Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Kansas – Economic conditions – Statistics'

Statistics contribute to the understanding of events by objectifying phenomena, as they are perceived to reflect or be an approximation of reality. This perception is based on the premise that statistical tools are straightforward, apolitical facts. However, quantification and its results are not objective. Definitions are needed beforehand to determine the phenomenon to be measured and the aim of the quantification. Thus, statistics face debates on methods, interpretation and use. Using the Argentine cost of living indices released in 1918, 1924 and 1935 as a case study and following a process of de-construction/construction/re-construction of the series, this thesis studies how, why and by whom statistics are made and used. It suggests that the political economy plays a crucial role in the history of the Argentine cost of living index in the first half of the twentieth century. In the de-construction phase, the thesis analyses various reports to arrive at an understanding how the indices were originally estimated. The construction stage then discusses the people and institutions involved in the production of each index and the methodology that they used, placing both within the political, economic and social context. It looks at how and why each index was produced by analysing their context, uses, contemporary reception and significance. Moreover, the pitfalls that come from the assumptions and methods underlying the indices are demonstrated using data available to those who produced them. Lastly, each CLI estimate is re-constructed by correcting its main pitfalls using the information available when the series were initially developed to depict how different assumptions result in different series. This leads to an alternative cost of living index being presented for the period 1912-1943. The re-construction also comprises a comparison in tandem of the Argentine, US, British and German cost of living indices.

This thesis analyses the contribution of economics and statistics in the transformation of Ghana from colonial dependency to socialist one-party state. The narrative begins in 1948, extending through the years of decolonization, and ends in 1966, when the first postcolonial government led by Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown by a military coup d’état. Drawing on insights from political economy, the history of economics and the sociology of science, the study is constructed as a series of microhistories of public institutions, social scientists, statistical enquiries and development plans. In the period under consideration economics and statistics underwent a radical transformation in their political use. This transformation is epitomised by the two extremes mentioned in the title: the ‘scattered data’ of 1950s household budget surveys were expression of the limited will and capacity of the colonial state to exercise control over different areas of the country. In contrast, the 1960s dream of a monolithic one-party state led the political rulers to use Marxist-Leninist political economy as a cornerstone of the ideological education aiming at creating the ideal citizen of the socialist regime. Based on research in British and Ghanaian archives, the study claims that economists and statisticians provided important cognitive tools to imagine competing alternatives to the postcolonial nation state, finding its most extreme version in the attempt to fashion a new type of economics supporting Nkrumah’s dream of a Pan-African political and economic union. At a more general level, the thesis provides a step towards a deeper incorporation of Sub-Saharan Africa in the history of economics and statistics, by depicting it not simply as an importer of ideas and scientific practices, but as a site in which the interaction of local and foreign political and scientific visions turned economics and statistics into powerful tools of social engineering. These tools created new spaces for political support and dissent, and shifted the boundaries between the possible and the utopian.

