Image
Working paper
Despite recent progress, energy poverty remains pervasive in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This challenge is generally more severe in rural areas. However, rapid urbanization adds a significant challenge to often under-capacitated urban local authorities that struggle...
February 2021
Climate and energy
Working paper
This study considers how household composition influences the leisure time of men and women in South Africa, using the South African 2010 Time Use Survey. Studying leisure time is important since the allocation of time...
February 2021
Labour market and inequality
Working paper
South Africa is among the most unequal countries in the world in terms of income with a Gini of 0.65, and land with a Gini of 0.64. Inequality decreased in all provinces except for Limpopo...
March 2021
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
Foreign direct investment is recognized as a significant driver of economic development and growth in many economies. It can have a positive effect on a host country’s development and growth efforts. This study seeks to...
January 2021
Macro-fiscal analysis
Working paper
This paper analyses how exchange rate volatility affects domestic consumption. It uses a Bayesian vector autoregression model to measure impulse response, based on South African data from 1990 to 2016, which helps to detect how...
January 2021
Macro-fiscal analysis
Working paper
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...
January 2021
Macro-fiscal analysis
Working paper
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...
January 2021
Macro-fiscal analysis
Working paper
This paper aims to analyse the influence of spillovers into South Africa’s economy from shifts in United States of America’s (US) monetary policy. Often changing, the US interest rate is regarded as an important driving...
January 2021
Macro-fiscal analysis
Working paper
Low-resource public schools in South Africa suffer from a lack of (i) access to home-language reading materials and (ii) teacher capacity on how to teach early-grade reading in African languages. In this context, the Funda...
January 2021
Enterprise development
Labour market and inequality
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
Technical note
The identification of foreign firms and South African multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the CIT-IRP5 panel has proved to be a challenge for many researchers. The CIT-IRP5 panel contains variables indicating different thresholds that determine foreign...
January 2021
Working paper
This paper examines the relationship between monetary policy and wealth inequality in South Africa. We employed a unique database of tax administrative data which allowed us to account for individual heterogeneity. These tax data span...
December 2020
Macro-fiscal analysis
Working paper
The paper evaluates strategies for developing successful special economic zones and transnational zones for Southern African countries to spur growth and employment. Most special economic zones implemented in Southern Africa have largely failed to bring...
December 2020
Phase 1 regional growth
Working paper
The successful use of special economic zones as economic tools for export-led industrial development in East Asia propelled a wave of similar initiatives across Africa. In Southern Africa, Zambia and South Africa instituted special economic...
December 2020
Phase 1 regional growth
Working paper
This paper empirically examines South Africa’s fiscal sustainability through a Markov-switching model which utilizes quarterly datasets for the period from 1960 to 2019. The results show that public debt responds positively, demonstrating a sustainable fiscal...
November 2020
Macro-fiscal analysis