The role of the rand as a shock absorber
This paper investigates the impact of rand shocks on industry output and various other South African macroeconomic variables. We use a factor augmented model, which has the key advantage of providing a rich narrative about the disaggregated impacts of exchange rate shocks. We show that the currency tends to react to changes in the relative […]
Quality of life: validation of an instrument and analysis of relationships between dimensions
Background The conventional approach to measuring quality of life was centred on the use of income measures such as GDP. There has, however, been growing acceptance of the limitations of this approach and of the need for a more multifaceted measure of quality of life. For example, the Report by the Commission on the Measurement […]
Quality of life: Validation of an instrument and analysis of relationships between domains
Quality of life (QoL) is now widely recognised as a multidimensional concept. This study validates an instrument to measure multidimensional QoL, and investigates the relationships between the domains thereof. The domains analysed are: health, housing and infrastructure, socio-economic status, social relationships, governance and safety. We utilise a rich household-level dataset collected by the GCRO on […]
Construction and analysis of a composite quality of life index for a region of South Africa
This study employs a novel approach to measure and analyse quality of life in the Gauteng City-Region of South Africa. A comprehensive composite index is constructed. Comparing the quality of life of different groups, groups such as Africans, residents in urban informal settlements and females scoring relatively low. The weighting of the dimensions of quality […]
The dynamics of inequality in a newly settled, preindustrial society: The case of the Cape Colony
Inequality is a major concern in many of the world’s developing regions. South Africa is no exception, as the voluminous literature on the subject attests to (see Bhorat and Kanbur 2006, for example). Indeed, modern South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world, primarily as a result of institutionalised inequality under […]
A comparative analysis of the synchronisation of business cycles for developed and developing economies with the world business cycle
Globalisation brought about worldwide changes, including economic and financial integration between countries. This integration implied, in business cycle theory, the emergence of a common business cycle. Most developed economies seem to follow the world business cycle most of the time. However, there is little evidence of the co-movement between emerging markets, such as South Africa, […]
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