Prof Bill Mitchell from the University of New Castle in Calaghan, Australia visited the Department of Economics on Friday, Sept 5, 2008.  During his visit he met with a number of lecturers and researchers in the department to discuss current research interests and potential collaboration between his Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE) and our department.  He is very interested in improving public works programmes, and we had the opportunity to discuss minimum wages, efficiency wages and the potential to create a pool of employed and employable people, to help limit some of the failures that exist in the labour market in South Africa.

 

Other matters discussed included “Differences between multilevel analysis and statistical matching when dealing with survey data” and “How to use Geographic Information System (GIS) to prepare survey data for multilevel regression analysis and conduct poverty mapping.”

 

Prof Mitchell extended an open invitation to members of Economics to visit CofFEE to receive training in economic and social policy modelling.