The paper contrasts early theories of the utility function (starting with Bentham and elaborated by Jevons) with the modern theory (laid down by Fisher and Samuelson).  The former include in the utility function not only the sensation of current events but also the memory of past events and the...

This is an attempt to view the relationships involving education and income as forming a system, and one that can generate a poverty trap.  The setting is rural China, and the data are from a national household survey for 2002, designed with research hypotheses in mind.  Enrolment is high in...

Why is it that couples who have a son or whose last child is a son earn higher conditional income?  To solve this curious case we tell a detective story: evidence of a phenomenon to be explained, a parade of suspects, a process of elimination from the enquiry, and then the denouement.  Given...

The paper examines the notion of a 'developmental state' and shows that China possesses the characteristics of a developmental state.  It explains the political economy which generated such a state in China and in some other economies.  It analyses the methods and mechanisms that were...

The paper uses the Lewis model as a framework for examining the labour market progress of two labour-abundant countries, China and South Africa, towards labour shortage and generally rising labour real incomes. In the acuteness of their rural-urban divides, forms of migrant labour, rapid...

Education will have externality effects in agriculture if, in the course of conducting their own private economic activities, educated farmers raise the productivity of uneducated farmers with whom they come into contact. This paper seeks to determine the potential size and source of such...

The conventional approach of economists to the measurement of poverty in poor countries is to use measures of income or consumption. This has been challenged by those who favour broader criteria for poverty and its avoidance. These include the fulfilment of `basic needs`, the `capabilities` to...

The conventional approach of economists to the measurement of poverty in poor countries is to use measures of income or consumption. This has been challenged by those who favour broader criteria for poverty and its avoidance. These include the fulfilment of `basic needs`, the `capabilities` to...

Unemployment in South Africa is so widespread that it demands an explanation. This paper examines two questions about South African unemployment. Firstly, why do the unemployed not enter the informal sector, as is common in other developing countries? Secondly, why do the unemployed not enter...

It is commonly claimed that the South African labor market is unusually inflexible owing to the strength of the unions and the system of centralized collective bargaining. One aspect of labor market inflexibility concerns the responsiveness of wages to local unemployment. Examining this spatial...