Working Papers

We study targeted lockdowns in a multi-group SIR model where infection, hospitalization and fatality rates vary between groups—in particular between the “young”,“the middle-aged” and the “old”. Our model enables a tractable quantitative analysis of optimal policy. For baseline parameter values for...

This paper studies the interactions between political and economic incentives to foster forest conversion in Indonesian districts. Using a district–level panel data set from 2001 to 2016, we analyze variation in remotely sensed forest loss and forest fires as well as measures of land use licensing...

Some of the most contested questions in political science and political economy revolve around the conditions under which democratization is likely to happen and when democracy becomes a stable institutional choice. This paper revisits the particular claim in the democratization literature that the...

Following the failure of Saambou bank in February 2002, another seven South African banks failed within a month, including the fifth-largest, and a further five within a year. In total, twenty-two small and mid-sized banks deregistered over two years: half the total number of banks, and nearly 10 per...

We explore the diversity of means by which governments borrow - from commercial banks, sovereign bond issues, official bilateral creditors, and multilateral financial institutions. Although political economy scholars tend to analyze financing instruments in isolation from one another, governments...

I study an expansion of a South African social grant program that provided unconditional cash transfers to adolescents for the first time. Over the period 2009 to 2012, age eligibility for the child support grant was progressively extended from children under 14 to children under 18 years old. I...

In applied studies, the influence of balance measures on the performance of matching estimators is often taken for granted. This paper considers the performance of different balance measures that have been used in the literature when balance is being optimized. We also propose the use of the...

This paper assesses the effect of US monetary policy on South Africa during the period 1990- 2018. We separately analyse and compare the effect of conventional monetary policy, before the Global Financial Crisis, and unconventional monetary policy, after the US monetary policy reached the zero-...

We develop a model that characterizes the joint determination of income distribution and macroeconomic aggregate dynamics. We identify multiple channels through which alternative public policies such as transfers, consumption and income taxes, and public investment will affect the inequality;...