I examine the possibility that the trans-Atlantic slave trades influenced the political institutions of villages and towns in precolonial Africa. Using anthropological data, I show that villages and towns of ethnic groups with higher slave exports were more politically fragmented during the...

I use satellite imagery on night time lights to measure growth across states and local government areas in Nigeria since the return of democracy in 1999. I show that states in Southern Nigeria have grown faster on average than states in the North. I also evaluate the effects of violence on...

Recent studies have highlighted the importance of Africa's history of slave exporting to its current economic development. In this paper I show that differences in investment in education may be one of the channels through which that history has affected current development. I combine data on...

The eyes of the world have, in recent years, been steadfastly focused on China’s economic progress. As China has in recent years emerged as a major player on the world economic stage, its growing relations with other developing regions received much attention. Of particular note is the...

Alan Cobley (1990: 3) has argued that no sustained interest was taken in the subject of class in South Africa until the arrival of a generation of radical historians in the 1970s, and then the focus of concern was largely with the origins and development of a black working class in whose...

Resource-poor rural South Africa is characterised by high human densities due to the historic settlement patterns imposed by apartheid, high levels of poverty, under-developed markets and substantially high food insecurity. This chronic food insecurity combined with climate and weather...

Volunteers are people who supply labour for the production of goods and services, for the benefit of others. Volunteer work is of significance in a time when social safety nets are weak and there are ever increasing demands on welfare organisations. The question is, who are these good...

This paper adds to the literature on the crowding out effect of tobacco expenditure in two ways. Firstly, the paper uses expenditure data from a low income sub-Saharan African country, Zambia, where most households are poor. Secondly, unlike previous studies, we relax the exclusion restriction...

The majority of academic research on central bank communication has analysed a central bank’s audience as a single group. Analyses, especially empirical research have focused almost exclusively on a central bank’s interaction with the financial markets, facilitated by the...

Navigation of estuaries is a vitally important aspect of boating recreation in South Africa and elsewhere. This paper uses a choice experiment to estimate recreation values of the Kromme River Estuary, a popular estuary along South Africa’s east coast. This valuation methodology allows...