We examine the economy-wide impact of the child support grant (CSG) on the South African economy using a bottom-up/top-down approach. This allows us to estimate the potential effects on households’ welfare and on the economy following a change in the CSG. Three simulations are presented, in...

The paper uses a micro-simulation computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to study the impact on poverty of trade liberalisation in Zimbabwe. The model incorporates 14006 households derived from the 1995 Poverty Assessment Study Survey (PASS). The novelty of this paper is that it is one among...

Education is often promoted as the solution to poverty in the developing world. Yet, fiscal discipline has led to reductions in public spending on education. We examine the poverty impacts of a cut in public subsidies to higher education, accompanied by corresponding tax cuts, in a general...

In this paper we extend an existing computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to perform optimal policy design exercises. Specifically, to an otherwise standard CGE model, we add an objective function that allows us to compute optimal values for selected policy variables. In turn, the CGE model...

The paper uses a micro-simulation computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to study the impact on poverty of trade liberalisation in Zimbabwe. The model incorporates 14006 households derived from the 1995 Poverty Assessment Study Survey (PASS). The novelty of this paper is that it is one among...

This paper applies a short-run computable general equilibrium model for Zimbabwe to analyse how tariff reform could have modified the effects of the actual trade liberalisation that took place in the 1990s. This is important because the trade liberalisation removed quantitative restrictions but...