Working paper
Climate change poses a serious threat to many countries, particularly to developing countries, which often have large sections of the population without resources to adapt to changes in their environment. One of the key ways...
February 2021
Climate and energy
Working paper
This paper seeks to synthesize a wide variety of work assessing the future of VRE and their potential for revolutionizing electricity generation, particularly in developing countries. As VRE technology matures and costs fall, focus shifts...
April 2018
Climate and energy
Working paper
We study the role of trade credit in enhancing the resilience of financially constrained firms from 2010 to 2017. Implicit borrowing in trade finance allows financially constrained firms to bridge the financing gap, expand employment...
May 2021
Enterprise development
Working paper
This paper uses administrative tax data in South Africa to answer questions about which types of firms employ relatively large numbers of young people. The policy objective of this exercise is to use these insights...
August 2018
Enterprise development
Working paper
Effective competition in the Southern and East African regions requires independent rivals competing across borders and within domestic markets through innovation and effort, investment, product quality, and prices. To understand the constraints to more dynamic...
September 2021
Phase 1 regional growth
Working paper
The paper examines the incidence and employment impacts of the Employment Tax Incentive, a South African wage subsidy system that is targeted at the employers of low-wage youth. The paper uses a triple differences strategy...
March, 2019
Public revenue
Background note
Countries need data and evidence to create, amend, and evaluate policy. South Africa has been at the vanguard of data collection in sub-Saharan Africa with strong and long-standing institutions collecting data for research purposes. Making...
June 2022
Working paper
Traditionally, analysts of the South African labour market have used household survey data to describe earnings and employment in the post-Apartheid period. More recently, administrative data from the South African Revenue Service has been made...
May 2019
Labour market and inequality
Working paper
Increased intra-regional trade in southern Africa will have a positive impact on economic growth. However, this requires a shifting of loyalties from the national to the regional. Tension between the goals of long-term regional development...
August 2019
Phase 1 regional growth
Working paper
We consider the interplay of climate change impacts, global mitigation policies, and the economic interests of developing countries to 2050. Focusing on Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia, we employ a structural approach to biophysical and economic...
March 2020
Climate and energy
Working paper
This paper reports ‘first pass’ estimates of the costs of the lock-down implemented by the South African government beginning on 27 March 2020. It also presents a series of recovery scenarios. Four channels by which...
April 2020
Macro-fiscal analysis
Climate and energy
Working paper
This paper aims at providing new evidence over the effect of conventional monetary policy shocks on wage inequality through the earnings heterogeneity channel under the inflation-targeting regime implemented in South Africa since 2000. The empirical...
June 2020
Macro-fiscal analysis
Working paper
The South African liquid fuels industry is a significant part of the economy. Historically, government policy focused on import substitution industrialization to support industry margins. This approach is called into question by the 2006 shift...
October 2020
Macro-fiscal analysis
Working paper
We investigate the relevance of beta (β, absolute and conditional) and sigma (σ) convergence in the economies of the Common Monetary Area of Southern Africa and in the provinces of the Republic of South Africa...
December 2020
Macro-fiscal analysis
Working paper
COVID-19 has created a trade crisis in Southern Africa, with a dramatic slowdown in cross-border trade. The crisis, which exposed weaknesses and deficiencies in the trade facilitation regimes, presents an opportunity for the African Continental...
April 2021
Phase 1 regional growth
Working paper
Crop insurance is a sustainable risk management tool that farmers need for increasing the sustainability of their agricultural enterprises by reducing income risks. This paper reports on factors influencing farmers’ interest in purchasing crop insurance.
May 2018
Climate and energy