C23

This paper examines the differential responses of various emerging market export sectors to exchange rate risk. This paper finds origin in initial theoretical posits of Ethier (1973) and Clark (1973) which both contend that exchange rate risk has a negative impact on the export flows of international trade participants who are assumed to be inherently risk averse.

We compute the exchange rate misalignment for a set of emerging economies between 1980 and 2013 using the behavioural equilibrium exchange rate definition. The real equilibrium exchange rate is constructed using a parsimonious model and estimators that are robust to cross-sectional independence and small sample size bias. We find that these countries tend to intervene to avoid real appreciation of their currencies following a rise in relative productivity, casting doubt on the Balassa-Samuelson effect.

Although the financial sector of Africa has witnessed massive reforms to enhance its ability to support economic activities, reduce poverty and lower income inequality, Africa remains the poorest region and the second most unequal region in the world after Latin America. Despite these established facts, little empirical research exists on the relationship between financial development and income inequality in Africa.

There are long-standing concerns that household income mobility is over-estimated due to measurement errors in reported incomes, especially in developing countries where collecting reliable survey data is often difficult. We propose a new approach that exploits the existence of three waves of panel data to can be used to simultaneously estimate the extent of income mobility and the reliability of the income measure.

This paper evaluates the strength of policy coordination in Southern African Development Community (SADC) as well as real effective exchange rate stability as indicative of sensible monetary integration. The underlying hypothesis goes with the assertion that countries meeting OCA conditions face more stable exchange rates. The quantitative analysis encompasses 12 SADC member states over the period 1995-2012.

Climate change has been classed as the greatest and urgent global issue facing humanity today, yet the empirics of the debate remain largely muted, more so with reference to sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where the impact of warming global temperatures are forecasted to have the worst impact. This paper is a contribution to the empirics of climate change and its effect on sustainable economic growth in SSA using nonparametric regression techniques.

By international standards the economy of South Africa is extremely energy intensive with only a few countries having higher intensities. SA’s primary energy use per unit of GDP is amongst the highest in the world. The high energy and electricity intensity of the economy partly reflects SA’s resource endowments (in particular the abundance of coal) but is also a function of the historical under-pricing of coal and electricity by the authorities. South African mining & industrial electricity efficiency is particularly concerning and considerably lower than the global average.