This paper estimates the output cost of fighting inflation-the sacrifice ratio-for the South African economy using quarterly data spanning the period 1998Q1-2019Q3. To compute the sacrifice ratio, the structural vector autoregressive model developed by Cecchetti and Rich (2001) based on...

This study simulates the macro-micro economic impacts of the employment policy, focusing on hysteresis in youth unemployment in South Africa. Specifically, we apply a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to calibrate the 2015 South African Social Accounting Matrix to estimate, compare,...

On July 13, 2020 a complete nation-wide ban was placed on the sale and transport of alcohol in South Africa. This paper evaluates the impact of this sudden and unexpected five-week alcohol prohibition on mortality due to unnatural causes. We find that the policy reduced the number of unnatural...

In recent years, diverging demand and growth regimes have received greater scholarly attention. In particular, the intersection between different variants of Comparative Political Economy and the post-Keynesian macroeconomic analysis provides a promising avenue for understanding the main...

This paper asks whether prioritarianism – the view that social welfare orderings should give explicit priority to the worse-off – is consistent with the normative theory of equality of opportunity. We show that there are inherent tensions between some of the axioms underpinning...

This article analyses a number of academic and journalistic proposals on the negotiated partition of South Africa coming from different schools of thought, from within South Africa and abroad, from the 1920s up to the late 1980s. These proposals of dividing South Africa into a ‘predominantly...

The newly established South African Reserve Bank (SARB) was tasked to protect the currency by navigating the interwar gold standard, and, from March 1933, maintaining parity with the Pound Sterling. We find that South Africa's exit from gold secured an unparalleled and rapid recovery from the...

Social welfare payments (SWP) were designed with policy priority to transfer revenue to vulnerable groups, thereby addressing poverty and inequality. Previous studies have shown that SWPs alleviate poverty, but investigating their effect on well-being is sparse. We investigate the relationship...

Radio spectrum is a key input for mobile operators and the structure of the industry is strongly related to and influenced by the ownership of spectrum licenses. Spectrum is usually allocated for a limited duration and may or may not be tradable which further complicates the interaction between...

The newly established South African Reserve Bank (SARB) was tasked to protect the currency by navigating the interwar gold standard, and, from March 1933, maintaining parity with the Pound Sterling. We find that South Africa's exit from gold secured an unparalleled and rapid recovery from the...

One of the core objectives of economic development is to improve people's standards of living. However, both standards of living and consumption expenditures are often determined by disposable income, crude oil prices and exchange rate volatility. The current paper employed quarterly time series...

Social welfare payments (SWP) were designed with policy priority to transfer revenue to vulnerable groups, thereby addressing poverty and inequality. Previous studies have shown that SWPs alleviate poverty, but investigating their effect on well-being is sparse. We investigate the relationship...

Despite the anecdotal evidence that suggests that SMEs adopt inadequate and ineffective risk management practices, only a few studies have been conducted on the topic in the emerging market context. Besides, the existing studies on factors inhibiting effective risk management in emerging market...

We present field experimental evidence that limited information about workseekers' skills distorts both firm and workseeker behavior. Assessing workseekers' skills, giving workseekers their assessment results, and helping them to credibly share the results with firms increases workseekers'...

In this paper we explore South Africa's personal income tax system using two microsimulation models. The first, SAMOD, simulates personal income tax and social benefits using a dataset derived from the nationally representative National Income Dynamics Study survey. The second, PITMOD, simulates...

We present new evidence on the effects of South Africa's Employment Tax Incentive (ETI), a hiring and employment wage subsidy aimed at reducing youth unemployment. We show that attempts to estimate firm-level treatment effects via conditional difference-in-differences are likely to fail when...

The COVID-19 pandemic has had severe economic consequences in Southern Africa, resulting in an unprecedented decline in production and employment. Similar policy responses have emerged across the region, centred on temporary and inadequate relief for workers and businesses; very limited fiscal...