A large number of child deaths in developing countries could be averted if ill children received care sooner rather than later. This paper analyses the healthcare treatment pathway that is followed for children under the age of six. The majority of these children receive treatment within 24...

The high rate of unemployment in South Africa stands out in an otherwise vastly improved set of macroeconomic fundamentals compared to the situation in the early 1990s. One might be tempted to argue that by this single indicator alone, government policies such as GEAR have been a failure. This...

This paper tests for the impact of survivorship bias by building on the work of Cubbin, Eidne, Firer and Gilbert (2006), and Bailey and Gilbert (2007). The former paper confirmed the existence of mean reversion on the JSE Securities Exchange, because portfolios of shares with high Price to...

We examine the impact of inflation on financial development in Brazil and the data available permit us to cover the period between 1985 and 2002. The results - based initially on time-series and then on panel time-series data and analysis, and robust for different estimators and financial...

In 1994, South Africa adopted the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) and emphasised the delivery of services to meet basic needs. Since then, great strides have been made to redress past social inequalities. However, analysis of these successes have been limited to national or...

An estimate of the persistence of inflation captures the long-run effects of a shock on inflation. A better understanding of the persistence of inflation can be useful for a variety of reasons. Firstly, a persistence measure can provide important information about the likely impact of shocks on...

The Basel Accords promote the adoption of capital adequacy requirements to increase the banking sector's stability. Unfortunately, this type of regulation can hamper economic growth by shifting banks' portfolios from more productive, risky investment projects toward less productive but safer...

We examine how poor macroeconomic performance, mainly in the role of high rates of inflation, affected earnings inequality in the 1980s and early 1990s in Brazil. The results based initially on aggregate time-series, and then on the relatively novel sub-national panel time-series data and...

There is presently considerable debate about the application and interpretation of realism in economics. Interest in this area of the philosophy and methodology of economics has intensified over the last twenty years, especially due to the substantial contributions by Uskali Mäki and Tony...

Most historians regard the Cape Colony of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as an impoverished and destitute settlement, primarily because of the many restrictions and prohibitions enforced by the Dutch East India Company, who founded the Cape settlement as a refreshment station for its...