The debate about the consequences of economic growth on poverty and welfare was recently rekindled in South Africa by announcements that the government would be targeting a sustainable growth rate of 6 percent per annum under the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa...

This paper focuses on the effects that a higher tariff on agriculture and food imports could have on poverty and the macroeconomy using a top down computable general equilibrium microsimulation model. This question is of broader relevance to developing countries that may be contemplating the use...

Zimbabwe has recently gone through a widely criticised land reform process. The country has suffered immensely as a result of this badly orchestrated reform process. Yet land reform can potentially increase average incomes, improve income distribution and as a consequence reduce poverty. This...

The paper uses a microsimulation computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to study the impact on poverty of a complete removal of tariffs in Zimbabwe. The model incorporates 14,006 households derived from the 1995 Poverty Assessment Study Survey. This paper's novelty is that it is one among a...

An energy-focused macro-micro approach is used to assess the poverty implications of government policy response to increases in international oil prices in South Africa. The first scenario assumes that increases in international oil prices are passed on to end users with no changes in government...

Zimbabwe has recently gone through a widely criticised land reform process. The country has suffered immensely as a result of this badly orchestrated reform process. Yet land reform can potentially increase average incomes, improve income distribution and as a consequence reduce poverty. This...

This paper reviews applications of computable general equilibrium models to trade liberalisation in South Africa. It focuses on economic structure, data, macroeconomic closure and results of the models. The models project that trade liberalisation has had small positive impacts on growth....

An energy-focused integrated CGE microsimulation approach is used to assess the implications of differential government policy responses in South Africa, to increases in international oil prices. The first scenario assumes that increases in world oil and petroleum products are passed through to...

We examine the economy-wide impact of the child support grant (CSG) on the South African economy using a bottom-up/top-down approach. This allows us to estimate the potential effects on households’ welfare and on the economy following a change in the CSG. Three simulations are presented, in...