IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ctw/wpaper/11144.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Economists versus the Street: Comparative Viewpoints on Barriers to Self-employment in Khayelitsha, South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Cichello
  • Liberty Mncube
  • Morne Oosthuizen
  • Laura Poswell

    (Haverford College)

Abstract

What prevents the unemployed in Khayelitsha, South Africa from trying self-employment? Perceptions of a small group of academic economists are presented and compared to the perceptions of unemployed Khayelitsha residents themselves. The largest differences in view-points are that a) academics believe that the general business skills of residents hold the unemployed back substantially while residents perceive it as a minor issue; and b) compared to academics, residents of Khayelitsha give much more weight to jealousy within the community and to the continual vulnerability to business failure as barriers to trying self-employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Cichello & Liberty Mncube & Morne Oosthuizen & Laura Poswell, 2011. "Economists versus the Street: Comparative Viewpoints on Barriers to Self-employment in Khayelitsha, South Africa," Working Papers 11144, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    • Handle: RePEc:ctw:wpaper:11144
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7292
    File Function: First version, 2011
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Freeman, Richard B., 2010. "Labor Regulations, Unions, and Social Protection in Developing Countries," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4657-4702, Elsevier.
    2. Suresh de Mel & David McKenzie & Christopher Woodruff, 2009. "Returns to Capital in Microenterprises: Evidence from a Field Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 423-423.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Catherine Wolfram & Orie Shelef & Paul Gertler, 2012. "How Will Energy Demand Develop in the Developing World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(1), pages 119-138, Winter.
    2. González-Uribe, Juanita & Reyes, Santiago, 2021. "Identifying and boosting “Gazelles”: Evidence from business accelerators," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(1), pages 260-287.
    3. Pascaline Dupas & Sarah Green & Anthony Keats & Jonathan Robinson, 2014. "Challenges in Banking the Rural Poor: Evidence from Kenya's Western Province," NBER Chapters, in: African Successes, Volume III: Modernization and Development, pages 63-101, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Stoeffler, Quentin & Mills, Bradford, 2014. "Households’ investments in durable and productive assets in Niger: quasi-experimental evidences from a cash transfer project," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 170212, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    5. Renate Strobl & Conny Wunsch, 2021. "Risky choices and solidarity: disentangling different behavioural channels," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(4), pages 1185-1214, December.
    6. Kjetil Bjorvatn & Alexander W. Cappelen & Linda Helgesson Sekei & Erik Ø. Sørensen & Bertil Tungodden, 2020. "Teaching Through Television: Experimental Evidence on Entrepreneurship Education in Tanzania," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(6), pages 2308-2325, June.
    7. Suresh de Mel & David McKenzie & Christopher Woodruff, 2019. "Labor Drops: Experimental Evidence on the Return to Additional Labor in Microenterprises," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 202-235, January.
    8. Miriam Bruhn & Dean Karlan & Antoinette Schoar, 2018. "The Impact of Consulting Services on Small and Medium Enterprises: Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Mexico," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(2), pages 635-687.
    9. Antonia Grohmann & Lukas Menkhoff & Helke Seitz, 2022. "The Effect of Personalized Feedback on Small Enterprises’ Finances in Uganda," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(3), pages 1197-1227.
    10. Dehejia, Rajeev & Montgomery, Heather & Morduch, Jonathan, 2012. "Do interest rates matter? Credit demand in the Dhaka slums," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 437-449.
    11. Vittorio Bassi & Raffaela Muoio & Tommaso Porzio & Ritwika Sen & Esau Tugume, 2022. "Achieving Scale Collectively," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(6), pages 2937-2978, November.
    12. Potrafke, Niklas, 2013. "Globalization and labor market institutions: International empirical evidence," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 829-842.
    13. Durevall, Dick. & Mussa, Richard., 2010. "Employment diagnostic analysis : Malawi," ILO Working Papers 994614443402676, International Labour Organization.
    14. Lori Beaman & Dean Karlan & Bram Thuysbaert & Christopher Udry, 2014. "Self-Selection into Credit Markets: Evidence from Agriculture in Mali," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 14/884, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    15. Brian Quistorff & Gentry Johnson, 2020. "Machine Learning for Experimental Design: Methods for Improved Blocking," Papers 2010.15966, arXiv.org.
    16. Daniel Bjorkegren & Joshua Blumenstock & Omowunmi Folajimi-Senjobi & Jacqueline Mauro & Suraj R. Nair, 2022. "Instant Loans Can Lift Subjective Well-Being: A Randomized Evaluation of Digital Credit in Nigeria," Papers 2202.13540, arXiv.org.
    17. Grimm, Michael & Hartwig, Renate & Lay, Jann, 2017. "Does forced solidarity hamper investment in small and micro enterprises?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(4), pages 827-846.
    18. Asli Demirgüç-Kunt & Ross Levine, 2009. "Finance and Inequality: Theory and Evidence," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 287-318, November.
    19. Axel Demenet, 2016. "Does Managerial Capital also Matter Among Micro and Small Firms in Developing Countries?," Working Papers DT/2016/12, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
    20. Cristina Fernández & Juan Benavides, 2020. "Las plataformas digitales, la productividad y el empleo en Colombia," Informes de Investigación 18276, Fedesarrollo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    self employment; informal economy; unemployment; perceptions; South Africa; crime; risk;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A1 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ctw:wpaper:11144. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Waseema Petersen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dpuctza.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.