Browsing by Author "Kooy, Zacharias Wilhelmus"

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    'n Ekonomiese perspektief op bemagtiging : 'n herdefiniering van welvaartskeppende institusies
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2003-12) Kooy, Zacharias Wilhelmus; Karaan, A. S. Mohammad; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Economics.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY : The economic growth that can have a real impact on poverty or the empowerment problem in South Africa remains unrealised. A microeconomic perspective on the empowerment problem in South Africa is given in the thesis by taking a New Institutional Economic (NIE) stance. The NIE perspective reveals that the development problem at microlevel in South Africa is also derived from the collective character of the environment in which persons targetted for empowerment often find themselves. The point of departure of the analysis is that in order to understand what empowerment is supposed to entail, the firm as the institution which generates products and services, and how it connects with the rest of the economy needs to be understood. This understanding is formed by setting the firm against the economic problem, namely people's infinite needs in the presence of scarcity and the potensial for opportunism that the situation creates. Transaction costs become the explaining variable of the firm against the backdrop of the economic problem and by distinguishing it from input costs. The understanding of the institutions that addresses the economic problem results in empowerment being defined as gaining a tradable asset and that the person who gains the asset has the ability to trade it in a sustainable manner, i.e. the person has the ability to lower transaction costs to competitive levels. From this it follows that empowerment cannot be separated from the environment, for the right of exclusion implied by a tradable asset needs to be derived from the community. The institutions that address the economic problem are therefore compared with the institutional environment in which South Africans targetted for empowerment find themselves. In this manner a more complete picture of the empowerment problem in South Africa is created. More complete, because not only friction in the market or discrimination under the previous regime is presented as explanation for underdevelopment. The insights derived from the analysis lead to a framework which can gauge the empowerment potential of a empowerment scheme, a clear picture of worker participation's empowerment potential and critique of the current land reform programme. The thesis distinguishes between empowerment and wealth-generating empowerment, with the last requiring as bottom line a methaphysical framework which leaves a community grateful.