This thesis makes use of recently collected UK Community Innovation Survey data to investigate 3 areas that allow to characterise and thus understand more clearly the innovation process in the UK. Firstly strategies of innovation used by firms are identified. Next the determinants of innovation, that is factors driving innovation inputs and outputs, are estimated. Thirdly this work examines the effectiveness of financial public support towards innovation. This also allows to establish which firms are more likely to be in receipt of public support and thus whether government innovation policy is in line with its objectives. Furthermore in this thesis a measure of absorptive capacity for the CIS is created, to see whether this proxy contributes in explaining innovative activities and the receipt of public support towards innovation. Similarly a measure of appropriability is generated for use as an explanatory variable in the estimation of the determinants of innovation. Both of these measures permit to find out if their latent variables have nonlinear effects in explaining propensity and extent of innovative spending. All these aspects have not received attention in previous literature, in large part due to the novelty of the data used. Besides the empirical evidence gained on the above, the addition to the literature of this thesis lies in examining several CIS survey rounds together. For one this serves as a robustness check for the conducted applications and on the other hand it allows investigating the comparability of the survey rounds. For this work the CIS 4, the CIS 5 and the CIS 6 are used as they are the most similar and comparable samples of UK businesses to date. Nevertheless it was found that differences in terms of design, wording and exclusion of responses to some question sets in the different surveys impedes their use for trend analysis and panel data analysis. Something the data collecting agencies need to address in the future. Despite these issues the conducted investigation has provided useful insights into innovation as it takes place in the UK. The first empirical chapter has been able to identify two major modes of innovation as captured by the survey. A ‘traditional’ or ‘linear’ strategy aimed at introducing product and process innovations, relying on innovative activities such as R&D and also making use of sources of information, more strongly from market sources then from science sources. Secondly a ‘dynamic’ or ‘systemic’ strategy also involving innovative activities such as R&D but more strongly making use of knowledge sources from science as well as relying on cooperation. The interpretation of this “blue skies strategy” which is not directly linked to achieving technological outputs is that it generates knowledge that helps to keep abreast of market developments and to be ready to spot opportunities in line with the literature on dynamic capabilities thus the identified strategies allow for a plausible interpretation congruent with innovation theory. In this chapter the aforementioned measure of appropriation and absorptive capacity were also successfully generated. These were then shown to play a significant role in explaining innovative activities in the subsequent empirical chapter, both exhibiting decreasing returns to scale. Following the CDM methodology this work has confirmed that knowledge capital as proxied by predicted R&D spending intensity is as important in generating service innovations as it is in stimulating goods innovations for the UK. The results also show that absorptive capacity not only indirectly impacts the likehood of introducing service innovations through its effect on knowledge capital as for goods innovations but also directly. This suggests that services once conceived further have to be tailored to individual customer’s needs. Hence absorptive capacity is specifically important in a developed economy dominated by service sector industries. At the same time the fit of the models confirmed that the CIS could do better at explaining service and process innovations by soliciting more information that are likely to cause these types of innovation. Finally further support for the innovation productivity nexus has been found. The last empirical chapter then established that absorptive capacity is also an important factor explaining the likehood of firms to be in receipt of financial public support towards innovation. This chapter further concluded that the financial public support towards innovation in the UK has in the recent past been effective at stimulating innovative performance besides just R&D spending. The government’s objective of supporting start-ups, that potentially face difficulties in financing their innovative activities, as well as supporting cooperation, vital for the dissemination of knowledge in the economy, is met according to the results. However SMEs could not be shown to be statistically more likely to be in receipt of public support despite facing the same problems as start-ups, though at least they are not less likely to be in receipt of public support then large firms. This finding stipulates that policy objectives are not achieved with regard to specifically targeting SMEs.

This study investigates whether there is an association between economic activity in women and union dissolution in the UK. This study looks at both individual-level and aggregate-level trends by posing a number of research questions. Using a series of Cox Proportional Hazard and Piecewise Constant models to analyse individual-level data from the British Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society surveys, this study has found only weak and inconsistent evidence of an association between women’s economic activity and union dissolution. Examining these data for separate union cohorts, this study has found some initial evidence that the relationship between economic activity and union dissolution may be changing over time. The final stage of the analysis in this study looked at aggregate trends in economic activity and divorce and found some evidence of an association at the aggregate level, although due to data restrictions this was not conclusive. Following a discussion of the changing status of women and the changing legal, social and cultural context within which unions are formed and dissolved, this study concluded more evidence is found for an association at the aggregate level, leading to the hypothesis that economic activity is contributing to wider social changes and that these social changes are influencing the risk of union dissolution.

