Despite continuous reforms and increased spending in the agricultural sector, Africa remains a net food importer. Previous research has argued that agricultural productivity is lower in Africa than in all other parts of the world due to challenging ecological conditions – soil fertility...

This study used the by-production model specification to separate emission-generating technologies from ‘desirable outputs’ technology. It then employed the dynamic efficiency model, following the Dynamic Directional Input Distance Function specifications to compute the deterministic,...

This paper assesses the effect of extreme weather variability in predicting the impact on two agricultural crop-related variables: yield and production. We use a Markov-Switching time-varying copula to describe the joint dependence structure between extreme weather variability and crops in East...

Designing a desirable block tariff structure for residential water use has been a challenging task for regulated utilities. In this study, we investigated whether the existing increasing block tariff design addresses the issue of affordability, especially for lower-income groups. Using the South...

An increasing number of countries around the world have linked taxes with passenger vehicle carbon dioxide (CO2) emission rates. Policymakers use vehicle and fuel taxes to target and reduce transportation greenhouse gas emissions. In 2010, the South African government joined this group, linking...

Livestock production and consumption of meat are significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems and global warming. This paper investigates the role of marine reserves in shaping meat consumption pattern across member countries of the South East Atlantic Fisheries...

This paper investigates whether the effects of weather variability in temperature and precipitation on agricultural output are short- or long-run. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, the paper attempts to establish whether temperature or precipitation variability affects...

Policymakers have little experience regarding designing the right levels of pricing for plastic bags. The ineffectiveness of charging for bags, in countries such as South Africa, makes it imperative that we map the demand curve. Getting the charge "right" depends on the size of the externality....

The South African wine industry has recently launched the world's first 'no sulphite added' wine made from indigenous Rooibos & Honeybush toasted wood chips. This wood chip contains antioxidant properties known to protect wine from oxidation. On the other hand, SO2 as a preservative, is often...

A new methodology, Tracking Under-Reported Financial Flows (TUFF), allows us to systematically gather open-source information - e.g. news reports, case studies, project inventories from embassy websites, and grant and loan data published by recipient governments - about Chinese development...