investigate the link between educational inputs and outputs and does so over a relatively long time run, from 1910 to 1993. Strong results emerge from our analysis. We find that educational inputs matter in the determination of educational outputs in the case of South Africa.

Temporal Association, the Dynamics of Crime, and their Economic Determinants: A Time Series Econometric Model of South Africa

The paper examines the association between variouscrime series for South Africa and their economicdeterminants between 1960 and 1993. The study usesJohansen cointegration techniques to establish theimportance of income per capita (economicopportunities), police officers per capita, convictionrates (both of which proxy for the likelihood ofcriminal success whilst the latter also captures aninstitutional efficiency aspect), and politicalinstability (necessary to reflect the unique SouthAfrican environment during this time) on per capitacrime levels. The results caution previous studiesthat find a close relationship between the level ofeconomic activity and recorded crime. Previous workhas relied on the Engle-Granger technique assuming aunique cointegrating vector. Our results for SouthAfrica indicate that whilst total offences arenegatively associated with income per capita,disaggregated crime series do not always yieldcointegrating vectors. Some conclusions on the policyimplications also follow.

An economic analysis of sports performance in Africa

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to develop insight into the socio-economic determinants of African sports performance. Previous studies have argued that a countrys success in sports is directly related to the economic resources that are available for those sports. However, factors that are used to determine the levels of success for developed countries are not necessarily the same, or bear the same weight, as for developing countries. Design/methodology/approach - The premise of this study is to identify specific factors that increase success in sports in developing countries by means of several econometric specifications using cross sectional data for African countries. Findings - This study finds evidence that suggests that Africas performance in sports is dependent on a range of socio-economic factors, which in some respects confirms worldwide studies. Money does indeed matter: GDP was the overwhelmingly consistent dependent variable in all four models tested. Interestingly, important shades of distinction between the various dependent variables are found. Originality/value - There is a lack of research in the field of sports and organizational economics especially in emerging countries. Previous studies have treated countries as a homogeneous grouping and allowed the broad aggregates to reveal the determinants. This study focuses on a sub-group of countries that are relatively poor, have had a complex past with colonial masters, and that generally have weak administrative structures.

The politics of state, society and economy

Takes issue with the way in which economics deals with the state and assumes homogeneous capacity. Instead it argues that differences in growth rates between countries can be traced back to the capacity of the state and political system. A state that is relatively capable is able to provide a political environment conducive to growth. It highlights the role of the elite in the development process, the necessity for a competent and insulated economic bureaucracy, and the significance of “embedded autonomy” for the state. These elements shape the nature and capacity of the state.

The impact of ethno-linguistic fractionalization on cultural measures: Dynamics, endogeneity and modernization

We introduce a measure called ethno-linguistic fractionalization (ELF), which captures the ethnic and/or linguistic diversity in a country and examine its implications on existing cultural measures. Not only do high levels of fractionalization affect the use of statistical means to account for cultural distance (CD), we show that it is not constant and therefore the dynamics of change need to be addressed. We pursue the study of the dynamics and potential endogeneity through an in-depth case study of South Africa over the course of the twentieth century. There is evidence of processes of modernization whereby economic progress impacts upon ELF. There are also complex interactions between the various measures of fractionalization and other sociopolitical and institutional variables. This provides us with an opportunity to bridge the CD and institutional distance literature as institutions impact upon culture and multinational enterprises, and institutional development is, in turn, affected by these. We call for a more realistic assessment of what is being captured in cultural measures and for recognition of the complexity of the notion of identity formation and its dynamics. Countries may have different underlying cultural schisms, including ELF, and its introduction will allow for a richer exploration of distance and diversity in International Business.

Infrastructure investment and its performance in Africa over the course of the twentieth century

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyse long-term trends in the development of Africas economic infrastructure. Design/methodology/approach - The importance of infrastructure was examined in social and economic processes, followed by an exploration of the changing nature of infrastructure and its implications for delivery. The paper looked at the development of infrastructure in Africa by focusing on what was inherited at independence versus what had been achieved there since and why this was the case. Findings - The development challenges are immense because delivery of infrastructure requires much more than financial resources – it requires the capacity to deliver massive, complex projects in an efficient manner. It is clear that African states do not possess this level of capacity but this can still be delivered through innovative public-private partnerships, global cooperation, and the support of international institutions. Practical implications - Improving Africas infrastructure is a necessary but not sufficient condition to promote economic development and attract investment back to the continent. Originality/value - The author assesses what needs to be done to ensure the massive infrastructure delivery required for the continent, which is estimated at 6 percent of output, and the innovation required for such a programme.

Urban Working Class Credit Usage and Over-Indebtedness in South Africa*

South Africas political transition has resulted in an increase in the ability of a larger proportion of South African households to borrow. The reasons for this are partially market driven (i.e. recent increases in household wealth for the new middle classes, wealth redistribution, declining interest rates, improved risk management approaches and the pursuit of new markets on the part of financial institutions) and partially politically and legislatively driven (i.e. encouraged by changes to the regulatory and policy environment, encouraged ‘financial sector deepening’, and wider access to the formal financial sector). Growth in credit consumption in South Africa, however, has exceeded growth in incomes, leading to increasing levels of household debt. One of the groups most affected by these changes is the urban working class and this article explores some of the features of, and reasons for, their over-indebtedness through industry specialist interviews, primary fieldwork and credit bureau data analysis of a sample of urban working class breadwinners and presents this within the changing socio-economic context of post-apartheid South Africa.