Prof Ronney Ncwadi

Faculty of Business & Economic Sciences
Lecture title: THE ENTREPRENEUR AS A DISEQUILIBRATING FACTOR IN ECONOMIC PROCESSES

Date: 23 October 2018

Recent evidence of entrepreneurship's significant contribution to economic growth and development, challenges the dominance of general equilibrium theory in microeconomics. The assumptions of the neoclassical economic model which underlies general equilibrium theory has long time been criticised; yet its consideration in policy formulation has not been dismissed despite the fact that general equilibrium theory does not incorporate entrepreneurship.
 


Prof Jonathan Makuwira

Faculty of Business & Economic Sciences
Lecture title: Water Under Troubled Bridge: The (Ir)Relevance of Development Studies Pedagogies in African Universities 

Date: 18 August 2016

The relevance of universities as educational institutions in the modern era has, over the past decade, come under intense scrutiny for various reasons. In the development studies field, most of its content has been defined by the disjuncture between the emphasis on Western epistemology at the expense of local contexts; imported theoretical viewpoints at the expense of indigenous viewpoints.


Prof Janet Cherry

Faculty of Business & Economic Sciences
Lecture title: Social Structure and Human Agency in the Age of Climate Change

Date: 30 May 2016 

The lecture deals with the relationship between social structure and human agency. This is not a new problem for social scientists, and the motive for Prof Cherry's intellectual enquiry over the past thirty-five years has not changed; it is how to respond to the injustices of our society, with a profound belief that a different social order is possible.


Prof Pierre Le Roux

Faculty of Business & Economic Sciences
Lecture title: Macroeconomic theory after the great recession of 2008: the need for a market process approach

Date: 6 May 2015

This paper sets out to reflect that contemporary schools of thought are unable to explain the great recession of 2008. The Great Recession 2007-2009 and the long, slow recovery from it serve as reminders of the difficulty of explaining business cycles.  Macroeconomists of all varieties have been humbled by these events and by our inability to predict or to design policies that moderate the effects


Prof Matthew Ocran

Faculty of Business & Economic Sciences
Lecture title: Resource nationalism: a threat or a panacea to economic development

Date: 15 September 2014

I seek to achieve three objectives in my lecture: first I attempt an outline of the evolution of economic thought regarding progress from the medieval period to contemporary times. Following the discussion of the mainstream theories of economic growth I then review the associated empirical literature. I also consider a brief case study on two successful countries before addressing the question whether resource nationalism matter in determining economic development. Lastly, I provide some policy recommendations for economic development in South Africa and other resource rich countries on the continent.