Some aspects of housing economics with reference to the coloured population of South Africa

Abstract

One of the outstanding properties of economic life is the often observed unevenness of economic performance with respect to time and place. The study of economic history, or any systematic reconstruction of economic events, shows that although economic growth has been unmistakable in the long run, it has also been characteristically uneven over shorter periods of time. Perhaps the most obvious manifestation of such economic variability over time, certainly in market-oriented economies, has been the business (or trade) cycle, i.e., the recurring cumulative rise and fall in economic activity, the causes of which have been of both internal and external origin. Since the Second World War, the international community has devoted much attention to the problems of economically less developed countries and societies. After more than three decades of deliberate development efforts, less developed societies have, on the whole, experienced some significant economic progress. Yet such progress has tended to be selective, and there remain today vast discrepancies between the economic status and performance of different parts of the world, as well as between different regions within the same country. In general, the approach adopted in the study of the business cycle and economic development has tended to be macro-economic in nature, admittedly involving some considerable disaggregation of empirical data. Hm, ever since, the study of regional economics has increasingly evolved along micro-economic lines, as it involves the reaction of supposedly rational individuals (investors, workers) to various economic stimuli. This shift in methodology, that is, the incorporation of an explicit micro-economic dimension in the analysis of road economic issues, has recently also become noticeable in the field of development economics. Briefly put , the essence of the microeconomic "approach" is that individual decision-takers maximise some (rational) objective, or set of objectives, within a number of given constraints. Economic development, therefore, involves not only aggregates such as total resource endowment, but also the constraints within which the available resources are utilised. Perhaps the main point to be made here is that disappointing economic performance is not necessarily always the outcome of insufficient resources, but also of restrictions and imperfections that ~ may govern the actions of individual decision-makers.