The principal objectives of this empirical study were to test the hypothesis that eduction is a major determinant of people's earnings differentials and to calculate private and social rates of return to education of blacks in South Africa excluding Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei. Basically, the data for working men and women used in the study were extracted from the 1985 current Population survey files comprising a sample representative of the black population. Lifetime earnings profiles are constructed from these data for five educational levels, namely, no schooling up to standard 1, standards 2 to 4, standards 5 to 7, standards 8 to 9 and standard 10. Schooling is assumed to account for 60% of the income differentials between these profiles, after adjustment for the differing probabilities of finding work of persons in specific age-education groups. Imputed average household outlays on schooling are taken as the private direct cost of education supplemented by estimates of per pupil spending by the various government departments responsible for black schooling for calculation of the social costs per year of primary and secondary schooling. Indirect cost in the form of imputed foregone earnings are included from standard 5 (age 15) onwards. The resulting private internal rates of return to education of males are about 16% at primary level and 24% for secondary schooling. Corresponding social rates of return are about 6% for primary and 15% for secondary education. The estimates for females indicate that between no schooling and standards 2 to 4 level, the private and social rates of return are -1% and -4% respectively, from standards 2 to 4 to standards 5 to 7 level, private returns of 12% and social returns of 4% are reported and for the remaining secondary school phases private returns of 32% and social returns of 15% are estimated. It is implied that black education is receiving minimal government financial assistance compared to those of the other population groups. The evidence of the results of the study indicates that; besides education, marital status, locational, regional and occupational variables also influence earnings differentials, the governments responsible for black education should emphasize human capital investment in relation to physical capital investment, on average more educated persons are better off than the less educated ones and with the exception of female early primary schooling, generally, it is worthwhile for an individual to undertake a certain educational programme investment

Since the Global Financial Crisis, the literature of financial networks analysis has been trying to investigate the changes in the financial networks structure, that led to the instability of the financial system. The Global Financial Crisis followed by the Great Recession costed taxpayers an unprecedented $14 trillion (Alessandri and Haldane, 2009), austerity and downturns in GDP. The dynamics of the financial networks transferred the collapse of a US housing market bubble into a large meltdown of the financial systems globally. The study of systemic risk and macro-prudential policy has come to the forefront to model and manage the negative externalities of monetary, fiscal and financial sector activities that can lead to system wide instabilities and failure. The dimensions of crisis propagation have been modelled as those that can spread cross-sectionally in domino like failures with global scope, or build up over time, as in asset bubbles. The cross sectional propagation of shocks that occur due to non-payment of debt or other financial obligations with the failure of a financial intermediary or a sovereign leading to the failure of other economic entities, is called financial contagion. Cross sectional analysis of financial contagion can be done using statistical methods or by network analysis. The latter gives a structural model of the interconnections in terms of financial obligations. This dissertation uses both approaches to model financial contagion. The applications include the study of systemic risk in Eurozone Sovereign crisis, the US CDS market and the global banking network. This is organized in three self-contained chapters Our contribution to the literature begins with the study of the dynamics of the market of the Credit Default Swap (CDS) contracts for selected Eurozone sovereigns and the UK. The EWMA correlation analysis and the Granger-causality test demonstrate that there was contagion effect since correlations and cross-county interdependencies increased after August 2007. Furthermore, the IRF analysis shows that among PIIGS, the CDS spreads of Spain and Ireland have the biggest impact on the European CDS spreads, whereas the UK is found not be a source of sovereign contagion to the Eurozone. Next we perform the empirical reconstruction of the US CDS network based on the real-world data obtained from the FDIC Call Reports, and study the propagation of contagion, assuming different network structures. The financial network shows a highly tiered core-periphery structure. We find that network topology matters for the stability of the financial system. The “too interconnected to fail” phenomenon is discussed and shown to be the result of highly tiered network with central core of so called super-spreaders. In this type of network the contagion is found to be short, without multiple waves, but with very high losses brought by the core of the network. Finally we study a global banking network (GBN) model based on the Markose (2012) eigen-pair approach and propose a systemic risk indices (SRI) which provide early warning signals for systemic instability and also the rank order of the systemic importance and vulnerability of the banking systems. The empirical model is based on BIS Consolidated Banking Statistics for the exposures of 19 national banking systems to the same number of debtor countries and the data obtained from Bankscope for the equity capital of these 19 national banking systems. The SRI is based on the ratio of the netted cross-border exposures of the national banking systems to their respective equity capital. The eigen-pair method stipulates that if the maximum eigenvalue of the network exceeds the capital threshold, there is cause for concern of a contagion. This is compared with the loss multiplier SRI proposed by Castrén and Rancan (2012). The latter is found to have no early warning capabilities and peaks well after the onset of the crisis in 2009 while the eigen-pair SRI gives ample warning by late 2006 that the cross border liabilities was unsustainable in respect of the equity capital of the national banking systems. We contribute to the literature by highlighting the efficacy of the network approach to systemic stability analysis of GBNs. In particular we develop an eigen-pair approach for GBNs and prove its usefulness in an early warning context.

