The main instrument within the broader framework of tobacco control in South Africa has been the more aggressive use of tobacco taxes which since 1999/2000 have increased from 0.12 cents per cigarette to 0.38c in 2009/10. The primary goal of these policies is to reduce cigarette consumption and...

The paper seeks to determine whether the observation from a constitutional law and public administration perspective, namely that a distinct centralist tendency has become evident in South Africa in recent years, is borne out by fiscal analysis as well. An overview of key legislative, policy and...

In the late 1990s the South African Department of Education implemented two policies that were meant to reduce the large number of over-age learners in the school system: schools were no longer allowed to accept students who were more than two years older than the correct grade-age and students...

Analysts such as Hanushek and Woessman have brought to the fore the deceptiveness of education enrolments, or years of schooling, in growth regressions and the need to consider educational quality. In this paper, a nonlinear programming solution is proposed as a way of normalising to a single...

Although racial segregation has been abolished for 18 years now, schools which served predominantly White students under apartheid remain functional, while those which served Black students remain dysfunctional and unable to impart the necessary numeracy and literacy skills students should be...

This paper analyses trends in hours worked from South African household survey data for the period 1997 – 2011. The purpose of the paper is fourfold. First, the paper provides an overview on the trends in hours worked of formal sector employees, by various demographic and work characteristics....

Since 1960 South Africa has seen a steep fall in fertility levels and currently the total fertility rate is the lowest on the African continent. Given the high prevailing levels of fertility in African countries, a better understanding of the factors behind the fertility transition can be...

An extraordinary consensus on the goals and conduct of monetary has been undermined by the international financial crisis and the faltering recovery in many economies. There is an evident need to pay closer attention to developments of asset markets and in the financial sector, which has opened...

Have recent expansions of access to primary schooling in African countries led to deterioration in the quality of education delivered? This paper helps clarify this question by presenting an appropriate conceptual framework: instead of considering country average test scores and enrolment rates...

Measures of education quality – primarily, years of schooling or literacy rates – are widely used to ascertain the contribution of human capital formation to long-run economic growth and development. This paper, using a census of 4,678 mission station residents, documents for the first time...