Papers by Malcolm Keswell
This paper utilises techniques in experimental economics to investigate the impact of racial iden... more This paper utilises techniques in experimental economics to investigate the impact of racial identity on the provision of public goods. A large sample of Black and White undergraduate University students were recruited to participate in public goods games, where the racial composition of the groups was varied to include All White groups, All Black groups and mixed race groups (comprising Black and White students). The results show that contrary to predictions from social identity theory, racial homogeneity in a group does not uniformly predict higher contributions to the public pool. Rather, it would appear that observable racial identity may convey information about extensive heterogeneity as opposed to homogeneity, especially where race is highly correlated with diversity in other dimensions, such as ethnolinguistic diversity. In accordance with the established macroeconometric literature on the provision of public goods, the results presented in this study show that contributions...
Has the end of Apartheid made South African labour markets meritocratic? This paper presents an a... more Has the end of Apartheid made South African labour markets meritocratic? This paper presents an analytical framework with testable hypotheses concerning equal opportunity. Using this framework and nationally representative panel data, it is demonstrated that while opportunities have been significantly equalized, as evi- denced by an overall decline in the white-black wage dierential, a new form of racial inequality has
This paper investigates the income eects
... and Decentralized Governance in LDCs. Tim Brophy, Susan Godlonton, Simon Halliday, Ronelle Og... more ... and Decentralized Governance in LDCs. Tim Brophy, Susan Godlonton, Simon Halliday, Ronelle Ogle, Victor Orozco, and Heather Warren provided excellent research assistance. Page 3. 1 Introduction A rich, though largely ...
Journal of Development Economics, 2013
Despite a theoretical literature that promises that land transfers will have large impacts on the... more Despite a theoretical literature that promises that land transfers will have large impacts on the well-being of poor households, well-identified empirical evidence on the efficacy of land redistribution is scarce. In an effort to fill this gap, this paper examines South Africa's Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) program. We exploit features of LRAD program implementation to extract exogenous variation in whether, and for how long, applicant households enjoyed land transfers. Binary treatment estimates, which compare treated with untreated households, show that beneficiary households on average experienced a 25% increase in per-capita consumption. Our preferred continuous treatment estimates, which analyze only the subset of treated households, identify the impact time path of land transfers on consumption. These estimates show that living standards initially drop and then, after 3-4 years, rise to 150% of their pre-transfer level. These results are statistically significant and robust to a statistically more conservative identification strategy. provided excellent research assistance. 2 Foundations for this perspective are found in static models such as , , , and . Subsequent theory has shown that overall economic performance can remain sensitive to asset inequality even in the context of dynamic models in which agents have time (and optimal savings plans) as another degree of freedom to work around missing contracts and financial markets.
South African Journal of Economics, 2005
We estimate the impact on consumption of South Africa's Land Redistribution for Agricultural Deve... more We estimate the impact on consumption of South Africa's Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) program, which provides capital and other forms of assistance to beneficiaries to enable market-assisted transfers of property rights from large landowners to the rural poor. Counterfactual outcomes are derived by screening out applicants with low probability of admission into the program, and then non-parametrically matching beneficiaries to applicants that are still in the pipeline to receive assistance. We find that land transfers associated with LRAD lead to very strong benefits for program participants. Accounting for heterogeneity in the length of exposure to the program, we estimate treatment effects of the program that peak at approximately 275 Rand per capita monthly consumption. Assuming a discount rate of 5%, this estimate translates to a discounted gain in monthly per capita consumption of about 50% after three years of exposure to the program.
S Afr J Econ, 2005
... Malcolm Keswell is Senior Lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town ... more ... Malcolm Keswell is Senior Lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town and Laura Poswell is a researcher in the Development Policy Research Unit at the University of Cape Town. The authors would ...
ABSTRACT While land reforms have long been motivated as a potential policy lever of rural growth ... more ABSTRACT While land reforms have long been motivated as a potential policy lever of rural growth and development, there is remarkably little evidence of the direct impacts of such reforms. In an effort to fill this lacunae, this paper examines South Africa's Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) program. We show that the implementation of this pro-gram operates as a natural experiment in which self-selected and administratively-filtered LRAD applicants receive land transfers at random points in time. This random exit from the application pipeline creates creates exogenous variation in treatment assignment as well as treatment duration. Exploiting both sources of exogenous variation, we estimate average and long-run treatment effects that imply a discounted gain in monthly per capita consumption of about 50% after three years of exposure to the program.
This paper investigates the income eects
South African Journal of Economics, 2005
... Malcolm Keswell is Senior Lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town ... more ... Malcolm Keswell is Senior Lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town and Laura Poswell is a researcher in the Development Policy Research Unit at the University of Cape Town. The authors would ...
The South African Journal of Economics, 2005
This paper examines the impact of health status on poverty status, accounting for the endogeneity... more This paper examines the impact of health status on poverty status, accounting for the endogeneity of health status. Using exogenous measures of health status from the South African Integrated Health Survey, we instrument for health status while allowing for covariation among the unobservables influencing both health and household poverty status. Health status, as captured by the body mass index, is
Review of Income and Wealth, 2013
Abstract We investigate the implications of the Markovian assumption for predicting the long run ... more Abstract We investigate the implications of the Markovian assumption for predicting the long run distribution of occupations. We postulate that the dynamical structure of the underlying transition process governing educational attainment and occupational choice, in the case ...
Labour Economics, 2010
Social networks are increasingly being recognized as having an important influence on labour mark... more Social networks are increasingly being recognized as having an important influence on labour market outcomes, since they facilitate the exchange of job related information. Access to information about job opportunities as well as perceptions about the buoyancy of the labour market depend critically on the social structures and the social networks to which labour market participants belong. In this paper, we examine the impact of information externalities generated through network membership on labour market status. Using Census data from South Africa, a country characterized by high levels of unemployment and worker discouragement, we adopt an econometric approach that aims to minimise the problems of omitted variable bias that have plagued many previous studies of the impact of social networks. Our results suggest that social networks may enhance employment probabilities by an additional 3 to 12%, and that failure to adequately control for omitted variables would lead to substantial over-estimates of the network co-efficient. In contrast, the impact of social networks on reducing worker discouragement is much smaller, at between 1-2%.
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Papers by Malcolm Keswell