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Working paper
We use a fiscal incidence model based on the South African 2014/15 Living Conditions Survey to simulate the poverty reduction impacts of a selection of medium-to-long-term social grant options with the goal of replacing the...
November 2021
Public revenue
Labour market and inequality
Working paper
This paper analyses the macroeconomic effect of legislated personal income tax changes in South Africa over the 1996–2019 period. We identify personal income tax shocks using a narrative approach and incorporate these shocks in a...
October 2021
Working paper
Debt-financed fiscal stimulus programmes directly stimulate aggregate demand through government expenditure or tax cuts, but their effectiveness is highly dependent on direct crowding out of private sector expenditure, spillover effects to the private sector through...
October 2021
Macro-fiscal analysis
Working paper
This paper investigates the business environment in sub-Saharan Africa. Previous studies show that the ease of doing business is associated with economic growth as it affects the level of business. This study aims to examine...
September 2021
Phase 1 regional growth
Working paper
Financial inclusion is considered a vehicle to inclusive growth and thus critical in addressing the three key socioeconomic ills of modern society—particularly in Southern Africa: poverty, unemployment, and inequality. Being excluded from the financial services...
September 2021
Phase 1 regional growth
Working paper
This paper analyses interconnection in telecommunications markets in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, focusing on cross-border roaming as well as international interconnection. These issues have been identified as critical for cross-border integration and...
September 2021
Phase 1 regional growth
Working paper
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...
September 2021
Phase 1 regional growth
Working paper
How does centralized bargaining affect the broader wage structure? And what does this tell us about the (non-)competitive dynamics of such labour markets? I study large contracted wage increases negotiated by centralized bargaining councils in...
September 2021
Labour market and inequality
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
This paper analyses the permanent and temporary differences of South African firms for the period covered in the SARS-NT panel. The analysis provides valuable information about the differences between accounting profits and the taxable income...
September 2021
Public revenue
Working paper
This study measures the incidence, depth, and severity of health poverty in South Africa, using ordinal self-reported data from the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) for 2008–17. The resultant trend is decomposed using a Shapley...
July 2021
Labour market and inequality
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...
July 2021
Phase 1 regional growth
Working paper
The paper adopts the SMART partial equilibrium model to simulate the impact of a full tariff liberalization as proposed under the African Continental Free Trade Area on South African agriculture. The results of the model...
July 2021
Phase 1 regional growth
Working paper
Enterprise development, especially expansion into export markets, is essential to create employment and unlock growth potential in many economies, including in sub-Saharan Africa. However, both firm and product survival (mainly in the export market) is...
July 2021
Enterprise development
Working paper
Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have become common across Southern Africa in the past 20 years. In line with experiences in the rest of the world, they have had at best marginal success. Their essential premise...
July 2021
Phase 1 regional growth
Working paper
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...
July 2021
Labour market and inequality