Welcome to ERSA

Economic Research Southern Africa (ERSA) is a research programme which is being funded by the National Treasury of South Africa.

Latest Publications

When Selection Trumps Persistence: The Lasting Effect of Missionary Education in South Africa by Johan Fourie and Christie Swanepoel
To estimate the long-term, persistent effects of missionary education requires two strong assumptions: that mission station settlement is uncorrelated with other economic variables, such as soil quality and access to markets, and 2) that selection into (and out of) mission stations is unimportant.
Optimal Monetary Policy with Learning by Doing by Chris Redl
I study the implications of learning by doing in production for optimal monetary policy using a basic New Keynesian model. Learning-by-doing is modeled as a stock of skills that accumulates based on past employment.
Variance Bounds as Thresholds for ‘Excessive’ Currency Volatility: Inflation Targeting Emerging Economies by Shaista Amod and Shakill Hassan
At what level does a currency’s volatility become ‘excessive’, in a concrete sense? Any claim that an exchange rate is excessively volatile needs a benchmark for ‘normal’variability.
A Network View on Interbank Market Freezes by Silvia Gabrieli and Co-Pierre Georg
We study the liquidity allocation among European banks around the Lehman insolvency using a novel dataset of all interbank loans settled via the Eurosystem’s payment system TARGET2.
A comparison of the values of water inflows into selected South African estuaries: the Heuningnes, Kleinmond, Klein, Palmiet, Cefane, Kwelera and Haga-Haga by Johane Dikgang and Stephen Hosking
Estuaries are open access public goods in the sense that it is difficult to exclude people from accessing and using them, and that the marginal cost of this use is low.

Workshops

ERSA Lecture Series in Economic Theory: “Knightian Uncertainty in Economics and Finance”
Wednesday, February 18, 2015 to Thursday, February 19, 2015
 Lecturer: Professor Frank Riedel (University of Bielefeld, Germany)
Workshop location: Pretoria
Imperfect Labour Markets
Thursday, February 19, 2015 to Friday, February 20, 2015
Imperfect Labour Markets
Workshop location: Newlands, Cape Town
CALL FOR PAPERS: 3rd International Workshop on the Economics of Competition and Industrial Organization
Monday, March 9, 2015 to Tuesday, March 10, 2015
The aim of the workshop is to consider theoretical and empirical advances in the economics of competition. Previous workshops included a mix of applied microeconomics and industrial organization research, but theoretical work is also welcome.
Workshop location: Stellenbosch
An Introduction to Public Goods Games and Experiments
Monday, March 16, 2015 to Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Over the last few decades, Experimental Economics and Economics Experiments have taken centre stage in research on human behaviour. The study of public goods represents an important field of study within Experimental Economics.
Workshop location: East London

Latest Journal Publications

Slave Prices and Productivity in the 18th Century at the Cape of Good Hope: The Winners and Losers from the Trade by Sophia Du Plessis, Ada Jansen and Dieter von Fintel
Cliometrica (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11698-014-0116-8?sa_campaign=email/eve...)
The question about the productivity of slavery is a strongly debated issue, for example in the USA the seminal work by Engerman and Fogel (1974), “Time on the Cross”, sparked a flurry of publications debating the issue from different angles. The debate about the economic worth of slaves in the Cape
Modelling Stock Return Volatility Dynamics in Selected African Markets by Daniel King and Ferdi Botha
Economic Modelling (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econmode.2014.11.008)
This paper examines whether accounting for structural changes in the conditional variance process, through the use of Markov-switching models, improves estimates and forecasts of stock return volatility over those of the more conventional single-state (G)ARCH models, within and across selected Afric
Dependence on Environmental Resources and Implications for Household Welfare: Evidence from the Kalahari Drylands, South Africa by Gladman Thondhlana and Edwin Muchapondwa
Ecological Economics (http://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S0921800914003139)
This paper examines dependence on environmental resources and impacts on household welfare among the indigenous San and Mier rural communities neighbouring Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in the arid Kalahari region, South Africa.
The spatial persistence of population and wealth during apartheid: comparing the 1911 and 2011 censuses by Waldo Krugell
Economic History of Developing Regions (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20780389.2014.957907)
This article examines the spatial distribution of people and wealth in South Africa over the period 1911 to 2011. Economic development is typically characterised by agglomeration, but Apartheid policies tried to separate people and disperse economic activity.
Literacy at South African Mission Stations by Johan Fourie, Robert Ross and Russel Viljoen
Journal of Southern African Studies (http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjss20)
Accurate measures of education quality — primarily, years of schooling or literacy rates — are widely used to ascertain the contribution of human capital formation on long-run economic growth and development.