Working Papers

Climate change and variability poses a significant hindrance on agricultural productivity. The adverse effects are particularly concerning in many African countries that rely more on rainfed subsistence agriculture for livelihood. The promotion of climate smart agriculture technologies as a pathway...

This study reports on measuring and testing of a Composite Financial Cycle Index (CFCI) as a modified version of a South African Financial Cycle (FC). This is achieved through the adoption of thirteen monthly financial time series indicators observed over the period 2000M1 to 2018M12. In this...

This study reports on measuring and testing of a Composite Financial Cycle Index (CFCI) as a modified version of a South African Financial Cycle (FC). This is achieved through the adoption of thirteen monthly financial time series indicators observed over the period 2000M1 to 2018M12. In this...

Understanding the causes and consequences of conflicts continues to be an important contribution to the economic development literature, particularly the mechanisms that can reduce civilian deaths. We contribute to understanding attacks on civilians and the spillover effects by analysing the impact...

We developed a network model to capture the dynamic interactions among foreign exchange returns and realised risk measures among 20 developed and emerging market currencies, including the rand (ZAR). We demonstrate how this framework can be used to assess the sensitivity of a given currency to...

According to recent macroeconomic evidence (Bosch and Koch 2020b; Farrell and Kemp 2020), the global financial crisis is still impacting the South African financial landscape more than 10 years later. In an effort to better understand the effect of the financial crisis, we examine household debt...

I construct and partially characterize the solution of a life-cycle model of fertility choice and human capital accumulation. Because children take time to raise, women face a trade-off between between lifetime earnings and childbearing. The model implies that (i) earnings must drop discontinuously...

South Africa has since the 1990's actively reformed its corporate tax policy to stimulate investment in various assets and industries. While the investment impact of corporate taxation has been evaluated in various studies, no effort has been made to assess the potential inter-asset distortions due...

This paper investigates the responsiveness of firm-level investment to corporate tax changes in South Africa over the period 1999 to 2012. The study exploits rare changes in corporate tax policy to assess the responsiveness of firm-level investment among Johannesburg Stock Exchange listed non-...

South Africa’s fiscal balances have deteriorated significantly over the last decade, while the economy has been recording disappointing economic growth rates even prior to the COVID-19 crisis. In this paper, we estimate a series of equations using the Arellano and Bond (1991) estimator to test how...