Imagine a world without appliances. Or one without weapons, vehicles, electricity or smartphones. For some of you reading this, that sounds like bliss. But even a remote cottage in the Karoo requires the stone to have been quarried, hewn and chiselled from somewhere....
The sacking of Environment Minister Dion George has been framed in these pages as a story of alleged staff abuse and underperformance, although the counter-view was well-articulated by Ghaleb Cachalia, along with Brandon Reynolds’s cartoon. Little detail or...
Many of you operating beyond South Africa will have seen that Tanzania is about to host another sham election. This is part of a broader problem that we refer to as ‘democratic backsliding’. It’s not only an African phenomenon, of course, but it is particularly...
In the global debate over sustainability, the concept of “negative externalities” — the divergence between private returns and social costs — remains a theoretical footnote in many economic models. The importance of accounting more appropriately for these costs is...
Mining is still central to the South African economy. It employs roughly 480,000 people directly. With an estimated dependency ratio of 10 to one, the industry essentially supports close to five million people. That’s a twelfth of the country’s population. Demand for...
Why this research matters South Africa’s economy, despite its extensive mineral wealth, has not achieved the growth many reasonably anticipated. Instead, it has suffered significant industrial decline, jeopardising broad-based development. This paper investigates...
Like many, I have been trying to make sense of US President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. Many others see this as a futile exercise. Either way you look at it, what has happened — and what might still happen — is consequential, not only for the US but...
The JSE took a hammering last week. The All-Share Index (ASI) dropped by roughly 4.5% on Thursday alone, wiping out nearly R1 trillion. Hundreds of thousands of South African employees’ pensions are represented in the ASI. In perspective, a trillion rand is just...
One may say a lot about Trump. As Bono said when introducing U2’s best song at Red Rocks in 1984: “There’s been a lot of talk about this next song... maybe too much talk... this song is not a rebel song; this song is Sunday Bloody Sunday." So perhaps there has been...
Budgets are always controversial. They’re a function of political battles tempered by economic realities. The South African budget is no less so. In mathematical terms, a country’s annual budget is literally about dynamic optimisation subject to constraints. Minister...
Imagine a world without appliances. Or one without weapons, vehicles, electricity or smartphones. For some of you reading this, that sounds like bliss. But even a remote cottage in the Karoo requires the stone to have been quarried, hewn and chiselled from somewhere....
The sacking of Environment Minister Dion George has been framed in these pages as a story of alleged staff abuse and underperformance, although the counter-view was well-articulated by Ghaleb Cachalia, along with Brandon Reynolds’s cartoon. Little detail or...
Many of you operating beyond South Africa will have seen that Tanzania is about to host another sham election. This is part of a broader problem that we refer to as ‘democratic backsliding’. It’s not only an African phenomenon, of course, but it is particularly...
In the global debate over sustainability, the concept of “negative externalities” — the divergence between private returns and social costs — remains a theoretical footnote in many economic models. The importance of accounting more appropriately for these costs is...
Mining is still central to the South African economy. It employs roughly 480,000 people directly. With an estimated dependency ratio of 10 to one, the industry essentially supports close to five million people. That’s a twelfth of the country’s population. Demand for...
Why this research matters South Africa’s economy, despite its extensive mineral wealth, has not achieved the growth many reasonably anticipated. Instead, it has suffered significant industrial decline, jeopardising broad-based development. This paper investigates...
Like many, I have been trying to make sense of US President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. Many others see this as a futile exercise. Either way you look at it, what has happened — and what might still happen — is consequential, not only for the US but...
The JSE took a hammering last week. The All-Share Index (ASI) dropped by roughly 4.5% on Thursday alone, wiping out nearly R1 trillion. Hundreds of thousands of South African employees’ pensions are represented in the ASI. In perspective, a trillion rand is just...
One may say a lot about Trump. As Bono said when introducing U2’s best song at Red Rocks in 1984: “There’s been a lot of talk about this next song... maybe too much talk... this song is not a rebel song; this song is Sunday Bloody Sunday." So perhaps there has been...
Budgets are always controversial. They’re a function of political battles tempered by economic realities. The South African budget is no less so. In mathematical terms, a country’s annual budget is literally about dynamic optimisation subject to constraints. Minister...