The 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments require that water utilities mail drinking water quality reports to their customers annually. The public uses this information; the news of a water quality violation makes a household 21% more likely to purchase bottled water in the following year. We...

Motivated by the way a small open economy should react to business cycles, we have estimated a small open economy (SOE) model for Nigeria. This is with a view to understanding how the Nigerian economy should be managed in the face of a cycle such as the current global meltdown. Our SOE model is...

We examine changes in market values and accounting returns for a sample of publicly traded Chinese firms around announcements of block-share transfers among government agencies (“State Bureaucrats”), market-oriented State-owned enterprises (“MOSOEs”) and private investors (“Private...

As South African universities experience extremely low graduation rates, academic staff implement a range of interventions, for instance tutorial programmes, in order to improve student performance. However, relatively little is known about the impact of such tutorial programmes on students’...

This paper examines the scope for a rights-based perspective on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by focusing on right to water. The paper adapts Hohfeldian framework of elements of a right developed by Wenar. According to this, a right should be interpreted in terms of powers, privileges,...

Is the SARB’s inflation target of 3-6% compatible with the 6% economic growth objective set by ASGISA? Estimations of inflation-growth bivariate Threshold Vector Autoregressive with corresponding bivariate Threshold Vector Error Correction (BTVEC-BTVAR) econometric models for sub-periods...

Tourism is increasingly being promoted as an important source of economic growth especially in developing countries. While there are many elements that contribute to tourism growth, without an efficient air transport system, it is almost impossible for a number of landlocked and geographically...

South Africa (SA) has pursued corporate governance reforms in the form of the 1994 and 2002 King Reports. This paper examines the association between the presence of independent non-executive directors (INEDs) and market valuation of a sample of 169 firms listed on the Johannesburg Stock...

Inflation, a macroeconomic variable, is underpinned by microeconomic data. This paper uses a large microdata sample at the unit level of South Africa’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the period 2001m12 to 2007m12 to begin to understand price setting conduct in South Africa. An understanding of...

Policies to stimulate export growth and diversify the composition of exports in South Africa are now high on the government’s agenda. In order to understand exporting and its impact on job creation, one needs to understand how firms function, what determines, or constrains, exporting at the...