In Executive Salaries In South Africa: Who Should Have a Say on Pay?, the 2012 executive pay packages of 50 of South Africa’s largest and most influential listed companies are examined.

A 2006 study by Crotty and Bonorchis revealed that, on average, the CEOs got paid more than R15 million a year – more than 700 times the minimum wage in certain industries. The authors predicted that without government intervention, executive packages would continue to sky-rocket. Unfortunately these predictions have come true, despite employment equity measures and changes to corporate governance requirements in King III. The average cash and benefits package of the 50 CEOs studied in 2012 came to almost R13.1 million and once the gains on the vesting and exercise of share options is included, this average rises steeply to almost R49 million.

South Africa’s widening income inequality and its history of racism, poverty and social unrest demand that something more be done to reverse this trend. But what will it take for companies to rein in excessive executive salaries? In Executive Salaries In South Africa we consider these questions:

• How do you strengthen the shareholder’s say on pay to ensure that the board of directors responsible for setting pay take into account multiple stakeholder interests?
• Should the courts, the Department of Labour, employees, the tax man or the remaining 99% of society have a say on what the 1% are being paid?
• How do you modify corporate governance standards, the tax code and labour legislation to achieve these goals?
• How do we turn shareholders into activists and empower the workforce?
• Is change only possible if a more fundamental shift in attitudes is achieved?

This book addresses these pressing issues and considers possible mechanisms to rein in excessive executive pay. Without these interventions, South Africa will continue on a path of instability and unrest, while the rich get richer and the poor become poorer.

This book assembles key texts in the theory and applications of the Structural Econometric Time Series Analysis (SEMTSA) approach. The theory and applications of these procedures to a variety of econometric modeling and forecasting problems as well as Bayesian and non-Bayesian testing, shrinkage estimation and forecasting procedures are presented and applied. Finally, attention is focused on the effects of disaggregation on forecasting precision.

Like all of us, though few so visibly, Alan Greenspan was forced by the financial crisis of 2008 to question some fundamental assumptions about risk management and economic forecasting. How had our models so utterly failed us? Virtually every day, we make wagers on the future - but, even when we're not driven by factors entirely beyond our conscious control, the maps by which we are steering are often out-of-date. The Map and the Territory is an important attempt to update our forecasting conceptual grid using twenty-first-century technologies, offering a lucid and empirical grounding in what we can know about economic forecasting and what we can't.

This study interprets and interrelates the major political, economic and security developments in Europe - including transatlantic relations - from the end of World War II up until the present time, and looks ahead to how the continent may evolve politically in the future. studies cover only specific aspects, such as the European Union. Destination Europe by contrast weaves all the different strands of European events together into a single overall and up-to-date picture which gives the reader a deeper understanding of the continent and its current and future challenges. security developments - both in the East and in the West - leading up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Later chapters examine the European Union's reform efforts, enlargement, movement to a single currency and emerging security role; the political and economic changes in central and Eastern Europe, including Russia; the break-up of Yugoslavia and the wars that ensued; and NATO's enlargement and search for a new mission. Final chapters deal with forces affecting Europe's future such as terrorism, nationalism, religion, demographic trends and globalization. introductory text for undergraduate students of European politics and European history.

This book, and its companion volume, present a collection of papers by Clive W.J. Granger. His contributions to economics and econometrics, many of them seminal, span more than four decades and touch on all aspects of time series analysis. The papers assembled in this volume explore topics in spectral analysis, seasonality, nonlinearity, methodology, and forecasting. Those in the companion volume investigate themes in causality, integration and cointegration, and long memory. The two volumes contain the original articles as well as an introduction written by the editors.

This book, and its companion volume, present a collection of papers by Clive W.J. Granger. His contributions to economics and econometrics, many of them seminal, span more than four decades and touch on all aspects of time series analysis. The papers assembled in this volume explore topics in causality, integration and cointegration, and long memory. Those in the companion volume investigate themes in causality, integration and cointegration, and long memory. The two volumes contain the original articles as well as an introduction written by the editors.

