The effect of financial capital on inner-city street trading

Abstract

This study extends and tests conceptions offered by the nutrition model of efficiency wage theory into the informal street-trading context. Three street-trader samples from 2008, 2009 and 2010 were drawn from the Johannesburg city centre. Statistical parametric and non-parametric analysis was used for a longitudinal investigation of certain associations of initial investment, or the money investments of street traders at start-up. Partial correlation analysis was used for further analysis of the 2010 sample. Findings suggest that policymaker interventions might best target traders earning under a threshold of earnings of about R230 per day. More specifically, training might offer such traders insight into how to change their product offerings to products associated with higher returns. Further, any interventions that might raise street-trader earnings above this threshold might enable such traders to obtain a positive return on capital invested in the sector.

Investigating the Effect of E-Commerce, Capital and Labour on the Income of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises in Banda Aceh City, Indonesia

“…The capital referred to in this study is the overall capital, namely owned and borrowed capital. According to Callaghan (2012), capital directly affects income, which means that any capital will increase the income of traders. Every business certainly needs capital to carry out its daily business activities.…”

A test of satisfaction, experience and hours of work as mediators of the relationship between education and informal earnings

“…On the one hand, the predictions of human capital (Becker, 1964) imply that the informal sector should, on the whole, be a 'developmental space' where learning will transmit to productivity improvements over time, enabling entrepreneurial performance 'up' and perhaps 'out' of the sector (De Soto, 1989). On the other hand, 'dysfunctionality theory' (Callaghan, 2011) predicts that the sector is fundamentally dysfunctional, and that financial capital operates in a dysfunctional way in the sector and that human capital relationships in this sector might also reflect this dysfunctionality. In other words, the survivalist component of the sector might not reflect functional relationships as in other sectors where financial capital and human capital obtain typical returns to their investment.…”