Working Papers

South Africa successfully reduced smoking prevalence by substantially increasing tobacco excise tax and therefore real cigarette prices between 1993 and 2010. Tobacco market structure changed in 2010 following the entry of local tobacco companies and the introduction of cheaper cigarette brands...

This article investigated income per capita convergence in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) over the period 1980-2017 in a non-linear time-varying coefficients framework. The findings of the study suggested no overall income convergence in the SADC region, but evidence supporting the...

We develop a new dataset of bank-level balance sheets data to estimate bank-level funding costs. These estimates are useful for monitoring of funding pressures and other risks to the banking sector as well as understanding the impact of prudential regulations and market conditions on the...

Homeownership by the lower and middle-income households is crucial to create wealth, particularly for South Africa with high levels of economic and wealth inequality. However, scholarship has paid little attention to how income affects the affordable housing market segment despite its systemic...

This study examines the complex relationship between carbon emissions and technological progress in a sample of 60 countries, divided into four categories based on their per capita income between the periods of 1989-2018. For robustness purposes and due to the broad definition of technology, we use...

We estimate that since 1701, South Africa has experienced 163 years of per capita growth of more than 1 per cent a year. These expansions include 55 years of sustained per capita GDP growth of more than 3 per cent a year – windfall periods that were related to the discovery of diamonds and gold,...

A panel data analysis of financial inequality was conducted using the PSTR model to determine the threshold level at which excessive financial development worsens inequality. The results reveal evidence of a nonlinear effect between financial development and income inequality where the optimal...

The 1918 influenza – the Spanish flu – killed an estimated 6% of South Africans. Not all were equally affected. Mortality rates were particularly high in districts with a large share of black and coloured residents. To investigate why this happened, we transcribed 39,482 death certificates from the...

I apply the bunching methodology to South African administrative tax data over the period from 2011 to 2017 to investigate the responsiveness of individual taxpayers to changes in marginal personal income tax rates. I find significant evidence of bunching among the self-employed but no evidence of...

This paper argues that contrary to previous findings, present-day education outcomes in Africa cannot be independently attributed to colonial or pre-colonial ethnic institutions. We propose that it is instead the complementarity or contention between colonial and precolonial institutions that result...