This book, and its companion volume in the Econometric Society Monographs series (ESM number 32), present a collection of papers by Clive W. J. Granger. His contributions to economics and econometrics, many of them seminal, span more than four decades and touch on all aspects of time series analysis. The papers assembled in this volume explore topics in causality, integration and cointegration, and long memory. Those in the companion volume investigate themes in causality, integration and cointegration, and long memory. The two volumes contain the original articles as well as an introduction written by the editors.

This book concentrates on the five biggest recessions in the twentieth century. It focuses on the UK, but makes numerous comparisons to recessions in other countries. Two major recessions are identified in the interwar period; three more in the years 1973-1995. The main conclusion reached is that major recessions reflect abrupt fallings off in demand not supply, and can be explained by identifiable demand shocks. The concluding chapter offers advice on how to avoid future severe recessions: a combination of prudent policy-making beforehand and special measures in the downturn and recovery.

Economics: Beyond the Millennium contains articles by leading authorities in various fields of economic theory and econometrics. Each contributor gives an account of the current state of the art in their own field and indicates the direction that they think it will take in the next ten years. The book is split into three sections: the microfoundations of macroeconomics, markets and organization, and econometrics, with highlights including Malinvaud on resource allocation, Van Damme on game theory, and Gourieroux on econometric modelling.

This report forecasts growth in developing Asia of 7.1% in 2021 and 5.4% in 2022 in an uneven recovery caused by divergent growth paths. Its theme chapter explores sustainable agriculture. Growth forecasts are revised up for East Asia and Central Asia from the projections made in April, but down for South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. This reflects differences in vaccination progress and control of domestic COVID-19 outbreaks but also other factors, including rising commodity prices and depressed tourism. Inflation is expected to remain under control. The main risks to the economic outlook come from the COVID-19 pandemic, including the emergence of new variants, slower-than-expected vaccine rollouts, and waning vaccine effectiveness. Sustainable food production and agricultural systems that are resilient to climate change will be crucial for developing Asia. To transform agriculture in the region, its economies must tackle challenges from changing consumer demand, changing demographics, and a changing and more fragile environment.

Originally conceived as part of a unifying vision for Europe, the euro is now viewed as a millstone around the neck of a continent crippled by vast debts, sluggish economies, and growing populist dissent. In Europe's Orphan, leading economic commentator Martin Sandbu presents a compelling defense of the euro. He argues that rather than blaming the euro for the political and economic failures in Europe since the global financial crisis, the responsibility lies firmly on the authorities of the eurozone and its member countries. The eurozone's self-inflicted financial calamities and economic decline resulted from a toxic cocktail of unforced policy errors by bankers, politicians, and bureaucrats; the unhealthy coziness between finance and governments; and, above all, an extreme unwillingness to restructure debt. Sandbu traces the origins of monetary union back to the desire for greater European unity after the Second World War. But the euro's creation coincided with a credit bubble that governments chose not to rein in. Once the crisis hit, a battle of both ideas and interests led to the failure to aggressively restructure sovereign and bank debt. Ideologically informed choices set in motion dynamics that encouraged more economic mistakes and heightened political tensions within the eurozone. Sandbu concludes that the prevailing view that monetary union can only work with fiscal and political union is wrong and dangerous--and risks sending the continent into further political paralysis and economic stagnation. Contending that the euro has been wrongfully scapegoated for the eurozone's troubles, Europe's Orphan charts what actually must be done for the continent to achieve an economic and political recovery. This revised edition contains a new preface addressing the economic and political implications of Brexit, as well as updated text throughout. Europe's Orphan charts what actually must be done for the continent to achieve a full recovery.

