Browsing by Author "Simatele, M."

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    Consumer payment choices, costs, and risks: Evidence from Zimbabwe.
    (2021) Simatele, M.; Mbedzi, E.
    Very little is known about payment choices in the African context and in developing countries in general. Their unique infrastructures and economic nuances suggest that both the availability of instruments and supporting structures in the payment system are different from the general perception. This exploratory study investigates the payment choices in Zimbabwe, a country that claims the existence of a near cashless society. Through a descriptive and logit analysis based on survey data, we find that a strong preference for cash, coupled with cash shortages and inadequate infrastructure for electronic payments, has resulted in a multitiered pricing system, with significant premiums for digital payments. This perverse effect counters the heavily lauded benefits of mobile payments in developing countries. We argue that the demand-side bias in government policies will not effectively counter persistent currency failures and the resultant inflation, both of which havea strong influence on payment choices. We recommend that the government should consider polices that will reduce merchant adoption costs to encourage widespread use of digital payment instruments, such as debit cards. Subjects: Microeconomics; Development Economics; Finance
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    Lending Technologies, Firm Characteristics and Small Business Efficiency in South Africa
    (Economies, 2022-11-18) Mbedzi, E.; Simatele, M.
    Internal factors of Small, Micro and Medium Enterprises (SMMEs) determine their technical efficiency, while external funding characteristics improve the quality of internal factors. Since the type of lending institutions and lending technologies primarily influence the lending decisions of financial institutions, firms’ technical efficiency may be linked to such external factors. Literature on determinants of the technical efficiency of SMMEs mainly focuses on internal factors excluding the financial access paradigm which stifles the effectiveness of internal factors on technical efficiency. Based on a sample of 321 randomly selected SMMEs from Eastern Cape Province in South Africa, the study measures technical efficiency using Data Enveloping Analysis and differentiates technical efficiency among firms using Post Hoc Test Pairwise Comparisons derived from factorial ANOVA. Both main and interaction effects were captured in the analysis. Our results, which pinpoint four main findings, show technical efficiency paths followed by firms vary significantly as a result of both internal and external factors. In particular, the effects of other factors are amplified by race. As a consequence, three main contributions emerge from the study.