Search results

A healthcare system in any country is rarely the product of one logical policy-making experience, but rather a manifestation of many years of historical development. The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics, components, and variables of South Africa’s healthcare system in the context of global patterns. It leverages a dynamic period in South Africa since 1994, and applies a comparative health systems analysis to explain where the country’s healthcare system is, and where it is potentially going.

This paper reviews literature related to South Africa’s healthcare system, outlines its historical development, and discusses three fundamental challenges experienced in the country. This paper also reviews the literature on healthcare system typologies and identifies three framework models that have been used to categorise national healthcare systems since the 1970s. This paper then discusses the categorisation of South Africa’s healthcare system in these models, in comparison to Canada and the USA.

This paper finds that the framework models are useful tools for comparative analysis of healthcare systems. However, any use of such typologies should be done with the awareness that national healthcare systems are not isolated entities because they function within a larger context. They are not static, since they are constantly evolving with many nuances, even with very similar healthcare system categorisations.

This paper charts the trajectory of change in the South African healthcare system, and demonstrates that the change process must keep internal conditions in mind if the outcome is to be successful. Imitating policies of countries with well-functioning systems, without regard to local realities, may not work, as the government attempts to usher in changes within a short span of time.

Proceeding from the van Rensburg and Priilaid (“An econometric model for identifying value in South African red wine”, International Journal of Wine Marketing, Vol. 16 No. 1, 2004, pp. 37‐53) econometric valuation methodology mapping out the relationship between wine price and value, this paper seeks to explore the relationship between wine value and value‐for‐money.

A series of regression models are developed from a database of some 537 South African red wines available during the 2004 period. Five cultivars are included here: cabernet, merlot pinotage, pinot noir, and shiraz.

This research finds that successive increments in wine quality ratings are not equally priced. As a result, the relationship between value and price can be better modelled when increments in wine quality (as measured in stars) are proxied by dummy variables.

Allowing for the possibility of the non‐linear hedonic pricing of wine avoids the bias of value‐for‐money misleadingly being identified excessively at the bottom end of the quality spectrum and neglected at the top end.

This study aims to investigate the impact of the macroeconomic environment on South African industrial sector returns.

Using standardized coefficients derived from time-series factor models, the authors quantify the impact of macroeconomic influences on industrial sector returns. The authors analyze the structure of the resultant residual correlation matrices to establish the level of factor omission and apply a factor analytic augmentation to arrive at a specification that is free of omitted common factors.

The authors find that global influences are the most important drivers of returns and that industrial sectors are highly integrated with the global economy. The authors show that specifications that comprise only macroeconomic factors and proxies for omitted factors in the form of residual market factors are likely to be underspecified. This study demonstrates that a factor analytic augmentation is an effective approach to ensuring an adequately specified model.

The findings have a number of implications that are of interest to investors, econometricians and researchers. While the study focusses on a single market, the South African stock market, as represented by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), it is a highly developed and globally integrated market. In terms of market capitalization, it exceeds the Madrid Stock Exchange, the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the BM&F Bovespa. Yet, a limited number of studies investigate the macroeconomic drivers of the South African stock market.

Investors should be aware that while the South African domestic environment, especially political risk, has an impact on returns, global influences are the greatest determinants of returns. No industrial sectors are insulated from global influences and this limits the potential for diversification. This study suggests an alternative set of macroeconomic factors that may be used in further analysis and asset pricing studies. From an econometric perspective, this study demonstrates the usefulness of a factor analytic augmentation as a solution to factor omission in models that use macroeconomic factors to proxy for systematic influences that describe asset prices.

The contribution lies in providing insight into a large and well-developed yet understudied financial market, the South African stock market. This study considers a much broader set of macroeconomic factors than prior studies. A methodological contribution is made by estimating and interpreting standardized coefficients to discriminate between the impact of domestically and internationally driven factors. This study shows that should coefficients not be standardized, inferences relating to the relative importance of factors will differ. Finally, the authors unify an approach of using pre-specified factors with a factor analytic approach to address factor omission and to ensure a valid and readily interpretable specification.

The aim of this study is to examine the impact of technical and fundamental (referred to as firm-specific) factors on the cross-sectional variation in equity returns on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE).

To reach the objective, the study follows an empirical research approach. Cross-sectional regression analyses, factor-portfolio analyses and multifactor analyses are performed using 50 firm-specific factors for listed shares over three sample periods during 1994 to 2011.

The results suggest that a strong value and momentum effect is present and robust on the JSE, while a size effect is present but varies over time. Multifactor analyses show that value and momentum factors are collectively significant in explaining the cross-section of returns. The results imply that the JSE is either not an efficient market or that current market risk models are incorrectly specified.

The findings of the study offers practical application possibilities to investment analysts and portfolio managers.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to use such a comprehensive data set for the specific analyses on the JSE over such a long period. All previously identified statistical biases are addressed in this study. Different approaches are applied to compare results and test for robustness for the first time.

This paper aims to understand how a fast moving luxury good like whisky is typically positioned within South Africa’s discounted retail environment and how this positioning could be improved. So doing this paper introduces an econometric valuation model to establish the relative efficacy of contending extrinsic cues in the explanation of whisky prices.

