While a mega-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...

The purpose of this study is to develop insight into the socio-economic determinants of African sports performance. Previous studies have argued that a country’s success in sports is directly related to the economic resources that are available for those sports. However, factors that are...

The SADC is attempting to achieve development and economic growth. This paper investigates the relationship between economic freedom – in aggregate and on an individual component basis – on economic growth in the SADC. The annual data for 13 SADC countries from 2000 to 2009 are...

The withdrawal of the Maize Board in 1996 meant that farmers could no longer rely on its pre-planting price or “voorskot†for price discovery and price risk management. Some have claimed (UNCTAD, 2007) that the South African Futures Exchange (SAFEX) can provide these functions. We test...

To the extent that diversifying income portfolio is used as a strategy for shielding against production risk, both individual risk preferences and weather uncertainty could affect crop diversification decisions. This paper is concerned with empirically assessing the effects of risk preferences...

To the extent that in utero and childhood malnutrition negatively affects later stage mental and physical health, it can possibly constrain later stage human capital acquisition, which is an important driver of economic growth. This paper considers the impact of famine on aggregate adolescent...

This paper investigates the effect of remittance inflows on the real exchange rate in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) using annual data from 1980 to 2008 for 34 SSA countries, generalised method of moments by Arellano and Bover (1995) andfeasible generalised least squares by Parks (1967) and Kmenta...

This paper uses the Dynamic Factor Model (DFM) framework, which accommodates a large cross-section of macroeconomic time series for forecasting regional house price inflation. As a case study, we use data on house price inflation for five metropolitan areas of South Africa. The DFM used in this...

This paper uses large Factor Models (FMs) which accommodates a large cross-section of macroeconomic time series for forecasting per capita growth rate, inflation, and the nominal short-term interest rate for the South African economy. The FMs used in this study contains 267 quarterly series...

This paper develops large-scale Bayesian Vector Autoregressive (BVAR) models, based on 268 quarterly series, for forecasting annualized real house price growth rates for large-, medium and small-middle-segment housing for the South African economy. Given the in-sample period of 1980:01 to...