The goal of the study is to examine the relationship between financial sector development and output growth in the agricultural, mining and manufacturing sectors in South Africa. The analysis is based on the hypothesis that financial development is essential for promoting production growth in an economy. To test the hypothesis, in the South African context, the vector autoregressive model (VAR) framework and Granger causality test are applied to a quarterly data set starting from 1970 quarter one to 2009 quarter four. The results suggest that financial intermediary development (bank based measure) and stock market development (market based measure) have a positive impact on output growth in the agriculture, mining and manufacturing sectors in South Africa. There is evidence of a one way causal relationship between financial sector development and sectoral output growth. Particularly, there is evidence that financial intermediary development and stock market development causes output growth in the agriculture, mining and manufacturing sectors in South Africa. However, there is no evidence showing causality running from sectoral output growth to financial sector development. The results provide evidence supporting the theory which states that financial development is essential to promote output growth in a country i.e. in our case South Africa. Thus an efficient financial system which promotes efficient channeling of resources towards the agricultural, mining and manufacturing sectors should be built.

Incorrect Afrikaans summary included in thesis.
Thesis (MPhil--University of Stellenbosch, 2000.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study was aimed at using secondary data to conduct an investigation into the relationship between macro-economic factors on one hand and aspects of household life on the other hand. On the basis of the results thereof, an assessment was to be made of how such a relationship reflected on the living arrangements of households in contemporary South African society. The basis of the analysis was secondary data from the October Household Survey (OHS-96) data set, which is rich in specific information encompassing various aspects of human life, like demographic details and household variables as well as health, education and employment variables. As expected, the results showed that the current state of living arrangements of households is characterised by positive relationships between income levels on the one hand and households variables like type of dwelling and dwelling ownership on the other hand. However, the same findings further revealed a surprising outcome that unlike expected, there is no clear relationship between income and another significant household variable i.e. household size (members). However, our findings lead us to a conclusion that on the whole, there is a hypothesised relationship between macro-economic conditions of a country on one hand, and patterns in living arrangements of households on the other hand. The results further revealed that as expected, the factors of magisterial district and race/population groups have an effect on this relationship that reflect our legacy of social and economic development policies of the apartheid era which gave rise to urban (metropolitan) and racial bias in the socio-economic development of households. The results thereof are that African households in particular, and urban poor black households in general, have become the least prosperous in terms of material or economic living conditions. The implications of these findings for theory and policy are highlighted. At the level of methodology, the valuable experience of this study served to further highlight the worth of secondary data analysis, not only in general economic terms, but also as invaluable educational or teaching tool for students which recommends its increased use by all practitioners or institutions of social research methods.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die Internet en sy Kuberruimtes is ontwikkel in die 1960s as 'n manier om inligting oor te dra sonder die risiko van intersepsie en vernietiging. Vandag, 40 jaar later het die Internet gegroei in beide grootte en toepassing. Die mees algemene gebruike is nogsteeds kommunikasie en die oordrag van informasie. Hierdie tesis is 'n etnografiese studie van my ervaringe in 'n Kuberruimte van die Internet- 'n virtuele gemeenskap byname Amazon City.com. Virtuele gemeenskappe is areas op die Internet waar mense bymekaar kom om hul daaglikse lewens, kwessies en enige iets toepaslik vir die spesifieke gemeenskap, te bespreek. Die tipe gemeenskap word gesien as 'n reaksie van die verval van "derde plekke" in af-lyn lewe en globalisering Die gemeenskap wat vorm in hierdie areas ontwikkel kulturele veronderstelling. Hierdie veronderstellings word openbaar aan 'n nuwe lid deur tyd en interaksie in die konferensie area. Die veronderstellings wat ek ervaar het strek van kennis benodig om 'n aanvaarde en suksesvolle lid van die gemeenskap te word, tot taal gebruik en identiteit van die lede. Die konklusie is bereik dat lede hul interaksie en lidmaatskap in hierdie gemenskappe as net so bevredigend en "eg" ervaar as hul aktiwiteite in hul af-lyn lewe. Verdere aspekte wat 'n webblad 'n suksesvolle en ekonomiese vatbare besigheids strategie maak vir sy eienaar, was my volgende fokus. Internet besigheid groei teen 'n geweldige spoed, en impliseer nie slegs die verkoop van produkte aanlyn nie. Rekenaar-ondersteunde kommunikasie toestelle is geimplimenteer op kommersiële webbladsye nadat dit gevind is in die vroeë 1990s dat mense soek vir 'n plek wat meer is as net nog 'n winkel. Ander maniere wat hierde dot com webbladsye gebruik om inkomste te genereer en of die lede gesien word as burgers of as verbruikers word ook bestudeer. Daar is gevind dat die lede hulself sien as burgers maar webbladsy lojaliteit sal die lede aanspoor om as verbruikers op te tree indien nodig. Die kommersiële aspekte van die tipe webbladsy is 'n noodsaaklik deel vir die voortbestaan van die dot com webbladsy, en die gemeenskap wat daar ontwikkel.

