Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) has been a major policy thrust of the democratic governments in South Africa since 1994 in attempting to redress the effects of apartheid. This paper explores the historical precedents to BEE in South Africa, its origins, and its points of contact with the...

The Independence of Namibia came about in 1990 as the result of a negotiated decolonisation process. The controlled change implied a perpetuation of the existing socio-economic inequalities under the former liberation movement as the new government. The country’s constitution endorsed the...

Redistributive processes do not belong to the pantheon of Neo-liberalism. In this framework, inequality of resources can only be addressed by equality of opportunity. Even in ‘softer’ impersonations of Neo-liberalism, corporate (mis)behaviour is tamed by corporate social responsibility, not...

Ghana has a relatively good international reputation with respect to political stability and macroeconomic reforms. However, its success with developing the private sector and attracting investment has at best been mixed. Therefore the new government that came into power in 2001 proclaimed a...

This paper studies the consequences of certain widespread policies for the quality and sustainability of growth. These policies cause economic inefficiency, environmental destruction and increased poverty. The paper develops a political economy model to show why the existence of such policies is...

In this paper we review five different methods used to determine the welfareeffects of policy changes: hedonic price analysis, contingent valuation, conjoint measurement, the Income Evaluation Approach, and the Cantril approach. In the first three approaches, an attempt is made to discover the...

After having been ignored for a long time by economists, happiness is becoming an object of serious research in 21st century economics. In Section 2 we sketch the present status of happiness economics. In Section 3 we consider the practical applicability of happiness economics, retaining the...

The paper aims at analyzing macroeconomic and financial strategies, which are to ensure achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the Kyrgyz Republic. The paper is based on results of simulations generated through the application of standard MAMS, a computable general equilibrium...

Recent economic developments highlight Latin America`s vulnerability to economic and financial turmoil that is triggered by events in distant corners of the globe. The Asian financial crisis that began in 1997 and the more recent Russian crisis have left the region profoundly shaken, and living...

This paper presents a new dataset on electoral systems and outlines its potential uses in further research exploring the connections between electoral systems and economic outcomes. The dataset provides indicators of the degree to which individual politicians can further their careers by...