The paper reports on the use of the contingent valuation method to study the determinants of Swazi households' willingness to pay (WTP) for an improvement in their water quantity and quality. A sample of 374 households was surveyed and a Tobit model was applied to explain household preferences...

The economy of Zimbabwe has been in shambles since 1991. Output has declined in most of the production sectors, leading to many job losses. Current debates on the problems facing the economy have focused on poor government's incentives and excessive interventions as major constraints of economic...

There is an important debate going on in South Africa on whether to apply safeguard trade barriers to protect textiles. This presents an interesting case of how a country might use safeguard trade barriers in order to better achieve a domestic policy objective. Much of the current discourse on...

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...

South Africa is trapped in a cycle of modest growth, unacceptable poverty levels and record unemployment. This has led to renewed interest on the relationship between macro (growth) and micro (poverty and distribution) issues. This paper uses a macro--micro tool that couples a computable general...

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...

This case study examines the impacts on poverty and equality of the extended trade liberalisation strategy that South Africa has been following since 1994. The paper features an integrated CGE microsimulation model with explicit incorporation of non-market activities and gender decomposition....