Firm Adaptation and Reallocation under Rationing: Evidence from South Africa

Working paper 932

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.