LESSONS FROM THE 1970s, MORE RELEVANT THAN EVER IN 2012, BY HARRY BROWNE

With a new author team contributing decades of practical experience, this fully updated and thoroughly classroom-tested second edition textbook prepares students and practitioners to create effective forecasting models and master the techniques of time series analysis. Taking a practical and example-driven approach, this textbook summarises the most critical decisions, techniques and steps involved in creating forecasting models for business and economics. Students are led through the process with an entirely new set of carefully developed theoretical and practical exercises. Chapters examine the key features of economic time series, univariate time series analysis, trends, seasonality, aberrant observations, conditional heteroskedasticity and ARCH models, non-linearity and multivariate time series, making this a complete practical guide. A companion website with downloadable datasets, exercises and lecture slides rounds out the full learning package.

This thoroughly revised second edition of an upper-level undergraduate/graduate text describes many major techniques of forecasting used in economics and business. This is the only time series book to concentrate on the forecasting of economic data and to cover such a broad range of topics. Its key features are: gives a complete description, with applications, of the Box-Jenkins single series modeling techniques; extends the Box-Jenkins techniques to multivariate cases; compares forecasts from purely statistical and econometric models; pays careful attention to such problems as how to evaluate and compare forecasts; covers nonstationary and nonlinear models, co-integration and error-correction models.

Political gridlock in Washington... the lingering effects of the financial crisis... structural problems such as unemployment and the skills gap of our work force... the mediocre K-12 educational system. Are our best days behind us?
Joel Kurtzman persuasively shows why all the talk about America's decline is not only baseless but dead wrong. Our best days, are, in fact, ahead of us.
Four transformational forces--unrivaled manufacturing depth, soaring levels of creativity, massive new energy sources, and gigantic amounts of capital waiting to be invested--have been gathering steam. When combined they will provide the foundation for a much stronger economy, robust growth, and broad-based prosperity that will propel the United States to new heights.
One endlessly repeated anxiety is that "we don't make anything here, anymore." The reality, though, is that the US is the world's dominant manufacturing power--and growing. American companies produce 20 percent of the world's goods in the US and perhaps another 15 to 20 percent outside our country. And much of what we make is recession-proof--such as software, jetliners, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and food.
Kurtzman reveals the stories of the unsung heroes who are the creative force leading the second American century, describing the payoff of the investment in our best minds. American companies have stunning levels of talent and creativity at work in the world's fastest growing economic sectors--biotech, pharmaceuticals, computer hardware and software, telecommunications, advanced manufacturing, materials science, and aeronautical and space engineering. In these fields, Americans are without peer and consistently break new ground.
We are coming to the realization that America is no longer beholden to the despots of foreign energy. Thanks to advances in technology developed in the US, we now have among the world's largest energy reserves, and are richer in energy resources than Saudi Arabia and second only to Russia.
These three strengths--manufacturing, soaring levels of creativity, and energy independence--will be magnified and synergistically combined with the unprecedented amount of capital that now lies idle. US companies of all types are hoarding cash and securities worth more than $4 trillion--an amount larger than the world's fourth largest economy, Germany. When the money starts flowing and is invested, it will rapidly propel every part of the economy forward.

South Korea's economic miracle is a well-known story. However, today Korea is confronting a new set of internal and external risks, which may foreshadow the next crisis. The Korean economy has been struggling with the faltering growth momentum and the rise of unprecedented socio-economic problems over recent years well before the pandemic crisis. After abrupt downshifts to markedly slower growth in the early 2000s, economic growth has continued to decelerate. Koreans are grappling with slow income growth, all time-high household debt, high youth unemployment, inequality, and social polarization. Politics is in disarray and is incapable of directing social discourse for the common good. Rapid population aging along with the world's lowest fertility rates stokes fears of Japanification. Simultaneously, disruptive technologies and fast-changing business environment such as the rise of China clash with a range of long-standing structural problems. The contemporary challenges are radically different from those seen in the early stages of industrialization. There are multiple risks that threaten to self-perpetuate low or stagnant growth over the next decade or so, if not an outright financial crisis. Motivated by these latest developments, this book seeks to provide a timely and in-depth analysis of key current issues and foreseeable challenges of the economy, with a provocative reassessment of its future. Based on extensive new empirical works, it examines the underlying causes of the socio-economic problems. In a constructive spirit, it puts in perspective what would constitute critical elements of ideal policy solutions and the direction of the future government's role.