Cointegration has important implications for portfolio diversification. One of these is that in order to spread risk it is advisable to invest in markets that are not cointegrated. Over the last several decades communication technology has made the world a smaller place and hence cointegration in equity markets has become more prevalent. The bulk of research into cointegration focuses on developed and Asian markets, with little research been done on African markets. This study compares the Engle-Granger and Johansen tests for cointegration and uses them to calculate the level of cointegration between South African and other global equity markets. Each market is compared pair-wise with South Africa and the results have been that in general South Africa is cointegrated with other emerging markets but not really with African nor developed markets. Short-run analysis with the error correction was carried out and showed that in general markets respond slowly to any disequilibrium. Innovation accounting methods showed that the country placed first in Cholesky ordering dominates the other one. Multivariate cointegration was carried out using three selections of 4, 6 and 8 market portfolios. One of the markets was SA and the others were all chosen based on the criteria that they are not pair-wise cointegrated with SA. The level of cointegration varied depending on the portfolios, as did the error correction rates, impulse responses and variance decomposition. The one constant was that the USA dominated any portfolio where it was introduced. Recommendations were finally made about which market portfolio an investor should consider as most favourable.

In this thesis I present three essays that explore various economic situations on strategic choices from different perspectives: the individuals’ strategic decision to work on the informal/formal sector, the US strategic decision on the provision of foreign aid, and the firm’s strategic decision to engage in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The first essay presents an analysis on the effect of income taxes and its effect on worker’s transitions towards informality. We find that an increase in average tax rate leads to a statistically significant increase in transitions towards informality for women and those with low incomes. The second essay offers evidence of how patterns of US foreign aid to Latin America differ from aid allocation observed elsewhere. We find that while political institutions and events in recipient countries greatly influence US aid allocations, the ideological orientation of US administrations can explain part of the divergent patters of aid towards Latin America. Finally, the third essay studies two possible mechanisms that affect the decision of a firm to engage in CSR: the role of growth in value added and workers’ preferences. The results suggest that firms engage in CSR in times of economic prosperity; peer effects are increasingly important in a firm’s decision to engage in CSR when the proportion of firms within an industry increases. And finally, I find a weak link between workers’ preferences and a firm’s decision to engage in CSR activities related with diversity.