An ordinary least squares regression model is developed from a data set of 122 whiskies drawn from the 2014 festive-season catalogues of two large South African discount retailers. In estimating the whisky pricing function, the hedonic contribution of the following input variables is estimated: age in respect of blended whiskies and single premium malts, in-store supply, claims of retail exclusivity, branding, country-of-origin and packaging formats.

Age effects as they relate to single malts, and mass produced grain whiskies offer the greatest explanation of price, while scarcity effects are observed, along with claims of retail exclusivity which are found to reduce product value significantly. Country-of-origin and packaging however have low to negligible effects.

To producers and marketers of whisky, these findings offer insight as to which extrinsic factors could be better amplified, modified or excised if the product is to be optimally positioned. Implications are explored.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the applicability of data envelopment analysis (DEA) as a basis of value portfolio selection criterion.

The portfolios are composed of the comprehensive sample of Finnish non‐financial stocks based on their DEA scale efficiency scores. The performance of portfolios is evaluated on the basis of average return and several risk‐adjusted performance metrics. Moreover, the impact of holding period length on the results is examined by varying the portfolio reformation frequency from one to five years at annual frequency.

The results show that the DEA scale efficiency scores add value to portfolio selection. Though outperformance of the DEA value portfolios in contrast to both comparable glamour portfolio and the stock market average is most evident for shorter (i.e. annual and biannual) holding periods, the absolute performance of the DEA value portfolio can be enhanced by using longer reformation intervals.

The sample of stocks is not large in spite of its comprehensiveness from the local stock market aspect. Future studies can apply DEA approach to other stock markets to examine whether the results are parallel to this study.

The DEA is particularly useful as a multicriteria methodology in cases in which the number of stocks in the sample is large.

This paper is the first attempt to form value portfolios using DEA models. The proposed methodology provides an interesting alternative to detect undervalued stocks by capturing several dimensions of relative value simultaneously. It provides also useful implications in portfolio management.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges of transforming South Africa’s health sector through the country’s eHealth Strategy and particularly one of its key components, the implementation of an integrated Electronic Document and Records Management System (EDRMS).

The study conducted an extensive review of literature and used it as a basis to analyse the challenges as well as opportunities in South Africa’s transformation path within its health sector based on the nation’s eHealth Strategy.

South Africa’s health sector faces three main transformation challenges: inequity, legacy of fragmentation and a service delivery structure biased towards curative rather than preventive services. Health information systems provide a solid platform for improving efficiency but, within South Africa, these systems have been highly heterogeneous. A recent study showed the country had more than 40 individual health information systems scattered in all provinces, with over 50 per cent not adhering to any national or international standards and more than 25 per cent being stand-alone applications that shared information neither locally nor externally. The eHealth Strategy offers a robust platform to start addressing the legacy of fragmentation and lack of interoperability. However, it also raises a few other concerns, including the use of different terminology such as Electronic Medical Record (EMR) interchangeable with Electronic Health Record (EHR), or EDRMS parallel with Electronic Content Management (ECM). In addition, there is the opportunity to explore the use of the maturity model concept in the EDRMS implementation experiences within South Africa.

This paper demonstrated the complex nature of the legacy of fragmentation in South Africa’s health information systems and explored three aspects relating to terminology as well as maturity models that should be considered in the country’s future eHealth Strategy.

This article develops an econometric valuation methodology that is applied to identifying value in South African red wines. It is found that quality, as simultaneously measured by Wine magazine and Platter star ratings, is the dominant factor in explaining the cross‐section of prices. However, together with a varietal dummy these factors are only able to explain about 40% of the variation in wine prices. This implies that there is considerable value that may be gleaned through informed bargain seeking using this tool. Indeed, at certain levels of value there is more than a 50% differential in price.

What impact do sports sponsorship announcements have on the share price returns of sponsoring firms? This research examines the impact of new, renewal and termination sponsorship announcements on returns, employing event study methodology to analyse 118 announcements made by 19 firms over more than 11 years. The mixed findings across all three announcement types indicate the lack of consideration given to sponsorship investment by investors. The findings suggest that, although firms may position their sponsorships so that they contribute towards a competitive advantage, announcements of sports sponsorships are not always taken into account by the market.

Through the use of both sight and blind‐based quality metrics, the purpose of this paper is to ascertain the extent to which the sighted appreciation of a wine's intrinsic merit is confounded by extrinsic cues such as price and region of origin.

Using a database of sighted and blind tastings of three red South African wines (Cabernet, Merlot and Shiraz) over the period 1993‐2001, a series of multiple linear regression models is developed to explain sighted quality ratings.

The meta‐model, with an adjusted R² of 31 per cent, indicates three statistically significant explicatory factors, namely price, region, and intrinsic quality. The price cue alone explains 84 per cent of sighted quality assessments; the combined effect of both the region and price cue explains 95 per cent. This finding suggests that when quality is measured from a sighted perspective, area becomes a significant explicator, along with price. It is only once the cues of region and price have been factored into the meta‐model that intrinsic merit becomes relevant, and here, only to an extremely limited extent (5 per cent). The lack of correspondence between sighted and blind tasting scores, suggests that for sighted judgements – extrinsic cues appear to be masking the wine's intrinsic merit.

For the first time, blind and sighted tasting results are collated into one database and statistically interrogated. The findings show how we are deleteriously distracted by the apparent efficacy of extrinsic cues.