The first book for a popular audience on the transformative, democratising technology of 'DeFi'.

After over a decade of Bitcoin, which has now moved beyond lore and hype into an increasingly robust star in the firmament of global assets, a new and more important question has arisen. What happens beyond Bitcoin? The answer is decentralised finance - 'DeFi'.

Tech and finance experts Steven Boykey Sidley and Simon Dingle argue that DeFi - which enables all manner of financial transactions to take place directly, person to person, without the involvement of financial institutions - will redesign the cogs and wheels in the engines of trust, and make the remarkable rise of Bitcoin look quaint by comparison. It will disrupt and displace fine and respectable companies, if not entire industries.

Sidley and Dingle explain how DeFi works, introduce the organisations and individuals that comprise the new industry, and identify the likely winners and losers in the coming revolution.

From two leaders of the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement, comes a bold, contrarian guide to retiring at any age, with a reproducible formula to financial independence

A bull***t-free guide to growing your wealth, retiring early, and living life on your own terms.

Kristy Shen retired with a million dollars at the age of thirty-one, and she did it without hitting a home run on the stock market, starting the next Snapchat in her garage, or investing in hot real estate. Learn how to cut down on spending without decreasing your quality of life, build a million-dollar portfolio, fortify your investments to survive bear markets and black-swan events, and use the 4 percent rule and the Yield Shield–so you can quit the rat race forever.

Not everyone can become an entrepreneur or a real estate baron; the rest of us need Shen’s mathematically proven approach to retire decades before sixty-five.

The purpose of this book is to bring together, for the first time, a description and examples of the main methods used in microsimulation modelling used in the field of income distribution analysis. It is structured to develop and use the different types of models used in the field, with a focus on household targeted policy. The book aims to provide a greater degree of codified knowledge by providing a practical guide to developing and using microsimulation models. At present, the training of researchers and analysts that use and develop microsimulation modelling is done on a relatively ad hoc basis through occasional training programmes and lecture series, built around lecture notes. Practical Microsimulation Modelling enables a more formalised and organised approach. Each chapter addresses a separate modelling approach in a similar consistent way, describing in a practical way the key methodological skills for each approach.

“I wish I had known” is commonly heard after major economic disruptions.  Make Your Move shows you how to spot future changes well in advance so you have plenty of time to take advantage of them.  It’s packed with practical strategies and proven solutions that businesses of all sizes can immediately use to boost their bottom lines and strengthen their futures.
For over 27 years, authors Alan and Brian Beaulieu have specialized in forecasting future economic changes for businesses. Their accuracy rate of 96% has helped their clients increase their profits and build for the future — even in the most severe economic downturns.  

This is a guidebook about short term Operational Forecasting - the sort that is done to determine how much product you need to source or how many people you need to draft in to meet customer demand. It is organized under 5 headings: 1. The purpose of operational forecasting 2. Understanding demand 3. Forecasting methods 4. Understanding forecast performance 5. Managing forecast performance. The first two sections and part of section three are essential reading for anyone involved in or responsible for operational forecasting. The rest of the book is most helpful for practitioners. The aim is to produce something that provides a useful introduction to operational forecasting for both practitioners and their bosses by filling in the gap that lies between a naive common sense understanding of short term forecasting and the complex technicalities of mathematical forecasting techniques. The authors background as a self-taught business orientated forecasting nerd with limited mathematical expertise qualifies who tell it the way it is makes him well qualified to fill this gap. The book has been designed to be simple but not simplistic, using short and to the point learning points supported by clear graphics. It is technically sound but also highly practical. The hope is that it will help create a common language to help people talk intelligently about forecasting and help stop people doing dumb stuff - which is where most of the potential for improvement lies. It will also help people design good forecast processes and informed software purchasing decisions. In doing so it will help people realize that forecasting is important and that investing in people as well as software will generate enormous benefits for many businesses.