Small towns can be seen as the fundamental building blocks of tbe urban system. Through time, some of these towns have lost the primary reason for their existence. Some towns that have been declining or stagnating include old mining and industrial towns, such as Indwe in the Eastern Cape or Welkom in the Free State. Some towns have also changed the main focus of tbeir economy, for example, from that of mining to that of tourism, as in the case of Utrecht in Kwa-Zulu Natal (Nel, 2002). In light of the above, this thesis seeks to critically evaluate what has happened in selected small towns in the Eastern Cape. The research investigated a number of towns in the Eastern Cape, looking at the history and influence of colonisation, population dynamics, education levels, employment opportunities, migration and the influence of capitalism on the economic and social structure of the town, as well as tbe evolution of its economy. The research sample consisted of interviews witb local historians, community leaders, development agencies and individuals who were benefiting from tbe various development initiatives/project in the towns. These interviews, in conjunction with the literature identified, were conducted in the selected small towns, assessing whether development was succeeding and, in conclusion, identifying witb reference to the study sites, what was learnt. The research process generated a number of lessons that need to be taken into consideration when attempting social and economic upliftment in small towns. These include: the need for leadership, support from the local population and the need for financial assistance to support and uplift the community.
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This study is concerned with the sexual abuse of enslaved women and girls by white men in the antebellum South. Interviews conducted by the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s are studied alongside nineteenth-century narratives of the formerly enslaved in order to make calculations of the scale of abuse in the South, but also to discover which conditions, social spaces and situations were, and possibly still are, most conducive to the sexual abuse of women and girls. This thesis is separated into two parts. Part One establishes a methodology for working with testimony of the formerly enslaved and determines the scale of sexual abuse using all available 1930s interviews with people who had lived in Louisiana and Texas under slavery. This systematic quantitative analysis is a key foundation from which to interpret the testimony of abuse that is explored according to different forms of sexual violence in Part Two. It is argued that abuse was endemic in the South, and occurred on a scale that was much higher than has been argued in previous studies. Enslaved people could experience a range of white male sexually abusive behaviours: rape, sexual slavery and forced breeding receive particular attention in this study due to the frequency with which they were mentioned by the formerly enslaved. These abuses are conceptualised as existing on a continuum of sexual violence that, alongside other less frequently mentioned practices, pervaded the lives of all enslaved people. Common features existed along the continuum. Abuse was intergenerational in nature for both the abusers and the abused. Light-skinned enslaved children born of rape were far more likely to become victims of abuse themselves and young enslaved girls were prematurely sexualised. Sexual abuse was brought into the white domestic space through the institution of sexual slavery, white children were thus unconsciously schooled in the abusive sexual mores of southern society from an early age. Abuse was quite open among white male family members. Other institutions existed that normalised and legitimised abuse, such as the fancy-girl trade and sexual interference through forced breeding practices that included eugenic manipulation and the use of ‘studs’. Despite this, enslaved women showed remarkable levels of emotional survival and initial reflections are made on the ways in which women could resist and cope with sexual abuse. Testimony suggests that abuse was discussed amongst the black community, support was rarely denied to victims, and there was no stigma was attached to children born of rape. With recent revelations on the scale of the institutionalised sexual abuse of women and children, as well as vast modern sex-trafficking networks, there are special opportunities presented through the current cultural climate in order to understand the southern experience. The South is reframed as a ‘culture of abuse’ where sexual violence against enslaved people was naturalised and culturally reproduced.

This study looked at the environmental factors present during testing for the spring 2004 administration of the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) in an attempt to quantify some of the factors that were previously only qualitatively reported. Five factors were examined for their ability to predict passing percentages of students on the CASHSEE at the school level. The results indicated that socioeconomic status was the only significant predictor.

Includes bibliographical references. Addresses the question of what an economic model of the world wine market suggests will happen to wine production, consumption, trade and prices in various regions in the early 21st century. A subsidiary issue is what difference would global or European regional wine liberalisation make to that outlook, according to such a model. Accompanying CD-ROM comprises spreadsheet written by Nick Berger, November 2000, for the Windows and Office97 versions of Excel; a seven region world wine model (WWM7) - base version projecting the world wine market 1996-2005 as a non-linear Armington model. System requirements for accompanying CD-ROM: IBM compatible computer ; Microsoft Excel 97 or later.

