Neil Rankin

The Regulatory Environment and SMMEs - Evidence from South African Firm Level Data

The paper specifically examines: labour regulations and their relationship with employment and investment; trade regulations; permits and licences for businesses; visa regulations; the predictability of regulatory application; and the costs of regulation. It also investigates the ways firms respond to regulations. There is evidence that these regulations constrain firm growth, particularly among smaller firms. Labour regulations are not the only type of regulations that have a disproportional effect on smaller firms. Government regulation comes in many forms, such as tax regulation, labour regulation and regulations concerning the import and export of goods. This paper uses data gathered from a number of South African firm-level surveys to investigate how government regulations impact on firms. In many cases firms are asked about the perceived impact of regulations. This places regulation in context.

Exchange Rate Pass-Through to Consumer Prices in South Africa: Evidence from Micro-Data

Abstract A sizeable literature examines exchange rate pass-through to disaggregated import prices, but few micro-studies focus on consumer prices. This article explores exchange rate pass-through to consumer prices in South Africa, for 2002–2007, using a unique data set of highly disaggregated data at the product and outlet level. The empirical approach allows pass-through to be calculated over various horizons for different goods and services. The heterogeneity of pass-through for food sub-components is considerable. Switches between import and export parity pricing of maize are found significant for five out of ten food sub-components. Using actual weights from the CPI basket, overall pass-through to the almost 63 per cent of the CPI covered is about 30 per cent after two years, and higher for food.

Is Africa Integrating? Evidence from Product Markets

This paper presents a price-based assessment of product market integration in Africa using disaggregated retail prices for 91 products and 12 African cities from 1991 to 2008. We find evidence of substantial deviations from the law of one price − product price differences between the cities averaged 76% over the period – a result that is consistent with the presence of large barriers to trade in the continent. Mean price differences across cities fell by close to a quarter over the period, but the decline was concentrated in the early 1990s with little progress subsequently, despite the regional trade policies implemented by the countries. Gravity-style estimates reveal that reductions in external tariffs and global trends towards price convergence in the early 1990s are the key contributors to the trend in price integration amongst the African cities.

Export Destination, Product Quality and Wages in a Middle‐Income Country - The Case of South Africa

A robust finding in the firm�?level literature is that exporting firms pay higher wages. Using South African data this paper investigates the relationship between export destination and wages at a worker level. South Africa, a middle�?income country, has two distinct main export markets - a regional market where per capita incomes are lower than at home, and an international market with higher per capita incomes. Our estimates show that workers in firms that export to the region earn less than those that produce for the domestic market. Those in firms that export outside the region earn more than either domestic producers or region�?only exporters. Much of this difference in wages can be explained by the premium the different types of exporters pay for skills. These results support previous studies which suggest that export destination is related to product quality which in turn is related to worker quality and therefore wages.

Comparability of NSC mathematics scores and former SC mathematics scores: How consistent is the signal across time?

Abstract Pupils’ competence and preparedness are assumed to be reflected in their school-leaving scores which are used by employers and further education institutions as signals for selecting appropriate applicants. Schools need a consistent signal of their pupils’ potential success beyond school in order to prepare them appropriately. The introduction of the National Senior Certificate (NSC) in South Africa has led to the admission of students into universities who seem inadequately prepared for tertiary education, especially with regard to their mathematical preparedness. Using a standardised 1st year university test first written in 2006 and repeated in 2009 and 2010, we compare the signalling ability of the NSC school-leaving mathematics scores with the former Higher Grade (HG) in terms of mathematical preparedness. Our findings suggest that the NSC mathematics scores are inflated by around 20–25 percentage points compared to the former HG mathematics scores. However, once deflated, the NSC scores are...

Dataset on retail outlet product prices for Botswana, Lesotho and South Africa

The data presented in this article are related to the research article entitled “Closer monetary union and product market integration in emerging economies: Evidence from the Common Monetary Area in Southern Africa” (M. A. Nchake, L. Edwards, N. Rankin, 2017) [1]. This article describes the monthly retail product prices used in the compilation of the consumer price index of Lesotho, South Africa and Botswana, and collected by the statistical offices in the respective countries. The data are provided at the product level and vary across cities and across time. Each individual product has information on the date (month and year), city, product and unit codes, units of measurements and, in some cases, brand name of that product. The data is made publicly available to enable replication analysis or to extend on the existing results.