The paper investigates the factors influencing the internationalisation of mining firms into Africa and the strategies employed. We focus on the FDI of South African mining firms because of the dominance of this country in the extractive resources industry for over a century. A semi-structured...

An energy-focused integrated CGE microsimulation approach is used to assess the implications of differential government policy responses in South Africa, to increases in international oil prices. The first scenario assumes that increases in world oil and petroleum products are passed through to...

In the context of a widespread focus on decentralisation in Africa, there has been an imperative to find suitable ways to maximise potential own revenue sources at all sub-national government levels. This need in particular and the need for greater domestic resource mobilisation by African...

This paper takes as its starting point established findings on industrial conduct as measured by pricing power in South African industry. The South African findings are contrasted with recent results derived from firm-level data from China and India. A stark contrast emerges between China, with...

This paper exploits variation between and within countries to examine the legacy of recorded conflicts in Africa in the pre-colonial period between 1400 and 1700. There are three main findings. First, we show that historical conflict is correlated with a greater prevalence of post-colonial...

We investigate in this paper the hypothesis that when democracies are young, or still fragile and unconsolidated, the size of government tends to increase, predictably in an attempt of redistribution, or to buy out the electorate, so that democracy becomes acceptable and "the only game in town"....

The Sundays River Estuary, situated in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, has excess recreational demand for estuarine services, specifically recreational fishing. The estuary has been over-fished, putting its sustainability at risk. Various management interventions may be required in order to save...

This paper analyses trends in hours worked from South African household survey data for the period 1997 — 2011. The purpose of the paper is fourfold. First, the paper provides an overview on the trends in hours worked of formal sector employees, by various demographic and work...

This paper applies a Markov switching model to the South African economy to provide an alternative classification of the business cycle. Principal components analysis (PCA) is applied to 114 of the 186 variables used in the dating of the business cycle by the South African Reserve Bank. PCA...

We develop a structural cointegrated vector autoregressive (VAR) model with weakly exogenous foreign variables, suitable for a small open economy like South Africa. This type of model is known as an augmented vector error correction model (VECM), referred to by VECX*. We compile the foreign...