Religious beliefs influence many aspects of peoples’ daily lives, so it is plausible to argue that religion affects some of humanity’s most central endeavors, such as trade, migration, foreign investment and tourism. This paper investigates the role a country’s religious affiliation plays...

The FIFA World Cup hosted in South Africa during June/July 2010 was a much anticipated sport spectacle, but also widely expected to yield lasting and considerable economic benefits for the host country. Optimistic scenarios have encouraged these expectations, but there have also been cautionary...

This paper presents estimates of the economic impacts of financing the hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup by the government of South Africa. Ex ante analysis using a fiscal social accounting matrix model indicates that hosting of the event impacts positively on gross domestic product and...

Professional sports leagues aim to provide attractive contests that maximise fan interest. Literature on the demand for professional sport suggests that fans derive utility from identifying with teams and from the quality of contests, which depends on uncertainty of outcome and demonstration of...

This paper tests the hypothesis that African countries reveal a comparative advantage in travel service exports empirically. The UNCTAD 2007 Handbook of Statistics (2008) is used to calculate revealed comparative advantage for 186 countries over 10 tradable service sectors using three different...

The 2010 FIFA World Cup, one of the largest mega-sport events, has stirred renewed interest in the benefits that a host country can derive from these events. While most predict a large increase in the number of tourist arrivals, the recent international literature suggest that ex ante studies...

While a mega-sport event is scheduled at least once every year somewhere in the world, these events are rare occurrences for the host cities and countries. The benefits of such events seem lucrative; the very fact that many countries bid to host these events suggests that the benefits – be they...

Recent remarks in the media suggest that the Currie Cup competition, the premier rugby union competition in South Africa, is in need of a revamp. This is not a new inclination; the structure of the Currie Cup has had numerous alterations over the preceding two decades. But why has the Currie Cup...

Primary school mathematics teachers should, at the most basic level, have mastery of the content knowledge that they are required to teach. In this paper we test empirically whether this is the case by analyzing the South African SACMEQ 2007 mathematics teacher test data which tested 401 grade 6...

In this paper we question the existing practice of reporting enrolment statistics that ignore quality, but also quality-statistics that ignore enrolment differentials. The extant literature on education in Africa is bifurcated in that reports focus either on the quality of education or on access...