THE REALITY AND THE RHETORIC examines the gap between the external reporting of four Australian organisations and their internal management practices and systems necessary to support comprehensive and reliable disclosure. The book finds evidence of a significant rift between the external rhetoric of sustainability and the internal management processes and culture. However, the book also finds that the rhetoric can be effective in driving real change internally, as organisations seek to close the gap between the reality and rhetoric of sustainability reporting.

Economists have long sought to learn the effect of a "treatment" on some outcome of interest, just as doctors do with their patients. A central practical objective of research on treatment response is to provide decision makers with information useful in choosing treatments. Often the decision maker is a social planner who must choose treatments for a heterogeneous population--for example, a physician choosing medical treatments for diverse patients or a judge choosing sentences for convicted offenders. But research on treatment response rarely provides all the information that planners would like to have. How then should planners use the available evidence to choose treatments?

This book addresses key aspects of this broad question, exploring and partially resolving pervasive problems of identification and statistical inference that arise when studying treatment response and making treatment choices. Charles Manski addresses the treatment-choice problem directly using Abraham Wald's statistical decision theory, taking into account the ambiguity that arises from identification problems under weak but justifiable assumptions. The book unifies and further develops the influential line of research the author began in the late 1990s. It will be a valuable resource to researchers and upper-level graduate students in economics as well as other social sciences, statistics, epidemiology and related areas of public health, and operations research.

Ever since the European currency crises of 1992-93, the Mexican crisis of 1994-95, and especially the Asian/global crisis of 1997-98, there has been heightened interest in early warning signals of financial crises. This pathbreaking study presents a comprehensive battery of empirical tests on the performance of alternative early warning indicators for emerging-market economies that should prove useful in the construction of a more effective global warning system.

Not only are the authors able to draw conclusions about which specific indicators have sent the most reliable early warning signals of currency and banking crises in emerging economies, they also test the out-of-sample performance of the model during the Asian crisis and find that it does a good job of identifying the most vulnerable economies. In addition, they show how the early warning system can be used to construct a "composite" crisis indicator to weigh the importance of alternative channels of cross-country "contagion" of crises and to generate information on the recovery path from crises.

This timely study comes on the eve of impending changes at the International Monetary Fund as that institution reexamines how it reacts to financial crises. Moreover, the study provides" ...a wealth of valuable elements for anyone investigating and forecasting adverse developments in emerging markets as well as industrial countries, " according to Ewoud Schuitemaker, Vice President of the Economics Department at ABN AMRO Bank, which is developing a Macroeconomic Risk System of its own to identify risks of macroeconomic downturn on a country basis for some 75 countries.

Why have the states of Europe agreed to create an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and a single European currency? What will decide the fate of this bold project? This book explains why monetary integration has deepened in Europe from the Bretton Woods era to the present day. McNamara argues that the development of a neoliberal economic policy consensus among European leaders in the years after the first oil crisis was crucial to stability in the European Monetary System and progress towards EMU. She identifies two factors, rising capital mobility and changing ideas about the government's proper role in monetary policymaking, as critical to the neoliberal consensus but warns that unresolved social tensions in this consensus may provoke a political backlash against EMU and its neoliberal reforms.McNamara's findings are relevant not only to European monetary integration, but to more general questions about the effects of international capital flows on states. Although this book delineates a range of constraints created by economic interdependence, McNamara rejects the notion that international market forces simply dictate government policy choice. She demonstrates that the process of neoliberal policy change is a historically dependent one, shaped by policymakers' shared beliefs and interpretations of their experiences in the global economy.