This paper presents an analysis of the interaction of human capital investment and the development of social and political institutions. We find that human capital matters - for growth through its quality dimension; for distributional conflict by raising political aspirations. But human capital...

Previous studies in South Africa have not dis-aggregated efficiency analysis across municipalities which are health system components of the broader national health system. The purpose of this paper is therefore to assess whether the relative efficiency of South African municipalities in primary...

This paper highlights an aspect of mega-events that has been neglected: the changing composition of tourist arrivals during and after theevent. The change happens because, in the FIFA World Cup, a quota of countries participates from each continent and this opens up new tourismmarkets. We show...

Recent empirical migration literature in South Africa suggests that access to physical and human capital, in the way of finance and education respectively, are key factors in increasing one’s probability of migrating. This paper attempts to extend this literature by directly measuring the...

This paper develops a new index of economic uncertainty for South Africa for the period 1990-2014 and analyses the macroeconomic impact of changes in this measure. The index is constructed from three sources: (1) Disagreement among professional forecasters about macroeconomic conditions using...

The influx of asylum seekers and refugees from across Africa to democratic South Africa has increased significantly. The aim of this paper is to determine the factors that influence the ‘expected well-being’ of this unique group. ‘Expected well-being’ is an important...

The Kuznets inequality-development hypothesis can be tested with time-series data rather than the cross-section analyses found in earlier literature. Single-country time-series analysis cannot be done without addressing endogeneity between output and inequality. South Africa has been...

Most studies that explore the impact of relative standing on subjective well-being use objective measures of the individual’s relative position, such as the mean income of the reference group or the individual’s ranking in the relevant income distribution. In this paper, using a...

The emphasis on location-specific factors, such as climate or disease environment, in the explanation of development outcomes in colonial societies implicitly assumes that settler groups were homogenous. Using tax records, this paper shows that the French Huguenots who immigrated to Dutch South...

Central bank communication is widely recognised as crucial to the implementation of monetary policy. This communication should enhance a central bank’s management of the inflation expectations of the financial markets as well as the general public — the latter being a part of the...