The sustainability of South African fiscal policy: an historical perspective

This article examines the issue of long-run fiscal sustainability in South Africa by applying a battery of recently developed unit root and cointegration tests to real revenue and spending data for the period 1895 to 2005. The results provide evidence that, allowing for structural breaks, South African revenue and spending during this period were I(1) series and cointegrated, with the estimated long-run equilibrium relation supporting the presence of a weak deficit sustainability condition.