This abstract will be reformatted upon submission. You don't need to format for line-breaks here!!!!! This will be a new paragraph but you can't indent - sorry. Now remember the good old days of cards. Punched holes in The Journal of Economic Perspectives (Summer, 1999: 3-114) published a...

This essay develops a transcendental variable elasticity of substitution (Trans-VES) production function in which hypotheses concerning scale, output-input, and substitution, elasticities can be examined. The objective is to determine the impacts of domestic resources on the pattern of economic...

I outline four, and calculate two, broad indices of the diversity of technical capability of 14 African countries based on nine common descriptors of technical capability. I find technical capability to be heterogenous, and conclude that performance policies that ignore technical diversity of...

This paper examines the efficiency implications of regulated demand price of 93 octane petrol relative to OPEC crude oil price across 183 Namibian localities in 1991. It describes briefly pricing problems associated with managing petroleum and petro-products. Assuming that demand price depends...

The illicit dealing in gemstones (including diamonds) is a fast growing activity in African countries which produce these minerals. Zaire and Angola are two extreme examples, but by no means exceptions. The preferred policy efforts to controlling the flow of illicit trade in gems have been...

The notion that lack of knowledge undermines the economic performance of African countries is deeply and widely held to be true. Yet evidence for the basis of that truth is few and far in-between. This paper first describes a production function approach to the creation of knowledge of African...

Are certain groups of unemployed individuals hurt less by unemployment than others? This paper is an attempt to test the hypothesis that non- pecuniary costs of unemployment may vary between societies with different unemployment rates. Using cross-sectional data from the SALDRU93 survey, we show...

Are happiness patterns structurally the same when comparing poor and rich countries? Using cross-sectional data from the SALDRU93 survey, we show that the relationships between subjective well-being and socioeconomic variables have a similar structure and is U-shaped in age in South Africa as in...

Three issues are addressed in this paper. First, we use both household and macro data to establish how fast per capita consumption and incomes grew in Ghana in the 1990s. Second, we ask how much of the rise in incomes was due to rises in the level of human capital and how much reflected...