The new Cooperatives Act 14 of 2005 was promulgated in August 2005 to promote the development of sustainable cooperatives in South Africa and their use as a vehicle to develop small enterprises. This paper uses the new institutional economics (NIE) to highlight problems created by the Act. Case...

The Heckman two-stage procedure is used to identify and rank the determinants of internal and external credit rationing in rural households using data sourced from two districts in the former KwaZulu homeland. The results confirm international findings that high transaction costs faced by rural...

This study investigated the prevalence and determinants of free-riding in the Ezemvelo Farmers’ Organization (EFO), a group of certified organic crop growers in South Africa, using data gathered in a census survey of its 151 partially and fully certified members. The computed free-riding...

This paper has two objectives: first, to identify the main contaminants responsible for high treatment costs in the Umgeni catchment area, and second, to predict treatment costs from observed levels of contaminants. A partial adjustment model of treatment costs is estimated for the DV Harris...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify factors that constrain marketing choices available to smallholders, limiting the chain's robustness from their perspective. Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws on transaction cost economics to develop a model explaining dyadic...

This paper extends a previous study in South Africa aimed at developing methodology for assessing the performance of equity-share schemes. The previous study proposed four broad criteria to measure performance: poverty alleviation; empowerment and participation; institutional arrangements and...