3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions

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    Exploring firm behaviour as a cause and consequence of financialization
    (2018) Ndlangamandla, Sandile
    This paper sets out to explore financialization from the perspective of firm behaviour. It looks at how financialization has become predominant in the global economy and how firms have adopted financialization as an accumulation regime. Considerations are made whether firm behaviour or changes in firm behaviour have propagated financialization or whether the rise of financialization on a global scale has influenced firms to become more financialized. From the research in this paper, it appears that financialization has in fact influenced firm behaviour, and the increased adoption of financialization by firms has led to its rise and predominance. We can see that under Financialization, firms or large corporations tend to become financial holding firms as they shift from traditional production to dealings in financial transactions for gains, adopting a “downsize and redistribute” technique.
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    Economic equilibrium analysis with Riesz geometry and measure theory
    (2018) Kalonji, Francis
    Equilibrium is a concern of each individual in the society, of an organisation, and of the entire world. This Masters dissertation consider the analysis of economic equilibrium for an infinite dimensional economy. Two mathematic models are used to conduct the analysis: the continuum economics model and the Riesz dual system hLw,L0wi model. Continuum economics show how an economy with many economic actors reach both an equilibrium of Walras and a core allocation. The second model, based on the paper by Aliprantis, Burkinshaw, Brown, explore the equilibrium properties embodied in the Edgeworth box. Three more equilibrium’s concepts(extended Walras equilibrium, the quasiequilibrium and the approximate quasiequilibrium) as well as the connection between them are presented in the last chapter of this dissertation.
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    Cameroon's agrarian political economy: impact of the state's free market agrarian system reforms on coffee cooperatives' activities and market orientation.
    (2018) Ngam, Ronald, Nkwain
    Cameroon’s modern economy developed around a satellite-metropolis plantation dynamic within which successive European colonial masters and later, African-led governments, promoted monocrop commodity production along coastal areas for the benefit of Europe. The federating organisations employed to structure production were a combination of plantations, agriculture development zones and especially cooperatives. The period of government-controlled cooperatives was characterised by a too-big-to-fail approach; the State intervened directly in cooperatives’ affairs and managed their cashflow through the National Produce Marketing Board. Following a structural adjustment plan in the 1990s, the Cameroon State divested its interest in cooperatives and transitioned the agrarian system into a borderless, global market within a neoliberal competition state dynamic. This study investigated the impact of the Cameroonian State’s post-structural adjustment neoliberal agrarian system reforms on coffee cooperatives’ activities and market orientation. This was done through the prism of the two biggest coffee cooperatives in Cameroon, i.e. the Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives of the West (UCCAO) and the North West Cooperative Association (NWCA). The study employed an interpretivist approach, and the extended case methodology was used to gather data. Data gathering instruments included interviews, questionnaires, participant observation, archival material and photos. Respondents were top managers of both cooperatives plus forty coffee growers. The study revealed three key findings. Firstly, the Cameroon State’s support to coffee cooperatives in the free market era is characterised by a preponderance of disparate programmes which appear to be done more for optics rather than actually providing the robust support that is needed to help producer organisations succeed. Some development experts (Chang, 2001; Gereffi, 1995; Stiglitz, 2008) are unanimous that in underdeveloped countries with threadbare infrastructure, the state has a key role to play in providing the infrastructure, communications networks, access to finance and other support necessary to develop efficient value chains that can take commodities to world markets on a consistent and reliable basis. Secondly, Cameroon’s coffee Cooperatives have made only timid and insufficient efforts to adjust to the deeply globalised free market context into which they were suddenly ushered in the 1990s after a half a century of operating as quasi parastatals. Their market orientation shows a business-as-usual approach which is ultimately self-defeating as it stops them from leveraging the opportunities offered by free market globalism. Thirdly, conclusive data from around the world reveals that the more successful modern-day cooperatives are those ones that locate themselves in parallel cooperative market economies based on solidarity, democracy and cooperation among cooperatives rather than in traditional capitalistic value chains (Wright, 2011). It is this pathway that Cameroonian cooperatives need to follow if they wish to succeed in the age of globalism.
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    “Exploring Firm Behaviour as a Cause and Consequence of Financialization”
    (2018) Ndlangamandla, Sandile
    This paper sets out to explore financialization from the perspective of firm behaviour. It looks at how financialization has become predominant in the global economy and how firms have adopted financialization as an accumulation regime. Considerations are made whether firm behaviour or changes in firm behaviour have propagated financialization or whether the rise of financialization on a global scale has influenced firms to become more financialized. From the research in this paper, it appears that financialization has in fact influenced firm behaviour, and the increased adoption of financialization by firms has led to its rise and predominance. We can see that under financialization, firms or large corporations tend to become financial holding firms as they shift from traditional production to dealings in financial transactions for gains, adopting a “downsize and redistribute” technique.
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    The international distribution of benefits from global value chains between the centre and the periphery using Lenin's theory of imperialism as a tool of analysis
    (2016) Ngxola, Nomonde
    Lenin's theory of imperialism is a strong basis of contemporary analysis for the interaction between countries in the core and those in the periphery. This paper examines the theoretical coherence of his theory in light of the advent of global value chains. The distribution of benefits between countries in the core and the periphery is a topic that is aimed at describing the distribution patterns that prevail as a result of the globalisation of trade and the decentralization of production activities by multinational firms [Information taken from introduction. No abstract provided].
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    Some consequences of the subjectivist approach to economic theory
    (2015-01-26) Fransman, Martin Jacques
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