Electronic Theses and Dissertations (Masters)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/37936

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    Is there a financial Kuznets curve for South Africa?
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-02-28) Basitere, Louisa Maria; Mondi, Lumkile
    This research report analyses the impact of financial sector development on Income inequality in South Africa for the period 1990 - 2021. The research report employs the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) using data sourced from the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) and the World Inequality Database. The report finds that there is no evidence of a financial Kuznets curve for South Africa for the period of the study. The report adds to the sparse literature on the nexus between financial sector development and income equality in South Africa by using an index formulated using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) as a proxy for financial sector development and considering the impact of Social protection expenditure. Social protection expenditure, mostly in the form of cash social grants, is used the by South African government as one of the levers to address income inequality in the country
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    How to win real-life Monopoly: the roles of tax havens and finance in the monopolisation of multinational corporations
    (2022) Nadarajah, Kristin Dilani
    Much like individual income inequality, there is an increasing gap between top corporations and the rest, in terms of revenue, profits, and power more broadly. This gap is reinforced and exacerbated by the largest corporations’ ability to minimise taxes through the use of tax havens and the offshore system. There has been extensive research mapping the issue of corporate tax avoidance, as well as documenting the rise of market and monopoly power (concentration), however, there is less research combining these two. Monopoly power is thoroughly dealt with in the Monthly Review School tradition with their monopoly capital roots. Recent developments within the tradition have also incorporated finance as a key aspect of the tendency of capital to concentrate and centralise. Nevertheless, tax havens and the system around them have been excluded from this debate. This paper finds that tax havens play a crucial role in the process of concentration and centralisation of capital for three key reasons: (i) they act as a driver of financialisation which in turn accelerates the centralisation process, (ii) they provide cost minimising tools which have become central parts of capital accumulation, and (iii) they contribute to creating more opaque markets and increase the competitive advantages of the giant corporations, allowing them to increase barriers to entry. Tax havens and their usage by multinational corporations (MNCs) must therefore be seen as a systematic issue that plays a key role in not only the financial system, but also in the economy and capitalist system as a vehicle of capital accumulation in the hands of a few.