Welcome to ERSA

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

Research Briefs

Path Dependence and Interdependence between Institutions and Development by David Fadiran and Mare Sarr
The institutional indices used cover three categories: civil and political liberties, freehold property rights, and customary (non-freehold) property rights.
The Impact of Basic and Social Infrastructure Investment on Economic Growth and Social Development in South Africa’s Urban and Rural Municipalities by Henk Gnade, Derick Blaauw and Talita Greyling
Under the right conditions, basic and social infrastructure investment can contribute to increased economic growth, social development and the reduction of inequality and poverty (Calderón & Servén, 2008:1).
Spatial Externality, Openness and Financial Development in SADC: Beyond the Multilateral Monetary Agreement by Alex Bara, Gift Mugano and Pierre Le Roux

This study empirically evaluates spatial externalities in financial development in SADC, in line with spatial proximity theory, which asserts that externalities increase with proximity.

Latest Publications

Which comes first: good governance or prosperity? A historical experiment from the South African Republic and the Orange Free State by Stan du Plessis and Sophia du Plessis

Two neighbouring republics, with a common history and culture, followed very different paths of

Decomposing the South African CO₂ Emissions within a BRICS Countries Context: The Energy Rebound Hypothesis by Roula Inglesi-Lotz

The main purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis of the rebound effect for the South African case in the years between 1990 to 2014 by firstly, decomposing the driving forces of the changes in CO2 emissions of the country and secondly, comparing with the behaviors of other emerging econom

Private Schools and Student Learning Achievements in Kenya by Fredrick M. Wamalwa & Justine Burns
This papers examines the effect of private schools on literacy and numeracy skill acquisition among children mainly drawn from lower primary grades in Kenya. We apply a number of estimation approaches that accounts for endogeneity of school choice. We begin with the OLS, as a baseline model.
Welfare analysis of bank capital requirements with endogenous default by Fernando Garcia-Barragan and Guangling Liu
This paper presents a tractable framework with endogenous default and evaluates the welfare implication of bank capital requirements. We analyze the response of social welfare to a negative technology shock under different capital requirement regimes with and without default.
Does the Equivalence Scale Matter? Equivalence and Out-of-Pocket Payments by Steven F. Koch
We evaluate the effects of different equivalence scale parameter estimates on the distribution of catastrophic health payments in South Africa.

Latest News

ERSA 2016 Prizewinners

Faculty of Commerce Awards for Excellence was held on  Friday 5 May 2017 at the New Lecture Theatre on UCTs Upper Campus. Professor Lawrence Edwards from the School of Economics represented ERSA at the function. View the award gallery page here.

Workshops

Skills Development
Monday, July 3, 2017 to Friday, July 7, 2017
Call for Application for Skills Development Training in Econometrics
Workshop location: Pretoria
7th Annual Meeting of the African Economic History Network: Innovation and the African Past
Wednesday, October 25, 2017 to Friday, October 27, 2017
The African Economic History Network, in association with the Laboratory for the Economics Africa's Past at Stellenbosch University, Harvard Univeristy's Center for African Studies and
Workshop location: Stellenbosch, South Africa

Latest Journal Publications

Small-scale Subsistence Farming, Food Security, Climate Change and Adaptation in South Africa: Male-Female Headed Households and Urban-Rural Nexus by Byela Tibesigwa and Martine Visser
World Development Vol. 88, pp.33-49, 2016 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.07.008)

This study examines the role of gender of the head of household on the food security of small-scale subsistence farmers in urban and rural areas of South Africa, using the exogenous switching treatment-effects regression framework.

The Data Revolution in African Economic History by Johan Fourie
Journal of Interdisciplinary History (http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/JINH_a_00977)

Big Data can be consequential for the field of history.

Buyer-Seller Relationships in International Trade: Do Your Neighbors Matter? by Fariha Kamal and Asha Sundaram
Journal of International Economics (http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1TUUc5330FcSm)

Using confidential U.S. customs data on trade transactions between U.S. importers and Bangladeshi exporters between 2002 and 2009, and information on the geographic location of Bangladeshi exporters, we show that the presence of neighboring exporters that previously transacted with a U.S.

Do Monetary, Fiscal and Financial Institutions Really Matter for Inflation Targeting in Emerging Market Economies? by Seedwell Hove, Albert Touna Mama and Fulbert Tchana Tchana
Research in International Business and Finance (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2016.07.025)

Most emerging market economies (EMEs) which have implemented inflation targeting (IT) have continued to experience large, frequent and sometimes persistent inflation target misses. At the same time these countries had reformed their institutional structures when implementing IT.

Valuing User Preferences for Improvements in Public Nature Trails Around the Sundays River Estuary, Eastern Cape, South Africa by Deborah E. Lee, Stephen G. Hosking and Mario du Preez
Journal of Economic and Financial Sciences (http://reference.sabinet.co.za/document/EJC189984)

Many valuations have been made of changes to in-estuary attributes but few have been made of out-of-estuary attributes.