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...

The ability of the South African government to provide antiretroviral medication to those in need will be determined by the ability of the public health services sector to efficiently provide that medication. If the delivery of other health services can be used as a guide, the goals of the...

We examine a two country aid model with performance intensive aid. The aid budget is determined by a donor country legislature, but allocated by a donor agency in terms of a performance criterion of its choice. Five sources of slippage in policy delivery are introduced: the donor agency observes...

This paper studies the synchronization of economic variables between South Africa and the US. In addition it examines transmission channels through which supply and demand shocks from the US effect economic activity in South Africa. We use a structural dynamic factor model approach, instead of...

This paper shows that South Africa’s exports and imports had been determined by the normal variables found in gravity models, namely GDP, population and distance. However, differences in the composition of trade had resulted in distance from markets having a greater adverse effect on...

The paper aimed at isolating the direct productivity of economic infrastructure using a production function approach. Based on an extension of endogenous growth theory with public finance, infrastructure could have either a negative or positive effect on economic growth. The empirical analysis...

The modern theory of investment identities the importance of uncertainty to investment. A number of empirical studies have tested the theory on South African time series, employing political instability measures as proxies for uncertainty. This paper verifies that political instability measures...

We model cartel defection in markets with stochastic demand fluctuations as an investment timing problem. We show that (i) the optimal timing of cartel defection is pro-cyclical, suggesting higher probability of competitive pricing during booms; and (ii) the defection trigger is a positive...

This paper explores the trends in industry concentration of the South African manufacturing industry over the period from 1972 - 2001, with a primary focus on developments post 1996. Across all sectors of the manufacturing industry, concentration is found to have decreased. The analysis of...

This paper offers an alternative approach to the existence of sunspot equilibria. The economy has a single perishable good and fiat money within an overlapping generations framework with two possible extraneous events. The analysis uses the dynamic adjustment of market prices during voluntary...