While livestock theft in Lesotho is primarily caused by increased poverty among unemployed workers and drought stricken crop farmers, its effect on stock farmers can be devastating. It reduces the affected households’ own consumption of both the “returns” on their wealth, e.g. milk and...

Against the backdrop of shifting views on the role of government in the provision of infrastructure, this paper distinguishes between the payment for and financing of the South African Government’s infrastructure investment programme. The paper also presents a classification system that...

This study specifically investigated the factors that influenced access by the poor and Blacks to credit in the segmented financial sector in South Africa, using income and expenditure survey data from 1995 and 2000. The study sheds light on the extent of financial sector deepening through...

Research has shown a positive correlation between extractive colonisation and low post-colonial economic growth. This paper provides case study research to explore the possibility that post-colonial extractive institutions were already present in pre-colonial times. In Zambia’s case this is...

The recent macroeconomic history of emerging market economies is coloured with economic crises of all kinds, ranging from debt-crises, through hyperinflationary periods to currency crises to name but a few. Much of the empirical literature notes that alongside fast-paced structural change this...

In the absence of longitudinal data that track individuals over an extended period of time, information on childhood socio-economic status can be provided by questions that ask adults to recall their parents’ education or their economic status at childhood. The usefulness of these data,...

This study quantifies a year’s worth of mathematics learning in South Africa (0.3 standard deviations) and uses this measure to develop empirically-calibrated learning trajectories. Two main findings are, (1) only the top 16% of South African Grade 3 children are performing at an appropriate...

This paper makes use of hierarchical linear modelling to investigate which teacher characteristics impact significantly on student performance. Using data from the SACMEQIII study of 2007, an interesting and potentially important finding is that younger teachers are better able to improve the...

Using forecasts of the inflation rate in South Africa, we study the rationality of forecasts and the shape of forecasters’ loss function. When we study micro-level data of individual forecasts, we find mixed evidence of an asymmetric loss function, suggesting that inflation forecasters are...

This paper assesses the impact of teacher subject knowledge on student performance using a nationally representative dataset of grade 6 students in South Africa. Test scores in two subjects and correlated random error models are used to identify within-pupil across subject variation in...