A longitudinal analysis of transactional data for an entire college cohort was mined from administrative student records systems to identify individual student behaviors and establish correlations between individual students’ behaviors and academic outcomes. Conducted at one large urban community college, this study determined curricular peer association behavior between individual students, and also evaluated late registration and course schedule change behaviors. Findings demonstrated a strong correlation between these three behavioral patterns and a lasting influence on academic outcomes, such as: semestrial GPA and cumulative GPA, credit accumulation, persistence and graduation rates. Finding also indicated a correlation among the three behaviors themselves. Furthermore, conducting a longitudinal analysis of individual students made it possible to identify the temporal tipping-points which differentiated at-risk behavior from otherwise benign behavior. The intrinsic factors associated with individual students’ behaviors were followed over a period of thirteen consecutive semesters. Mining Transactional Student-Level Data at the scale achieved in this study, when compared to traditional methods of data collection, provided the precision needed to determine the actual proximity among specific peers, and the identification of registration behavior patterns. The extraction of transactional data from the records of each student in an entire cohort resulted in a method of inquiry immune to the negative effects of student’s non-response or selection bias. Complimenting previous research, this study provides a detailed descriptive analysis of those behaviors not only at the semestrial level, but also cumulatively across consecutive semesters. This study demonstrates that curricular peer association can be measured directly from common, ubiquitous, transactional records. The rates of Peer Association among individual students was very dynamic: While the majority of students had some peer associations while enrolled, in the aggregate two thirds of students had no peer association (were soloists) at some point in time, while more than a quarter of all students were soloists for at least half of their entire enrollment period. Soloists differed from students with peer associations. They were likely to be older, international students, African Americans, transfer students, or those entering fully prepared for college level coursework (no remedial coursework). Peer association was positively correlated, both in the semester in which it occurred and cumulatively, with: GPA, credits earned, and retention or graduation rates. These correlations to academic outcomes varied with the number of peer associations established, and the intensity of peer encounters. The study revealed that nearly a quarter of all students practiced late registration at least once; and more than 10 percent have registered late multiple times during their studies. Nearly three quarters of students made modifications to their course schedule at least once after the semester began. Overall, two fifths of students changed their initial schedule every semester. These behaviors were unrecorded in previous studies that were limited in the evaluation of longitudinal behaviors, used subsets of students and were subject to non-response bias. Late registration and student schedule changes was correlated with lower semestrial and cumulative academic outcomes. Late registration behavior subsequently increased the likelihood of a student being a soloist. When compared to previous studies, the analysis conducted here not only accounted for academic, demographic and financial variables at baseline, but went on to perform updates at key points in time each semester to reflect changes over time. The exhaustive revisiting of the covariates each semester provided enhanced control to the ‘order of time’ influence. All covariates were re-measured each semester allowing to better evaluate the correlation of student behavioral indicators for a given semester, and cumulatively. This enhanced the study’s ability to account for common unobserved variables inherent to academic, demographic and financial attributes that might influence student outcomes correlated with peer association, late registration and schedule changes. This study contributes to the literature by showing that peer association can be evaluated in the setting of an open admission commuter institution, and that peer association has consistent and positive correlation with academic outcomes. It provides new insights regarding the magnitude of late registration and schedule changes, as well as their negative immediate and longitudinal correlation with student outcomes. Further implications to community colleges’ faculty, administrators, researchers and policymakers, as well as future directions for research employing transactional level data are discussed.

