Firm Adaptation and Reallocation under Rationing: Evidence from South Africa

Rowan Clarke (), Chris Eaglin (), Zach Kuloszewski () and Jun Wong ()
Additional contact information
Rowan Clarke: Harvard Business School, Harvard University
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Martine Visser

No 298, ERSA Working Paper Series from Economic Research Southern Africa

Abstract: Rationing policies are frequently implemented due to equity concerns, yet whether equitable-exposure rules deliver equal economic impacts remains unclear. We study the 2021--2023 power crisis in South Africa, exploiting quasi-random variation in outage exposure and combining hour-level outage data with geocoded transactions from a leading payment platform. Although aggregate daily sales do not change on outage days, revenue is reallocated: below-median firms lose roughly eleven percent of daily revenue while above-median firms---able to invest in defensive technology---gain a similar share. These unequal effects are amplified when outages are anticipated, suggesting the impacts of rationing are not equal despite equitable exposure.

Keywords: Economic Development; Firms; Demand Reallocation; Electricity shortages; Rationing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D22 L11 O12 O55 Q41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in ERSA Working Paper Series, May 2026

Downloads: (external link)
https://ersawps.org/index.php/working-paper-series/article/view/298/200 First version, 2026 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rza:ersawp:298

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ERSA Working Paper Series from Economic Research Southern Africa
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Maggi Sigg ().