The effect of trade liberalisation on environmental conditions has yielded significant debate in the energy economics literature. Although research on the relationship between energy consumption, emissions and economic growth is not new in South Africa, no study specifically addresses the role...

This paper examines the Nelson Mandela Bay public’s willingness to pay (WTP) for the removal of a local undesirable land use, the manganese ore dumps and the oil tank farm situated within the boundaries of the Port Elizabeth harbour, Eastern Cape, South Africa, by means of the contingent...

This paper analyses wage subsidies on lower-skilled formal workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). A multi-sectoral empirically-calibrated general equilibrium model capturing the economy-wide transactions between the formal and informal sectors is used to analyse one policy simulation...

This paper uses a dynamic CGE model to help explain some apparent contradictions between changes in the structure of the South African economy and movements in related variables over the 2006 to 2013 period. Most notably, an increase in the capital-labour ratio was identified, despite a relative...

We assess the degree of persistence in armed conflict in particular places over the last two centuries, asking in addition if conflict-ridden places have durable features – social, demographic or geographical – that explain persistence, or whether armed conflict at one time has a...

Persistent protests might endanger the stability of young democracies because the economic legacies of the old autocratic regimes tend to outlive their political structures. This paper seeks to explore the micro-level predictors of protest potential in South Africa before and after the end of...

Past research provided evidence of the negative effect that individual unemployment can have on subjective well-being. The persistent high levels of unemployment and poverty in South Africa have been well documented. Many people are forced into the informal economy, where they engage in a...

In 2002/03 the yield spread falsely signalled a downswing that never materialised. This paper provides two reasons for this false signal. Firstly, while the Reserve Bank never actually officially declared the start of a downswing, by other important measures a downswing did actually occur. It is...

There are various pathways through which the impact of trade openness may be transmitted to the labour market. This study explores a relatively new linkage identified by the literature: the impact on labour demand elasticities via a substitution effect through increased factor substitutability...

Although informal finance forms a large part of their financial sector, nearly all low income countries exclude informal transactions in official monetary data. Usually, informal finance data are nonexistent and occasionally, they are available only from surveys that often occur at irregular...