In this analysis, I estimate the impact of the changing relative size of the adult male population, classified by age and education groups, on the earnings of employed males living in 502 Brazilian local labor markets during four time periods between 1970 and 2000. The effects of shifts in the age distribution of the working age population have been studied in relation to the effect of the baby-boom generation on the earnings of different cohorts in the United States. However, the question has received little attention in the context of the countries in Asia and Latin America, which are now experiencing substantial shifts in their age-education distributions. Taking advantage of the huge variation across Brazilian local labor markets, the models in this research suggest that age-education groups are not perfect substitutes, so that own-cohort-education size depresses earnings, as expected by the theory. Compositional shifts are influential, attesting that this approach represents a fruitful way of studying this central problem in economic development, going beyond the effects normally analyzed by formal labor market equations.
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The study was conducted across the four district municipalities in the Free State province of South Africa. The objective of the study was to determine socio-economic factors that affected livestock numbers among smallholder cattle and sheep farmers in the Free State province of South Africa. The research was qualitative and quantitative in nature. Proportionate random sampling method was used to collect data. The population comprised of smallholder cattle and sheep farmers that kept at least 30 livestock. Data between the 2008 and 2012 farming seasons were collected by administering well-structured questionnaires to 250 smallholder cattle and sheep farmers. Data collected were captured and analysed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS version 22 of 2013) to obtain frequency, cross-tabulation, descriptive statistics and ordinary least square (OLS) regression. Descriptive statistics results indicated that lack of camp systems, drought prevalence, increased feed costs, poor veterinary interventions, insufficient breeding stock, high cost of fuel and transportation, lack of equipment, diseases, stock theft and pilfering, and insufficient grazing land were the prevalent factors that affected cattle and sheep farming in the province.The OLS regression results indicated that the variables that significantly affected livestock numbers were district, household size, livestock numbers in 2008, planted pastures, grazing land condition, grazing land acquisition, service, advice / training, veterinary services, purchase of dosing products and sales per year. The results also indicated that the majority (96.8%) of the smallholder cattle and sheep farmers would like to increase their livestock numbers. It was therefore recommended that extension and veterinary services should be strengthened in the study area. In addition, it was recommended that smallholder livestock farmers should be encouraged to plant pastures to reduce pressure on the natural veld and make forage available throughout the year. Lastly, as a recommendation, government should provide subsidies with distribution policies that will ensure that all smallholder livestock farmers can benefit.
Agriculture and  Animal Health
M. Sc. (Agriculture)

Estimates of the value of manufacturing sector output enter into many economic indices, especially those measuring productivity. The South African Central Statistical Services has twice made substantial errors in the output series. Revisions to correct the first of these raised the growth rate in manufacturing over the period 1970-80 from 2,6 per cent per annum (compound) to 5 per cent. This episode is not common knowledge. After examining the conceptual difficulties involved in producing output stimates, a practical technique for detecting errors in the series , the Euler Consistency Test, is presented. Developed, refined, and then applied to the South African data, it predicted, retrospectively, the first set of errors (using only the information available at the time those errors were made), then detected another set of errors , not previously known to exist. The study records the process by which the CSS was made to concede this second error. Acknowledgement only came after protracted correspondence and an examination conducted by a special committee formed to investigate my complaints. With 1979 set equal to 100, the output level in 1988 was originally given as 113,8. After investigation, the CSS raised this to 126,1. The magnitude of this second error is equivalent to the omission of the total output of the two SASOL plants commissioned during the early 1980s. Estimates of productivity growth by the National Productivity Institute using these incorrect figures are shown to have created a misleading picture of the sector's performance, especially in the sensitive debate over the relationship between wage and productivity growth. An attempt is made to lay the groundwork of an analytical framework for comprehending (from a Marxist point of view) the activities of ideological state apparatusses like the NPI. A review of the literature on theory choice is conducted, and the necessarily political nature of this activity is explored. The relative impotence of I science' in the face of ideology in a conflict-ridden society is considered. The question of the significance of disagreements between economists is examined, and prospects for convergence and consensus on certain issues are weighed.
Thesis (Ph.D.)-Unversity of Natal, 1994.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
This thesis will explore issues concerning cultural tourism investment and resident quality of life in the Midwestern city of Indianapolis, Indiana. It is important to understand from a cultural tourism perspective how further attempts to grow and invest in tourism will affect resident perception of quality of life and future cultural tourism investment. To achieve this goal, data from the 2012 Indianapolis Quality of Life survey was statistically analyzed to specifically examine how residents' perceived quality of life affects cultural tourism investment. This allows for the study of what city-service attributes (i.e. safety, attractions, transportation, et cetera) identify as potential indicators of whether residents' perception of quality of life affects cultural tourism investment and if there were any correlations between demographic factors of age, gender, ethnicity, and household income with the perception that investing in cultural events and attractions for tourists is good for residents. Results indicated that several key city-service attributes identify as potential indicators of whether residents' perception of quality of life in Indianapolis affects residents' perceptions that investing in cultural tourism for tourists is good for residents. In addition, several key city-service attributes identified as potential indicators of residents' perception of quality of life in Indianapolis excluding perceptions of cultural tourism investment. Finally, results indicated that demographic factors of gender, age, ethnicity, and income were not significant when it came to affecting the perception that investing in cultural events and attractions for tourists is good for residents.