South Africa

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...

South Africa successfully reduced smoking prevalence by substantially increasing tobacco excise tax and therefore real cigarette prices between 1993 and 2010. Tobacco market structure changed in 2010 following the entry of local tobacco companies and the introduction of cheaper cigarette brands...

I apply the bunching methodology to South African administrative tax data over the period from 2011 to 2017 to investigate the responsiveness of individual taxpayers to changes in marginal personal income tax rates. I find significant evidence of bunching among the self-employed but no evidence of...

This paper investigates the relationship between the education level of household heads and households’ energy-saving practices at the micro-level in South Africa. It uses the community survey of 2016 as data source. Multilevel logistic models are estimated to account for heterogeneity that...

The numerous diagnostic studies and policy recommendations that exist for South Africa typically focus on microeconomic constraints to growth. Higher potential growth certainly requires structural reforms to boost productivity growth, in particular to allow private competition and investment in...

We study the effect of income receipt in form of Old age pension (OAP) on the prevalence of depressive symptoms using the Centre of Epidemiologic Studies Short Depression Scale (CES-D 10). We exploit the exogeneous age eligibility criteria in a regression discontinuity (RD) design to estimate the...

This study aims to scrutinize the responsiveness of the South African tax system to changes in economic performance. The study made use of annual time series data spanning from 1995 – 2017. The tax system was found to be fairly buoyant, albeit there is still room for improvement. The ARDL bounds...

The yield spread of South African to United States 10 year government bonds over the last 5 years has increased substantially to levels approaching those last seen during the mid-1980s. This yield spread increase is replicated in spreads relative to long-term German bonds, as well as for the spread...

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-...