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...

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...

Recent cross sectional growth studies have found that ethnolinguistic fractionalization is an important explanatory variable of long-run growth performance. In the present paper we follow the call of earlier studies to conduct a more detailed clinical analysis of the growth experience of a...

This paper examines industry concentration for the South African manufacturing sector over the 1972-1996 period, for the three digit industry classification. The paper notes both the high level of industry concentration in South African manufacturing, and a rising trend in concentration across a...

The paper is concerned with the growth impact and the determinants of foreign direct investment in South Africa. Estimation is in terms of a standard spill-over model of investment, and in terms of a new model of locational choice in FDI between domestic and foreign alternatives. We find...

Rereading D Hobart Houghton’s The South African Economy (1967) and Economic Development1865-1965 (1971) brings to mind the stark theoretical and empirical differences between his account of thirty years ago and current views of economic growth. Hobart Houghton wrote within the optimistic...

The current, persistent growth problem in Zimbabwe is often attributed to poor economic and political institutional frameworks characterised by insecure property rights and an unreliable rule of law. An empirical test of this hypothesis presents some methodological difficulties. Although...

This paper presents a model in which two groups in society are engaged in strategic interaction. Privileged members of society have the opportunity to allocate resources either to their own productive capacity, or to enhance the productive capacity of the disadvantaged. Redistribution to the...

This paper surveys the literature on the manufacturing sector in South Africa, focusing on concentration and markup levels, with a view to inform policy. The literature has employed a number of different measures of industrial concentration, namely, the Gini and Rosenbluth indices, the Occupancy...

While economic theory assumes that risk is of central importance in financial decision making, it is difficult to measure the uncertainty faced by investors. Commonly used empirical proxies for risk (such as the moving standard deviation of the returns on an asset) are not firmly grounded in...