Some stepping stones in the economic modelling of apartheid

After a review of some of the seminal empirical contributions to the study of the economic role of racial discrimination in South Africa, the essay compares and contrasts three different approaches to the formal economic modelling of the apartheid system, based on these contributions: the neoclassical approach which emphasizes gains and losses in terms of factor incomes, the public goods approach designed to deal with 'petty' apartheid, and the efficiency wage approach which models apartheid as an anti-shirking device. It compares the predictions of the different models with the historical sequence of racial discrimination in South Africa.